The article highlights the significance of listening in conversation and its often overlooked impact compared to speaking. It argues that our language limits the recognition and appreciation of listening, suggesting that if we viewed ourselves as 'listening' animals, we might refine our understanding and language surrounding it. The text draws on references from philosophers and musicians who have attempted to create a richer vocabulary around listening, emphasizing how terms like 'soundmark' and 'Deep Listening' highlight the importance of sound and listening in our communities and environments.
Listening is the dark matter of conversation, a mysterious activity that shapes the cosmos of any society or relationship.
If we thought of ourselves as 'listening' animals, equipped and adapted to receive language, would we talk about listening more precisely?
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that the limits of our language are the limits of our world. Perhaps our listening cosmos has indeed been limited.
There is pleasure to be had, for example, from terms such as those compiled by Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torgue to 'rehabilitate general acoustic awareness'.
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