LIFTOFF: The Art & Science of Conversation

7. HOW Part II: How to Listen

• Ilana Gilovich • Season 1 • Episode 7

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LIFTOFF: The Art & Science of Conversation
Episode 7

In Episode 7, host Ilana Gilovich learns how to listen deeply to the human and non-human worlds.

Featured Guests:

Mentioned Morsels:

Transcripts for all LIFTOFF episodes are available on Buzzsprout.

ILANA GILOVICH: [00:00:00] On this episode of Liftoff, we continue our two episode arc of the conversational how this time focusing on how to listen. In this episode, we'll learn how to listen with our bodies and our words, how to listen more deeply to ourselves and our surroundings, and how listening to the non-human world can sharpen our listening skills and human interaction.

I discussed the Art of listening with Mallory Gracenin, a superbly talented actor, writer, and producer. We met performing together in Punchdrunk's off Broadway, immersive production, sleep No More, in which we were often tasked with striking up conversation with hundreds of strangers each night in a cocktail bar.

Mallory is an adept conversationalist, and their insights about listening apply to both performance and life. 

MALLORY GRACENIN: A conversation is something that you both have yet to discover, and so what's happening in the moment, and if you are not in the moment, you're not listening. There's so much more to a conversation when you really are [00:01:00] actively listening.

ILANA GILOVICH: Yeah. 

MALLORY GRACENIN: And most of the performances that we love to, to watch, I love to watch. I know other people maybe realize it, maybe they don't, is how somebody's actively listening in a scene. Yes. How it's, how it's landing on them. It's not the words that they're saying, it's how they're receiving their scene partners.

Action, how they're receiving their words. And so for me, I'm realizing that it's very important to be ever present in a conversation to the best of your abilities. We're continually distracted, um, as humans, and that's okay. We're, we're up against some titans, uh, as far as things that like to take our attention.

But if you're really gonna have a good conversation, be present, keep your phone on your bag if you're able to. Mm-hmm. You know, keep the music low. Mm-Hmm. If you're having a, like a nice dinner at home with somebody you really wanna talk with and really hear about their day, and just be present and receive them.

[00:02:00] Mm and don't be planning your answers ahead of time. 

ILANA GILOVICH: In his book, A Swim in the Pond, in the Rain, the brilliant author George Saunders writes some conversations feel evasive, ill considered agenda laced, selfish. Others feel intense, urgent, generous, truthful. What's the difference? Well, I'd say it's presence.

Are we there or not? Is the person across the table there to us or not? As conversational artists, we strive to be there with our presence. Sign language artists, Brandon Kazen Maddox, proposed a powerful technique to encourage this kind of deep listening. I. 

BRANDON KAZEN-MADDOX: One thing I really love to do is, um, if I go to a bar with hearing people, it's like a fun kind of magic trick.

Mm-Hmm. Um, if the bar is, gets really loud and there's like huge music and. You know, [00:03:00] you have to scream or like lean into someone's ear. I'm like, I'm not doing that. I'm like, actually what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna turn down the volume of my voice. I'm gonna sign to you, look me straight in the eye, and I will talk and sign.

And even though you don't know sign language, you understand me. And every, every time hearing people are like, oh my God, I. And I'm like, right. Pretty amazing because like your body's already keyed in to trying to understand someone. So if you actually just try to understand someone, you'll probably understand them 

yeah, it is and it's, and so much, I think this is the other thing, so much of communication is in the spirits, in our eyes. 

Like, 

if you look at someone in the eyes, I, I learned this a long time ago too with, with interpretation and actually watching [00:04:00] sign language. You don't really watch someone's hands while they're signing, right.

You look them in the eye because that's where the message is. That's where the nuance is. Um, any flicks away or looks up and down, or looks into your eyes or looks down, you're like. You understand so much about what someone is saying if you just look 'em straight in the eye and it's, it's a little different now because of Zoom.

Right? Um, you know, our interpersonal relationships are a little different, but the key is in the eyes. 

ILANA GILOVICH: Conversational expert, Alison Wood Brooks offered verbal listening strategies to accompany these visual listening strategies. 

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: So follow up questions are part of a suite of strategies that use your words to express that you've heard someone.

And so what we [00:05:00] find is that people who use more verbal strategies, they use their words to express their listening. Um, they tend to make their partners feel better. And they actually, you actually can't use your words to express your listening unless you are actually listening. 

ILANA GILOVICH: Wow. So 

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: in order to ask follow up questions, or in order to call back to topics that someone, or any sort of details that someone said earlier in the conversation or earlier in your relationship, you actually needed to like, hear those things and process them earlier on.

Uh, paraphrasing is another one. If you can paraphrase what other people have said. It shows that you were listening to them and thinking about it. So these verbal strategies are incredibly powerful and, and I think people don't even really think about them as listening strategies. They think of them as like, what are, what do charismatic people do?

What do people 

that I like and wanna be around? What, how are they, what, how do they converse? These are the things they are, they are both [00:06:00] putting in the hard work to listen to the people they're with. And then they are good at expressing. What they've heard and how they've processed it, not only through their nonverbal cues, but also with their words.

ILANA GILOVICH: Fred Dust, the expert in conversational design that we met in episode three, has a personal connection to the art of listening based on the lessons he learned from his mother. 

FRED DUST: Most of the skills that come to bear in the work that I do, a lot of it were, was actually kind of like cast in by my parents, by my mother and my grandmother specifically.

Um mm-Hmm. But, um, you know, I think that what was interesting for me is that I knew when I was writing the book, and I knew as I was thinking about the book, that I wanted to write a chapter on listening in part because, um, we sort of, kind of hate it. Um, we sort of think it's work, um, and we, and we sort of treat it like, like work.

And even people who love and talk about listening still sometimes like. You of can tell that they don't. Right. So it's like, [00:07:00] and all of the language around listening suggests that, you know, it's like the way we talk about like. Um, they had no choice but to listen. You know, you hear that about politicians a lot or you know, it's a, um, I've, I've been around CEOs who are like, we're gonna do a listening tour.

I'm just gonna have to give everybody a good listening to. It's like the, the language feels punitive. And yeah, I knew I wanted to kind of unlock listening and I think Alana, you know, from the work I'm doing now, it's something that I'm even more interested in doing now. Like I'm looking to expand that work way further.

Yeah. Um, but I needed to have, I was like, who's inspiring to me in this space? Like, who's done that well? And, um, I realized that my mother was an incredible listener. And to your point, Alana, there was some context for my, the reason my mom was such a good and open listener, in part because she was raised in a household where her younger brother was deaf.

Um, which meant that, um, uh. Listening was a prized attitude. Like it's something that actually allowed you to engage [00:08:00] in a way and understand and navigate. And I myself remember going to birthday parties and Thanksgiving dinners and things like that, that were almost entirely silent because wow, it was sort of a respect to, um, to her deaf brother and what you had to pick up and how you had to engage.

So listening was not a, um. Passive thing that happened, it was a active, I don't, I don't mean active listening. It was like it was a fundamental component of the way a, a dinner happened or any kind of conversation happened in the house. Mm-Hmm. And I think what it did gave my mom a whole different lens.

And so I used to laugh that she. She had sort of a resting listening face. And so people would walk up to around the street and like tell her stuff and she loved it and she would, she was great at giving prompts and drawing it out. And then she would like revel in what she heard and she would repeat what she heard in other.

And so it was not like, oh, I'm listening. It was like, no, there's a real joy in in what it's, yeah. [00:09:00] And so in that way I feel like, um. I learned a lot from watching that. And I too feel like in my life I've been sort of like have the same kind of experience where people come up to me and they'll just tell me stuff.

When I would be a kid, we'd be walking in, like my friends would see like the weirdest person on the street and they'd be like, watch it. That person's gonna come up and talk. And you know, when you're a kid you sort of hate it and then at some point you have to make peace with it. And now I feel like if I don't listen, I.

It's just a huge waste. And so for me, like listening to taxi drivers and listening and engaging and having conversations with, you know, everyone from like your doctor to your, the person who's waiting your table, those all become really significant. Mm-Hmm. The last thing I would say about it is that, as you know, I now live in a really small town.

Um, very small. And one of the things that I've learned. Is that [00:10:00] you can't do anything but listen your way through a small town. Like there's a joke that we have, which is that you can't go to the grocery store and expect to just buy milk. You have to, or buy milk and have a 30 minute conversation. Totally.

And you know. Thank God that like, it's something that, that we learned over time because it's like, I'm like, that's just part of our life here is that you listen your way through this community. Um, 

that's perhaps a long ramble, but it's a, I I think in a way right now, the work that's most critical, I think for, for me and I, I believe for us generally as humans.

ILANA GILOVICH: Yeah. I love that. And I'm so excited to see where your next work takes you as you dive deeper into listening. And in particular, I remember there was a line in the book where you talked about we're now treating listening as a form of consuming, which doesn't seem quite right, and it's so, it, it makes so much sense that we would apply that lens to it.

But so much of what you write about is that it's an act of [00:11:00] creation. It's an act of doing. You're right. When I start to think of it as consumption, it feels so passive and then it feels like a chore. Totally. As opposed to something that's very mutually participatory. 

FRED DUST: That's right. Or, you know, there's a lot of skills, like, there's like active listening, there's a bunch of other kind of listening constructs that are often about like listening without judgment.

You know? I personally believe that it's like we're judgy. That's just like, that's, that's a part. Humanness. And so when you're like, oh, listen, but take out this fundamental piece of what listening is, which is like. Judging, then you actually aren't, you don't give somebody the joy of what it takes. And so a lot of the work that I try to do is like, no, embrace that.

Embrace the human emotions you feel when you're hearing stuff. That doesn't mean you have to hold onto them, doesn't mean you have to hold those judgments. But if it makes it more compelling for you to engage, then you should, um, be doing those things. Uh, judging, actively listening, laughing, asking questions.

That's all listening, right? It's not [00:12:00] just sitting there. Yeah. 

ILANA GILOVICH: Yeah. And in terms of you, you speak about this a little bit in the book, but then when your mom developed aphasia, 

there was another phase of your relating to her that meant mostly silent, but deeply visual listening. And also when I think about you as a visually oriented person, as as a designer, what has that experience been like for you and how did the two inform each other?

FRED DUST: I mean, I think that, um, the. One of the most profound. So if what I described with my mom was this idea that like there was a active and participatory way and stance of listening in, in her family, in her life that was there and, and, um, that, that was kind of key to her personalities. What's interesting when you go through something like in this case, she had a stroke and then became aphasic, um, uh, and aphasia, as you know, means that it's like your, your [00:13:00] mind.

The, the cognitive mapping of your mind and your speech may not be aligned, so what you might be thinking and what you're saying may be entirely different. Um, what, what you're hearing can be different. They're, they're really still exploring what, what aphasia does to the, to the mind. But what it took from my mother to listen process and then responds to in a conversation was, um, no longer just work or interaction.

It was labor. I mean, it was incredible labor, right? It's a, um, and I think I talk about this, but she, she would often quite literally hold the side of a person's face while they were talking, not because she was picking up any vibrations or anything like that, but it was because she was like, it was kind of maintaining her focus on what was being said and helping to transfer that.

And so she would treat it as a almost physical, um, manifestation. It's of course like heartbreaking. But at the same time, this tremendous [00:14:00] reminder of the fact that this is not a given state. We don't just get to wake up and listen. And some people, it's, it's tremendous privilege. And so, um, to watch her work and literally sometimes like it felt like she was pulling the words from somebody's brain into her own, um, was really, uh.

Remarkable to see. And she's, she, she actually has, she's died. She died during the pan, the early part of the pandemic. But, but it was a really interesting, um, experience to watch her for that 10 year period where, um, it was really, uh, uh, listening as the most profound labor. Um, and at the same time, the most kind of, um, honored labor that she gave, um, during, during that period of her life.

ILANA GILOVICH: That's such a beautiful way to put it, and that a testament to your, your listening to her and continuing your relationship with her through, through this research and this exploration. I think that's so beautiful. For this [00:15:00] episode on listening, I sought out the most textured, engaged, and sustained listener.

I know Natalie Marie Shapiro. Natalie is a facilitator, ritualist, and teacher. Her life is in the devotion to the art of becoming more human, a remembrance of deep communion with oneself and the vast fields of relations in which we exist. Thanks to the multimedia interdisciplinary forms of listening that Natalie practices, this episode of Liftoff broadens the scope of what we consider conversation by expanding to include a kind of metaphorical dialogue with the natural world.

For those listeners who might feel a bit skeptical at first, I charge you with a listening task to decenter the human experience in order to ponder the potential conversational offerings of the plant and animal kingdoms. Natalie invites listeners to access a more intuitive, embodied form of listening.

NATALIE MARIE SHAPIRO: It is through the cultivation and the willingness to remember really like this. This is a word that one of my dear friends and teachers used [00:16:00] as a lot is like the remembering, like not only the the recalling or the re recollecting, but reremembering ourselves as a part of, hmm. A much greater system of really conversation.

And so to tie this back into conversation, right, as I've found personally, the more that I'm able to attune to more of those. Capacities within me and cultivate them and strengthen them. And of course, it's not a linear journey. And there's times in my life when some get really quiet or go numb because of a hard moment in my life or whatever it might be.

But the more that I'm able to cultivate them, the more I find that I'm able to enter into much deeper conversations with not only the the wilds. Yes. Because the wilds are, they don't speak. The, the tongue we were, we grew up [00:17:00] speaking, they're, they're speaking, uh, in some ways a much stronger and in some ways, a much more subtle and nuanced language.

Hmm. And so to actually enter that communion, those capacities have been really essential to engage. And then also for the, the human to human right, like especially in vulnerable conversations, especially when we're really being asked to. Go into some depths, right? If we can be, and this isn't, I say this not from a pedestal because I am very much in the soil of trying to figure out how to do this in the most vulnerable of conversations or the most challenging or the most conflictual of conversations.

But can we get slow enough? To actually allow for all of those parts to be participating and, and, and in that way be able to engage a much more full conversation and really [00:18:00] communication and even communion with, with each other. 

ILANA GILOVICH: Oh my gosh, Natalie, there's so, there's so much in what you've said and so many ripe possibilities.

Like you were saying. We can go, we can go in so many directions with this, but one, I love the idea of remembering and really recentering the body as a focal point in dialogue and communion. One, because I think just from a very practical perspective, and something that I'm, I'm cognizant of as I make this, this podcast is like.

It could have a tendency to swing ableist if we're thinking purely verbal conversations generally, because if you are signing, if you're reading braille, if you're engaged in different kinds of conversations that are more embodied than simply moving your lips, and so the idea of thinking about the body as more central to conversation feels like a cultural imperative as well as a spiritual one.

And one of my favorite phrases that you coined was being devoted to the art of becoming more human. [00:19:00] And I think about that in relationship to conversation because. Conversation seems to me, and I'm excited for you to challenge me on this, but seems in at least the way I'm imagining it, a distinctly human art.

And I think part of the way you're gonna help me is like thinking of it as a non-human art as well. But one of the things that I love in what you're talking about, the paradox contained in what you're talking about is in order to become more human, we have to listen to the subhuman or superhuman. We have to expand in order to situate ourselves.

In a context. And so to be able to sit with ourselves, we're meaning making machines. That's our gift and that's our curse. And so the idea of being able to resist that and dance with it and suspend find these moments of widening the gap between, uh, sensation and narrative feels like resisting. A [00:20:00] uniquely human impulse for the purpose of finding more humaneness and more humanity.

And I really, really like the idea that in order to find what's inherently ours, we have to see ourselves as part of a bigger picture. 

NATALIE MARIE SHAPIRO: Yeah, we have, this is something you spoke to, like the sense that conversation is specifically human. Right. And then that kind of for me, opens up the question of. Is is intellect or not even intellect is intelligence innately human right?

Because a sign of like deep intelligence is the ability, at least from my understanding, to be in relationship, to be in in a conversation, right? It doesn't have to be a word centered conversation, but to be in conversation. And as far as we can tell. At this [00:21:00] point, both from just both ancient wisdom and science that's proving it to be true, is that there's incredible amount of intelligence in the more than human world, like incredible conversations happening.

Between the trees in a forest, between the trees and other species in the forest, from the animals to the fungi, you know, from the beetle to the leaf, to the intelligence of the tree, to let out a certain center perfume to negate the beetle from eating its leaves. I mean, there's so many. Processes of conversation that are happening over and over again, and that are just moving also in a different quality of time than we move as humans.

All of those different categories require such unique qualities of practice and exploration. And, and, but we have it like it's, it's available. [00:22:00] It's available. Mm-Hmm. 

ILANA GILOVICH: I asked Natalie for advice on how to practice becoming a more embodied, attentive listener. 

NATALIE MARIE SHAPIRO: You know, I really just invite you to find a spot to go sit.

You know, I the power of revisiting a place over and over again. I. Just sitting there, if you are feeling super clear that day and enthusiastic, or you're feeling lost or confused, like just having a spot that you go back to again, whether it's a window that looks out at a tree outside your house or a city park or a suburban park or a wild place.

Just like to go sit and, you know, trees are, I've, I've personally found particularly supportive in. That conversation. There's something that's really strong, but it can also be, you know, you can play with a houseplant, you know, you can play with flowers. Um, if you have pets you can play with what is it like to communicate with my pet without, like over projecting [00:23:00] myself onto them, which they're so easy to be the, you know, those funny projection portals for us.

Um, but yeah, just the willingness to go sit and again, really calling in the faculties of the body, of the imagination. Of the emotions. And again, that practice that we're doing with ourselves without making meaning too quickly is really supportive to that as well. 

ILANA GILOVICH: I asked Natalie to share what she has learned from conversing with nature.

NATALIE MARIE SHAPIRO: Ah, well, yeah. For the last year I was living in a redwood forest and I have since moved, and the move is because of a pretty big. For lack of a better word, or maybe the most precise word, is like upheaval in my life. 

And I spent hours in these last months just sitting outside with the trees. But what I've received in that conversation with [00:24:00] just sitting for hours and hours over many, many weeks and months with these trees is, and really just this forest.

Is just so much care. Like so much care. You know, this Redwood forest was not gonna rescue me. It was not gonna save me from having to move through and process what I needed to process, but it was just there. This forest was just there with such strength, like such compassion, such, um, you know, even just like the essence of the redwood is this incredible, potent.

Huge being that is also, you know, for those that aren't aware, redwoods don't have their own, um, unique root system. Each individual tree doesn't. It's the redwood forest is all tied to one root system, so the redwood trees aren't growing from like a seed that gets [00:25:00] propagated and you know, grows from the soil.

Each redwood tree in a forest is growing out of the root system that already exists. So that's, for example, like why you very rarely see Redwoods fall is because they're just, they're all tied to this massive root system. So it's like if you're walking through a redwood force and you see a root popping up of under the, um, above the soil, that root system is connected to all of the trees that you can see.

All of the trees even be on that tree line perhaps. And so, you know, I even sent moments with like the sweetest fingers of the redwood tree in the spring or the early summer when they were like a lime green and they would like, there's one tree right in front of my home where the roots were coming up, and then the fingers of the smaller baby trees were like touching the root.

And it was just like this, it was so informative. Just again, I, I can't even make too much meaning of it, but just the. The, this whole cycle of life, right, that I'm [00:26:00] witnessing and all of the beings that belong to that forest from, you know, the, the butterflies to the scorpions, to the tree beings, to the soils, you know, to the birds, and, you know, being in a system like that, that's, you know, so wild and so quiet.

So. Powerful. And so still at the same time, it, it is just how could I not be guided to be more patient with my process? How could I not be guided to let whatever needs to move, move, feeling so held by that container of that forest while at the same time like feeling the, the depth of emotion and pain while also.

The strength that's inherent in my being, you know, this like extreme vulnerability and also this [00:27:00] like inevitable power that's like here, you know? And so again, this, I wasn't getting like, uh, a, I wasn't closing my eyes and receiving words in the English language from this forest, but such deep support.

Such deep support and you know, all I can do is describe what I received through my experience. Mm-Hmm. And so I can't say exactly what the trees were telling me, at least from my case of how I listen, but I can understand that I was touched and I was moved and I was supported. 

ILANA GILOVICH: I actually think that's a perfect way to end.

'cause so much of what you've said is just widening the aperture of how much life we can take in through our senses, how much we can be listening for. And part of that is, um, removing part of that is like the act of, of hollowing out to become the empty [00:28:00] vessel. And then how much more information can we let in, how much more aliveness can we let in?

Which I agree with you is, is deeply erotic and life affirming. And so I think that's sort of what I initially had in mind when I thought about liftoff, which is what does it mean to come away from a conversation feeling so full of aliveness? And there are many, many methods and paths to do that, and I think this is a really significant one.

Reality holds more information than we will ever process in a lifetime. The only way to learn, the only way the found from which all initial knowledge acquisition springs is by listening. When we listen, we become wider, pure apertures for receiving the glory of existence. Before your next conversation, carve out some time to sit quietly in your own space to discover how deeply you can [00:29:00] listen.

Then recreate that depth and attentiveness in your interactions with others. On the next episode of Liftoff, we finally unpack the why of conversation mattering.

Liftoff was created and directed by Ilana Gilovich and produced by Greg Hanson. The featured guests on this episode were Mallory Gracenin, Brandon Kazen- Maddox, Alison Wood Brooks, Fred Dust, and Natalie Marie Shapiro. If you like liftoff, please share it with your friends and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, so the power of potent and playful conversation can continue.