When You Are Listening, There is Only Now
“Foggy Morning in Carolina Bay, Fall 2025”
I ran across this thought while reading Rick Rubin’s book “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”. As Rick wrote, “While the eyes and the mouth can be sealed, an ear has no lid, nothing to close it. It takes in what surrounds it. It receives but can’t transmit. The ear is simply present in the world.” When we are really listening to the world around us, we automatically become more engaged.
I’m a visual artist, and likely most of you are as well. So, what does good listening have to do with being a better photographer or visual artist? Everything and nothing.
As I try to write about in these “Musings”, I look for connections that I might not have made before. Some will help open up new avenues for me and others are just thoughts that might be of intertest more down the line.
When we are having a conversation or listening to speech of some sort, most of the time we are thinking about what we plan to say next, or how right or wrong the speaker is, not what the speaker is really saying. As we spend time and energy putting together our thoughts during this time, we aren’t really present and listening to the speaker. “To listen impatiently is to hear nothing as all.”
This had me remembering when I have heard other photographers talk about their experiences in nature – while photographing or not. Almost all will talk about the light they were seeing. Some will talk about the physical nature of the experience, like the heat or cold or the conditions of the path. But the rare few talk about the sounds they experienced. Does it make them “better” photographers? Maybe. Though, it is more likely they are just better at observing and being present in that moment in nature or on the photo shoot. Noticing things others might not be aware of.
And isn’t that one of the main things about those creative people we admire? That they experience things and reflect them back to all of us in a way we hadn’t noticed or apricated before?
I was recently in the Carolina Bay on a foggy morning. Those types of mornings, I usually notice more the stillness of the park. How the fog muffles sound and I hear almost nothing moving. But this morning was different. There was a breeze knocking the leaves off of the trees and blowing them around. I was hearing and feeling the water dropping from the leaves because of the fog. The call and response of some of the smaller birds. And since the park is right by the road, there were city trucks rumbling by, and the bad mufflers on older cars, just to round out the sounds I did notice while photographing.
The photos in today’s blog are from that morning. I’m curious if your impressions of the images have changed after reading more about that morning and the sounds I heard. Or do you still have the same take on them since your first viewing?
For visual artists, does the sound you are experiencing at the moment effect your creations? Or are they just nice to notice and experience at the moment? We can’t easily visualize a sound – maybe a crashing wave, or water moving over rocks, or wind in the trees – but, no matter what we are doing, by paying more attention to what we hear, we are being more present in the moment. And ultimately, isn’t that what good art does? It takes us to that moment the artist wants us to experience with them. Some of it will be visual, some textual, and don’t discount the sounds you listen to in that moment either.
Thank you, and keep creating what you do.
Patrick Krohn
December 2025