Beyond One Sided Listening.

    If we entertain there is something to Jung's Psychological types, and apply it to ways of listening things take on an interesting form.  If nothing else it exposes the fallacy of either one or the others being more ego based than the others. It would be the extrovert who we would find interested in the 'sounds around us'  while the introverts the sounds that come from our interior. Perhaps the further distinction into four types is better in showing other ways of hearing too. Sensation being the former with the intuitive with the latter. We  also have the functions of thinking which analyses, breaks into pieces and defines the parts and material. The emotional on the other side would accept what emotions  that come up spontaneously. Historically, music has been thrown back and forth between these, each claiming a superiority. It seems it is as if music is at odds with itself, even ill. We are constantly asked to listen to works in one way or another. Sometimes these are  demands, that we listen in no other way.  It is no wonder that in the midst of the so-called assumed freedom we find little that truly convinces of it. At this point, i would prefer some path to a complete way of hearing, a harmony or a even dialog between all of these.

A Place for Distance in Field Recordings.

 

 Top of Mt. Dana - Yosemite

Field recordings are too often an extension of our urban perspective. One of the most common features in the urban landscape is the lack of distance in viewing and hearing. Outside of looking up, our opportunities to look or hear at long distances are few or limited. It is this same cramped horizon we find common in field recordings with a prevalence of closely recorded sounds with a push to get even closer than we could ever get with or bodily ear. An aural claustrophobia is easily invoked. The childhood wonder of echoes seem to be so often forgotten.  One morning as I lay in bed I remember hearing the most unforgettable sound, echoing at a great distance. It was late in the day when I discovered it had been a train wreck 8 miles away.  There were recordings in Tehran of people on the roofs yelling protests one could hear both close and far. Neither of things are pleasant and perhaps why distant sounds are both rare and avoided. Is this the only context we hear distant things?  Just as my eye craves to focus at a large distance, a reason my vacations have always sought such landscapes over other cities, my ear craves the same.