How we listen creates our life. Listening is the basis of all culture. An introduction to composer Pauline Oliveros’ ideas about sound. For her, listening is to be aware of one’s self – not just in the current moment.
If you don’t like a sound, listen closely! For most people suffering from misophonia, that might come as a paradoxical advice. To be aware of the thoughts behind this idea, however, might change one’s perception of a situation when being triggered.
Originally employed as part of a bundle of means for mapping acoustic situations in locations around the world, soundwalks are a good method to understand and internalize the concept of soundscapes by experience. No one, who got initiated to the technique, ever got bored by them.
When composer Pauline Oliveros quoted Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche on putting meditation in an equation with the wisdom of listening and the depth of insight in 1999, she had realized that her own listening skills were still continuing to evolve – forty six years after she started meditating on sound.
Every now and then the world turns into a sound installation, only waiting to get noticed. When reel-to-reels became portable and affordable during the 1960s, field recordists, musicians and artists began to open their ears – on the hunt for special sounds.
In conversation with music therapist Prof. Dr. phil. Isabelle Frohne-Hagemann I want to find out how receptive music therapy works and whether there are similarities between my own approach to listening and the established technique. Could guided listening to music possibly be an appropriate form of therapy for misophonia?