I was speaking to a friend over the weekend and we started talking about a particular kind of deafness: a lack of listening in the world. At the time I wasn’t sure how I would describe this, and still I’m not sure. The best I can come up with is to think about the way I hear the building, the hall or church, when I listen to organ music. Or the way I hear the history of the USA when I listen to the outcome of the recent election.

It’s a way of accounting for effects, I suppose, and it’s how I listen to people. I listen out for space, time and intensity. Sometimes I miss the obvious things. I can never listen closely enough, but sometimes I need to listen distantly, as if I’m on the very edge of what I can hear. Wherever I listen from, I hear something different.