Christian McEwen
In Praise of Listening, Slowing Down, and Creativity
Traversing through time and space, through the ephemeral and the eternal, and through humanness to the beyond, listening connects us to a world that's slowly dwindling far beyond our reach. So says author, educator, and cultural activist Christian McEwen. She prefers to use the word "listening" not simply to the work of our ears, but as an extended metaphor for openness and receptivity - less actual than symbolic, less physical than metaphysical - rippling out from the self-centered human to the farthest reaches of the non-human world.
Christian's latest work might be considered a sister or first cousin of her earlier, very popular book, World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down (2011), now in its sixth printing. "From the beginning, I was concerned with how slowness might intersect with happiness, and then again with creativity," Christian writes in World Enough. "Like the English composer Brian Eno, I wanted to find a way of living in 'a Big Here and a Long Now.' It was obvious from the start that this would not be easy."
In all her work, she continues to prod the reader or viewer to preserve the art of pausing and listening as a pathway to new informed learnings. "In a world of racket and distraction, generous, expansive listening is increasingly under siege. But it remains a skill worth honoring, worth passing on...Many an old story begins with the words, 'Long ago, when animals could speak....' Perhaps the corollary would be just as good an opening.... 'Long ago, when people could listen.'"
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