deep glistening

a place to keep thoughts, sounds, movements, and dreams throughout the deep listening certification process

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(sound off) such inspirational movement!

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prompt w/ heloise gold : 02.04.2018

Feeling my body moving fluidly and listening to Spock’s sounds from the bones in the middle of my back.

Small bird sounds from outside landing on my shoulders, right up against my neck and underneath my ears.

The past is present is future, in movement, in body, in sound, in listening.

For a moment, my body feels physically as fluid as it feels emotionally, psychologically. This is huge for me.

My gender is here and now.

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journal : 02.03.2018

My dreams, for months, had had no discernible sounds in them; everything happened in compete silence. Not John Cage’s 4′33″ of silence or Deep Listening silence, where the silence actually holds sound. Not anechoic chamber silence either, because in these dreams I could not hear my own breathing, pulse, or tinnitus.

Complete and utter silence.

Until just this past week.

It started with a dream that my cat, Peep, was standing in the bathtub, as she often does (she’s the only cat I know who loves water). She was speaking to me in English, in almost a toddler-like fashion, with the same small cat vocal cord frequencies that her body produces in my waking reality. 

She would only mimic words that I’d say to her, but almost perfectly. We did this, back and forth for a long while. That was the entire dream.

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movement / dreaming : a reel of bas jan ader’s work

his films have always been deeply inspiring to me, my composing, and my life. i dream about them often and experience dream worlds that feel similar to what he creates in his short films. the way his body moves resonates with me.

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journal : 1.28.2018

our class with jane rigler today made me realize how much i’ve closed myself off to everything during my current grieving process.

for the first time in many years, i have to work to open myself up to deep listening and to the world.

i lived and loved with a fellow deep listener for so many years that i can’t remember what it was like to not have things be that way.

many sounds have lost their magic. i must reclaim them.

this is all part of my healing and growing process, though, and i’m immensely thankful for it.

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sound pressure patterns assist hearing but cultural history and experience influence listening.

pauline oliveros

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one of the objectives of deep listening practice is to achieve and promote health not only for deep listeners but also for those with whom a deep listener may come in contact.

stuart dempster

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journal : 01.16.2018

the sound of the gravel on the ground in the driveway, churning and buckling under heavy car tires - a sound that is so beautiful to me. it has always been a sound of great comfort; my mother arriving to pick me up after a day of abusive daycare; my father getting home from work and our two big black labs getting excited to see him; driving up the dirt road to camp cody for my first life-changing years volunteering with the new hampshire teen institute. when i hear this sound, it all comes rushing, gushing back. childhood in all its forms, or just a bunch of rocks?

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journal : 01.16.2018

on my way to work this morning, as i was walking down sansome street, i heard a large mack truck singing the sweetest song.

its brakes didn’t just sustain one pitched tone, but many; sometimes polyphonic, but also sometimes the most shimmering forms of monophonic.

its song weaved through syncopation and atonality in the most eloquent of ways, especially for a big, old, dirty truck.

it must’ve been playing a score that looks something like this.

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pauline oliveros once led me through a guided meditation that involved being a spider in my own spider web and playing the spider web as a musical instrument. that experience is still, to this day, one of the most interesting and life-changing i’ve ever had.

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journal : 01.09.2018

the cable car tracks in san francisco make some of the most beautiful small sounds i’ve ever heard. it’s a light, jocular tinkling, as the far-off cable cars crawl up and down steep hills. a jingling that only catches me as i cross the street in the early dawn - as i make my way to open the office.

i feel like in the back of my mind there is a dream sleeping; a dream in which i am in the financial district at midnight. there are no cars on the road, no people to be seen, but the streetlights are burning bright and i know that there is one single cable car far-off, traveling, waiting for me to find it through it’s own strange form of echolocation.

i walk in the middle of the street, following its tracks, its song growing louder with every block, every hydrant, every step, every breath.

it is coming toward me, over the crest of a steep hill. i listen to it pass and sing on its way back into the distance.

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movement : a snail in motion, leaving its trail behind

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movement : a dandelion flower’s lifespan, timelapsed (best with sound off)

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sounds : shower running in the bathtub from underwater

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journal : 01.08.2018

one of my favorite sounds to listen to is the sound of being underwater in my bathtub.

i can only hear my own movements against the porcelain of the tub, my cat dipping her paw in and splashing gently at the bubbles on the edge of the water.

the whooshing of my own body keeping itself alive, and the wildly amplified sound of my own inhales and exhales.

i live in an apartment building (and an old one, at that) in the city, and can hear all of my neighbors’ water usage whilst my ears are submerged in the tub: the squeaking of faucets turning, the creaking of pipes, the water pressure changing from a drop - to a dribble - to a stream, and all the way back again.

you can either only be in the underwater sound world or the above-water sound world; never both at the same time.

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journal : 01.07.2018

it was really nice to finally get to meet the other folks in my deep listening group. i’m really interested in malcolm’s merging of deep listening with visual art, and also feel very connected to tuku (music/voice) and julia (movement).

leila kept mentioning returning to childhood and to your inner child for these deep listening practices. it makes me realize that i was not presented with positive forms of wonder as a little one, and instead my openness then was filled only with needing to suppress itself. it will be hard work on many levels to heal my childhood self in these ways.

i do, however, believe that i have a current playful being inside of me for now - it is just not connected to childhood-me.

how do i open myself up through deep listening?