On Listening

Hearing and listening are not two senses but two layers, one inside the other. Hearing comes with the body and costs no effort; listening is a movement that passes through the sound one hears and reaches toward the one who makes it. This essay argues that listening has collapsed in an age that severs sound from its subject, from the stethoscope and telephone to the phonograph, radio, and headphone, leaving hearing intact but aimed at no one. Drawing on Jonathan Sterne, Michael Bull, Joel Krueger, Martin Buber, and Rilke, it recovers the most sacred face of listening: to meet the teller's need to be heard and, in doing so, to create the teller anew.