Grace Goodley-Student Response to Deep Listening

 Deep listening, first developed by Paulina Oliveros in the 70s, pertains to the practice of listening in “every possible way to everything possible, to hear no matter what you are doing (Oliveros, 1999). Oliveros first developed this practice around the age of twenty-one when she was given a tape recorder and would notice sounds during playback that she had never noticed when recording them. Oliveros set for this practice of meditation in which she would “listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening'' (Oliveros, 1999). As I was exposed to this practice during an elective course my sophomore year, I found it interesting to add to the discussions we have had this semester surrounding one's connection to the surrounding environment, in this case, that connection is to the acoustic environment. In this practice, one is to sit in their surroundings, eyes closed, and simply listen. The key though, is to listen without restraint, following your attention as it drifts its attention from one sound to the next. The first time I practiced this was during a class on the steps of CNH, where my entire class participated in a group deep listening meditation. I can recount my attention moving from the creaking of the light that hangs over the top of the entrance to Luter, to someone going by on a skateboard, to the rustling of the trees and singing of the birds. In this meditation, we as a class were able to not only experience these sounds free of visual interpretation bias, but we were able to experience the sounds both isolated and existing with one another. Experiencing this entanglement of both the natural world and its mechanical counterpart.