Free the Listening

--Listening to Myself Listen by S. Arden Hill


Listening to Myself Listen is an interesting article by S. Arden Hill. The hearing and listening are very common behaviors for us in our daily lives. But I was not aware the differences between them as well as the focus of listening until I read Hill’s article. The examples in Hill’s article are so familiar for me and maybe a majority of us. I am curious about what new aspects can be found in these common human behaviors.

Hill raises and discusses some questions about the hearing and listening in his article. These questions include the reasons and ways of choosing the focus of listening as well as the possibility to describe this process. Listening is a consciously or unconsciously interpretation of the sounds that we hear. The focuses of listening for individuals can be very different due to the differences on culture, listening skill, physical ability and interest. For a single listener, the focus can change according to the changes of environment. Hill briefly introduces to us how certain sound resources in a sonic environment impact on our focus of listening through examples. Providing these examples and background knowledge of ethnography, Hill suggests that in a sonic environment, the factors that influence listener’s selection process in listening can be extended to values of society. Because of the complexity and diversity of these factors, which frame our focus of listening within boundaries, it would probably become interesting when we play with the frame.

In fact, I began to relate Hill’s examples to my own experience when I read the first sentences. Through understanding of factors which have key influence in our focus of listening, I attempt to free myself to more possibility in listening. In my soundwalk, I tried to pay attention to those sounds that I don’t like and familiar with in my daily life. For instance, the mechanical sounds including siren and noise of elevator. Sometimes, in order to know about more sounds that I have not noticed before, I would record sounds as long as they occurred in my surroundings. I would collect the sounds unconsciously when I was walking. I didn’t feel anything special in these sounds when I was recording. However, when I listened to them after a while in a different environment, I found another aspect of the characteristics in sonic environment. It is not true that the siren and the noise can be more beautiful than music, but non-musical sounds represent other dimensions of sonic environment in real life and cannot be replaced by music. That is how I am inspired by Hill’s article in exploration of listening to sounds. By doing so, I also experienced the joy of playing with the frame of focus of listening. What is more, to break the frame and free myself to new areas are valuable practice for any other artistic creation.