Just Listening and the Composing Process
02/11/19 11:32
At a recent Just Listening workshop, this one at my home institution, the Longy School of Music of Bard College, I was asked about the connection between Just Listening and composing. I gave a credible answer, but one that only began to turn up the most meaningful and important parts of the connection. And of course, when did the full realization hit me but during my daily meditation the next morning!
So, the crux: Just Listening and Just Sitting (Shikantaza) share the fundamental reality that thoughts just bubble up. One does not aim to suppress thoughts, squash them, remember them — only to recognize that yes, there’s a thought. What is also real, though, is that these thoughts are about what one engages with in life, and if something is already on your mind, the thoughts that bubble up are often related to that. And the very fact that the thoughts just appear means they often bring insight.
Insight is basically another way of knowing. It is distinctly different from the acquisition of knowledge, it is not acquired through thinking, following a thought, obsessing over “figuring it out.” Though much thinking and work precede it, one must simply wait for insight, it comes on its own time, and of course that means it’s not a good idea to meditate in order to find the answer to a question.
Another aspect of the insight-meditation connection is that we are so accustomed to holding onto a thought that we think is good, following its implications, etc., that the process consumes our minds, and crowds out anything that might follow. So here’s another connection to the Just Listening paradigm: the listening model of being totally aware, absorbing what comes, and not latching onto a favorite or unfavorite occurrence in the music or performance means that when such an event does come, we acknowledge it and return to listening. In so doing, we hear the next thing and the next thing, which we might easily have missed were we involved in our likes and dislikes, and that next thing might be the very turning point in our appreciation or understanding of the music. Likewise in composing, it is incredibly valuable to allow insights to pop up through a variety of means, and sitting meditation is one. (All seem to share the aspect of waiting, in one way or another.) When the insight comes, it is difficult not to obsessively try not to forget it, but when one is able to simply let it be, to risk losing it, it’s amazing how often another comes and another after that.
My response then, to the question of how the Just Listening approach to listening connects to composing is that the process of maintaining the state of beginner’s mind while listening, allowing insight to bubble up without our grasping onto it, exactly corresponds to loosening one’s grasp on the composing process enough to allow unsolicited insight to arise. Thoughts just arise without our direction. Learning to let that happen, learning to give up some of our desire to control the outcome, and let the materials and process more directly speak to us through insight, is an incredibly valuable lesson to learn, and a very worthwhile compositional tool.
So, the crux: Just Listening and Just Sitting (Shikantaza) share the fundamental reality that thoughts just bubble up. One does not aim to suppress thoughts, squash them, remember them — only to recognize that yes, there’s a thought. What is also real, though, is that these thoughts are about what one engages with in life, and if something is already on your mind, the thoughts that bubble up are often related to that. And the very fact that the thoughts just appear means they often bring insight.
Insight is basically another way of knowing. It is distinctly different from the acquisition of knowledge, it is not acquired through thinking, following a thought, obsessing over “figuring it out.” Though much thinking and work precede it, one must simply wait for insight, it comes on its own time, and of course that means it’s not a good idea to meditate in order to find the answer to a question.
Another aspect of the insight-meditation connection is that we are so accustomed to holding onto a thought that we think is good, following its implications, etc., that the process consumes our minds, and crowds out anything that might follow. So here’s another connection to the Just Listening paradigm: the listening model of being totally aware, absorbing what comes, and not latching onto a favorite or unfavorite occurrence in the music or performance means that when such an event does come, we acknowledge it and return to listening. In so doing, we hear the next thing and the next thing, which we might easily have missed were we involved in our likes and dislikes, and that next thing might be the very turning point in our appreciation or understanding of the music. Likewise in composing, it is incredibly valuable to allow insights to pop up through a variety of means, and sitting meditation is one. (All seem to share the aspect of waiting, in one way or another.) When the insight comes, it is difficult not to obsessively try not to forget it, but when one is able to simply let it be, to risk losing it, it’s amazing how often another comes and another after that.
My response then, to the question of how the Just Listening approach to listening connects to composing is that the process of maintaining the state of beginner’s mind while listening, allowing insight to bubble up without our grasping onto it, exactly corresponds to loosening one’s grasp on the composing process enough to allow unsolicited insight to arise. Thoughts just arise without our direction. Learning to let that happen, learning to give up some of our desire to control the outcome, and let the materials and process more directly speak to us through insight, is an incredibly valuable lesson to learn, and a very worthwhile compositional tool.