WHAT'S SAID IS DEAD! THE LISTENER LIVES!

the listen lab will be up and running some time this summer, the whens and whats spelled out like a treasure-y map. in the meantime, feel invited to make this experiment happen come birdchirp o'clock and send questions & thoughts to stirruppantschapbooks@gmail.com.

the idea is that maybe it's hard to listen while you're hearing, so let's create a way to listen after we hear.

and the plan:

after hearing a scrap of sound shared by a community member, we'll "listen" for an hour or so — using some really awesome not cheesy super engaging movement and play techniques (check out Augusto Boal!) to keep us sifting through all the ways we might challenge, embrace, parrot, chrystallize, rearrange, and wring dry to the bone what we just heard.

then we'll talk about how the listening went, and write about it too:

the final result, after 6 experiments through the spring and summer, will be an anonymously co-written essay about what listening could be and how we could do it better - as artists, as activists, as folks. and maybe we could make it into one of those beautiful little handmade books everyone's always talking about...

THANK YOU, FANNY HOWE.

to describe the ideas of Bhartrari, an Indian grammarian who wrote in the fifth century, Fanny Howe writes (in her new book, The Winter Sun):

"The listener hears the words coming in the opposite direction from the speaker: the first becomes last."

and

"The future is like a listener who can put the sounds together and respond."

YES. let's do it.

PROVISIONAL INVITATION

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