Half Letter Press, ISBN-13: 978-0981802374, English, 32 pages, 2017, USA

Pauline Oliveros’ passing at the end of 2016 has triggered a vast response from all the people inspired and influenced by this unique pioneer musician. Among them, publishing house Half Letter Press has produced (in Risograph printing) the work of eleven students, who, a few months before she died, attended Deep Listening Certification class, led by her and a few other people. There they experienced the three fundamental principles of Deep Listening: “Listening/Sounding, Dreaming and Moving”, and developed personal projects based on the same principles, as a kind of script for anybody to practice and test. All these projects have been included in this booklet, and they can be read as exercises, as a tribute, or as a small anthology of opportunities to challenge yourself and your acoustic perception of the world. It’s a small booklet, but genuinely reproduces Pauline Oliveros’ spirit and principles, still so powerfully present. This listening practice was meant to be learned and ‘cultivated’ in order to reach a point where one would even have been able to ‘guide’ others through the listening. Reading the texts, and understanding their shared structure, we can isolate parts, pushing the imagination to cope with what is written, projecting actions and their possible outcome in our mind. It has been appropriate to dedicate the centrefold to one of Oliveros’ most fascinating suggestions: “walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”

 

Pauline Oliveros Sonic Meditation I: “Teach Yourself to Fly”