Listening: the Lost Art
By Sarah McCoy | August 23, 2016 |
Flickr Creative Commons: Randy Adams
We live in a culture and time of Listen to Me.
Listen, we preference our statements to family, friends, and strangers. Did you hear me? We ask when someone doesn’t do as we request. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? We jokingly parrot into our third ears (cell phones) and are piqued to shrieking if there’s a connection hiccup, a dim signal, a garbled word. But stop a minute. Hush yourself and think about it: if each of us is talking, how can the other ever be the listener?
I’m a storyteller. That’s my craft, my profession and my passion. Every hour of my life (wake to sleep) is dedicated to the business of stringing together words and telling a story. The odd paradox of being a writer is that it’s imperative that we be listeners first.
Seek to hear
Just this past week I was at the doctor’s office. My technician is from Poland. We’d had our introductory meeting last month when I moved to Chicago. Then, she’d asked me what I did for a living, and I told her I wrote books.
When I arrived for this second visit, she met me in the exam room, “I’m reading your book! The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico!” She took a vacation to the island this summer and was interested in learning more. While she went about her medical checklist, she said she was fascinated by the similarities between my young protagonist’s dream of “making it to America” and her own growing up.
As it happened, I was physically in a position where I couldn’t do the talking—couldn’t tell her about my mom, titis and abuelita, about my family farm in Aibonito, about the food and the music and all the wonders of Puerto Rican culture. All the stuff that I’d grown accustomed to chatting about when someone brought up the book. So instead, I turned the tables on myself. I became the listener.
“Tell me about growing up in Poland, how you came to be in Chicago,” I said.
While I lay still for the next two hours, she talked, and I lost myself in the world she described. At one point, a tear eked out my eye and she fretted, “Ah, too painful? We stop.”
I shook my head. “I’m okay. It was your father,” I mumbled.
She’d been telling me about how her father left them for two years while he went to earn money as a house painter in America. She’d been telling me her grandmothers’ stories about the Nazis and Russians during WWII. She’d been telling me about her first American movie— “Dynasty”—and how her extended family gathered to watch on a 10” antenna TV. She’d been telling me her dreams for her life when she was a child. Her dreams for her children’s lives now. I was moved to the tear, not pained to it.
When my appointment was complete, she shyly apologized, “I’m sorry I talked the whole time. I don’t know what made me tell you all that.”
I told her she’d given me a gift. She’d nursed my body and mind, and I realized, our general society doesn’t seek to hear enough. As writers, we often become so mired in our own authorial voices and the voices of our characters that we don’t stop to hear the ones around us: the people sitting beside us on the subway, the grandparents reminiscing about ‘back in the days’, the chatty Uber drivers and nurses and checkout ladies at the grocery store. There are so many people with stories to tell!
Of course we can’t listen to them all. We are only one set of ears. But what if we took it as our writerly duty to push our own pause button? To stop putting out our words and listen—really listen— to another person. Just one. Start there. Think of the opportunities.
Listen to the pros
When I was a young journalism major in college, I remember reading an interview in the Los Angeles Times with writer John Ridley (who would go on to win the Academy Award Best Adapted Screenplay for 12 Years A Slave in addition to his many novels, TV shows, stage plays, etc.). At the time of the interview, his novel, Everybody Smokes in Hell had just released from Knopf, his movie “Three Kings” was taking Hollywood by storm, and “Third Watch” was one of television’s most praised shows. All of these vastly different narratives came out of his imagination. I was in awe—that one person could creatively produce so much. Truthfully, I was a touch envious, too. He was a savant, an abnormality of limitless ideas. There was probably a benign tumor on his cerebellum, I decided.
Then Ridley explained his secret: “If you want to be a writer, you’ve got to be a listener first.”
Boom. It was so simple… so simple it was easy to disregard just how powerful being a listener truly is.
As I said from the start, we live in a society of Listen up, listen here, listen, listen, listen! Which, in effect, produces the opposite: our ears become numb and deaf. Other’s words cease to hold weight and meaning. We’re too busy thinking about what we’re going to say next.
There’s the old Epictetus quote: “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
It took a kind Polish woman in a new city to remind me that the power of our calling is not in our own cries of Listen, listen to my words! but in actively participating in the art of hearing a story.
What if everywhere we went and every new person we met, we asked ourselves, what could they tell me if I listen? We might discover more treasures than we could ever imagine, and the world might be a little kinder, too.
[coffee]
SARAH McCOY is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of the novels Mustique Island, Marilla of Green Gables; The Mapmaker’s Children;The Baker’s Daughter, a 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee; the novella “The Branch of Hazel” in Grand Central;The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico; and Le souffle des feuilles et des promesses(Pride and Providence). Her work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post, and other publications. She hosted the NPR WSNC Radio monthly program “Bookmarked with Sarah McCoy” and previously taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband, Brian, an orthopedic sports surgeon, her dog, Gilly, and her cat, Tutu.
Not meaning to hijack the comment thread, but your story reminded me of a time I was listened to.
It was 2007. St. Francis Hospital in Trenton, NJ. Night. Nothing like boring late night in a hospital. There were two of us in the double room, both post-surgical. We got to talking, and somehow the whole story of Pride’s Children poured out of me. I kept trying to stop talking – the lovely lady in the other bed kept asking questions, making me continue. When I was finished, she said, “I’d buy that,” and we went on to talk of other things until we couldn’t keep our eyes open.
The corollary to listening – the other side of the coin – is being listened to. I wonder how many of us are writers because it’s one way to be allowed to get our stories out.
Listening to another is a gift – to both of us.
I agree. What a beautiful “other side of the coin” story. I loved HEARING it. Thank you for sharing, Alicia.
Have a beautiful end of summer evening!
Yours truly,
Sarah
I’ve been noticing lately how often people preface what they’re about to say with: “Look,” or “Listen,” or “Here’s the thing…” I’ve noticed it among friends, acquaintances, and particularly among talking heads on the tube. It’s as if they’re about to reach a critical point in a lengthy debate or an elaborate tale. But I’ve also noticed something else: it almost never is a critical point or the culmination of… anything. Your essay reveals what it usually is: folks are desperate to be heard, and they know that no one’s actually listening. They’re just waiting to talk. (Not that I’m never guilty of this, but awareness is the first step to changed behavior.)
On a side note, when I recently toured the Baltic region, the show Dynasty came up twice. The first time, our Estonian guide in Tallinn told us of going to her aunt’s house as a child during the Soviet era to watch Dynasty subtitled in Finnish on Swedish television (with a big antenna). Our Berlin guide also mentioned watching Dynasty in East Germany as a child. I’m thinking this fairy tale version of America might have played a larger role than we knew in the fall of the Iron Curtain. I suppose those living behind it were really ready to listen to a new version of what their lives could be.
Excellent reminder, Sarah! Thanks.
That is fascinating about “Dynasty” being played across those great political divides. My technician’s eyes sparkled when she talked about watching it with her family. She said they were rapt. It was magic. Everything was perfect and beautiful in America. She had to get here. She said she knew then, there. was. hope. Funny how “Dynasty”–a make-believe story– could serve as the catalyst for such a life revolution.
Once again, it makes me feel ever more responsible for the narrative gifts I am given and the ones I give out.
Thanks for being part of the conversation, Vaughn!
Yours truly,
Sarah
I really enjoyed your post. Perhaps because I love stories, people can sense it, because people tell me about themselves on buses, airplanes and just hanging out at soccer fields. It truly is a gift.
Amen, Vijaya! When I travel, I’m usually in “shut down, introvert, nose-in-book, focused” mode. This made me want to be more open to listening to those around me. Gifts, yes.
Yours truly,
Sarah
Beautiful post, Sarah. Oddly enough, I learned something about the art of listening from my grandmother, who was hard of hearing. She’d sit quietly in restaurants staring off at one table or another with a catlike smile on her face. Turns out she was ‘eavesdropping’ by way of lip-reading. She said it was amazing what you could learn about people from doing this. I took it to heart. so, much so that a guy once called me an eavesdropper. It was a long time ago and I think he meant it as an accusation. But I was already thinking of it as research. And yes, too much talking these days. Everyone’s mouth is moving. Listening is an art and a wonderful, life-enhancing practice!
I LOVED THIS STORY, Susan! It makes me wish I could’ve met your grandmother. I’m sure she was a beautiful soul, full to the brim with stories to tell. I would’ve sat quietly by her side and listened to every whispered word.
I’m re-learning the art of listening and grateful to all those willing to teach me new tricks.
Yours truly,
Sarah
Great post. Too often we shut down in the middle of what someone is saying, eager to jump in and take over. That’s not conversation. We need to enjoy the give and take of true sharing when talking with one another. Then when we go to the page to construct a real conversation, we might have a reasonable handle on doing just that.
Exactly, Beth. That’s not a conversation. We live in a society that encourages us to value OUR opinions over everyone else’s. Having a voice is one thing. Learning how to wisely use it is another. Listening is the key.
Thanks for listening to my post!
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
Beautiful. Reminds me of that song with the refrain “We all have a story to tell.” And if it’s a really good one, other people can relate even if they’ve never been to Poland, or in Puerto Rico when it snowed.
The Titanic, one of the biggest box office films of all time uses exactly that formula, of an old woman telling the story of her life. Stories are an integral part of the human condition.
Thanks for this lovely post. I think I’m going to ride the subway today, for the sake of stories brought on the rails.
Wonderful! Thank you, Bernadette. I’m imagining you on the subway, ears perked, imagination ready to be lit by all you hear.
Have a beautiful end of summer night!
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
Thanks for your lovely post, Sarah. I notice in this day of “Hear Me!, Hear Me!” people clamor over each other, aching to be heard. It brings me joy to hold my thoughts still, and witness someone’s surprised smile or raised eyebrow of disbelief when I am open and curious and ask them questions. “You want to hear about me?” There’s the story. Connection.
Thank you, lovely Brin! Exactly what you said: there was this spark when I asked my technician to talk tell me her story. A sort of unexpected, “Oh! You care?” Quiet and beautiful–a connection, as you so aptly put it.
Isn’t that what we’re all seeking–feeling worthy of being known?
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
Steal, steal, steal! Yes, yes, yes!
There are other benefits to listening. You get details. There are many fleeing-Eastern-Europe stories. Many families tell them. But each one is a little different and it’s those differences that bring each one alive.
People also think in ways completely strange. They care about the oddest stuff. It’s not strange or odd to them, of course, it’s just the way they filter life. That too is useful.
There’s often an unusual element to people’s personal stories, too, the my-grandma-was-a-stripper-in-the-circus-sideshow factor. The best stories can come from these. How could that happen? Stories explain the inexplicable and the inexplicable is all around.
If you listen. Wonderful post and a great way to get through a medical procedure. Thanks!
Wait– was your grandma really a stripper in a circus sideshow? What a GREAT story that would be!
I agree with your salient point. The details are everything and people don’t want to “bore” you with the details if they feel you aren’t listening. Truthfully, I do the same to my husband some nights…
Ex. He walks in looking bedraggled and asks, “How as your day?” while pulling his tie off, tossing OR scrubs into the laundry, and answering a text on his phone.
Me: “Fine.”
I know his mind is elsewhere. If I told him the neighbor ran over a squirrel and the little boys across the road broke into sobs, so we had a cul-de-sac burial by the park, which culminated in hazelnut cookies in honor of the dead. Well… that’s a much more interesting story! But he’s not listening so none of it gets shared, and therefore, not remembered.
The listeners of the world are memory’s treasure-keepers.
Your truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
I did not know my grandma, she was mentally ill and hung herself in my father’s closet. That might go into a novel someday but I’m not in a hurry on that.
I agree that listening is a key skill for a writer. We glean story ideas, as you already noted. We also absorb speech patterns, jargon, and cadence. Learning about those aspects of speech can only help us when we’re writing dialogue.
Most importantly, we learn how to tell a story. That is, we learn how to use significant pauses to draw our audience in, how just the right details can bring a scene to life, and how an unexpected twist can take an ordinary tale to the next level.
Wise words, Ruth. I 100% agree.
I started off my MFA program as a playwright and one of the exercises we often did was to go to public places and sit listening. Then we’d crafting stage scenes (dialogue only) from our daily catch. On a vernacular level: I learned so much about the rhythm of language; how evocative a single word can be when said in a particular place in a conversation, etc.
When I think of my technician’s story in my mind, I hear her thick Polish accent, the comforting zh at the end of certain words, the whispers cloaked in confidence. It’s the ribbon and tissue paper on her story gift.
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
It happens that we were camping up in Traverse City, Michigan this weekend at a state park. While I was filling a water jug at the dump station (yes, all in the same place), I hear this little voice ask, “What are ya doin’?” That was the moment I met Kylie, Junior Park Ranger. Kylie, about ten years old, talked. She talked a lot. She showed me her official Junior Park Ranger hat, certificate, and badges. She said she goes around to all the campsites to make sure everyone is being safe and not talking too loud. I suspect none of this was sanctioned by the real park rangers, but Kylie took her job seriously. Back at the campsite, Kylie told my family about how her mother was a drug abuser and alcoholic and that she’d abused Kylie as a baby. Kylie was eventually adopted by her grandparents. She later returned with an iPad full (and I mean full) of photos of her cat. We had a couple more conversations with Kylie over the weekend, but I kept thinking how much joy that little girl possessed. A ranger hat and certificate she’d probably gotten from a one-hour campground seminar gave her purpose (along with the cat). We met her grandfather when he came to save us the first night, and I suspect they have little. But I also suspect that Kylie will go very far, despite her tragic beginnings. As we were talking about Kylie later, my wife mentioned that I could write an entire middle-grade series about Kylie the Junior Ranger.
It might just happen.
DO IT, Ronald! You’ve given us a teaser and we want more: Kylie the Junior Ranger. What an inspiring child! So young and already so full of heartache and love. I’m sure having you and your family truly *hear her was one of the greatest gifts of her 10 years.
Thank you for listening to that sweet baby girl and for sharing with us!
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
Thank you for the reminder, Sarah. Another timely post. My writer’s mind has been distracted lately and of course, all I need to do is sit quietly and listen to the wind. It’s a windy day today. Listening to others, listening to nature, listening to myself – it’s time to remember to do these things.
I’m saying this same thing to myself, Bronwen. I’ve been distracted by so many other things. As summer declines, I’m taking the opportunity to follow the season’s path… go quietly into autumn, listening to nature and people and my own inner thoughts.
Cheers to the beauty of listening!
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
Lovely, lovely reminder. Thank you.
I’m glad to have other writers beside me in the listening.
Have a wonderful summer’s eve, Carol!
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
That’s beautiful.
Thanks you, sweet Susan!
Hugs,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
Beautiful. Madeleine L’Engle used to tell her students, “Listen to your characters.” Instead of making up words for them, listen to them speak. Every time I use that technique, my work becomes more vivid. Life springs from I do not know where.
Stephanie, I completely agree. I ask my characters what I’ve missed, what I’m now allowing them to do, what would make them happy and more. The answers are amazing.
Love those questions, Benjamin. The answers… aw, yes. We (writers) live and breathe by those wondrous answers.
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
L’Engle spoke holy truth. I try to abide by it. If ever I start to hear myself in my prose, I stop, backspace, delete. I know I am doing my job when I can’t remember writing– because I’m too busy listening to characters and acting as stenographer.
Thanks for being part of our listening conversation, beautiful Stephanie!
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com
So many people just do not listen…….or look around themselves, they are self contained.
That’s why it’s ever more critical that we be the listeners. Stories need a vessel to fill. Quiet hearts to hear even the whispers.
Yours truly,
Sarah
http://www.sarahmccoy.com