Listening As an Act of Creativity
To anticipate. To attune. To open.
I’m writing a novel called “The Listener,” so I’ve been thinking a lot about how we listen (or don’t listen) to each other, to the world, to ourselves. I’ve also been thinking about the role of listening in creativity.
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories,” wrote Eudora Welty. “Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
I like this image of attentiveness, how listening for stories is different than listening to stories, how the world is a place of anticipation, attunement. To listen for stories is an art unto itself. You have to practice listening with a curiosity that goes beyond yourself. You have to listen with wonder and receptiveness.
You listen for a story in the way a broom sweeps across a floor or the way thin chords of rain strike a window.
You listen for the past’s murmurings, to what the tongue can’t, or won’t, say. You listen to the way a broom sweeps across a floor or the way thin…
