Morton Feldman’s String Quartets, Personal Development and Deep Listening Enhancement (Part 2)

I write these lines just after spending about six hours listening to the String Quartet No. 2 by Morton Feldman (1926-1987), quite a sonic-meditative experience for me. It’s not easy to summarise six hours of mindful listening in just a few words. To be honest, for me this experienc has been a little challenge. Would I be able to hold out and spend 6 hours and 8 minutes listening to these slow sonorities, so peculiar? I cannot say I have spent the whole of these six hours in total mindful state. Your mind has quite a good chance to wander over six hours. You really have plenty of time to get lost and trapped in a web of thoughts, feelings and sensations. Neither can I state that this listening session would help me to become a better person, although that was my intention when I started it. Meditation doe not make you a better person: it just allows you to spend some time with yourself becoming an observer of your thoughts, feelings and sensations. However, I would like to think that these hours of deep listening will leave an imprint in my brain. What will be its effect? I do not really know. Maybe someday, someone decides to study my brain, you never know! Anyway, I do believe that facing challenges – and no wonder this was a challenge for me – makes us exercise our resilience capacity. And talking about resilience, take the interpreters (Flux Quartet) of this String Quartet No. 2 as an example. Yes, it’s true, I have spent around six ours listening to their recording, but they spent as many hours playing instruments and fighting physical and mental tiredness!!

Maybe my endeavour to improve my listening capacity by doing this kind of things is just useless. However, the one thing that wins is that I feel the satisfaction derived from this little sonic-meditative “feat”. In the end, that is what is all about in life: being aware and satisfied with what you do!

Michael Thallium

Global & Greatness Coach
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