If You Want to Take Photos, Go to Disneyland

Last weekend, with help from my friends at Top Hat Supply for Journeys, I got to try something that I’ve wanted to do since returning from Japan. 

I’ve written about my experience of falling in love with listening at my neighborhood vinyl bar in Tokyo, and how we need less talking and more listening. I’ve also written about my experience of coming back from Japan, straight into the chaos of the presidential election, with everyone shouting at each other, but no one hearing anything. 

I’m really interested in what it means to listen, and I want to create experiences where people can come together to practice focused, intentional listening. If everyone got a little better at listening, I believe the world could be a better place. So, last weekend we invited a small group of people to join us at Top Hat for some listening practice.

Everyone arrived at 7pm, grabbed a drink and mingled for a bit before coming together in the main space around 7:30pm, where I asked everyone to power off their phones and drop them in a basket (which everyone happily did). Then I gave a short talk about my interest in listening, a brief overview of the evening, and some ideas to consider. Once the talk was over, guests were invited to find a comfy space to sit, get quiet, focus, and listen with intention to an hour of music that I would curate. No talking, no texting, no photos. Just listening. 

I played records from two turntables and a mixer, with two large speakers in the main space, and four other speakers in the back space, which was set up with lots of comfy seating and pillows. The space was filled with rich, analog sound. The music was a diverse selection of songs — some obscure, some well known. All of them are songs that I love, that offer a stream of little rewards for careful listening, arranged in a way that took everyone on a dynamic sonic journey. 

After the hour of music was up, I rang a bell (ok, a crystal bowl, actually), and we gathered together to talk. What did you hear? How was this different? What did you learn? Will this change how you listen?

I loved creating and sharing this experience. And based on feedback so far, I think everyone loved taking part in it. I think there is something here.

OK…I know that the concept of just sitting and listening to records is not revolutionary. But nowadays, we are so consumed and distracted by work, life, and technology, that we rarely give ourselves the gift of just doing one thing. Most of the time when we are listening to music (or podcasts / books), we are driving, or walking, or working, which is just not the same. My goal for these listening sessions is to give people permission to shut down for an hour and just…listen, with the full 100% of your attention. It’s another form of meditation that allows us to access a part of ourselves that is getting lost in a digital sea of multitasking. 

It’s good to pick one thing and just do that one thing — to give it your full attention. If you want to listen to music, then sit in a comfy chair and grab your headphones, or, as my friend Wataru-san once said, “If you want to take photos, go to Disneyland!”