For our first Walking Writers Salon after the summer break, and to open Sound Walk September, we are delighted to welcome Canadian writers and researchers Kit Dobson and Ken Wilson in conversation discussing Kit’s Field Notes on Listening.
Many of us walk out with scant attention to what we hear, our brains filtering out much, and for an increasing number of people they have noise-cancelling headphones or ‘ear-buds’ that diminish the ambiences around us. Kit Dobson calls for us to stop and listen, become attentive to the ambiences but also the stories we share about the neighbourhoods and places we inhabit, not to be sucked into the crazy, business of life, where everything so quickly becomes a blur. Listening with attention and intention.
As Ken Wilson writes in a recent blog post: “I’m teaching Kit Dobson’s Field Notes on Listening this summer, and rereading it in preparation for last week’s classes was a revelation: I had forgotten it was so good. The book is structured like a musical composition, with three movements bracketed by a prelude and a coda . The prelude and coda present a sonic history, in 100 fragments, of the first months 2020, when Dobson was working on this book. Those sounds are arranged chronologically, so that the prelude ends with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the coda explores the sounds and, more importantly, the silences of that experience.”
Appreciative comments from attendees:
- Barbara Lounder: Thanks very much, and happy teaching, sabbatical hiking.
- Whitney (she/they): thanks for the interesting conversation!
- Ann de Forest: What a fascinating conversation.
- Sandra Cowan: Thanks all, this was so lovely and interesting.
- Erin Bondo: Very interesting, thank you!!
- Richard White: Excellent session, thank you both!
