Sharon Stewart
Deep Listening Certificate
2008-2010
Third Quarterly Report
February, March, April 2009
Lovely Months
Each month has its own color, based on a focal experience. In February I went to Barcelona, where I explored the city in a more deeply listening way, with my deep listening buddy, Hui, and created some sonic meditations by the sea. In March I joined the conference call with IONE (albeit a bit late) and started my monthly practice of full moon rituals, also with my children, who love it! I also gave the lecture in Utrecht (for the course: Women’s Representations of Eros and Pathos), introducing Deep Listening through a discussion of listening, and an experience of full-body listening to a recording of Pauline Oliveros. April was filled with preparation for an instrument building workshop with my piano students. Bamboo cutting, sawing, boring, stringing… working slowly and creatively with my hands and enjoying it!
Deep Listening in Barcelona
In a park on the side of Montjuic, the two of us sitting on the cement benches, under empty rose trellises, we listen to the city, the environment:
Close sounds, passing sounds, longer drones. I listen, and the atmosphere takes on layers, shifting layers, sonic layers. Close sounds are of insects, wind, the movement of visitors and animals. Further, below and stretched out, is the voice of the city, vehicles and machinery. Above are the sounds of gulls in the sky. Further, the global sound, an atmospheric hum that comes when I am very still, listening, and this merges back inside of me with my inner vibrations, so that there is a circular connection. We play with vocally responding to focused sounds as well as the atmospheric hum. The city becomes more of an organism to me, and I hear and appreciate it like a partner in dialogue.
Walking through the city, alone, I do not look at a map. I walk, walking more slowly, every step coming into the moment, observing, being, feeling the nervousness of being alone in an unknown city, not knowing where I am going. Trusting, taking in the details of a playground, of the stores, the shape and feel of the sidewalk tiles under my feet, the faces of people passing by. I walk until am tired and then look for where I am. I am just fine, close to a metro station, right where I need to be.
I go one evening to a performance in the Barcelona VisualSound Festival. A couple of guys have integrated live video into their songs, along with electronic gadgets that they use in a playful way. It is fun, playful, but I am longing for some quiet, some space. This is the beginning of an aesthetic/artistic search for me – how to perform while leaving space (acoustic/emotional/bodily) for the audience. This is what I ‘hear’, I ‘feel’ in some (especially DL) works and less in others. This is a longing in me.
At the Joan Miró Institute. After a morning of intense absorbing of his works, I am resting on top of the building (where there are some artworks of his). I am stretched out in the bright sun, resting my sensors. A guard comes to me and tells me something I interpret as I am not allowed to lay down on the top of the building.
A little annoyed, I enter the building again, slowly moving toward the ‘final’ stop of the exhibition, a square-ish room with sculptures in the middle and large paintings all around. I sit cross-legged on the floor and draw in my journal. I enter a listening moment. Two guards come and try to tell me something like I am not allowed to sit. There is no one else in the room, and in exasperation I say ‘Miró!...... meditatione???!!!!’ They kind of smile and say ‘ok, ok…’ and leave me in peace.
I write:
This is an acoustically amazing room. A sculpture of rounded, hollow square with egg on top is behind me. The room is quite still but not at all quiet. I hear the movements of other visitors. The room is tall with two white-curtained windows. There is a ventilation shaft that make a wonderful long sound with all kinds of delicate harmonies and shifting tones… like hearing a whole choir singing light ‘oooos’ and ‘aaaahs’ at the end of a long tunnel. They are singing in a chapel…. the effect is magnificent, calming and soothing! Gentle fan of air reinforces the feeling of complete privacy and complete vulnerability. At any moment this space could be penetrated by visitors or more guards who are less understanding.
Hui and I are laying on the beach, listening. I/we discover:
Two Ocean Listening, Perception Games
Transecting Waves Duo:
Lay with your friend/partner/lover on the beach. Get comfortable with yourself, each other and the ocean. Close your eyes and listen to the sound of the waves.
Gradually change your perception to a two-dimensional perception of the wave sound. Wave sounds usually come from the left and move to the right, or vice-versa, and can of course transect each other depending on the situation. Picture the sound as a band, moving from left to right or vice versa, the volume increasing and decreasing. Continue this until you have a clear perception of the waves becoming (through imagination) a two-dimensional, moving plane/band.
One person chooses to focus on waves going in one direction, the other on waves going the other direction. Take your time to get a clear and easy picture. With your voice, or other instrument, join the wave ‘band’ with another sound, your sound. Pay attention to the volume of ‘your’ waves, and follow this with your voice. Play with this, in close connection with the waves.
After a while, slowly move back to a more three-dimensional awareness, including waves going in both directions, your own sounding and the sounding of your partner.
Continue until you feel at one with the water and can easily shift your focus from ‘your’ waves and sounding to a more global focus on all other aspects of your sounding environment.
The Ocean Says Your Name:
Find a comfortable spot by the ocean. Close your eyes and open your ears.
Sound the first vowel or consonant of your name and listen for that sound to arise from the sounds of the ocean. Listen to how the ocean ‘says’ that sound. Repeat it as closely as possible either out loud or in your imagination.
Move on to the next sound, and the next and next, repeating this process. Continue for all vowels and consonants in your name.
When you have ‘discovered’ all the sounds of your name being spoken in the sounds of the ocean, listen for the ocean to say your whole name using its own, miraculous, voice. Repeat this out loud or in your imagination.
Deep Listening and Movement Highlights
Listening meditations ground me, bringing me into connection with the here and now, time and space around me, inner and outer worlds. They become times of inspiration, intuition, guidance for my life and work; there are also moments in which frustration does surface.
9 Feb 2009, Deep Listening becomes a story of regaining joy
I light candles and feel myself settling. The lighting of candles is such an important ritual for me. I sit cross-legged on the floor and begin listening – listening for a sound I desire to make. The sound comes ‘ai-ai-ai-‘ I play with the sound until it moves away.
At the end I get on my knees and ask for joy – the joy that I have not experienced in quite a long time. The joy, an opening comes. I then sing and gesticulate the story:
- I was here without joy, pain in my heart
- I asked fro joy, and it came
- The joy came!
- We can all do this!!!
5 March 2009, Listening in the forest, woman and nature
The Belvedere Tower in Sonsbeek looks gorgeous against the gray skies. I park my bike against a tree. It is raining ever so softly, or maybe just some drips from the trees. I do some qigong-like warming up exercises.
A movement comes up:
one leg out and diagonal, palm in front of the face – pull in, push out, pull in push out
rotating sides, shifting the weight mindfully from one foot to the other
what am I pulling in? what am I pushing away?
parts of myself…
I start looking to the directions. East. Close my eyes and listen. The sparkling waves of bird calls, light lighted points streaming through the trees. The hum of traffic. A plane. The lightest tick, tick, tick of raindrops. South. The aural cinema has rotated. Cars more frontal, bird waves more present. West. I feel the urge to sing, communicate with that around me. Singing seems too dominant. The lines too long. Too legato. I chirp and make short calls. Why? Am I luring the birds to me? The dilemma of the nr. 1 predator. Why would animals want to come to me, communicate with me. As a human, what do I have to offer them? A gun, chop their tree down?? I feel jaded – why do I want to communicate with nature? I want desperately to belong to nature, but feel like it is lost to me. It makes me feel lonely and isolated.
I have lost myself in the mind, and turn back to listening. Perhaps the most healing thing is to listen. Ah, yes…
8 March 2009, Ohm Fingertops Exercise
Stand facing your partner. Touch fingertops together. Keeping fingertops touching, allow your arms to go, without leading, without following, just listening to the contact.
The ‘third person’, the third force, entity which enters into contact when two people are deeply listening.
Use this metaphor in singing together. The ‘third person’ singing, when not following, not leading, not changing, not taking over, not stopping, not holding back.
20 March 2009, Listening to bodily pain
Breathe to the leak in my back, strange, deep, panic-pain – relaxed breathing sends me into a state akin to falling – hot waves flush up again. I tell the pain that I won’t go away. It’s my pain, I will carry it, accept it, be there for it. Pain.
25 March 2009, ‘Hands on Organs’ and Chakra healing with Monica
Monica does ‘Hands on Organs’ with me, gently shaking, rolling, vibrating the organs with her hands.
I use my ting-sha bells (c#) and sing to her Chakras (o, oo, ah, eh, e, m/n, nying). This is the first time I have done this with another person (besides David). I am a bit nervous, but relax and feel her openness. The vibrations penetrate deeply, and sometimes she hums or sings with me.
It feels good for both of us.
16 April 2009, The World Slows Down
(not my picture, but remarkably like my experience)
With stretches reaching to the sky, I open up to and become aware of the beech leaves above me, the palest of green, just opening to the power of the sky. Delicate green, covered with fine silvery hairs. I am in awe.
While doing Heron Walking, very slowly, I suddenly feel as if the earth is slowing with me. Cars moving by take on a certain slow-motion grace. Moving things seem to join together in a cohesiveness that matches the softness and suppleness of my motion.
Creating a Dream Temple
At the beginning of March, I sign up for IONE’s Tele-Seminar about Ancient Egyptian, Iroquois and Senoi Dream Practices and how they relate to modern day dreamers. Accompanying this Seminar is an encouragement to make a Dream Temple, a healing dream incubation calling on Isis during the Full Moon. This begins a regular ritual of paying attention to the full moon and starting a dream ritual with my boys. I have communicated often with IONE regarding these experiences.
Lecture at the University of Utrecht
It is always a challenge to bring in more ‘participatory’ elements into a lecture at a University. Students seem (in the past) so caught up in their preconceptions of what a lecture is, that (my) deviations seem to freeze, confuse or frighten them. This time I feel I reached a good balance by discussing the erotic/power elements of sound and listening (with PowerPoint presentation).
The ‘participatory element’ was to listen to Striations from ‘The Roots of The Moment’ using the whole body, as outlined in the following listening exercise from Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (p. 15):
Whole Body Listening
As you listen, notice the impact and effects of sound throughout the body.
Notice when you feel sound in your body.
If you are in conversation, receive with your whole body what is being said.
Further, I created a space for myself by laying out a silk scarf with objects on it, such as I would do for myself to create a place for meditation. In this way, I felt I penetrated the classroom space with something personal.
Instrument Building Workshop
In April I built myself three instruments, using bamboo, some old materials given to me by the neighborhood violin builder, and other ‘waste’, such as plastic and tin cans. My favorite is a banjo-like instrument with three strings and a round (IKEA) cookie tin resonating chamber. I also built bamboo frames for 16 participating piano students who then made their own percussion and/or string instruments.
My goal was to teach the students basic sound-making principles (such as the need for a resonating chamber for string instruments to amplify the sound) as well as to get them interested in the acoustic properties of materials around them.
The students were highly motivated to create their own designs and worked diligently for more than two hours! Some of them discovered, through trial and ERROR, that their designs were difficult to make or produced very little sound. Perhaps the next time I would chose to ‘interfere’ more, offer a bit more guidance.
Ideally, I will use the instruments next year either in a workshop or for online profiles of my students.
See attached photos.