Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you're not. But going below the surface too, it's an active process. It's not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you're tuned out, then you're not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing.
Pauline OliverosPeople's experiences are all different, and you don't know what the person experienced. They know, but you don't, so I think it's important to listen carefully to what a person has to say. And not to force them into any direction at all but simply to model what you've experienced, model it and also be what I call a Listening Presence. If you're really listening, then some of the barriers can dissolve or change.
Pauline OliverosThere are these sounds that come from outside that work really well if you're listening. If you're not listening, if you're blocking them out, then you don't get it. You don't get the merger of what the players are doing with everything, listening to everything.
Pauline OliverosIt might be fun to have audience members wander up the ramps as well, so they can listen from different vantage points.
Pauline OliverosI think that this performance with the Thingamajigs is going to be an exploration of the acoustic space and particularly the vertical space, which we don't think about so much.
Pauline OliverosThose people who don't have any voluntary control, or hands, can work with the physical movement that they can do - whatever voluntary movement they have, even the slightest .
Pauline OliverosIn my Deep Listening class at RPI, I always do an hour of energy exercises to start with. Then we do a listening meditation after that, after the body has been loosened up and warmed up and is ready. We do the listening. After that, there's the journaling of the experience, which they do each time throughout the semester to the point that I have them write a final paper on what they've experienced.
Pauline Oliveros