Listen

from where you stand

Listening requires more than just registering sounds. It means decoding them from the most distinct to the quiet and obscure.

Deep listening means dwelling long enough on the unfamiliar until something jumps out as meaningful, like learning a new language involves building sensitivity towards the words interactions and gestures which give rhythm to a culture.

In my work, listening is not passive. It takes risks to get real answers. The key for me has been learning how to maintain an insider-outsider role. Gaining someone's trust keeping up the rhythm of a conversation.

While at the same time being able to take a step back to interpret the probe and hear what's not being. The most exciting part of the work is its dynamic element. Traveling around the world, I experience time and time again how our hypothesis is turn on its head.

The critical factor of the linking piece ends up being a surprise, something I identify only when running back through the data and seeing it in the context of the whole. This whole is about the entire experience of the culture.

The people I met and the odd things that were mentioned in passing. Sometimes one phrase can make everything else make sense. Studying people is not a linear process.

It is often blurry, ambiguous yields slow responses, but I always leave the field feeling like I've seen something true. The reality of a place or a phenomenon dawns on me later, not as a flash of insight but rather in the rigorous process of creating meaning.