Listening exercises: living in the gaps

When was the last time you looked at an app on your phone? If you’re like I am, it was likely in the last hour or two. I thought about this a few weeks ago when I (once again) collided with the edge of my kitchen counter because I was walking through the room while reading something on my phone. I may have liberated myself from the distractions of social media, but I haven’t yet learned to stop filling every spare moment with a voracious search for information and entertainment.

I’m not alone. This morning I had to navigate around five teenagers on a city sidewalk, all of whom were scrolling on their phones and meandering around aimlessly. Distraction has become our default mode. We seek it without thinking about it every time we have a spare minute. Waiting in a line? On the phone. Taking a walk? Listening to music or a podcast. We say we want time for silence and reflection, yet we run from it when it presents itself.

I’ve made all the excuses myself—I don’t have time to meditate. I’m too busy to just sit and think. But on closer examination, I can see how I’ve filled every nook and cranny of my day with the voices of others. Is it any wonder that days can go by without feeling as if I’m in touch with myself and my life? When is enough enough? When will we give ourselves the freedom to not fill every available moment and to simply listen to and observe what’s happening around us?

All of this affects playing the piano, of course. We forget that if we want to play well, we must first learn to listen well. We forget that music comes from a background of eternal silence and that it’s our job to commune with that silence. We forget that the body and the mind need this silence to catch up with each other and to be available for what shows up.

How do we learn to listen? Advice articles recommend mindfulness and meditation, but sometimes time and personal temperament make these things challenging. What if we started with something smaller? What if, instead of looking for swaths of time where we can sit formally, we learn to create little gaps of silence for ourselves in our everyday lives?

I call these breaks in my day “listening gaps.” They grew out of my realization that I was filling my day with distractions. When I examined why I was filling every spare minute, I ran headlong into my fear of boredom. That boredom was a veneer for another, deeper issue: namely, my desire to run away from situations or circumstances that made me uncomfortable. And underneath boredom I found the root fear—fear of what I’d hear if I truly listened to the world around me and to myself.

It has been difficult to break my habit of seeking distractions, but I’m gradually learning to seek out and live in the listening gaps when they appear. I’m learning to wait out the initial boredom of doing nothing but observing my surroundings, and I’m allowing myself to sink into deep listening, even when it makes me uncomfortable.

The effect on my music and my life has been transformative. It turns out the real world has lots to teach me when I stop stuffing myself on mindless distraction. The stillness of the listening gaps that appear in my day has taught me to hear everything more deeply—the music I play, the emotional context underneath others’ words, and the messages my body and psyche have been screaming at me to hear. It’s humbling to see how much I still allow mindless distraction to pull me away from life, but I’m grateful for the listening gaps that guide me back to what’s real.

Bird song, the roar of traffic, the smell of roasting nuts from a food cart, the chuckle from the person you most love—these things are worth experiencing. When we start truly listening we find life is a symphony—beauty, pain, noise, laughter, anger, compassion, it’s all there. And we’re part of it. Turns out there’s a whole world out there and a whole lot of real life that waits for us to simply stop and be part of it. This is where the real nourishment lies—not in the carefully curated false realities that are pitched to us every day, but in the humble but majestic life of which we are a part. Switching from digital junk food to real life sustenance grounds us in our music and ourselves, and from this real life foundation, we express what’s genuine, not the recycled opinions of others.

And so I challenge you to join me. Create listening gaps in your own day. Take a walk without ear buds and just listen to everything around you. Lean into the boredom and possible discomfort that may arise from avoiding distraction. Embrace the inherent elegance of stillness. Listen and respond. Listen compassionately to others and to yourself. And then, take yourself to the piano, and bring everything you’ve heard and experienced in real life to the music you play. Listen for the heart beneath the notes. Listen to your own experience with the music. Employ the patience you learned through listening and applaud yourself for your efforts, no matter how small. This is how we find something real to offer in our playing; this is where we create pure, honest storytelling that connects. This is where we offer our one true voice to the symphony of real life.

Photo by Nick Fewings, courtesy of UpSplash