Hello and welcome to my first blog
post. This blog will serve multiple functions. This includes a chronicle
of our efforts to build a low power radio station inside the beltline of
Raleigh North Caroline to serve listeners in Downtown and South East Raleigh in
hopes that you will either enjoy the story of something wonderful being created
or find it a useful utility in your own efforts to create a low power station
of your own. Force me to improve my dreadful writing skills by increasing
my output. It will also be a forum for thoughts on music, film, books and other
diversions and arts that inspire us to create think and do. These functions will be part of a smaller
picture of the primary purpose of this blog which is to explore the concept of Living
By Listening.
When I find myself in a low mood it
manifests itself as feelings of alienation and at its worst I feel like an
abomination of a tumorous growth that consumes and produces waste but is no
longer a living thing. To set things
right I need become a living person again.
What then is living? Is living struggling,
hoping, caring, planting, loving, acting, creating, searching, praying or sharing? I’m going to have to say no. These are some of the noblest things we do by
living. I think living as a human being
anyways is the art of learning to interact with the external world by finding
the balance between emotion and reason.
I perceive the world through five senses: sight, touch, smell, taste and
hearing. Living things do more than just
react in a programmed way to these stimuli they with thoughts approaching the
speed of light (perhaps faster if you believe in déjà vu) seek meaning in them
by looking, feeling, savoring, tasting and listening. I hope you will join me on this experiment
of seeing if improving one of these mental mussels rooted in the soul we will
see gains in all of them. For this trial I am going to focus on
listening. Listening is the quest to
understand and assign meaning to the things our ears apprehend. Improving” the ability to listen” means improving
the capacity for empathy, focus, awareness, comprehension and with a little luck
the chance to think before speaking.
Radio is important to me because it
gives me a chance to concentrate on listening separate from my other
senses. It allows me to not understand
what I am hearing but also why someone else thought it was worth listening to
as well. I can listen to it on the go, when
I’m dreaming out the window or just need to escape from the things out of my
control.
Here are some things worth
listening to today 03/01/2011.
Jeff Skiles speech at Kill the Bill
made me happy to be in the human race
