‘Hearing’: Song #10 from the Boundless soundtrack
To chart the next chapter of your life, listen. In BOUNDLESS, my newly published memoir, I learn that the path to rejuvenation is that simple: Listen, listen now again and live boundlessly.
In this post, wisdom from Sleeping At Last and Irish poet Seamus Heaney, plus some super-inspiring writing prompts from Tuscany, Italy, from the Stories + Songs series.
To come alive again, listen.
It is said that the last sense to leave us is hearing. It’s also true that it’s the first sense we gain. From our mother’s womb, we can listen to her heartbeat, her voice, her talking to our father. That voice is our first music, our lifeline.
To live into the next chapter of your life, listen. Listen closer.
In BOUNDLESS, a memoir about emptying my nest and discovering a new, unbounded chapter in my life, I must learn to start training my attention to the sounds and sensations around me with fresh ears.
This track by Sleeping At Last immerses you in perfect stillness. It has no words. Instead it offers a language we knew from before we were born. From that place, we can be born again.
[Actually, it does have words, neatly tucked beneath the layers of violins. The words are, “Love is an echo.” Listen closely to capture that strata of sound.]
Composer Ryan O’Neal, who records as Sleeping At Last, has this to say about the song, which is part of his five senses collection from Atlas I: “When I began thinking through each of the five senses, I felt that "Hearing" (Spotify) should be an instrumental song. That was my starting point. Though our voices are a vital part of our experience of sound, typically when we think of our sense of hearing, we aren’t thinking inwardly of hearing ourselves. We are more often thinking outwardly, of the sounds we experience.” (For more about how the song was made: https://www.sleepingatlast.com/blog/hearing-how-it-was-made)
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney writes about listening and listening closer in “The Rain Stick,” about tuning into the cascading sound of water within a rain stick. He upends it again, again, again.
The sound is a shimmering invitation to simply listen. Listen now. Listen again. Listen with fresh ears.
This is how we rejuvenate our lives and enter the next stage. This is how we learn to live boundlessly.
“What happens next is undiminished for having happened once . . .” goes the line as the rain stick is upended. “You are like a rich man entering heaven through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.”
~ SEAMUS HEANEY
FROM STORIES + SONGS: A SERIES OF WRITING PROMPTS TO AWAKEN YOUR SENSES
In September 2024, I co-led a Stories + Songs writing retreat near Sienna, Italy, with novelist/lyricist Karen Leslie and songwriter extraordinaire Clay Mills.
The Tuscan landscape at this 13th century villa and working agritourism farm awakened our senses. We were surrounded by olive groves and vineyards brimming with Sangiovese grapes.
Part of entering a writing retreat is training yourself in the discipline of leaving the noisy distractions behind and awakening the truth that’s always with you, waiting to be summoned in a pure, unfiltered way through your senses.
If that sounds inspiring, it is. That right there is the definition of inspiration: The discipline of simply not taking the ride with your noisy thoughts plus noticing. Instead, let those distractions walk on out ahead of you and let yourself sit back behind them. Start taking in the place you are in right now through your five senses. Notice what no one else notices. You’ll find there is an abiding truth there that waits with you. It wants you to notice what’s true. So that it can become insight. So that it can be birthed.
Inspiration = Don’t take the ride + Notice with all five senses
That’s the inspiration process, and you can do it anywhere, anytime. Certainly, it helps if you are watching a Tuscan sun dawn through the fog and cypress trees. But really, you can do this anywhere.
For a taste of Italy, and the Stories + Songs experience, consider becoming a paid subscriber and getting all of my Awakening the Senses prompts.
Awakening the Senses: ‘I Hear’
Here’s a preview, from “Hearing.” Tell me in the comments what you wrote.
For today’s writing prompt, the theme is “I hear.”
If you like, warm up by listening to this track, “Hearing,” by Sleeping at Last, in which composer Ryan O’Neal explores this sensory awareness.
The composer said this about how the song was made:
“When I began thinking through each of the five senses, I felt that "Hearing" (Spotify) should be an instrumental song. That was my starting point. Though our voices are a vital part of our experience of sound, typically when we think of our sense of hearing, we aren’t thinking inwardly of hearing ourselves. We are more often thinking outwardly, of the sounds we experience.”
{For the rest of the blog post, go here.}
PROMPTS {Choose one or all}
What sounds are you noticing right now? (Three-minute warm-up)
Think of the voice of someone you know (or a character you’re working with). Put that character in a scene in which the listener (the narrator) is only hearing the voice of that character, perhaps from the other room, perhaps from the other side of the trees. The only thing we know about what is happening to the character—what the character cares about, what the character wants, how the character feels—is through voice and sound.
Take three minutes to do a silent meditation. Tune in to your inner landscape. Is it serene or turbulent? Chatty or blissed out? What words come? (Notice if you hear them, see them or just feel them.) What is the aural tone?
Though “Hearing” is an instrumental, the composer has tucked one repeating lyric in the soundscape. It is: “Love is an echo.”
Use this as a prompt: Love is an echo, and… Take it from there.
Even if you only write for 10 minutes today, commit to tuning up your sense of hearing as you go through the rests of the day.
PRACTICE: LITERARY FORENSICS
If you have attended one of my writing retreats or worked with me as your book coach, you know that I am a big believer in reading like a writer. I call it doing your due diligence — your literary forensics.
Or sometimes I call it the “word cleanse.” I do a bit of literature therapy (reading another author’s completed, published work) to switch up my wordstreams — to get a better channel open. It always boosts my vocabulary and emboldens me to reach a little higher, write a little better.
You can do that with mere words? I often respond with astonishment when I read.
Can I do that with my words? I ask next.
What if I did? And then I’m writing.
TODAY’S FORENSICS: Start noticing the ways that storytellers and lyricists use sound to bring their work alive.
Try it in your own writing today.
Boundless is available!
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