28 Jul Uneasy Listening
Notes on Hearing and Being Heard
What makes a good listener? Is it a skill that can be easily learned, or rather a personality trait or talent? And why do some people seem to be so much better at it than others?
Uneasy Listening, written by a psychoanalyst and a violin maker, is a dialogue between two very different kinds of professional listeners: one works with speech, the other with musical instruments. Anouchka Grose and Robert Brewer Young, complete strangers at first, embark on an engaging, entertaining and intricate meditation on communication that makes wide-ranging references to psychoanalytic theory, philosophy, contemporary politics and culture. As they discuss the differences, similarities and resonances between their practices, they encounter some of the illuminating difficulties of dialogue itself.