Hearing Aids
TAoN No. 179: Five ways of listening (among many others). Plus a new Missing Word, and more.
The other day I listened to a great audio documentary — about listening itself.
Specifically, One Hundred Ways of Listening (from the BBC) featured “sound anthropologist” and University of Exeter professor Tom Rice, who for 20 years “has been collecting different ways of listening from the world’s leading sound experts.”
The best way to explain is to offer some examples of listening categories Rice has collected.
Acousmatic sound, for instance, is what you’re hearing when listening without seeing where a sound is coming from.
Diagnostic listening is what it sounds like — imagine a mechanic listening to a car, a doctor with a stethoscope, or me trying to figure out of the ‘fridge sounds weird.
Acoustic flâneury refers to the flâneur-like practice of “absorbing and reflecting on” the city environment, but with an emphasis on sounds.
Palimpsestic listening means (hypothetically) hearing every sound ever made in a particular place.
And so on. Some of the categories are more straightforward — such as eavesdropping, privatized listening (with earbuds for instance), and the like. But a few struck me as quite pleasingly creative. Maybe my favorite:
Enchanted listening: When the thing you’re listening to becomes in some sense a “sonic being” with its own characteristics — like “happy” or “sad” music. Makes me think of a lonesome whippoorwill who sounds too blue to fly. …
See if you can experience these five categories in the week ahead. Or listen to that terrific BBC doc and pick five that grab your ear. Listen, and think about the way you’re listening.
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Dictionary of Missing Words is an exercise in paying attention to phenomena you encounter — sensations, concepts, states between states, feelings, slippery things — that could be named, but don’t seem to be. More here and here.
This week’s missing word is from Megan A Arnold, via the comments:
For the dictionary of missing words: when a favorite, often-worn item of clothing is cresting the hill of being perfectly broken in and about to start heading toward being threadbare, having holes, or otherwise worn out to the point of where you probably shouldn't wear it in public any more.
I tend to keep and wear things waaaaay beyond this point. Thanks Megan!
Describe your Missing Words in the comments, or send them to my email below.
IN OTHER NEWS
My thanks to Jim Knight for having me as a guest on his Coaching Conversations podcast. I really enjoyed it!
The Waking Up app has recently released a batch of audio-essay “lessons” I recorded for them. You can try the app free for 30 days here.
“Wikenigma is a unique wiki-based resource specifically dedicated to documenting fundamental gaps in human knowledge.”
Why the sky is blue.
Life advice from a 100-year-old.
OKAY THAT’S IT!
As always, I value your feedback: suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, etc. Constructive insults may be directed at me, not at anyone else. I also welcome your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers, at consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.
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And thanks for reading …
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All this by Rob Walker PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032. Send me mail!
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I am currently listening to a hum no one else in my house can hear. They say it's in my head, but ai feel the vibration in my feet on the floor. Your article made me decide to listen in a different way. I got my headphones and turned on the app that amplifies ambient sounds. It picked up all kinds of other house noises, but the hum remained the same. Perhaps it is in my head after all. Thank goodness it only comes occasionally.
I become mesmerized by voices on the radio (or podcast, I'm old.) Content does not matter, just the quality of the voice. For some reason, the voices of Native Americans does this for me. Come to think of it, so does Noam Chomsky's voice.