Listening to Banned Books…
2 brown girls Conversate…
I love to read maybe more than I love to write.For so long, I took literacy for granted and did not understand why or how others could not understand the way in which a quiet space and a book would not be the best posible way to spend a rainy afternoon.
My love of information, data, more knowledge calms me. It is my anti-anxiety agent. Imagine my surprise when learning later for some people not so much … more information obfuscates…
What my nicest friends call my careless tendency late in life to over share. This quality is also somehow linked to listening in too closely or for too long or to be harmed by allowing someone to rant along and to not even realize that you are being harmed and traumatized and triggered by the constant retelling to the tale.
You are talking baring your soul, or just doing a general mind dump. it’s a form of house cleaning for you. They are not listening! It doesn’t really matter. HOWEVER it may be helpful or even funny if you know that.
.…The story that has no end and before you know it, you are sucked in playing a part, a character critical to the story teller and the narrative. You are now a part of the play.
What if in another life you were punished for reading, for writing, for teaching. Beaten down and ostracized for wanting to be literate in the know and to be “woke” or awakened for just having exposure to a reality just outside where you were for the moment.
Alternate facts are simply the perspective on how we see it, paid and rewarding for lying may have it’s benefits as quickly as we can see the consequences of believing the hype.
In any case, I want to be upfront here that I am happy I am a reader. I am happy and grateful for those educators and wise folks who taught me to read, to write, to ask critical questions and yes yes yes most grateful for those who took the time to listen to me. There is a significant cost to listening.
Encouraging me to read or listen or to hear it for myselfmeans the control C key has been activated. Unadulterated listening time is the greatest gift you can give someone. Amazing how something that seems so unselfish on the face of it can also be such a hedonistically transformative act of courage.
Indulge yourself today. Listen in closely to someone who you are likely not to agree with or for whom you know nothing about or worst you think you know all about because you thought you heard a few choice words or clicked on a tweet.
Buy a banned audiobook today, listen in closely for the whole story; preferably fiction so you wont have to worry about the nuance of “truth”. Fifteen hours might be about right for the first deep dive. If you are really lucky, you will find someone to conversate with about what you heard and maybe share even a bit of what you learned or not. You will be changed never the less.
