Friday 7 December 2012

Listening


















 
'The present century, in proclaiming the advent of a new age of communication and information, and inventing recording machines to give talk immortality, forgot to deal with the great problem of talk, which is how to find someone to listen. For more and more people, merely to talk, mainly about oneself, as birds sing from tree-tops, is not enough. Humanity’s pride in being able to communicate better than any other creature is belied by most talk being greeted with silence or incomprehension. The frustrations of sex are nothing compared to the frigidity of listeners.'

Zeldin, Theodore, 1995. An intimate history of humanity. London: Minverva, p. 422