The normal way of gathering information is through sound: when you hear information that you want to gather, you look in its direction, you see what it is, if you choose you can get closer, you can see it, you can touch, and then, finally, the most committed form of data gathering is to taste it and eat it. But for the urbanite, we're cut off from our primary sense, and I want to stress that - our primary sense of gathering information about the place that we're living in - and instead, we're in a war zone.
Gordon HemptonThe most sensitive frequencies are at the resonant frequencies of the auditory canal. In other words, the ear has shaped itself to naturally amplify certain bandwidth. And that corresponds to sounds in that bandwidth that were most important to our evolving ancestors to hear, in order to survive. And it doesn't match the human voice. It matches birdsong.
Gordon HemptonWhen we listen, it's not linear, it's 360, and it's in a time-space continuum, so you don't have to create a list of priorities, because it's all important. You can deal with everything at any given time. Not only that, but it happens very simply, without effort.
Gordon HemptonYou can listen to a birdsong, and from the content of the birdsong, you will be able to determine whether or not the bird grew up in a noise-polluted environment or whether it grew up in a pristine, clean environment. Isn't that incredible?
Gordon HemptonI've never really understood how people cannot value the future, or think that the world is going down a fast slippery slope of degradation. No, I don't think so; this is just what it's going to take to wake us up, and allow us to do what our ancestors did. You know, our ancestors brought us here by tooth and claw. A lot of people perished, a lot of pre-humans perished. Life has never been easy. Why should it be easy for us?
Gordon HemptonIf you're going to listen, you have to be willing to be changed by what you've heard. My life has gone through so many changes. I'm sixty-two years old right now, and I'm as busy changing now as I was when I was a teenager, or in my twenties. Every day is different. Every day brings new information.
Gordon Hempton