A Moment to Myself: the Art of Listening, Pt. II

I've always been a visual learner, and visual arts have come much more easily to me than hobbies involving physical coordination, or....(shudder) math.
(Hello, music  and music theory!)

My day job as a landscape architect is - of necessity and definition - all about the visual.
I read spaces, I read the amounts of daylight and shadow a space gets, and after many years of doing the job, I have a knack for understanding how people will use a space and how they will physically move through it.

 And in day to day life, I like to think that I'm pretty good at reading other people too: assessing their visual cues and body language, and then combining that with what I hear them say.

So, to go through several exercises at Wooten Woods that involved taking away my sight, making me rely on other ways to navigate through space, making me rely on and trust what I heard, internally and externally....Well, that was something else entirely.

I don't want to give too much away about the specific exercises, but there were several that involved navigating through outdoor spaces while blindfolded, sometimes under time constraints, sometimes not. I got something different out of each of the three blindfold experiences, and the last ended up being one of the most interesting ones.

 After a couple of blindfold quests, you learn how to tune in to your other senses.  You listen a lot more closely to everything around you, from the sound of birds, to the rustle of a breeze in tree leaves, to the shuffling sounds of the other campers around you.  If you choose to go barefoot - a great option! - you learn how to feel the ground for clues, and you learn to navigate a bit better from the feel of sunlight or shadow on your skin.  You pick up external cues.

The bigger challenge was listening to my own instincts, and believing them!
During our last blindfold quest, we formed teams, and each team had to make their way, as individuals, across camp, and direct themselves toward the sound of  a specific instrument.  There were 5 or 6  instructors in the common space, each one playing a different instrument - all at the same time.


Everyone on my team had to make their way to the fretted bass.


Ok, sounds reasonably straightforward.
Unless you're still a novice bass player.
And there was another instructor playing a fretless bass at the same time.
In more or less the same area.

Oh, and we were being timed while doing the exercise.
And the campers who finish early get to watch everyone else do the exercise - so you know you have an audience if you're slow.

Now any bass aficionado will most likely scoff at my uncertainty, but there was an element of doubt.
And, to put it in context, I'd just spent several days listening to  world class musicians like Steve Bailey  play fretless basses.

But that's just it.
What if you'd never quite had to listen that way before?
What if you had to trust what you hear when so much of your daily life is based on what you see in front of you?

What if you had to listen, evaluate what you heard, and then trust your own impressions and instincts  to navigate to the 'right' goal?

I wrote earlier about listening, or not listening, to those critical inner voices.
Well, those inner voices that criticize can also guide and direct.
Sometimes it takes a real conversation with yourself to figure out which one is which.

Meanwhile the closer you get to your end point, your camp buddies decide to act like a bunch of crazed little brothers, and stampede in a big, noisy circle around you, just to see if it'll throw you off!  For a moment it was a little bit like being in the middle of a 90's mosh pit.
(It still cracks me up to remember it.  I absolutely adore all those bratty boy-punks.)

In the end, I went straight to the fretted bass.
(Big thanks to Matt Koons for making the fretted bass sound like a fretted bass!)

I was slower than my teammates, and I had to stop and listen a few times.

I did some internal coaching, and I had to actively decide to trust my instincts.

The pandemonium of the stampede rattled me for a moment, then I found the humor in it.
(It felt like smart assed, good-natured teasing, which was wonderful actually.)

 When I was uncertain, stopping and listening helped me correct my course, and I never did crash into anything on that particular adventure.


All in all, I'd say that's a damn good metaphor for navigating through life, wouldn't you?

Macy Gray's A Moment to Myself
I saw a rainbow earlier today

Lately those rainbow be comin' round like everyday
Deep in the struggle I have found the beauty of me
God is watchin and the devil finally let me be
Here in this moment to myself
I'm gonna vibe with no one else
There is a conversation I need to have with me
It's just a moment to myself


They're all looking at you, you're got everything to lose
Get up and dance girl, sing your tu-rah-loo-rah-loo
And quit bitchin bout how don't nobody really love you
Spread your rubber lovin and it bounces back to you
Here in this moment to myself
I'm gonna vibe with no one else
There is a conversation I need to have with me
It's just a moment to myself


Flowers are bloomin under gray skies and moons
Seems like I'm winnin every time I lose
And the answer I been looking for been here all this time
Spread your rubber lovin and it bounces back to you
Here in this moment to myself
I'm gonna vibe with no one else
There is a conversation I need to have with me
It's just a moment to myself