Spiritual Archaeology
I wasn’t sure when I started this public forum blog how much I would write directly about people and situations in which I was currently involved. The trouble is that, like any human, once I get the sense that anyone is really listening, some lever deep in the human construct clicks into place with a quiet kerschnap and, like the huge boulder unleashed on Indiana Jones, a distant rumbling builds to a thunder as the unstoppable force of my inner thoughts roll out. It can be terrifying or thrilling depending on how you see these things and which side of the boulder you’re on, but I became a documentary filmmaker because I so love mental archeology and the rush of standing directly in harms way, coaxing out the next chance to be flattened. Go ahead. I’m listening.
Quite a few years ago I went to see a play at Fronterafest that featured a man dying of cancer. He did a whole series of bits, including a short and terrifying magic act with knives, a musical performance, and a poem. In the end, he talked about finding one’s purpose in life by thinking about this question: “What is the one thing that you do so well and so naturally that you don’t even realize it’s hard to do? In fact, likely the only way you found out about it is that at some point other people were astounded and asked, ‘how do you do that?!’”
I went out to lunch with my friend CC and her friend of many years a few months later. During the course of conversation CC’s friend began talking in depth about how she fought with a long period of depression and what it took to work her way back to owning her own life. As CC and I were leaving together she kept saying, astounded, “I’ve known her for ten years and I’ve never heard her talk about that. She’s never opened up like that before…” and then she stopped and spun to face me. “It’s you! It’s that thing you do!’“
Over the years I’ve tried to understand what it is that I’ve picked up from my mother and grandfather that has caused complete strangers around me to spontaneously burst out in the song of their greatest struggles, triumphs, and fears. On a flight from Alaska to Chicago I met a middle-aged business woman and started chatting. This built to a sudden breakthrough and she decided that she was going to quit her job the minute she got back and travel europe like she’d always wanted. A young Philippino woman on a bus told me the story of how she had been abused as a child and began reflecting on how this still affected her daily interactions. Sadly, it’s shocking how many women have revealed rape or near rape stories to me, and how often it is the first time they’ve told the story to anyone.
Listening seems like such a simple task, but I’m still trying to understand it, as it’s something I do so unconsciously. I at first feared that thinking about it at all would be like trying to drive a stickshift car after attempting to explain it to someone– impossible. At first it appears to be nothing more than doing nothing at all. Simply not speaking, however, is not enough. For someone’s lever to trip, I have to also stop wanting and, most importantly, stop being me.
There are several impulses and desires that lie behind “wanting”. I have to not want to respond, or jump in with, “wait, I have a story just like that!” I have to stop wanting them to respond in a certain way, or wanting them to be anything other than who they are in that moment. I have to stop expecting them to tell me anything, and, in fact, genuinely not want them to tell me anything at all. Yes, I know, very zen. Well the zen gets even worse. I think that when I’m most effective, I am not myself at all. I become egoless. For a little while, I become this person before me. When the cab driver tells me how he wants to stab every black man that gets into his cab before they stab him, I nod and listen and feel what that fear and hatred must feel like for him. By feeling through his experience, I can respond to what he says without judgement. I’ve noticed that when someone talks for long enough without feeling judged, they often find themselves with their defenses down and not only willing to say more, but listen to themselves for the first time. In fact, in the absence of having to defend their beliefs against the judgments of others, I’ve seen people begin to re-examine and bring their own fresh observation and judgement onto themselves.
Of course, the byproduct of this process is that afterwards I have to remember to step back out of that person’s skin, re-enter my own and make use of some of my own judgements. This cabbie is not, for example, someone I need to introduce to my black friends.
There is one more side effect, too. I sat interviewing an amazing older woman as part of a documentary project. As is typical she started out the two day long interview with repeated glances to my eyes, to be assured that I was still watching and listening, and to be sure that I still cared. By the second day, she so trusted my interest that I don’t think she looked at me once. There were tears of joy and sadness, times of reflection, and wonderful stories. In the end… I was in love. Maybe we both were, I’m not really sure, but it created some strange moments as the reality of our situation slowly re-emerged. Her age, the physical distance, and the fact that she didn’t know much at all about me, sank in as we stepped out of the bubble that is created by this listening magic.
Powerful and dangerous. That’s listening.
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