Hearing Loss

Does the attraction of composing a blog lie in the intense satisfaction of being able to yell like a maniac into the cyber void knowing that nobody will think you odd?

If you stopped in central London and stood in the street, turned your eyes heavenward and shouted,

“AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!”

Nobody would take any notice, granted (Londoners are good like that) but under their umbrellas, they would be deeply startled. A kind soul might even pause to ask if you’re lost and would you like directions to the nearest rehabilitation centre. A blog however, is a forum in which you can mutter and mumble to yourself without people moving to the next carriage on the train. You can shake your fist in words and people won’t cross the road and hide their children away. You can say everything or nothing and nobody will care, much.

Really?

Alarmingly, this is not true and having laboured under this misapprehension, this contributor to Ear to the Flagstones has been duly warned that I “Ought to be a bit careful about what you say”. One wouldn’t like to come across you see, as a self-indulgent bigot expounding the antiquated middle-class views which, over time, are probably responsible for classical music’s ‘snobby’ reputation. Particularly not when in reality, you’re the kind of person who had to look up most of the words in that sentence before typing them. Of course, one can always blame spell-check or auto-complete – an excellent example being when I recently complained to a friend that having only two ‘followers’ for Ear to the Flagstones was “bad for my moral”.

Taking in to consideration the startling revelation that despite my homepage telling me so, more than two people have read Blog; I must change my tune. No longer am I free to vent my impotent rage or insolent views, (I may even have to change that sentence about Nick Pritchard) no, dear readers (more than two of you) from now on I will be a model of decency, intelligence, interest and wit...

“Hearing Loss: The Lost Art of Listening”

Or

“Ode to an ‘Ear”

It is extraordinary to observer the complete inability of fully grown, healthy human beings to sit either still or quietly for longer than five minutes at a stretch unless given something to look at. Whatever happened to the world’s ability to listen? Here I am at the Pianists of the World concert given by Beth Chen. Born in Taiwan and raised in New Zealand, she has given a gorgeous performance of Debussy’s L’isle Joyeuse and La fille aux cheveux de lin alongside extraordinary works by fellow Kiwis Ross Harris (The Swans) and Jenny McLeod (Meditation on Psalm 134) and we’ve reached the crowning moment of the recital and, if I’m entirely honest, the reason I am here; a performance of Poulenc’s Barbar the Elephant. Now, Harris’s piece is 2 minutes in duration, McLeod’s 4 minutes and Debussy’s no more than 10 minutes combined and yet at least four people have managed to develop acute tuberculosis in that short time. It started with a gentle clearing of the throat over to the right, followed after a few peaceful seconds by a Jeeves-esque cough to the left. Suddenly, near the front, a man hurumphs loudly and another back in row P says, “Garrghhmmmph” and before you know it, an epidemic has snowballed its way around the church in a Mexican wave of disturbance which flows effortlessly into the applause. Barbar is here however, and how could a room full of adult concert-goers possibly be restless when presented with beautiful music, a dryly humorous story and the rather attractive and un-elephant like narrator Paloma Bruce? I was secure in my knowledge that as the piece was written at the behest of the composer’s three-year-old cousin, it could not possibly be too challenging for this audience.

You would be surprised!  

By the end of the introduction (when Barbar is comfortably settled into the city with the kind old lady who knew very well that every little elephant just wants a fine suit and a fast car) I had lost the plot. A gentleman had got up to light some candles and knocked over the metal stand. Another had wandered down the aisle to look at the South Africa Memorial just as Barbar’s Mother expired dramatically. The performance itself was wonderful, animated and engaging but people just don’t sit still and listen! Later, I looked back over my notes where I had thought to record the story of Barbar – they read something like this:

“ – Barbar in Forest, mother killed by hunters and he runs off. (Late-comers to concert are so NOISY), Rocked to sleep by mother, playing with a shell, Riding on Mother’s back, (why don’t people just LISTEN), ends up in town after death of mother, drives car, two years pass ... IF YOU WANT A PEACEFUL CONCERT EXPERIENCE – COME EARLY AND SIT IN THE FRONT!”

Evidently, I was having a bad day and having spoken to a number of other members of the audience, it became evident that I was being a little over-sensitive about the whole thing. It did get me thinking however, about listening and I realised that we are not very good at it, as we’re seldom called upon to practise it.

St Martin’s recently joined Twitter and (sensibly, I thought) before embarking upon the great social-networking adventure, I read up on Twitter’s advice for new users. Explaining the name, the founders said,

“We came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product was.”

Further down the page, I came upon the following ‘tip’.

“Tip: To listen in on the conversations happening right now, search Twitter for the name of your company, product or brand. If you have a Twitter account already, your home page has a handy search box on the right side. If you don’t yet have an account, try typing in the box below or go to search.twitter.com.”

I’m confused by the many references to the ‘sound’ made by birds and to ‘listening’ in on the conversations. So far as I have been able to make out, like email, text, facebook and most modern means of communication, Twitter is a visually driven method of communication. But what isn’t any more? How about the telephone, the quintessential instrument of speaking and listening? Well, the telephone has rapidly been taken over by the mobile phone and if you want to sign up to a new plan, the options for 3G web browsing time and text messages far outweigh the relative insignificance of ‘minutes’ with which to actually talk which might require a person on the other end to actually listen. We live in a visually driven society. What does this mean for our concerts?