Another Way to Love

Spring is taking on a different meaning for me now that I've been farming. When the grass starts to show through and you can smell the soil soak up the snowmelt and the birds start making a rowdy caucophony in the still bare trees, I start getting restless and excited. Having spent another dormant winter in quiet snowy spots and doing part-time cafe work and lots of time in front of books and computer, I step outside and listen to spring arrive. Even in this insulated spot, I can hear the warmth, water and wetness soaking into the city. Dripping off banisters, splashing in the street, a moist warmth in the air that gives everything and air of liveliness. Trees and grass are respiring in the wind, emitting a hum that you can hear if you listen.


There's other things to hear when you listen. Like the tension rise and fall in someone's voice when they start to talk about something that affects them emotionally, that strikes close to heart. If you listen, it can help you understand what they're saying, to hear the measured and pained patience and deep breath required to try to explain something so personal to someone outside of their body, their words might not even have anything to do with the message. Sometimes you can just enjoy listening to the click or motoring lilt of their speech, accentuated with Anglo or Franco or Afro or Sino or Euro or Austro or Ontario tendencies.

And then there's things that you have to really really listen hard to hear. Like hearing what the cat is meowing about beyond just being a big fat annoying whiny cat. Or like listening to a person who is saying things that you really disagree with for the 10th time, to try to hear it and understand it and not just subtitle and supplant the image of their talking head with what you imagine they are saying so you can disregard it as soon as you find a way to poke a hole through it since it must be an argument that's going on when two people talk, right?? God forbid it be a conversation. Am I Right??Maybe??Because, well blah blah blah blah blah blah and he didn't even listen to me and I would never talk like that to anyone and they don't know what it's like to be me, never mind me trying to listen to an ignorant thing like that who obviously just doesn't get it because he just won't listen to me...

(Scenes from Occupy Wall Street in New York City)
In 2011, I visited and participated in discussions held at the Occupy movements in Fredericton, Halifax, Montreal and New York City and it really made me understand how hard it is to listen sometimes, even with people who you agree with. Listening is difficult even for those who accuse corporations and governments of not listening. Listening takes practice.

I also attended Sappyfest in 2011, an outdoor music festival in the small and vibrant town of Sackville, New Brunswick, bordering Nova Scotia. It was special because the vibe of the festival is so open, friendly and laidback that you can really call it a vibe. Everyone I met was up for a conversation. On the last day, there was an Improvisation and Listening workshop put on by Jerry Granelli, a 70 year old jazz drummer and a sinewy wise old man (Listen! Here or http://www.cbc.ca/video/watch/Radio/ID=2088250971 ) . It started with a room of us, many of the bands who had performed throughout the weekend, sitting in a big semi circle. Jerry has us do a starter exercise where we just spend 120 seconds, listening and not judging noise but just listening, to the timbre and resonance of the noises we hear, up above us off the ceiling or muffled in the corner or just beyond the wall down the stairs and not judge the noises as too loud or too soft or in harmony or in bad taste or being caused by this or that but just hearing them. You can feel something in the crown of your head being activated.

Then, he continues, if you're into listening or playing music listen for a rhythm in it. But don't be so quick to count out 1, 2, 1, 2 or 4/4 time. Instead, feel out the bigger cycles that are there in the sound, e.g. hear not just three cars passing on the street outside on the wet asphalt, their tires and the motor and the air movement as connected one thing to another but also with the braking noise and other cars going the opposite direction and the squeak of laundry machine downstairs and the steady hum of the laptop and not on counts of 4 or 8 or 16 but rather bigger and bigger time signatures where everything is incorporated into that cycle because ultimately, everything is one big cycle. It's hard to explain the concept with rationality and logic but the idea I offer you is:

(and this is not backed up by scientific research but I doubt I'm the first to make this connection) A place in your head gets activated when you actually listen. Whatever that brain structure is called, I'll call it the Listening Bulb, either inside that or synaptically wired to it must be where you find love.