Listening

 

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand."

Karl Menninger

 

"Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery."

-Joyce Brothers

 

"The talkative listen to no one, for they are ever speaking. And the first evil that attends those who know how to be silent is that they hear nothing."

-Plutarch

 

"Stop jabbering like a magpie. Notice what's actually happening, not just what you think is happening or wish were happening. Look and Listen."

-Epictetus

 

"Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice."

-William Shakespeare

 

"Let me listen to me and not to them."

-Gertrude Stein

 

 

"The word listen is derived from two anglo-saxon words. One word is HLYSTAN, which means "Hearing." The other is HLOSNIAN, which means to "wait in suspense." Listening, then, is a combination of hearing what the other person says and a suspenseful waiting, an intense psychological involvement with the other."

-Robert Bolton

 

"In antiquity there was only silence. In the 19th century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men."

-Luigi Russolo

 

Cairo-Egyptians in this capital city say it is harder to be heard and to have a voice, but they are not talking politics. Well, not only politics.

   What they are talking about, or rather, yelling about, is noise, the incredible background noise of a city crammed with 18 million people, and millions of drivers who always have one hand on the horn and a rules-free way of thinking.

   Noise-outrageous, unceasing, pounding noise-is the unnerving backdrop to a tense time in Egypt....

Article in New York Times April 14,2008   A CITY WHERE YOU CAN'T HEAR YOURSELF SCREAM by Michael Slackman

 

 

"Every man....should periodically be compelled to listen to opinions which are infuriating to him. To hear nothing but what is pleasing to one is to make a pillow of the mind."

-St. John Ervine

 

"I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God."

Soren Kierkegaard

 

"For 25 centuries Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible but audible."

-Jacques Attali

 

"Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another's word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word."

William Stringfellow

 

"Enlil heard the clamor and he said to the gods in council, "The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the Babel." So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind."

The Epic of Gilgamesh

 

"Noise-outrageous, unceasing, pounding noise-is the unnerving backdrop to a tense time in Egypt, as inflation and low wages have people worried about basic survival, prompting strikes and protests. We're not just talking typical city noise, but what scientists here say is more like living inside a factory....."

Cairo April 14 ,2008  New York Times A CITY WHERE YOU CAN'T HEAR YOURSELF SCREAM by Michael Slackman

 

 

"Much of the conflict in our lives can be explained by one simple but unhappy fact: We don't really listen to each other."

-Michael P. Nichols

 

"The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.:"

-Albert Camus'

 

"There is only one rule for being a good talker-learn how to listen."

-Christopher Morley

 

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."

-Ernest Hemingway

 

"The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader."

-Robert Frost

 

"For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. it has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. it is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise."

-Jacques Attali

 

"The outer ear includes the delicately sculptured and arranged auricle, a sound trumpet which catches the sound waves and guides them into a passage of about one-and-a half inches called the auditory channel. The outer third of this channel is lined with tiny, wax-producing glands and fine hairs that constitute a gentle but effective barrier to discourage inquisitive insects and keep out foreign bodies.

   Separating, the outer ear from the middle ear is the ear drum, or tympanic membrane, a thin sheet of tissue about a quarter of an inch in diameter. Sound waves vibrate the eardrum, which in turn touches the first of three moveable bones closely linked to each other. Called the auditory osicles, these bones are of unusual shapes which have given them their picturesque names. Attached to the eardrum is the malleus or hammer, which rests against the incus or anvil that in turn impinges on the stapes or stirrup.

   To the hammer, anvil, and stirrup is added a snail-shaped mechanism, the cochlea, known more popularly as the inner ear. Sound vibrations move the stapes or stirrup in and out of an oval window in the cochlea disturbing the liquid called perilymph which vibrates some of the twenty-four thousand fibers of the basilar membrane and stimulates the attached nerves.

   From this "organ of corti," as it is called, the neural current flows through the auditory nerve to the temporal lobe of the brain. The cortex or "bark" of the brain is gray in color and covered with a tremendous number of neurons which are interrelated and provide a fantastic number of circuits that can be hooked up, allowing the neural current to be routed in a great variety of directions.

   The whole operation of a sound wave hitting the ear, and being transmitted to the brain, takes place with lightning speed. The brain itself is programmed by years of experience and conditioning to handle the auditory impressions and which it is fed. Like a busy executive's efficient secretary who sorts out the correspondence, keeping only the most important for his personal perusal, some sounds are summarily rejected, while others have the total attention focused on them.

   This selective process carried on by the brain is the main distinction and difference between hearing and listening. From the total number of our auditory impressions we choose a small select number upon which to focus our attention. As the sounds come to us we hear; when we apply ourselves to their meaning and significance we listen.....

                              John Drakeford

                     The awesome Power of the Listening Ear

 

"....The deplorable habit of Americans having background music for everything they do can actually cripple the mental, emotional and creative abilities of a person, according to Dr. Franz Winkler*"

"Beware of Background Music," This Week Magazine, Sept 17,1961

*Ed note   Scientists working on the first Atomic Bomb were reportedly divided into those who listened to "jazz" and those who preferred Classical  

 

"Everything is written in the sounds around us.

    Man's past, present and future.

    A man who does not know how to listen

cannot hear the advice that life is offering us

    at every moment.

Only someone who listens to the sound

of the present can make the right decision."

-Paulo Coelho

Diary of A Magus

 

"....A fascinating subject for scientific research, in light of quantum mechanics, would be the contribution that the human and animal ear makes to the laws of consonance, dissonance, pith, and timbre. Such studies might be extended to more esoteric realms, as far as the cosmos and , in reverse to the atom. One hypothesis published by Heinrich Husmann in 1953, is that there are sounds that arise in the ear besides those that reach the eardrum. These inner sounds are "subjective overtones" and combination tones." Our ears are truly magical mechanisms, meriting more than the limited anatomical interpretations usually given them."

-Joseph Eger

Einstein's Violin: A Conductor's Notes on Music, Physics, and Social Change

 

"It may seem foolish to you, but you can actually increase your listening skill by doing a very simple thing. Each day, close your eyes for one minute and concentrate on the sounds you hear about you. Try it in different places where you find yourself. Don't think of anything except what you can hear. In this noisy age, we learn to shut out sounds for our own comfort; we do this unconsciously and it becomes  a habit. This habit can be detrimental when we really want to listen to something, so we need to be able to break the habit at will. Try it!"

Hugh P. Fellows

The Art and Skill of Talking with People

 

"I've another French tutor now. Gribouille is patient and considerate, never interrupts, and always lets you finish what you want to say. He gives you time to pause, to reflect, to search in your head for the best word, for the mot juste, and then lets you enunciate it clearly and carefully. He looks at me as I speak and twirls his ears. he does it to be rid of the flies; but I know he's listening. I speak better in his company. I don't feel the need to rush it out, to hurry a phrase, to spit it out garbled or clipped. With a donkey, you speak correctement. If only every human encounter was like that! No matter what language. I'm all ears, too, little human ears, for his wisdom, and for his needs. he seems to instill patience in me, someone who's not always the best listener."

Andy Merrifield

The Wisdom of Donkeys

 

"Prince Shotoku was a seventh-century politician attributed with authorship of Japan's first constitution. Famed as a nation builder, he is said to have been able to listen to many people simultaneously, hearing the petitions of up to 10 supplicants at once and then handing down judgments or advice.

   Inspired by the legendary prince, Japanese researchers have spent five years developing a humanoid robot system that can understand and respond to simultaneous speakers. They posit a restaurant scenario in which the robot is a waiter. When three people stand before the robot and simultaneously order pork cutlet meals or French dinners, the robot understands at about 70 percent comprehension, responding by repeating each order and giving the total price. This process takes less than two seconds and, crucially requires no prior voice training...."

Tim Hornyak   article: Playing It by Ear in Scientific American Magazine August 2007  Tom Hornyak is author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots"

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Book: "The Listening Experience: Elements, Forms, and Styles in Music" by James P. OBrien

Book: "Lend Me Your Ears: Great speeches in History" ed by William Safire

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