Music. Okay, take it easy, take it easy, easy does it, okay. Yeah, okay, thank you. No, thank you. I'm calling this the lost art of listening, but I could also call it the lost art of understanding, or better yet, immersive listening, or even just being fully present while listening. The subtitle could be listening with discernment. But as I outline here, the discernment comes as a result of immersive listening.
So do we really listen? When we think we're listening, How much do we perceive or understand or just take in? As my wife would say, people hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see. Wise words, and I concur. So, what do we want to hear and what do we filter out and why? Well, without taking each of those parts of the question and answering them serially, I hope to answer in what follows here. Besides the question of do we
really listen, I'll give us humans a little break here. Just a little one. Not invoking victimhood by any means, but by saying that the way that we listen has changed quite a bit, and so I posit that the effect of that is that it by default changed or changes how we listen, as well as to what extent and what we actually perceive. As technology advances, so often does convenience. And for every gain, there's something lost. Waxing nostalgic again?
Not at all. Before any other communicative technology, other than a quill pen and parchment giving giving way to paper, then the printing press, people thought about what they're going to say to each other and had the opportunity to reflect upon it in letter writing. And the recipient could also reflect on what was written to them.
As this slower semi-permanent state of thought and idea transference took place, we could slowly digest it and reflect and have a rich abundance of imaginative musings about it, much like slow cooking and mindful eating versus fast food. Now, maybe it's easier to see how I'm not waxing nostalgic here.
In addition to that, communications took place face-to-face in the workplace and at home with the family at the dinner table, for example, to share and reflect on their day and just communicating one-on-one in general. There were no added distractions other than maybe a dog barking or rooster crowing in the morning bringing in the dawn. We listened to each other.
And if someone felt that they weren't listened to or there was some unjust communication that took place, it could be worked out again in the same way as there was nowhere to hide except maybe under the bed, unlike getting an email telling you that you're fired. Then people read books and maybe they talked about them and shared their ideas about what they had read.
Once again, we needed to be present, to listen to each other, and the comprehension level and level and length of attention was greater simply because of the modalities. If we regress even further here, if only for a moment, apparently the relaying of the great spiritual books was done orally, as per the tradition then. The amount of comprehension then, infused with the massive memory capacity, is staggering. That's yet another level of perspective to consider in what we're discussing here.
We can now fast forward to the age of the radio and the early record player. The advent of these technologies might be said to involve passive listening. Now, that doesn't imply a lack of understanding or a deficit in our basic ability to listen and listen with understanding and perception and discernment. Not at all.
But at some point, us being recipients of information without the means of responding in a give-and-take exchange of ideas were subject to manipulation and the shaping of public opinion through propagandistic techniques. Eventually, beyond our scope of awareness, our thoughts and opinions were being shaped for us without us even knowing or realizing it. This is known data admitted by those who employed the techniques.
But on a more even tone here, we could listen to stories being told, radio shows, like plays, but without seeing them so as to engage our imaginations in the same way as we would reading a book. It was passive listening, yes, but it too could be considered immersive listening as it doesn't need to involve a conversational exchange. It's a presence. It's being fully present and attentive.
Attentive and when we listened to records it could be likened to a ceremony the unwrapping the careful removal of the vinyl disc beginning side one as we got comfortable and had the cover art and the liner notes ready maybe we listened alone with headphones or we could have invited friends for a listening party or gathering then getting up to turn over the record and hear side two we were committed to it we weren't going anywhere and neither
was our attention we didn't have the ability to endlessly scroll through a miasma of content. Now, it could be said that, hey, we can do the same thing now, having a service create playlists for us. Yes, we can, and often many of the songs are from varied artists that we like, and so we get that variety. And yet, with that seeming advantage, it is still situationally different.
We have more choices available instantly, so we are now not paying attention to the one artist and the one album, which is a carefully curated collection of songs made up to not only stand alone but together to tell a story and to be a segment of a larger story of the artist's longer story and development and creative output. Therein lies the difference. To put that in a broader context, I'll briefly repeat my prior statement of getting an email to tell you that you've been fired.
We have more ways to keep each other at arm's length now. If we do that, how can we be listening to anything really, let alone be forced to communicate effectively and immediately in the first place? When we're used to slow listening, we don't discard a song or an album quickly. We'll listen repeatedly and often hear things on the fifth or the eighth listen that we may not have noticed. Or maybe there will be a new reveal lyrically, some new revelation, something afresh.
Of course, it happens in the movies all the time. As it's certainly no surprise that it can't all be taken in on the first view. But we often don't mind several viewings of movies. And we have to remain stationary while watching a movie, the same way that we once did when listening to vinyl albums. Sure, we could put on the album and wander around the house, but the nature of the medium itself invited a more complete immersion.
We all know the effects that music has on us, like the Mozart effect, and that jazz music can promote theta brainwaves and improve memory, mood, and verbal abilities, according to a study done by Johns Hopkins University.
But now beyond studies and data and statistics and all of that, we're talking about listening mindfully and how that can affect our experience of listening, not only immediately, but also in cultivating the awareness of our thoughts that can interfere with fully listening and effective communication as well.
When I first started taking photographs and really paying attention of taking photographs, I realized that what had happened as I pursued my newfound hobby that I loved, it was teaching me how to see. That's the biggest thing that happened, more than light or composition or tricky little techniques in capturing or editing. No, seeing. It taught me how to see. It was like an entire vista had opened up to me that was previously closed,
closed for my own deficit of awareness. And I thought that I was seeing just fine before that, but doing something like photography shows us differently. It's been said that if you smile when you're talking to someone who can't see you, they can sense that you're smiling when you're speaking to them, and it has a positive effect, though they can't actually see you.
There's a paper published online at NIH, National Library of Medicine, under the banner of Advances in Cognitive Psychology titled, Words That Move Us, The Effects of Sentences on Body Sway. After one experiment testing if reading various sentences resulted in changes in postural sway, the conclusion was that semantic processing reaches the motor periphery, leading to increased postural activity.
What does this have to do with listening, you might ask? everything because the same sentences can be read to us resulting in a physiological effect. A more direct example is cited by an article from the International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering, and Education, Volume 1, No.
2, 2013 by Dr. Akopova Asya, Department of the English Language of Humanitarian Faculties, South Federal University in Russia, in which one of the statements is, quote, Manipulation is realized when the listener cannot see the speaker's covered intentions behind what is actually being said. It continues, use. Manipulation is pragmatic aspect that achieves its goals without evident detection of communicative intention.
The speaker wittingly chooses such form of utterance that lacks direct signals of his intentional condition. By increasing the level of inadequate perception of information field, manipulation widens illusionary subjective reality. End quote. It's also been said that 70% of communication is body language.
However, it was Albert Morabian, who was a researcher of body language, that first broke down the components of a face-to-face conversation and found that communication is 55% non-verbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only.
All of this is also echoed in a summation or a takeaway of an article by Viviana Maria for the American Scientist called The Art and Science of Manipulative Language, saying that human communication takes place on several levels at once, not just speech, gestures, and body language, but also messages that are implied but not explicitly uttered in words.
The implicit level of communication can be a particularly effective channel for leading the recipients of a message to act or think in a specific way without directly questioning it. And by learning to spot implied messages in various forms of discourse, recipients gain Gain the ability to examine such messages directly and thereby avoid being manipulated by them. I'm reminded of thumbnails that start with, the secret of, then fill in the blank. Like, the secret the pros know.
What secret? Talent and hard work? Some secret, but it often causes the bait to be taken. Once I remember having a conversation with a Japanese person who didn't speak any English and somehow, through sheer determination and a mutual willingness to understand each other, we understood each other and had a better conversation and understanding that I've had with many people speaking the same language as me.
I've had conversations with people speaking the same language and dialect and the lack of understanding was astounding. I also once had a conversation with a taxi driver who spoke Spanish and I replied in my elementary Italian. Yet, we understood each other quite well, not because of the similarities of some words to each other in both languages, but again because of a willingness and openness to communicate. He respected that I had tried my best, and I respected him as well.
That's how it works. The reciprocal. The reciprocity. When we listen without interrupting it shows the person speaking that what they say matters to us That they matter to us and it allows them to relax and flow better by entrusting them with our listening care We help that place to come forth now all of this may be painfully obvious to us But unless we actually do it We can't know how much we're actually not doing it and we can't feel what happens to us when we do it We automatically feel
the difference why? Why? Because if we're not used to doing it, then we will feel the urge to interrupt and respond just as we're used to doing. That might signal to the speaker that what we're saying by interrupting is more important than what they're saying for one thing. And as we resist doing that, we can come to a realization that never happened before, a different feeling, a realization that we might be missing something by interrupting their flow because we have the urge to jump in.
We might start feeling like we're also getting more out of it than we may have because now Now we're really listening instead of our own wheels spinning and off into our own thoughts that we feel compelled to insert into their thought stream. Things like that. People want to be heard and they want to feel as though what they're saying matters. When we really listen to each other on stage or in the studio, we can become an interconnected mind that functions in collective flow.
That's when we're greater than the sum of our parts and we're in flow together. There's no thought, no judgment, no interruption, just a creative synergy. This is when music really comes alive. I've often thought and said that you can't force the muse no matter how much you romance it.
It knows better. It spots the counterfeit intent and will not allow entrance to that hallowed space where that intent just can't exist, because tainting the space closes it, much like you can't float with bricks tied to your ankles. Musically, in a live interactive ensemble situation, when a person is soloing, they're telling a story, and the story will develop. And as their story develops, we as supportive accompanists can also play an active role without necessarily interrupting.
Revealing that we indeed are listening, versus just introducing what we feel that the next step in the story should be. There is a difference, and to the attentive listener, the attentive audience, that difference can be perceived.
As the soloist's story develops, they may introduce something that sounds like the analog to a character in a story, and we as active listening supporters can become that character and animate that character as we perceive the character, then engaging in a script or a dialogue or even a dance, as it were, becoming co-creators of that story without intruding versus breaking down the door and suddenly barging in.
Conversational as it may be, it's still the author's story, a script being written in real time. Again, the listening can give us that discernment just as it can give us or help us develop discernment while listening to another speak. We pay attention and hear and understand things that we may not have understood had our own wills been spinning and our attention been diverted there instead, whereby we're now pretend listening and not really there, just the illusion of being there.
So how do we go about listening better? Well, I think that it all comes down to focus. We can listen to a piece of music and listen different ways each time to hone our focus. We can listen to the mix, the entirety of the mix. We can then ask ourselves questions about the mix, like, did the entire mix reflect the story? How? We can listen to various elements of the mix, and so on. In that way, we are redirecting our focus and sharpening our focus.
We can listen to the lyrics alone if the piece contains vocals. We can then ask ourselves what the story said to us, etc. After listening with directed focus, we can then listen as a whole.
At that point, we may perceive it in a completely different way, as well as even hearing things that we may have missed during focused listening it can reveal and teach us much and listening to the lyrical content can help us to truly listen linguistically as well as the other way around even the lyrics and storytelling are composed and arranged differently than normal or particulate speech we can again glean much each way as far as
speech and reading are concerned we can focus on syntax tone cadence of delivery word meanings and so forth if we're watching someone speak or give a speech or presentation, we can again practice our focus that way. We can even watch with no sound. Then we can focus on body language, which often speaks volumes in and of itself.
Then listen without watching, even if we've already seen it, as again, we will glean much using focus, which can help us to not be distracted by what we had just seen if we watched first. And as far as discernment is concerned, when we listen and pay attention, the discernment we acquire can and often will give way to the ability to understand the language better and how it's being used.
We'll be able to see our own confirmation and selection biases and thwart them as discernment swats them down lest they interfere with real understanding and we'll be able to explain if need be that our perception is not our bias. We'll read between the lines better. We'll hear and understand how the words and phrases and the syntax and context in a play to create intended meaning that we may otherwise miss, as was spoken of earlier.
The point is that re-listening engenders these important capabilities that serve us, as they should. So, in recapturing or improving or learning anew what seems to be this lost art of listening, let's cultivate it to better communicate with each other, in whatever context it may be, and for a better understanding of ourselves. Thanks for listening. Please stay Stay tuned for the next episode of Breakfast with Vinny. Music.