The Listening Book

Music is such a private part of us, it touches us in so deep and vulnerable a place, that evasion of practice can seem quite reasonable: Why disturb what is sleeping so deeply? Why mess with a functional inertia?

To be open and impressionable, to hear everything, is dangerous. You can be damaged all too easily.

Sound and the ear have complementary natures; they reflect each other. Sound is hand, ear is glove.

We need to hear machine music. It is an extension of our tolerance, our capacity, our vision of harmonious life.

and the sense that what you are doing is useful because it is connective. Give yourself the authority to do it, to focus your energies on keeping perfect time with a little matter-music.

There is a sense of value inside you that is more powerful than either your individual self or your cultural self.

To listen is to be vulnerable.

Not having the right stuff is the American nightmare. When we seem to lack our quota of power or ability we get scared, and from this fear comes self-anger.

Musical tone can boil thoughts away. This is the open secret of making music. Set the string to vibrating again, lock your hearing onto its energy and be absorbed into its disappearance.