On the Cusp of Lent: Listening
Although I have used this space for some liturgical and spiritual things recently, I would like to write a little about listening starting from a musical point of view.
As the old adage goes, "confession is good for the soul", and I happen to think we are confessing or revealing ourselves all the time. Well . . . a kind of label that I have been courting in my music listening is that of being called "an audiophile". Literally, it means a "lover of sound" or maybe even more correctly, the hearing of sound.
Over the last few years I have been improving my sound system and in aid of that have gone to some pretty high end audio stores. I even travelled to Montreal to attend an audio show with many systems exhibited, and manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers represented.
As a hobby it is populated by a group of people where at almost 60, I am firmly in the middle to lower-aged bracket. The sweet spot are boomers who are a little older than me -- old enough to have been at Woodstock in 1969. I get a couple of the best known magazines where many of the writers fit into this description as well. In the magazines especially there is a good deal of breast beating (can you see Ash Wednesday landing into this write-up soon?). How are we going to attract younger people to this great hobby? And there is much writing about some technical approaches to the question.
What is not written about so much is the nature of listening.
Music is really a good place to start to reflect on how we use our listening capacity.
Growing up, our family had a cheap radio in the kitchen which, under the watch of my parents, stayed tuned to one radio station. Listening was for the news, but otherwise the radio was a kind of background to cooking, washing the dishes or going up and down the stairs to do the laundry.
When I entered the seminary to study theology I listened to the radio in the afternoons. I learned a lot about classical music over those years but I was half-listening most of the time as I researched and then organized my notes for essays.
Ordination to the priesthood came within a few years of the emerging dominance of compact discs -- CD's. I bought my first good CD player almost right away, a company you don't see much of anymore, Nakamichi. Over the years I gradually changed speakers to improve a little, but it wasn't until a few years ago when I bought some much more serious speakers that I began to hear what audiophiles go on about.
I had always done some intentional listening, that is some listening to whole pieces of music without dividing my attention. For a long time I have enjoyed how some pieces of music can take me through a whole range of emotions and land me more put together than when I started. That is why I have gravitated toward classical music over the years. The pieces are long enough and layered enough to be a kind of aural workout that helps me to be more present to life, to myself and I hope, to God.
I have only recently become aware of some solid theories of speaker placement in the room which has resulted in a more 3-dimensional presentation of the music, so that I hear each instrument positioned differently, forward and back, to the left or to the right and in the centre.
The detail that I now hear is partly a product of the equipment but also the product of careful listening and some educated experimentation in the set up of the system.
How many people have the space or the technical interest? But the more interesting thing is how many of us have made a discipline of listening so that we appreciate the textures present. In music it is the tone and clarity of sound we might focus on. In relationships and in the spiritual life, it is the restful heart and mind that can allow the person we have heard to penetrate us. In prayer, we can find ourselves becoming emotional at times. Then we need to listen also to what is inside, with respect and compassion. It is there that God genuinely desires to bring life and health.
Some listening we do is simply to be moved. The music that many of us listen to has become part of our memories of life, especially the important moments or times in our life. What do we do with that emotion or memory? It can enrich how we meet life in the present, but it can also get in the way if it we use it merely to be comforted and to shy away from life.
We can do that in our relationships as well. We can be in habits that cause us to interpret one another in the same way, casting ourselves in roles. We like the familiar, but that does not constitute revelation. In Catholic faith we believe that co-operating with God we can become living signs of God's love. That love is without measure. To keep receiving it and using it I have to be open to revelation.
I have to listen with intent and be willing to reflect deeply on what I hear.
Perhaps this is the problem with the audiophile hobby. Technology and focusing on making the physical characteristics of the sound better does not satisfy the deeper human needs we have. Many of those boomer writers in the audiophile world tell some variation of the same story. They heard a great system playing their favourite band which was of great value to them in their teens and wanted, as we often do, to relive the experience either of a live concert or that first sense they got of "being there", enveloped by the music. That's not enough really. It is looking to reproduce a high; we have a lot of that around these days.
Maybe it would be better to think about listening in a way that would communicate some intimacy or closeness of the musician(s) to the listener. It is why, now, I like to hear the violinist breathe as he or she plays, or hear the part of the voice that is resonating in the body of the singer. I hear the emotions and the same vulnerability I know that I have. This is more than a high. I like the intelligence as well as the emotion of some musicians. And having heard good recordings rendered clearly I can now also hear through some of the not so good recordings the artistry of the performer more. The ear and the mind have been trained.
It is a passion for the worthwhileness of this sort of learning that at least has the potential attract people to take the quality of sound seriously . . . and it is the sort of learning that is deeply human and therefore also spiritual. Religion is about sharing that journey. It is a further relationship.
Tomorrow, Catholics whether or not they are able to participate in the Mass will begin the journey of Lent, a time to strip away the things that get in the way of the very deepest kind of listening. All of us, can lower the barriers a little and begin to drink in the depth and transformative power of God's love. "Speak Lord, your servant is listening."
