Dear ,
I have a lot of things on my mind, always. Last night I was awake for about three hours in the middle of the night, because I was dreaming of writing to you.
What I wanted to tell you is that I’m going to embark on a journey of listening. I don’t have a sense of where this will go—only that in our society where it seems that listening is a lost art, I’d like to be a person who listens, and I’d like to see where it takes me (and maybe, by extension, you).
I’m not entirely sure where this idea started—maybe in the car, where I spend quite a few hours per week with nothing to do, and I’d started listening to YA stories and then to Neil Gaiman, thanks to Megan Willome.
It is really something to listen to stories delivered by the human voice. I noticed how some stories were made more interesting, based on the voice of the reader, and some (like a Pulitzer prize winner I’d hoped to “read” by listening) were made absolutely uninteresting. Voice matters. The embodiment of a story matters. It’s the difference between speaking at someone, I think, and just being the story through your voice. This is probably true for writers, too.
Anyway, listening to stories aloud may have led me to the idea of listening to podcasts. (If you have any to recommend, let me know.) Listening to podcasts led me to Joshua Spodek. Listening to Joshua led me to consider listening more intently. So, starting with his material, I’m going to listen consistently to at least one podcaster a month, for a year.
While I lay awake last night, alternately thinking about the ruin of my car by nature’s ways and the potential development of a new friendship-themed effort through Tweetspeak, this listening thing was on my mind.
Wherever you are today, I wish you a lovely listening moment.
As Always,
L.L.