I recently read the introduction for Pauline Olivero’s book Deep Listening, where she defines the concepts taken into consideration and describes superficially her arguments and ideas. A couple of things stranded out for me:

First: The difference between listening and hearing. I never thought of both concepts as a pathway of consciousness, she explains that listening requires attention from an acoustic and psychological perspective. Hearing in the other hand refers to the simple psychical means that enable to perceive a sound.

Second: The concept of Deep listening and its relationship with meditation. She argues that deep listening is the further step when perceiving and analyzing sound, she expressed it as listening to the listening. Then she discussed that listening is a form of meditation but meditation is not a form of listening. Meditations refers to the fact of putting attention to something.

Third: She gave a basic outline of how deep listening could be a change of improvement in everyday activities and society. Her expression on listening is very romantic and poetic, I fell totally compelled by it.

On conclusion, I think I do practice often deep listening. I find myself a lot perceiving my surroundings and analyzing both the psychological and acoustic nature of sound. I also overthink and re-analyze what I have concluded of such listening experiences and then tailor my skills to my sonic wants and needs. Of course I will have to read the entire book to find out her ideas and to get tips and feedback on my ways of listening.