Listening

(in response to Tremors, a poem by Stewart Conn)

Attentive listening - assertive listening

Listen to the wind or storm

There is no sound that moves me more than music.

Of the wind, the soul, the instrument...

What of the deaf who have no sense of sound?

Who go to concerts and watch the pianist?

What extra sense or other dimension is acquired when you can't hear?

A friend who went to boarding school for the deaf fell in love with a deaf girl in his class. Now in his 40's, he has a cochlear implant. He can hear. He learns to listen. He hasn't lost that extra sense his deafness gave him. He asked me if he could invite his friend, who had a cochlear implant five years after him. He wanted to see her. He wanted to talk to her. But most of all he wanted to listen. I felt an intruder as I observed two 40 year olds who had known each other almost all their lives talk to each other for the first time. They talked over each other, at each other, with and into each other, beyond my comprehension. But they understood more in half an hour than I could ever learn from talking to a loved old friend.

Listening to the unspoken word is so often more valid than listening to what is said. Listening to the silence greater than listening to the sound. Only be listening to spoken language can one begin to understand and discriminate between what is said, what is implied, and what is meant.

Listening is an acquired skill we never stop acquiring.

To listen or to hear

Yes there is a difference don't ask me to explain it As sometimes i can not tell the difference. Am I listening to .Sketches of Spain... Miles Davis Am i hearing Dylans A hard rain gonna fall.Listening reminds me of giving all my attention to The spoken word of T.S. Eliots..Four quartets.. Am I listening or hearing The ticking clock and chirping birds I remember in the late 70s at a empowerment group EST.the facilitator saying.." Do you Hear! What I am saying" Or are you half asleep staring at the wallpaper Wondering what meal your having tonight! So maybe we listen but don't hear..or I hear what your saying.but l can't Be bothered to listen....to be honest I don't really care ..think I might take up a course in lip reading.......

I've always found it easier to listen then talk about myself. As a little girl I would bottle up my feelings and thoughts until there was nothing else to do but explode. My family did not understand why I burt into tears, but I couldn't tell them. I didn't know how to. My grandfather used to admonish me for always looking grumpy. I don't think I was unhappy, but I did feel a weight constantly on my shoulders, bearing down on me. I would observe the world thinking, "Nobody is like me, no one sees things the way I do." It is hard enough to express yourself when you are young, but when you think you are different, it becomes almost impossible. On my 7th birthday my mother gave me a diary. It was not new, it was one of the diaries my father had had printed for the cleaning business that went burst the following year. But I didn't care. She had painted over the logo on the cover, replaced it with an intricate design of flowers and leaves twisted around the letter B. She couldn't have known it at the time, but that diary, the first of many I kept over the years, would provide me with a much greater gift: the ability to express myself, in secret, away from judgement. It would give me a place where I could let things go and listen to myself.

Years later, my sister andI would sit at the table regularly, punctually writing about our days and thoughts on our own journals. We'd put a lot of effort into it, decorating each page with stickers and coloured pens. After we finished writing, we'd let the other read what we had written, so that I always knew what my sister was going through and she knew me. Quite beautiful when I think of it, but it did have a downside for me. I never did learn how to speak. Writing was all I could do. When my sister stopped keeping a diary, I wrote her letters so I wouldn't need to sit down and speak to her.

Listening. Listening out – for the disappointment in her voice, for any sign of let down, or disbelief. Does she accept I am not well enough to meet her on her birthday, to travel up to London, to weather the relentless sound and vibration of travel, to traipse around a museum or gallery, my legs heavy, aching, every thud shooting up my spine, wishing I was at home, seated, unmoving. Does she feel rejected; will I have to weather her insecurity the next time we meet? Listening, to myself. Do I tell the truth to myself? Do I want to be seated, unmoving –what is the purpose to all this inactivity in my life now? An endless see-saw of making an effort, then collapsing in on myself. My fantasy is that I can sit in a restful state and go deep within, find a vein of healing and know this time is worthwhile. But for now, the time feels turgid, a denial of contact with myself, keeping my awareness at bay. The sounds of the train moving – sometimes a gentle lulling into peaceful thoughts or a rhythmic jogging to clarity, at others it is the screech and scream of tedium unremitting; life passing by. Is it being lived or passed through obliviously? Am I just in a tunnel at the moment? Still moving but no external indications that it is so. Just alone with my doubt scraping and flapping at the window. A cold chill of dark metal. The light will come. Listening. Listening to myself. What do I want to say, here in the dark. Closing off the light, to heighten the senses, the listening ear.

I listen to you when you stop shouting in my ear. Keep it down! I can listen only when you keep it to an even tone. The railway tracks keep on going across the open land and the ribbon development reveals those lives. Plastic Wendy houses and small dreams held in pine sheds, newly minted. That tiny trampoline! And a smoker, sitting in the easy chair. Spaniels dance across the sight lines, making the illuminated alabaster motion still, train tracks. Listening to the rail. Listening to the rant and rail of the dispossessed. Listen, listen. Stop shouting, everyone! Anger is no use. Anger gets you nowhere. Don’t tell me what to say and think. I have one desire, to listen well. But what if there is nothing to say? How will the children bind their voices tightly into a single firework?

By talking quietly in the evergreen spaces. They only want to be heard. My voice is not my own, you say. Don’t touch me! Stay away and leave your dirty fingers at the market place, fingering goods. I am silenced. How do they do that? How does the silence evolve into the burning ball of fire in your belly? The constricted circle of stiffness and pain that you cannot unbend? I whispered. Obviously I didn’t. You whispered. Don’t tell, you said. Don’t tell what? Don’t tell what to whom? I cannot be sure, can you?

You listen to me now. Your pain is alleviated by my listening. Let it out, let it out. Train dreams. Hear the story. Rattling in my head. It will escape! Closer, closer.