On Listening & Not Listening

A reflection on how to listen and pay attention amid the constant noise that saturates our public and private lives.

From podcasts sounding through earbuds to talk shows blaring from televisions, from the continuous stream of social media on our phones to doctors’ waiting rooms with pumped-in music, we face different sounds, soothing and alarming. Some are welcome, some are not, but all demand our attention, often to distraction. Whether we’re at home or out and about, someone or something is broadcasting—hoping to be heard. How do we navigate a culture, a society, like this? Through musical, literary, and cinematic examples—Stevie Wonder and David Bryne, James Joyce’s “The Dead,” John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place films, Don DeLillo’s The Silence, measured against Trumpspeak and a raging nation of podcasters and posters—Thomas Larson traces the dwindling influence of the artist’s voice, and its chaotic replacement, everyone talking at once and very few listening.

This multipart critique of our current audiosphere, its public nuisance and its private rapture, further explores the control our favored platforms and the unshutupable media have instilled, forcing us to adapt and fight back. On Listening & Not Listening: Living in the Age of Noise asks how we can manage the sound overload and indulge its joyful strains wisely.