writing to you live from regard-ville once again…
Of one of her writing teachers, New Yorker editor William Shawn, Janet Malcolm writes, “The thought of him ultimately reading what we had written both slowed us down and gave us courage to continue.”1
This description has lingered with me since I read it, made me think about how this generosity of regard powers and sustains us. Open hearted presence offers a kind of heat to the flame in us, some kind of additional wattage.
It reminded me of this story I came across some weeks backs, about a public listening booth that poet (obviously) and teacher Genine Lentine created in San Francisco several years ago. She shares about this experiment, “Open-air vault, chamber without walls, Listening Booth is dedicated to sharing one of the most precious and yet infinitely renewable resources: attention. It is founded on the brightening effect of being listened to, even for a brief period of time.” Lentine started the experiment after noticing the decline of face to face conversations in her life with the rise of smartphones, computers, etc (this was in 2011!) — “As useful as all these modes may be, however, they offer little in the way of the limbic resonance.”
The conditions were simple, two people — one listener and one talker, folding chairs, a table, and a timer. The talker chose what kind of reception they wanted from the listener (!) by moving a small ceramic duck (!) to one of the following options on the table top:
“1. Silence
2. Non-lexical backchannel responses, e.g. mm hmm, nodding
3. Neutral verbal responses, e.g. I hear you, yes, I understand
4. Offering an analogous story, example, or relevant quotation
5. Advice, questions, comments
6. Freestyle”
People left the exchanges feeling fortified and renewed. Lentine wanted to know, “Who are we when we don’t need to jockey for the floor and how do we do this subtly all the time?”
When we’re not jockeying for the floor we can give each other the ‘floor’. We can ask for the ‘floor’. We can become the floor—solid, for dancing, the places in each others’ lives to land.
William Shawn, 1992 in Forty-One False Starts Essays on Artists and Writers. In another essay in the book, William Shawn’s son Allen notes “Had he been an inveterate traveler, a doer, or a true extrovert, he would have become too jaded and worldly to maintain the striking innocence and almost infinite receptivity that made him capable of listening so raptly and carefully to what writers had to say.” —The Not Returning Part of It
*”Friends have often told me I am a good listener, citing what they see as a “strange confidence in the other person.” “When I talk to you, I feel as strong as I am,” one friend told me. I love the intricacy and subtlety of what happens in conversation and Listening Booth very much nourishes this enduring curiosity. This direct interaction mirrors writing poems — as when someone tells me a poem has somehow “heard [them]” and addressed something in their own lives. It’s weirdly satisfying to remove the mediation of a poem — of course I will keep writing poems, but I feel this process will inform my writing in ways I can’t know yet. I love human speech, so it’s partly just that simple: I get to listen people talking.” ↩