What do ‘schizophonia,’ Neil Young, Robert Schumann and the Scottish percussionist and composer Evelyn Glennie, who is nearly deaf, have in common? Are you intrigued or scratching your head, perhaps? I promise all four relate in a curious way! Just read on and you will find out. I even include links to video interviews and talks for your listening enjoyment!

Let me start with ‘schizophonia.’ And no, it’s not a new disorder, at least as far as I know. However, have you ever felt out of sync or disoriented while listening to something on your i-pod (or in the old days on your walkman) while doing other activities? Well, you may have experienced what ‘schizophonia’ tries to describe.

Yes, listen up, particularly all of you music lovers, i-pod users and otherwise plugged in or wired up people, and, for that matter, all of you.

What is schizophonia? It’s derived from the Greek, with ‘schizo’ meaning ‘split’ and ‘phone’ meaning ‘voice, sound.' The term, it turns out, was first employed by the Canadian composer and environmentalist R.M. Schafer in 'The New Soundscape' in Toronto in 1969. It refers to the split between an original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction in a soundscape, a 20th century phenomenon.

The term and phenomenon, described in R.M. Schafer’s book Soundscape: The Tuning of the World, caught my attention recently (the book was originally published in 1977, though) and I’ve been reflecting on it since then. Schafer suggests that due to the overabundance of acoustic information around us, we need to reduce the noise on this planet so we can relearn to hear the nuances of sounds around us.

With the plethora of devices available to us to reproduce and play sound any time and place, we have moved into a world where we experience a dislocation between what we hear and what we see. For instance, as my i-pod is pumping Ella Fitzgerald’s voice in my ears, I’m riding my bicycle down the street, where I’m surrounded with original sounds that partially enter into my awareness. But which one of the activities am I really present to in my listening? Which noise is drowning out which other one? And what does it do to me in the process?

I would suggest that the most common form of listening practised by us today is ‘passive’ listening. As I share in my article on Deep Listening, we spend between 40-50% of our time listening, yet what training or education do we receive to learn to listen deeply, to really listen?

“Listening looks easy, but it’s not simple. Every head is a world,” a Cuban proverb suggests. How true, in my opinion. Listening is complex. For instance, you probably know that the speed of our hearing ability exceeds that of our capacity to speak. No wonder the mind starts to wander, when I can listen at 400-500 words per minute, but my partner can only speak between 150-250 words per minute.

We can think at 1,000-3,000 words per minute. Brain scans show about 40 thoughts per minute making their impressions in our neural networks. That’s not all, though. We hear less than 25% of what was said–probably in part because only our body is present but the mind is elsewhere, I would dare to speculate. After one week, we may recall up to 5% only. And another complicating factor, the average attention span for adults is currently estimated at only 22 seconds!

Are you up for an experiment? Take note of your own behaviour just for one day. How much noise is going on? Do you have the TV running even when you are not in the room? Where are the time when you can opt to shut down white noise? How much voluntary multi-tasking is going on in your life? Where could you sequence your actions instead of trying to accomplish them simultaneously? See if you can notice a difference in how you feel and perhaps in the quality of the results.

I remember the stories told by my grandfather of gathering around the radio to listen to the news, to speeches and other broadcasts. Now let’s compare that to the pride we take in our ability to multi-task. Granted, some of it is necessary, some of it may work nicely, but how much do we compromise in the process?

Singer and songwriter Neil Young provides us with another angle on listening with his reference to the composer Franz Schubert. In a video interview with CBC Q’s Jian Gomeshi, Neil Young was questioned about his songwriting. He responded that he did not ‘come up’ with an idea or lyrics and compared his process to that of Schubert’s, whom he quotes to say, ‘I don’t make up my music. I remember it. I remember what I’m doing.’ Neil Young elaborates that it doesn’t matter where it (ideas, lyrics, music) comes from, but that you have to take care of it and care about the moment of expression.

Well, to me this suggests Neil Young describes in his own way an active and reflective form of listening. It involves being present to what is going on, taking responsibility for it and committing to it. I have to admit I was really struck by his explanation and reference to Schubert. (And thank you for alerting me to the interview, David.)

Listening is a fully embodied experiences. What do I mean by that? It means we listen with every aspect of our being. Have you heard of the Scottish percussionist and composer Evelyn Glennie, who last almost all of her hearing by age 12? In this TED talk video , she gives a brilliant demonstration of how we might “feel” listening and experience sound more deeply and broadly.

Just as the notes only make up a small percentage of what music is about, it appears that less than 10% of what we hear is based on language. Most of the information we assume we hear, actually comes to us through visual cues, including body language (50%) and mostly unconscious aspects of speech that impacts us through pitch, pace, volume, enunciation, emphasis and tone (40%).

Think about your favourite performers, particularly actors. Who engages you the most? Probably those actors whose responses to what’s happening appear genuine. How does it happen? It happens when actors treat listening as one of the foundational skills of their craft. It means, listening becomes an active process where actors put their attention outside of themselves on the person with whom they are interacting. That’s when they begin to establish a real connection, where they bridge the head and the heart.

If communication depends so much on non-verbal information, then perhaps we need to explore and those aspects of the listening process as well, both internally by tuning in (see the Neil Young example) and externally, by listening to others in a way that goes beyond the words and the thinking power of our brains. Yes, we can teach about body language, eye contact and other external factors, but to me nothing will come close to the power of a balanced head-heart connections.

As you may know, the heart is the most powerful generator of electromagnetic energy in the human body. The heart’s electrical field is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity generated by the brain (measure by ECG). The magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 5,000 times greater than the field generated by the brain and can be detected a number of feet away from the body, as demonstrated through the research by the HeartMath Institute in Boulder, CO. These electromagnetic signals have the capacity to affect others around us.

Therefore, let’s approach listening as a deeply active process that engages the heart. We might do well to remember that words in themselves have no meaning. It’s us as interpreters who attach meaning that arises from the accumulation of experiences, feelings, thoughts within the listener. As M. Scott Peck aptly states, “You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”
So, here is my challenge to you. ‘Are you listening? Really listening?’ Would you be willing to increasing your level of listening engagement–both with yourself and others? You see, it won’t take extra time. What it will take, though, is extra commitment. How about it?

If you need further inspiration and explanations, just go to my website, where you will find two further articles on listening, "From Me to We: Practical Guidelines to Deep Listening" and an essay on "Deep Listening" with more background information. I also offer a seminar on the topic of listening that might interest you.

And please share your insights and experiences with me. I’d love to hear from you.