[MUSIC] Well I love that sense of fandom that you're describing in its capacity to help us be open and receptive to, as you put it listening through someone else's ears or seeing through someone else's eyes. That really to me is one of the core value propositions of being a fan is opening yourself up to a world of possibility that other people inhabit as well. And you can learn from, I actually want to take a moment to read a very brief passage from the moment in poetry of Pop, that you're you're talking about to think about the what you framed as a skill and a practice of deep listening. So you're right listening to pop songs with a critical ear begins by attending to language, sound and style as they imprint themselves on. Feeling deep listening is only possible once we invite emotions into our analysis. That's from one of the early sections of poetry Pop. And I love that sense of imprinting and the way that you authorize fans too allow their passion and their love and their kind of uncritical feeling about something to be a part of the holistic process of analysis and interpretation to to inform the way that they approach understanding something more deeply. So I want to ask if you could imagine, a music listener, a casual fan, a listener who is at a point where she really wants to take her listening to a deeper level to really invest more in being a fan of music. What advice would you give to that person? What would their first step be to really get into that space of deep listening? >> Wonderful, well, the first step of moving into deep listening is to acknowledge the ways that you're already doing it. Likely yeah. That it's already a part of how you relate to the music that you love the most. Now of course there are all sorts of registers of listening that we do on any given day when I'm lifting weights out of my backyard right now and have the airpods in, I'm listening in a different way than I would be listening while having dinner later that night. Or more to the point when really listening with focus and attention, which I occasionally do to a new song or album or whatever it is. Maybe that I'm revisiting from the past and it's just me and the music, so there are different ways of listening but that that deep connection, I think we all have experienced it at some time with some sounds. So part of it is acknowledging that that's already in part of your critical apparatus, even though you may not not think of it as such connected to that is an awareness of just how sophisticated listener you may already be. When I go to classrooms particularly. I'm thinking here in the K through 12 settings and I've actually worked with kindergarten classes on this in addition more more often to working with older students, high school students. The first thing that I do is to say, hey, listen, you already know how to do most of what I'm going to ask you to do in terms of analyzing a song lyric or analyzing a piece of music of any kind. What you may not have though is a critical vocabulary for doing it in a way that allows you to be in conversation with others about the same things. Most often when we have conversations about music that we care about, we don't necessarily use the most nuance language like, I love that song. Or back in my, I'll date myself in the in the nineties hip hop era and be like, yo that's dope, that's that's so whatever, that's fire, that's this, that whatever the term of the moment happens to be in your particular neck of the woods when it comes to music fandom, there's a particular language that you use and it doesn't tend to be that descriptive. What I'm talking about in enhancing your capacity as a listener is simply saying, hey, there are these tools that you can use, some of which are drawn from music theory, some of which are drawn from literary studies, some of which are drawn from, I don't know, socio linguistics and sociology and anthropology and a range of different practices shoot some were drawn from art history and and those kinds of frames that aren't even directly related to music. Whatever it is that you find as tools that are useful for vocalizing and articulating in clear and precise ways, observations that you have about the music that you already have in your head that you already have in your heart as well. So just a couple quick things that I would advise for people. One is two use what I call the emotional seismograph that you have within you already. That is when you're listening to a particular song, what is the emotional journey that the song takes you on? Are there parts that are particular sections of the song that call attention to themselves in ways more profoundly than others? And can you characterize the way that it does? So when I was first writing poetry of Pop, I had two very young daughters who were huge fans of frozen. And so I was inundated with Let It Go, and Do you want to build a Snowman? And just every song off of that damn album. And you know what? Instead of fighting it, I decided to work with it. And what I did in the end was to use some of those songs which are so theatrical, both because they're out of a kind of Broadway tradition, but also out of the Disney musical tradition. That very, really broadly and deeply emotional in a lot of ways. So, I use those songs as ways to test some of my theories and the emotional seismograph works great in a song like Let It Go where it moves from a kind of calm and centeredness at the beginning, kind of almost a brooding thing. So at the end, the DEA Menzel is at the pitch of emotional and vocal energy at the end of that song. And so you've gone through this journey that you can chart in some ways. So that's the first thing is to use your own senses, your natural senses as a listener, as the first point of connection as a critic as well. And then from there, adapt your own set of tools. I apply a lot of them in the Poetry of Pop and describe how to cultivate them. You can borrow from those kinds of things as well. I talked about focusing on rhythm and rhyme figured of language and story and voice and probably something else, I don't know, it's been a while since I read that book, [LAUGH] but I talked about those and those are certainly places to start. You'll begin to cultivate your own set of tools that are your go to for your initial investigation of your listening experience. And ultimately, it's about attending, not only to the things that say, the genius dot coms of the world have us attend to the hidden meanings and the double triple quadruple and Sandra all of that, but rather to what's going on in the very surface of the song, on the surface of the sound, the surface of the lyric. Don't neglect those surface effects, because those are often actually some of the most profound things that are going on in the song. So, yeah, I mean, those are just more than a few ideas, I guess with. But yeah, I'm excited for someone who is moving from the position of being a kind of passive listener in that sense, to being more active, engaged, thinking critically. And of course, like this gives you the license to do just that and invites it. So that's a very exciting thing. Certainly not something I had as a student. >> Yeah, I love one of the points you made there toward the end, that that you don't want to ignore the surface effects. Right? I think there's a there's often a stigma maybe stigmas too strong a word. There's often an association made when we're thinking about, literary analysis that it automatically has to be deep that you have to that you aren't supposed to pay attention to the surface. You have to find that deeper underlying thing. And I think that impulse really kind of cuts us off from so much of the enjoyment about what makes interpretation and analysis so much fun and so meaningful and immediately meaningful and approachable for a wider spectrum of folks. So that's good advice right to follow the emotional seismograph, listen to the song, let yourself navigate through it and then figure out where you want to go from there.
