Endophasy is the act of inner speech or talking to one's self— “the silent process of thought and production of unuttered words”. (Medical Dictionary, 2009)

I decide to listen.
Or I realise I am listening.
Or I realise I need to decide that I am listening.

At first I get a feeling for the sounds.
Or I feel the sounds.
A kind of audible tactility.
As I roll the sounds around,
attempting to absorb, separate and collate,
I start to think about what the sound is doing.
What the sound is saying to me.
And what I am saying to myself.

The listening really begins when I hear myself thinking.
Hear my thoughts take the form of words.
Words attaching themselves and generating themselves
in response to the sounds.

There are no rules about how that language manifests,
what grammatical form it takes.
It can be visual images, narrative, textural sensations,
neologisms, associations, cross-modal metaphors.

I listen…
    I think…
       I talk to myself.

Or my thoughts talk to me.
Or I listen to my talking thoughts.
Or maybe my listening talks directly to me.

It’s no problem for me to listen to the two things at once
— the sounds, my thoughts.
To acknowledge my thoughts as words
allows me to hold the sound long enough,
as it flows always forward,
to make connections between things,
to sit in the relation of things.
To be in the sound.

Listening is not a receiving but a searching.

Search through the sound.
Run several parses.

Listen for:
   sounds I recognise,
   sounds that intrigue,
   sounds I know how to make,
   sounds I am confused by,
   sounds that work well with other sounds,
   sounds that don’t,
   sounds that do something
   utterly surprising
   to other sounds.

 

Wonder:
    why this is happening?
    how this is happening?
    what will happen next?

Compile:
    hold what is happening now,
    what has just been
    in relation to now.
    how did we get here?
    where did this come from?
    where is it going?

Feel:
    where am I in this?
    what is it doing to me?
    how has it changed my listening?

What am I listening to?

 

I’m listening to
the sound of the sound,
the source of the sound,
the material of the source,
the intention of the material,
the intuition of the maker.

 

I’m listening to those around me listen.
To their shuffles and their stillness.
I’m listening to myself in the act of listening,
my own shuffles and stillness.
I’m listening to my restless mind listening,
my mind coming to rest on the sound,
my mind minding this sound,
processing this sound.
What is the sound of a mind processing?
Is it a hum, a whirr, a clink, a kerchunk?

 

Tonight the sound of listening is
a hushed room,
a craned head,
a tilted ear,
the creak of bones,
and the rustle of an eyelash.

— What am I hearing now? —
My stomach — tiny squeal — small animal sound.
Keyboard — nervous skitter.
Distant dog — yelp yap — testing the air.
Low song of the wind — gentle crooning — bursts of intense enthusiasm — an undulating drone.
Distant voice — choppy peaks — lost low murmurs.
Cars — overlapping shwoooooms.
Neighbour's door — kerlunk clank clunk.

A layered sound world radiating out from me,
categorisable in distances,
left-right movements,
envelopes moulding sounds from silences…

But it’s no longer enough for me to describe sound
with a solipsistic pleasure of noting that I have noticed.
I too easily slip into a flabby subjectivity.

I seek a taut self-awareness,
toned by a reflexive intelligence
and a rigorous sensitivity.

A writing that integrates, braids,
weaves webs of connections,
and complex relations.