The Spaces Between Us: Listening / Breath
I am conscious that my anxiety often makes me talk too much. I interrupt, I
finish people’s sentences though I hate it when they do that to me. How to
listen to each other is something I am learning about from you. Also how to have
speech as dialog and not as an imperative. When you stayed with me for a week I
became very conscious of the careful practice of how to live together, how to
speak to each other. You observed a great deal and then you asked questions. I
learned to use language more carefully. What I loved was how well we lived in
the same apartment and how our different rhythms were allowed to play out. It
was funny working in the kitchen with you making food for the party and talking
art and theory the whole time. Your Russian salad was an amazing production
although I did not really like all the parts of it and I thought you made far
too much. But I myself always make too much food.
Faith: “Listening to the Other, sparing them some silent time, is respecting his or
her breath, too. Only a mother breathes for her child. Once born, we all must,
should, breathe for ourselves.” (Luce Irigaray, I Love to You, p.121)
