The Work Room Interview: The Art of Active Listening with Stephen Kuusisto

CA: How do you define the fundamental difference between hearing and listening? A big question, I know!

SK: I’ve always loved this great line by Shostakovich, “hearing has no merit, a duck hears also.” It’s the nuanced and attentive act of imagination that makes listening an art. This is what we’re after in this sort of course. Artful ears!

CA: Is active listening always a delightful experience? Does it sometimes bring about discomfort? In short, in what ways can a listener be moved?

SK: Yes discomfort is a central part of all art. Sibelius often wants you to hear the somber, dark, quasi-tragic elements of nature in his tone poems; Beethoven’s late quartets are elegiac; chance sounds, which we tend to prize for their fidelity to unmediated experience (John Cage) can be remarkable and awful. I remember one night at a Northern California arts center, going outside with my guide dog and hearing peacocks shrieking in the woods. I thought a baby was being murdered. And the peacocks were just letting one another know they were still alive. 

CA: In your course description you mention the great literary listeners—is there a particular line from a poem or passage that comes to mind when you think of these writers?

SK: Whitman’s “Song of Myself" part 26 is a great starting point:

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,

I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,

I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,

Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,

Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals,

The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,

The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence,

The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters,

The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights,

The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,

The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two,

(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)