The theme for World Listening Day 2019 is “Listening With,” as created by composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood:
“Listening with…
listening with the neighborhood
at midnight, and again at dawn.
Listening with an awareness that all around you are other life-forms simultaneously listening and sensing with you – plant roots, owls, cicadas, voles – mutually intertwined within the web of vibrations which animate and surround our planet.”
I find the idea of “listening with” intriguing. Through my own research, weekly soundwalks, and a Deep Listening Intensive, I’ve been encouraged to listen to, with, and through my body. During a past listening meditation, I distinctly remember sitting at my kitchen table and being aware of the refrigerator’s low groans, mid-range hums, and higher crackles in and through my left lower ribs with an almost dull tingling sensation. Something about the fridge sounds resonated clearly in my body, helping me better hear the range of sounds emanating from the machine. Feeling how my body interacted with the sounds also heightened my sense of sharing the space, both sonically and physically. Sensing how the groans, hums, and crackles moved through the room and my body, I could then reflect on how my own sounds pass through spaces and impact others.
This type of reliance on embodied and multi-sensory listening – detecting changes with our skin, absorbing sound in our bodies – elevates the listening experience. It can also better connect us to ourselves and the space we’re in. Listening with our bodies to discover resonance can reveal how we’re feeling, if we’re holding tension, how we’re moving through a space, and how that space is interacting with us. “Listening with” allows for the gathering of information, which in turn can bring about empathy and care for the intertwined vibrations of people and spaces around us.
