I was excited today to pick up last week's New York Times magazine and find a short and inspiring article about Pauline Oliveros. My teacher Silvia Nakkach speaks of her often as one of her great teachers and mentors. Up until now I had just seen one short performance by her on YouTube. The only thing I really knew is that she seemed to think about and experience sound in much the same way as I do- but with a far great understanding aligned with wisdom and the gift of being able to articulate her understanding most eloquently!
I have a ridiculous number of short recordings on my iPhone. Most are audio recordings and some are video- for example the "murder of crows" I filmed a few nights ago in Newport when they all came flying into a tree next to where I had parked. Or the recording of sheep in Holland, the day I discovered that they all have different voices! And countless recordings of bird sounds, different configurations of running water, cicadas in Sedona and other interesting sonic wonders I come across. I am frustrated that I do not have enough of an understanding of current technology to be able to upload these recordings onto my website or to layer them and expand on them with other instrumentation. Hopefully the right person will come along who can help me with that.
The Healing Sound Journeys that I perform evolved from my sound healing workshops, the intention being to stimulate, deepen, enhance and expand the process of listening- to naturally and organically take one beyond the experience of passively hearing to actively listening. What I have discovered through my own experience and observation is that the listener can enter into a state of deep relaxation due to the nature of the ambient acoustic frequencies and also have the rare experience of becoming fully present with no effort on their part. The endless mind chatter seems to naturally drop away at a certain point and along with it the tendency to think about the past and project into the future, opening up to the fullness of the present.
Here Pauline Oliveros gives a TedTalk on Deep Listening- it is brilliant. Enjoy...