Listen To the Rhythm of the Falling Rain...
One tends to show one's age when remembering songs, the song above being an "oldie" even in my book (but still a classic). I bring that up partially because of a parody of Don McLean's classic song, American Pie, a parody sent to me by a friend and now making its way through the internet; but the parody also caused me to look at the lyrics of the original song, it's ending proving to seem a bit of a downer and hinting that that "bad guys" were winning in the battle to take down our country's standards. Here's the final verse of McLean's original words: Oh, and there we were all in one place, a generation lost in space with no time left to start again; So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candlestick 'cause fire is the devil's only friend. Oh, and as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage, no angel born in Hell could break that Satan's spell. And as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite I saw Satan laughing with delight the day the music died. As McLean told one reporter: Basically in ‘American Pie,’ things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less idyllic. I don’t know whether you consider that wrong or right but it is a morality song in a sense. But I remember bouncing rhythmically to that song, "sort of" catching the lyrics and listening but now discovering that, upon actually reading those lyrics, that apparently I wasn't "listening" at all. Yes, I heard the music and the lyrics, but in truth I wasn't really listening.
That topic is the subject of a new book by Kate Murphy titled You're Not Listening (What You're Missing and Why It Matters). In her opening she writes: When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened, without thinking about what you wanted to say next, glancing down at your phone, or jumping in to offer your opinion? And when was the last time someone really listened to you? Was so attentive to what you were saying and whose response was so spot-on that you felt truly understood? In modern life, we are encouraged to listen to our hearts, listen to our inner voices, and listen to our guts, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people. Instead, we are engaged in a dialogue of the deaf, often talking over one another at cocktail parties, work meetings, and even family dinners; groomed as we are to lead the conversation rather than follow it. Online and in person, it’s all about defining yourself, shaping the narrative, and staying on message. Value is placed on what you project, not what you absorb...People find phone calls intrusive and ignore voicemail, preferring text or wordless emoji. If people are listening to anything, it’s likely through headphones or earbuds, where they are safe inside their own curated sound bubbles; the soundtracks to the movies that are their walled-off lives. The result is a creeping sense of isolation and emptiness, which leads people to swipe, tap, and click all the more. Digital distraction keeps the mind occupied but does little to nurture it, much less cultivate depth of feeling, which requires the resonance of another’s voice within our very bones and psyches. To really listen is to be moved physically, chemically, emotion-ally, and intellectually by another person’s narrative. Later in the book she added this: Hearing is passive. Listening is active. The best listeners focus their attention and recruit other senses to the effort. Their brains work hard to process all that incoming information and find meaning, which opens the door to creativity, empathy, insight, and knowledge. Understanding is the goal of listening, and it takes effort.
Brain Games pointed out that what we "hear" when we listen is sometimes a struggle for our brains to put together, a process termed mondogreen. We "fill in" or create similar-sounding words in order to have a song or a phrase make sense. As an example, back in my day Mahalia Jackson, often termed The Queen of Gospel, was well known with her first name pronounced ma-high-la; and I swore for years that the chorus of another pop-radio song at the time, Hey Paula, was saying her name in its chorus (they were actually saying "my love" in an extended way with "my-eye-love"). Or the Steely Dan song Hey Nineteen, written with the thought of being older and yet dating someone much younger leads to realizing "we've got nothing in common; we can't talk at all." Their bridge, in referring to the increasing (but geographically limited) drug trade at the time went "the fine Columbian" but many of us again swore that with cocaine now entering the country the words occasionally changed to "the fine coke running in." Or one last one, the Beatles A Day in the Life lyric "now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall" seeming to also reflect the increased rise of heroin use at the time and turning the lyric into "holes it takes to fill the arms of Paul" (re: Paul McCartney, one of the Beatles). Mondogreen says that this our brain at work, basically making us hear what we "want" to hear...or not hear. Yes dear, I heard you; or that glazed reaction to someone saying "now listen up."
Among police interrogators, it's known that silence is a good thing, that if you give suspects a long enough period of not saying anything back that "they will spill their guts out." This isn't always the case but think of how many people (and I can count myself in this) will reveal far more of their life than a stranger might want or care to know. Marriage, work, hobbies, habits...poke around at a party and a good CIA operative could likely nail down your patterns in less than 10 minutes. So it puzzled me that a few people I've bumped into have told me personal histories such as where they went to school and parts of their home life, and apparently all of it being false; these were just casual meetings (one on my plane flight home) and I listened with interest only to later discover that they were merely expanding on what I was saying to them (in this case, me talking about a friend's upcoming high school reunion). One example of how "easy" this was to do was displayed in a scene from Murphy's Law where the person asked Murphy (the lead character) where he was from. Ireland, he replies; no kidding, so am I...what part? Northern, he replies; no kidding, so am I...what city? And on and on, down to the street and house number, only to be told later that he's just being egged on. As the Irish proverb says: If you have to swallow a frog, try not to think about it. If you have to swallow two frogs, don't swallow the small one first. My question became, why would people do this (never mind how gullible I turned out to be)?
The Atlantic had a piece on what are alleged to be the campaign tactics of the current campaign to re-elect Trump, their view that disseminating small and local news groups with wrong information will plant enough doubt in those viewers' minds that soon even accurate information would be in question. Said the journalist/author on reading his Facebook feed from a few of Trump's campaign outlets: I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach. The person on the plane and his false narrative (everything he had told me on that high school turned out to be made up said my friend attending the reunion there) planted a similar seed in my mind. How much should I "listen" or believe the people I meet? What about the things that I was reading? And how accurately was I even reading such material (as it turned out, not very, something I found out when I "read" a book on increasing your reading speed, a book which tested your comprehension of the material just read). Was I also speed listening, thinking that I could multitask and "listen" while doing something else?
In her book, author Kate Murphy notes that some research studies show that even among close relationships miscommunication can occur because of not listening, or at least not currently listening, that old been-there, done-that thing; assumptions are made that a spouse would know you better often proved incorrect when it came to simple phrases such as "You look different today" (was that meant to be good or bad...among married couples, it turned out that strangers interpreted the correct meaning as often as the spouses). The author goes on to explain: It's as if you feel a connection with someone, you assume it will always be so. The sum of daily interactions and activities shapes us and adds nuance to our understanding of the world so that no one is the same as yesterday nor will today's self be identical to tomorrow. So it doesn't matter how long you have known or how well you think you know people; if you stop listening you will eventually lose your grasp of who they are and how to relate to them. There will be exceptions of course, that long-ago friend that you meet years later and it seeming as if no time as passed at all; on those occasions you're sharing memories and truly "listening" as you catch up. Not so much when your spouse or teen or parent walks out the door and reminds you of something you need to do, a quick thought to file away and perhaps soon forget. You're busy, working away on something or intently reading and when you're asked again "did you hear me?" you tend to blurt out, "I heard you," often with a bit of attitude often thrown into that response. But did you? You likely heard them but did you listen?
I did okay on the reading part of that ACT review, but perhaps it was because I knew that I would be tested immediately after and I was focused on what I was reading. I was "in the moment," as so many Eastern religions advocate. And perhaps my biggest discovery so far has been how difficult that is to do...turns out that the listening, the sound of silence, is something that requires work and practice as well, especially in this time of division and growing isolation. But it would seem that if we are to have unity, to have peace, even to have a good relationship, that we will need to start doing some listening...
That topic is the subject of a new book by Kate Murphy titled You're Not Listening (What You're Missing and Why It Matters). In her opening she writes: When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened, without thinking about what you wanted to say next, glancing down at your phone, or jumping in to offer your opinion? And when was the last time someone really listened to you? Was so attentive to what you were saying and whose response was so spot-on that you felt truly understood? In modern life, we are encouraged to listen to our hearts, listen to our inner voices, and listen to our guts, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people. Instead, we are engaged in a dialogue of the deaf, often talking over one another at cocktail parties, work meetings, and even family dinners; groomed as we are to lead the conversation rather than follow it. Online and in person, it’s all about defining yourself, shaping the narrative, and staying on message. Value is placed on what you project, not what you absorb...People find phone calls intrusive and ignore voicemail, preferring text or wordless emoji. If people are listening to anything, it’s likely through headphones or earbuds, where they are safe inside their own curated sound bubbles; the soundtracks to the movies that are their walled-off lives. The result is a creeping sense of isolation and emptiness, which leads people to swipe, tap, and click all the more. Digital distraction keeps the mind occupied but does little to nurture it, much less cultivate depth of feeling, which requires the resonance of another’s voice within our very bones and psyches. To really listen is to be moved physically, chemically, emotion-ally, and intellectually by another person’s narrative. Later in the book she added this: Hearing is passive. Listening is active. The best listeners focus their attention and recruit other senses to the effort. Their brains work hard to process all that incoming information and find meaning, which opens the door to creativity, empathy, insight, and knowledge. Understanding is the goal of listening, and it takes effort.
Brain Games pointed out that what we "hear" when we listen is sometimes a struggle for our brains to put together, a process termed mondogreen. We "fill in" or create similar-sounding words in order to have a song or a phrase make sense. As an example, back in my day Mahalia Jackson, often termed The Queen of Gospel, was well known with her first name pronounced ma-high-la; and I swore for years that the chorus of another pop-radio song at the time, Hey Paula, was saying her name in its chorus (they were actually saying "my love" in an extended way with "my-eye-love"). Or the Steely Dan song Hey Nineteen, written with the thought of being older and yet dating someone much younger leads to realizing "we've got nothing in common; we can't talk at all." Their bridge, in referring to the increasing (but geographically limited) drug trade at the time went "the fine Columbian" but many of us again swore that with cocaine now entering the country the words occasionally changed to "the fine coke running in." Or one last one, the Beatles A Day in the Life lyric "now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall" seeming to also reflect the increased rise of heroin use at the time and turning the lyric into "holes it takes to fill the arms of Paul" (re: Paul McCartney, one of the Beatles). Mondogreen says that this our brain at work, basically making us hear what we "want" to hear...or not hear. Yes dear, I heard you; or that glazed reaction to someone saying "now listen up."
Among police interrogators, it's known that silence is a good thing, that if you give suspects a long enough period of not saying anything back that "they will spill their guts out." This isn't always the case but think of how many people (and I can count myself in this) will reveal far more of their life than a stranger might want or care to know. Marriage, work, hobbies, habits...poke around at a party and a good CIA operative could likely nail down your patterns in less than 10 minutes. So it puzzled me that a few people I've bumped into have told me personal histories such as where they went to school and parts of their home life, and apparently all of it being false; these were just casual meetings (one on my plane flight home) and I listened with interest only to later discover that they were merely expanding on what I was saying to them (in this case, me talking about a friend's upcoming high school reunion). One example of how "easy" this was to do was displayed in a scene from Murphy's Law where the person asked Murphy (the lead character) where he was from. Ireland, he replies; no kidding, so am I...what part? Northern, he replies; no kidding, so am I...what city? And on and on, down to the street and house number, only to be told later that he's just being egged on. As the Irish proverb says: If you have to swallow a frog, try not to think about it. If you have to swallow two frogs, don't swallow the small one first. My question became, why would people do this (never mind how gullible I turned out to be)?
The Atlantic had a piece on what are alleged to be the campaign tactics of the current campaign to re-elect Trump, their view that disseminating small and local news groups with wrong information will plant enough doubt in those viewers' minds that soon even accurate information would be in question. Said the journalist/author on reading his Facebook feed from a few of Trump's campaign outlets: I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach. The person on the plane and his false narrative (everything he had told me on that high school turned out to be made up said my friend attending the reunion there) planted a similar seed in my mind. How much should I "listen" or believe the people I meet? What about the things that I was reading? And how accurately was I even reading such material (as it turned out, not very, something I found out when I "read" a book on increasing your reading speed, a book which tested your comprehension of the material just read). Was I also speed listening, thinking that I could multitask and "listen" while doing something else?
In her book, author Kate Murphy notes that some research studies show that even among close relationships miscommunication can occur because of not listening, or at least not currently listening, that old been-there, done-that thing; assumptions are made that a spouse would know you better often proved incorrect when it came to simple phrases such as "You look different today" (was that meant to be good or bad...among married couples, it turned out that strangers interpreted the correct meaning as often as the spouses). The author goes on to explain: It's as if you feel a connection with someone, you assume it will always be so. The sum of daily interactions and activities shapes us and adds nuance to our understanding of the world so that no one is the same as yesterday nor will today's self be identical to tomorrow. So it doesn't matter how long you have known or how well you think you know people; if you stop listening you will eventually lose your grasp of who they are and how to relate to them. There will be exceptions of course, that long-ago friend that you meet years later and it seeming as if no time as passed at all; on those occasions you're sharing memories and truly "listening" as you catch up. Not so much when your spouse or teen or parent walks out the door and reminds you of something you need to do, a quick thought to file away and perhaps soon forget. You're busy, working away on something or intently reading and when you're asked again "did you hear me?" you tend to blurt out, "I heard you," often with a bit of attitude often thrown into that response. But did you? You likely heard them but did you listen?
I did okay on the reading part of that ACT review, but perhaps it was because I knew that I would be tested immediately after and I was focused on what I was reading. I was "in the moment," as so many Eastern religions advocate. And perhaps my biggest discovery so far has been how difficult that is to do...turns out that the listening, the sound of silence, is something that requires work and practice as well, especially in this time of division and growing isolation. But it would seem that if we are to have unity, to have peace, even to have a good relationship, that we will need to start doing some listening...
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