Joshua Banks Mailman, “Seven Metaphors For (Music) Listening: DRAMaTIC”

In DRAmATIC, Joshua Mailman tentatively denies that listening is even defined as an act or action. He refutes pure listening and defends that listening always relates to some other activity. In this light, he lists a series of metaphors for the act of listening: recording, adaptation, improvisation, computation, digestion, meditation, and transport.

The author points out listening as recording as one of the most challenging modes. Sonic environments, for instance, can be so multifaceted and filled with different sounds that recording them become a very demanding task. It’s not only about hearing all the sounds, but also processing them in a very specific way, so they can live up and be preserved for later listening. This gives a great responsibility to the sound recordist. Depending on how the recordist captures the sound, the later experience of listening can be completely different. For this reason, the author believes this mode sets a high standard.

However, listening to environmental sounds can be processed in different ways. Sometimes, the sonic experience can put one in tune with the environment. When the individual changes his thoughts and evolves a relationship with the music, the listening is becomes adaptation. Through this type of listening, we adjust our thinking in order to absorb what is happening around us, in a process called self-tuning.

Further in his article, Mailman comments on listening also as computing, meditation and transport, which are pretty suggestive terms. But the metaphors that called my attention the most are listening as digestion and as improvisation. Despite the fact that the author defends recording as the most challenging mode, I disagree and claim improvisation to be the one instead. For an improviser, the act of listening merges with the acts of composing and performing. They become so connected that their boundaries dissolve and the three actions become one: improvisation. And even though they’re all performed as one, they are all using different parts of the brain, which makes of this listening mode the most demanding one, in my opinion.

Finally, the digestion. This metaphors really appealed to me, because it is very organically accurate. Listening, just like digesting, is an ephemeral, sensorial experience. Listening is an act of the specious present, the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible. It only happens at the moment. Nevertheless, its qualities lingers. After the sound is gone, it is accessible through memory. And here comes the most appealing part, in my opinion: the memory is sequential. Yet so simple, this analysis had never come across my mind. Different from visual memories, which can be broken and re-ordered in our minds, music cannot. If we break the sonic memories into fractions, the excerpts will not make any sense alone, unless they are put together as in the original composition. And this aspect also speaks to the digestion metaphor, given that there is a sequence of events that need to happen in specific order when we are digesting.

Although Mailman spends many paragraphs on the nature/quality of digestive listening, he does not touch upon how this listening manifests in our body, or what are its effects. The transport mode take your mind to another place; the improvisational mode requires you to play; the adaptation mode makes you pay attention to your surroundings; and so on. But what happens when we are digesting the sounds? My answer to this question is very personal. It relates to how I listen to music myself. And it speaks to the sensorial meaning behind the term digestion. I very easily tend to respond to sounds with body movements, whether I move just my hands or my entire body in a synced, choreographed way. For me, the digestive listening translates into body movements and it only happens during the specious present. I need to be stimulated by the sound in order to respond. Yet it is true that, if the sound becomes part of my memories, I can access the movements associated with it as well. But this memory component also relates to the nature of listening as digesting. To sum up, I see this mode as metaphor for synesthesia. For me, digesting is the way of listening through the body, instead of the ears.