The music industry depends upon people listening. It’s hardly news but it is noteworthy in the times we’re living through. Listening is the impenetrable bedrock of our music culture, the absolute baseline, the one thing that unites us unilaterally. Noise, notoriety, auditory agendas, impeccable Maschine manipulations, tormented peals of deep soul exegesis, endless underground seams of unmined streams, and the insatiable, irreplaceable dopamine drop. We’re listening. 

Sadly though, in a culture where “listening” and “hearing” are two sides of the same dubplate, we’ve begun to witness the impact of excessive noise drowning out the fundamentals of human connection. Last year, as the pandemic rumbled tragically around us, Spotify streams peaked at approximately 1 million songs per minute, every other person emerged from their Splice cocoon as a producer and the melee of audio material reached a triumphant zenith. Simultaneously, we were deafened by headlines of rising mental health concerns, crippling anxieties and tragic high profile suicides. Is it time to reconsider how we listen? Are we listening or just simply hearing? And is it now more important than ever that we know the difference? 

More than 73% of independent music makers have experienced stress, anxiety and/or depression according to a survey of 1500 artists by the The Record Union. The well publicised report from Help Musicians entitled “Can Music Make You Sick?” highlighted the worrying trends of poor mental health and stress in the music industry with 71% of their surveyed demographic returning reports of panic attacks and high levels of anxiety. Depression had been experienced by a staggering 68% of the artists approached. We’ve all seen the media headlines but we can assume that for every high profile case of poor mental health and suicide there will be countless desperate stories that never see the light from the unknown creatives and industry professionals who keep the whole stressful merry-go-round turning. If we add the isolation, the uncertainty, the disorientation, the sudden lack of purpose and the financial fallout resulting from the immeasurable impact of a pandemic upon the entertainment industry, we can only imagine the mental health ramifications lurking behind the sunny pictures of home baking on Instagram. 

It’s been encouraging to see so many responses to the plight of the industry and the genuine care and zeal of many initiatives targeted at promoting awareness and providing professional services of psychotherapy, counselling and holistic wellbeing. I would argue that listening is at the heart of every positive inclination towards improving the mental health of an individual and it’s something all of us can do. 

Listening to someone immediately ascribes value to that person. It simultaneously elevates them internally and roots them in a moment externally. It orientates chaotic thought patterns, makes headroom above the noise of society and generates rest and sobriety. It helps process complexities, promotes relational wellbeing and provides space to alleviate tensions, frustrations, fears and disappointments. It provides an individual with the relational lifeline of love, community and acceptance necessary for healthy human function and progress. Crucially, it reveals and unearths turmoils, anxieties and oppressions that may need professional or medical assistance. 

There is hearing and there is listening. On many occasions we hear people but do we actually listen to them? Eminent psychologist Carl Rogers famously stated that “We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.” Listening is so much more than waiting for our moment to speak, interjecting with our own experiences and similarities, bossing the conversation around our agendas and goals. In my experience in the music industry I have found many people who want to talk and so few who actually want to listen. Sometimes, even having someone hear you is a challenge and I’m not convinced it’s a natural consequence of too many looming Void stacks or a broken booth monitor dial. 

Real and sincere listening requires a sacrifice; a laying down of time constraints, a choice to leave our pressing concerns in the car park, a fissure in the mountains of our personal schedules and progress. It involves giving something of ourselves, our focus, our attention, our compassion, our concentration. Good active listening doesn’t require us to fix problems, it requires us to be simply present. It doesn’t need us to relate with our own story, as tempting as it is. Instead, it requires us to be still and engaged, connecting the dots and registering the concerns. It asks us to abandon judgement and opinion and simply let someone speak. It embraces silence as much as chatter, space as much as tumult, like turning off the threshold on the proverbial noise gate and finally hearing someone breathe. 

Truthfully, we live in a culture where listening is a forgotten or misplaced value. Social media interactions and comments rarely leave genuine invitations for alternate viewpoints. We have become used to one way dialogues with faceless threads; consumed with our digital opinions and viewpoints with no real appetite for conversation and unapologetically individualistic in our pursuit of online community. As society transitions to something even more intensely virtual in the slipstream of lockdowns, fear and uncertainty, our propensity to listen and our desire for distraction become increasingly inversely proportional. 

We’ve struggled through this season where the dance floors have been dry, the festival fields have become bowling greens and the line arrays have waited solemnly on gloomy industrial estates. As shoots of hope begin to emerge through the cracks on Covid Road and we start to dare to believe that music, art and entertainment may once again appear in the distant mirage, perhaps we do have an opportunity, and indeed a responsibility, to listen again. There is no estimating the traumas lying dormant, the anxieties in the mass gathering, the lack of confidence from frozen funding and the scars from a cornered, snarling, wounded creative industry sector. The likelihood is you know someone who needs to talk and will need you to listen. To really listen. Without judgement, opinion or comment. Just space and time to exhale the burdens, the anxieties, the fear, the uncertainty; allowing value to surface and morale to lift. There will be someone who needs room to rearrange the chaotic inner cutlery draw and rediscover the implements with which we need to feed ourselves; our physical well being, creativity, community, rest and spiritual nourishment. Your time could change the course of someone’s despair; upending the storms that were never meant to be confined to tea cups and letting the howling tempests gratefully and tearfully exhaust themselves. We’ll never know unless we stop, turn the music down for a minute and listen to those around us. As Christian philosopher Dallas Willard writes: “How rarely are we ever truly listened to and how deep is our need. I wonder how much wrath in human life is a result of not being heard.” The music industry depends on people listening. Let’s be those who do. 

Luke Rollins

30.04.20