December 2019
Just Listening, SEA, Analysis
18/12/19 15:45
I came across some quotes by J. Krishnamurti of late, on the subjects of listening and analysis. They fit right into my thinking about what the Just Listening paradigm offers, and bring me to probe more deeply what I call the Sound-Energy Aggregate (SEA). What began as a recognition of the unity of sound, of the phenomenon that contains virtually every musical component and creates what we describe variously as energy, affect, or emotion, I used for years as a compositional tool, and then realized it could be used as an analytical method.
Eventually I realized that the way one must listen in the early stages of SEA analysis — which posits that each musical parameter can contribute an energy contour of its own that we perceive as part of a greater whole, or aggregate — is very similar to how one sits in Zen meditation, or Shikantaza, “just sitting”. I have thus created a workshop to enact that open-eared, pure listening, which is the Just Listening workshop. The following quote I came across over summer from Krishnamurti references the kind of listening I’m interested in:
"When you give your whole attention to something, you listen to the totality of the thing. When you attend, there are no borders of attention. When you so intensely listen, you are listening to the birds, the wind, the breeze among the leaves, the slightest whisper. In the same way, the very act of listening brings about total attention in which you see the totality and the whole significance and structure of what is being said. Not only what the speaker is saying but also when you are listening to your wife or husband, to your children, to the politician or priest, to everything about you. Then there is no choice, only clarity. There is no confusion but right perception."
It is pretty clear from this statement that in the mind of a listener giving full attention to listening, there is not a place for analysis, for the taking apart of constituent elements that we consider to be the heart of analysis. And now I have come across another quote from Krishnamurti, as follows:
“The process of analysis is the process of evaluation and censoring: this is right, this is wrong; this should be, this should not be, which is the very nature of conflict.”
This makes me realize that the SEA can be used as an analytical tool, and is excellent as such, in its use of non-discriminatory listening that leads to awareness of where to put further, more conventional analysis. But its true value is how it honors, places immense value upon that first stage, the initial perception and its reliance on stating the obvious about what we have heard. Just Listening is exactly that, and I realize that, in distinction to the statement about analysis by Krishnamurti, Just Listening is aimed at understanding how music comes together, not how we take it apart.
Maybe we need a term for that.
Eventually I realized that the way one must listen in the early stages of SEA analysis — which posits that each musical parameter can contribute an energy contour of its own that we perceive as part of a greater whole, or aggregate — is very similar to how one sits in Zen meditation, or Shikantaza, “just sitting”. I have thus created a workshop to enact that open-eared, pure listening, which is the Just Listening workshop. The following quote I came across over summer from Krishnamurti references the kind of listening I’m interested in:
"When you give your whole attention to something, you listen to the totality of the thing. When you attend, there are no borders of attention. When you so intensely listen, you are listening to the birds, the wind, the breeze among the leaves, the slightest whisper. In the same way, the very act of listening brings about total attention in which you see the totality and the whole significance and structure of what is being said. Not only what the speaker is saying but also when you are listening to your wife or husband, to your children, to the politician or priest, to everything about you. Then there is no choice, only clarity. There is no confusion but right perception."
It is pretty clear from this statement that in the mind of a listener giving full attention to listening, there is not a place for analysis, for the taking apart of constituent elements that we consider to be the heart of analysis. And now I have come across another quote from Krishnamurti, as follows:
“The process of analysis is the process of evaluation and censoring: this is right, this is wrong; this should be, this should not be, which is the very nature of conflict.”
This makes me realize that the SEA can be used as an analytical tool, and is excellent as such, in its use of non-discriminatory listening that leads to awareness of where to put further, more conventional analysis. But its true value is how it honors, places immense value upon that first stage, the initial perception and its reliance on stating the obvious about what we have heard. Just Listening is exactly that, and I realize that, in distinction to the statement about analysis by Krishnamurti, Just Listening is aimed at understanding how music comes together, not how we take it apart.
Maybe we need a term for that.