The Art That Will Make You Grow Back Your Ears

Hello Hedge School,

What do you sound like when you finally speak?

These words open a poem that was written through me. Titled, Signature Sound, the poem is a journey of remembrance. A journey back to the sound that speaks through you when you are most alive. A sound most of us have forgotten.

Lost under layers of conditioning. Muffled under other people's expectations, our own distinct voice is stifled. Mimicry. Fitting in. Fear. The sound we share when we speak often feels foreign. Like someone else is speaking. Someone else's voice escapes through your lips.

But we do get glimpses of our own natural magic. Our own Signature Sound. Our own sign of nature sound. Moments where we disappear into moments, becoming a channel for spirit, allow that sound to be set free. And that music is enlivening.

For it is our true voice.

Listening is how we find our way back to that true voice.

Rediscovering your Signature Sound is the art of growing our ears back.

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Deep listening

There is much to learn from the oldest continuing culture on Earth, the First Nations people of Australia. Custodians of the land I'm blessed to call home for thousands of years, Indigenous Australians are masters of deep listening. The Aboriginal peoples of the Daly River region in the Northern Territory of Australia call this "dadirri."

“Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call contemplation.”
Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr - 2021 Senior Australian of the Year

This beautiful video gives you a glimpse of the deep spring inside.

Deep listening is a key component of all Indigenous Australian cultures. The core characteristics of Deep Listening are:

1. Respect underpins our relationships with each other and with the land;

2. Time is invested in relationships and the building of trust;

3. Our understanding of ways of knowing is broadened and deepened;

4. Creativity is embedded into the way we learn; and

5. A quality of care infuses our relationships and our work with each other.

Source: LivingCircle21

Deep listening is the deepening of relationship. With the land. With the sentient beings that co-inhabit the space. With yourself. It is through being still in place that we rediscover who we are and learn new ways of knowing. Learn new ways of coexisting. Personally, I find that such stillness fills me with words only poetry can contain. Bouquets of language that are my humble attempt at paying homage to my listening experience. But I wasn't always like this. Sitting on land and being in relation with land through listening unlocked that from within. My Signature Sound effortlessly flowed from within in the guise of poetry. I learned to pay attention to the parts of myself I had long discarded.

And as a result I remembered who I was.

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Till next time,

Steve