When thinking of “deep listening” and “listening for intent”, one may straight away assume this would be to listen to a piece of sound and analyse the different noises that can be heard, or to follow the musical direction of the artist whom created it. This is not untrue- deep listening requires full focus and attention, but not only on the sound, but also your body. Based on the learnings of Pauline Oliveros, deep listening is a healing practice; a tuning of the mind and body.

Having written about Oliveros in a previous blog post, I am going to forego the background context of who she is and focus solely on the information given in the article, and how this relates to my current thoughts around the voice, sonic meditations and what that means for sound art today. In the late 1960s, following an unsettled political and social state of the US, Oliveros began to retreat. She backed away from public performance and spent time in solitude playing long, extended notes on her accordion, spending “nearly a year on a single note”. This “experiment in self care” led to Oliveros’ newfound meaning within sound, leading her to publish her Sonic Meditations in 1977.

My initial tangent goes off this notion of “experiments in self care”; how are we to define and differentiate this from “normal” music making, which is a process of experimentation in itself? Based on what I gather from Oliveros’ experience, its about the intention of why you’re creating sound, and the activities you do surrounding these “experiments”. During this time when Oliveros was retreating, she began studying Tai Chi- a Chinese martial art with meditational properties. Oliveros worked on transforming her whole life, taking steps to heal the mind and body which ultimately impacted the sound which she created. Collaborating with her Tai Chi teaher, Al Huang, Oliveros assembled a small group of sound makers to improvise to Al Huang’s work. Oliveros always sought to connect each of her practices together. This can be seen again in her studies of Kinetic Awareness with dancer and bodyworker, Elaine Summers. Elaine Summers taught her students to become sensitive to signals coming from their bodies, leading them to be more in tune with themselves. From this and the outcome of Oliveros’ work afterwards, one can conclude that being in tune with your mind and body leads to realisations within your sonic, or any other creative, practice which improve the quality and substance of your work.