Internal and External Connections through Listening: Finding Comfort in Pauline Oliveros's "The Earth Worm Also Sings"
In the final days of 2020 I, like many others, was feeling disconnected. Disconnected from my friends, my passions, and even myself. As a part of my research on sound, music, and environmentalism I came across a poem by composer, performer, and sound artist Pauline Oliveros. In her poem "The Earth Worm Also Sings" Oliveros lays out her understanding of the universe as made of and connected through sound: living, dying, and the afterlife are sonic. For Oliveros, all of existence is based in sound and vibration. “The Earth Worm Also Sings” is a 165-line stream of consciousness poem in three sections: First, Oliveros explores the sonic world of the mind, body, life, and death; Second, Oliveros describes a meditative journey in which she imagines an “alternative self, tiny enough to journey inside” the “acoustic universe” of her own ear; And finally the poem ends with a short coda which repeats material from the first section, bringing the reader full circle. Throughout the work Oliveros explores the sonic nature of the universe, a universe that is made of and connected through sound. In her holistic worldview, mind and body are connected to the cosmos through sound and vibration, and it is Deep Listening, a practice of listening to all things at all times, that allows us to access that connection. Through Deep Listening we can be returned to “the source of all beginning,” which is “abundance, fecund creativity, brilliant spark, sounding pulse, life unending.” “The Earth Worm Also Sings” encapsulates the potential depth of Deep Listening, a practice which goes beyond mere “listening” and ties one to the very essence of the universe.
In a time when I was feeling disconnected from the things that made me feel like myself, "The Earth Worm Also Sings" helped me to feel grounded while reminding me that I am a part of something larger than I could ever imagine. At the most fundamental level, Oliveros describes herself as a “community of musical cells” each of which “[sing] the song of its musical structure.” Oliveros’s sounding and listening selves function cyclically, regenerating through listening to their own sound. She writes, “I was born here to hear all my cells through my cells.” In "The Earth Worm Also Sings" Oliveros expresses a way for me to sonically connect to myself, both through listening to the sounds of my body and the sounds of my imagination. After I feel grounded in my own mind and body, remembering that my sonic self is a part of a larger sounding and listening cosmos has provided comfort in days of disconnection and isolation. Listening to the world around me, to the sounds of chirping birds, to the slam of car doors on the street, to laughter coming from my neighbors apartment, connects me to my place. Even the sounds I cannot hear—the sounds of Boethius's "musica mundana," the music of the spheres—connect me to a greater whole.
Pauline Oliveros
"The Earth Worm Also Sings"
2020
Taylor McClaskie, Musicologist
internal-external-connections-listening
Learning to Sing Stories
<p>Juan Felipe Herrera, a performance artist, activist, and U.S. poet laureate in 2015, recalls how his third-grade teacher’s compliment on his singing voice led to his lifelong belief in using his voice to encourage the beauty in the voices, stories, and, experiences of others. He goes on to speak about the power of the humanities to warm communities, create peace, and, move hearts.</p>
<p>To celebrate its 40th year anniversary of grant making, programming, and partnerships that connect Californians to each other, California Humanities invited a group of 40 prominent Californians to explore what the humanities mean to them. For more information visit <a href="http://calhum.org/about/we-are-the-humanities" title="California Humanities: We Are the Humanities" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">California Humanities: We Are the Humanities</a>.</p>
Juan Felipe Herrera, performance artist, activist, and U.S. Poet Laureate in 2015
juan-felipe-herrera
No Such Thing as Silence
I believe I was in the first year of my undergrad when I saw a video of John Cage’s 1952 composition <em>4’33”</em> for the very first time. It’s been give-or-take eight years since I sat in that lecture room, but I still keep coming to that day in my thoughts, to that moment when everything fell into place for me as a future humanities scholar. I remember leaning forward in my chair (I always used to sit in the back, feeling like I didn’t belong, like I wasn’t cut out for university, still finding my place) and squinting at the image projected on the wall, staring at the pianist as he stared into the audience and they stared at back at him. He never played a note, he never sang a word, he never even spoke. I didn’t at first realise the gravity of that composition. I knew Cage was an experimental, avant-garde artist and so I didn’t bat an eyelash at the weirdness of his “music”, but I couldn’t fathom the /why/, I couldn’t understand the purpose, until I realised that /why/ wasn’t the question I was supposed to be asking at all. I was supposed to listen. <em>4’33”</em> is an avant-garde composition whose score instructs the musicians not to play their instruments. It consists of three movements and takes exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds. While many people perceive the duration of the composition as four minutes and thirty-three seconds of awkward silence, Cage maintains that his composition is anything but silence. What we may perceive as nothing is actually EVERYTHING. While the musician doesn’t actually play, there are so many things going on, there are so many sounds that we might have not even heard under normal circumstances; the squeaking as the audience squirms in their seats, some opening packets of peanuts, some whispering to each other, perhaps sharing secrets or paying each other compliments, telling each other “I love you” or perhaps “I hate you”; the muffled traffic and ambulance siren noises coming in from outside the concert hall, people rushing from or off to somewhere, people meeting people, people being rushed off to hospitals, people living, people dying… this is what makes "the music". That's the actual composition. My mind was blown. I couldn’t help but imagine the story behind each of those sounds. I couldn't help but care. And I realised that that was it. That was what excited me about being in that lecture room, about being a humanities student. The thing is, if John Cage’s composition was never performed, we may have perhaps never heard those sounds. Or we may have heard them, but not /heard them/. And that’s why I feel humanities are important; why I feel like studying literature and culture is crucial, even. Humanities ARE <em>4’33”</em>––they provide a platform that lets us, the students and the scholars, the writers and the readers, stop and listen. They let us care. And that's important. There's no such thing as a silence, unless you live in a vacuum, and that is no place to live.
John Cage's 1952 composition <em>4'33"</em>
2010
Tereza Walsbergerová, 27, graduate student of English
no-such-thing-as-silence