Pauline Oliveros – Deep listening

Before listening to Pauline Oliveros’ piece “Lear” again, I made some research on the artist, and the term that connects with her the most is deep listening. As far as I understand, deep listening means responding to environmental conditions, and connecting music and meditation. When I listened to the play again at home, I closed my eyes and tried to envision a situation that I link to the sounds I hear.

I am not too familiar with music instruments in general, but the start of the play immediately reminded me of the echoing of a didgeridoo. Hence, in my mind, I portrayed a picture of me looking at the Ayer’s Rock in Australia. The sounds are rather low, which is why I perceive them as majestic, but to some extent also intimidating. I thought that this music would fit perfectly into a movie, especially to put emphasis on a landscape or to announce something dangerous or mysterious. The buzzing of the didgeridoo maintains a certain tension that is supported by very melodic, and also fluent sounds. I could not precisely define what instruments were used here, because the sounds appeared to be somewhat changed by technical media. However, this does by no means deteriorate the sounds produced. In fact, I think the entirety of the sounds fit together and complement each other really well.

 I also enjoyed that there was no observable break, but instead the sounds kept flowing like a never-ending river. The small sound pieces overlap, and the transition appears very fluent and smooth, which reminds me of modern music features. The tones are very drawn-out, which kind of supports the fluency and the transition between different sounds. Due to the tension that I perceived in the beginning, I could also imagine the music to be used in a horror movie simply to increase the feelings of fear or to provoke a moment to frighten someone. However, the tension definitely loosened the longer I listened to the play. In fact, the music had a very calming effect on me. This would also support my assumption regarding deep listening and meditation, because, in my opinion, the play would be suitable for meditation purposes. At some point, the play even had religious or even divine features.

 As you can see, my overall experience with this play could be described as evolving, because the imaginary picture in my head changed frequently. I definitely liked that fact, because the play as a whole encouraged my imagination.