70. Pauline Oliveros & Debby at Goddard College Residency, PT, WA '09
"I differentiate 'to hear' and 'to listen'. To hear is the physical means that enables perception. To listen is to give attention to what is perceived both acoustically and psychologically."[1]
Space is the most important music quality that Pauline Oliveros uses in her work. When I teach, often it is the space that has more clarity, makes more sense and is more pronounced than the rhythms or tones that, to me, seem so obvious. Last May, I substituted for Seattle Universities' "Improvisation in Art and Life" class. A young man came up to me after class and said, "I understood what you meant when you said, Listen to the space...the silence, to understand where you are." I was struck that a concept like "space" was taken in and understood so naturally.
A composer to the nth degree, Pauline Oliveros quite naturally developed a Deep Listening philosophy and practice, distinguishing the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening.[2] I participated in her Vancouver, BC workshop, last year. What a gentle soul, Pauline is. She and Ione (partner and artistic director), performed that evening...roaming through sound aesthetics, ethereal happenings and attended to dreams of a "wide awake" nature. All while pushing sonic pulses around the room from speaker to speaker, making you dizzy with their dense nomadic melodies. This collaborative soundscape had an otherworldly feel. But why? From Ione's spoken (dream) word to Oliveros' sensual accordion solos, all improvised, you got the feeling that they were waiting for something. Listening to each other, to all the history of sound, technique and story that had gone on before.
“We found that it was best to improvise first and talk about it afterward. If we discussed what we were going to do, the improvisation seemed to fall flat. Improvising without discussion seemed to give us an exciting edge and arena for discovery, as the world of possibilities remained open.”[3]
Patience is the virtue here. Just now, a bee is brushing me so closely that I feel his wings on my hair and cheek, wings vibrating so loud I can't hear or think of anything else. I am a little bit afraid too. Sitting still, listening, paying attention and listening again is painfully hard for me, but a practice I am finding most necessary. If silence could be as obvious as that bee, I wouldn't have quite so much trouble paying it the attention it requires. Patience and listening are two of the most illusive and most important qualities of an improvisational life.
Pauline, when asked about how she instilled creativity in her students, reflected on the importance of facilitating a community of creative interest.[4] The word facilitate reminds me of Seitu’s (a Goddard advisor) response to a video I shared, taken of student performances during a class I was teaching. My question was, "What am I doing and what is my role?" Seitu saw that I was giving space and time for others to express and create what interested them most. Pauline is a listening facilitator, holding space and time for herself, during performance, and for others.
“My early composition was gestural rather than formal. I wrote what I heard. As a composer, I was not interested in the textbook forms presented to me in classes; rather, I was interested in sounds, in the interplay and sensual nature of sounds that ran through my mind.”[5]
[1] Deep Listening, A Composer's Sound Practice Oliveros, P. (2005), Deep Listening Publications~iUniverse, Lincoln, NE. pg. 12
[2] Oliveros, P. (2009), Retrieved from http://www.deeplistening.org/site/about.
[3] The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation and Communities in Dialogue, Editors: Fischlin, D. & Heble, A. (2004), Wesleyan University Press. Middletown. CT., Chapter: Pauline Oliveros. Harmonic Anatomy - Women in Improvisation.
pg. 53
[4] Deep Listening, A Composer's Sound Practice. Oliveros, P. (2005), Deep Listening Publications~iUniverse, Lincoln, NE. pg. 24
[5] The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation and Communities in Dialogue. Editors: Fischlin, D. & Heble, A. (2004). Wesleyan University Press. Middletown. CT., Chapter: Pauline Oliveros. Harmonic Anatomy - Women in Improvisation. pg. 53
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