When we hear the word ‘beauty’, we inevitably think that beauty belongs in a special elite realm where only the extraordinary dwells. Yet without realizing it, each day each one of us is visited by beauty. When you actually listen to people, it is surprising how often beauty is mentioned. A world without beauty would be unbearable.
Listen
Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.
Silence may be golden, but can you think of a better way to entertain someone than to listen to him?
We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.
Whether you listen to a piece of music, or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug, or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.
When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.
Poetry, as odd as it is, and as hard to figure out as it is, many times, it’s almost something that we’re used to. It’s kind of like a dream language that we had centuries ago, so that when we speak poetically or write a poem about what’s going on, a real difficult issue that’s facing our communities, people listen.
It’s all about the mood I’m in and the scene I’m writing. ‘Cause work controls my life, writing controls my life, performing controls my life. So I don’t listen to any music that’s not an influence on what I’m working on that day. Music is a big influence in my work and sometimes drives the energy of where I want to go.
Listen to any musical phrase or rhythm, and grasp it as a whole, and you thereupon have present in you the image, so to speak, of the divine knowledge of the temporal order.
Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.