Pauline Oliveros Quotes & Sayings

I feel that students always learn more from each other than they do from their professor. They learn by doing and not by trying to soak up information from one person. — Pauline Oliveros

Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears — Pauline Oliveros

Working in theoretical systems can take away the juice. It can also be very beautiful, but when you're trying to satisfy a theoretical principle rather than a sonic reality, then it can become dry. — Pauline Oliveros

Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening. — Pauline Oliveros

My writing has always been a rather non-linear process. I've found if I get something down, I can listen to it and other things start to come. — Pauline Oliveros

My mother brought home the accordion in 1942. I was fascinated and wanted to learn to play it. Some of my music has a relationship to dance styles - The Well and the Gentle or The Wanderer for example. — Pauline Oliveros

When I am composing, the sounds are leading me to the way I want them to organize. — Pauline Oliveros

Listening is selecting and interpreting and acting and making decisions. — Pauline Oliveros

I am also interested in music expanding consciousness. By expanding consciousness, I mean that old patterns can be replaced with new ones. — Pauline Oliveros

Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you're not. But going below the surface too, it's an active process. It's not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you're tuned out, then you're not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing. — Pauline Oliveros

I try to schedule the Intensives wherever I go. — Pauline Oliveros

Listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as listening — Pauline Oliveros

Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening represents a heightened state of awareness and connects to all that there is. As a composer I make my music through Deep Listening — Pauline Oliveros