Thursday, December 18, 2025

Yesterday, I wrote my first of several planned posts about listening to music, and I paused. Soon, something different and subtle struck me. I was highly focused on writing about music, but wasn’t rushing off to research or make lists. Nor was I working on organizing sections, say about eras, or trying to build arguments toward a point of view. Instead, I found myself involved in actively listening itself.

I wasn’t listening constantly, nor methodically—but differently, very thoughtfully. More slowly. More attentively. I found myself listening for something, and not simply to something. That “something” has always been hard to name, but it’s something I constantly search for–and I always recognize it instantly when it appears.

To me, certain voices don’t merely enter a room—they change the space. The air feels altered, and as a listener, I feel myself being addressed—and personally. This doesn’t depend on volume or virtuosity. It’s likely to arrive in a whisper, a pause, a cracked note, a breath held just a beat longer than expected.

Here are examples: While listening to Louis Armstrong, I realized I’m not just hearing sound; I’m hearing weight—as if he’s carrying joy alongside sorrow, humor braided with endurance. When Ella Fitzgerald sings, I hear something like generosity in her phrasing—as though she’s opening space rather than filling it. Nina Simone’s voice creates a world where feeling becomes thought itself—urgent, unyielding, refusing comfort. Janis Joplin sang as if nothing were protected. Amy Winehouse sang as if she already knew the cost.

Here’s what strikes me: these are voices that don’t ask permission. They don’t soften themselves for acceptability. They don’t sound engineered to land well—they sound natural and necessary.

When I hear them, the idea of “performance” feels inadequate. Performance suggests polish, presentation, and a certain distance. Instead, I hear presence. I sense the singer fully inside the moment, and bringing me along without barriers between experience and expression.

Presence can’t be trained into someone, and presence can’t be copied. One can imitate another’s phrasing, tone, and even style. But “real presence” isn’t a technique; it’s a condition. And listeners know it when they hear it.

I often think about how rare this feels today—not because artists lack talent, but because so much contemporary music is filtered through expectations of marketability, branding, perfection, and constant visibility. Today’s technologies create pressure to be seamless, consistent, and endlessly repeatable. Earlier music, by contrast, often allowed unevenness. Performances included roughness, surprise, and even discomfort.

That may be why I return so often to voices from earlier decades—or search for modern artists who feel somehow outside the machine. I seek those whose sounds are as though something real is happening to them as they sing, not just through them.

I’m not suggesting that suffering creates great art, or that pain is a requirement for authenticity. But lived experience—fully inhabited—leaves traces. Great artists allow those traces to remain audible.

Listening in this way makes me consider my own habits. How often do I listen while doing something else? How quickly do I move on when a song doesn’t immediately reward me? How conditioned have I become to smoothness—to ease?

This is my second post about listening to music. Not to make a conclusion, but to create something more like a tuning fork. A small way of noticing what resonates—and what doesn’t.

In another post on this topic, I hope to stay close to this question: What makes a voice unrepeatable? Not better. Not more famous. But singular—so that no matter how many imitators try to cover an original, something essential refuses to transfer.

For now, I’ll keep listening for presence. And I’ll gamble that once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it either.

— Diana