A Bicyclist's Conditional Response To The Changing Weather; Or, On Listening
It is said that Hemingway famously said that it was the sound of others that taught him how to use his own voice. Papa don't preach. He listens! The formulation makes perfect sense, of course, until you try to unpack it. For, what is Hemingway saying, precisely? That most people never listen to other people? To some other people? To themselves? To nature? To the essence of things? To audible sounds? To silence? To everything? And there is another difficulty in the pronouncement, and is contained in the knot of the first four words of the quote: I like to listen. Easy to say, easy to write, easy to apply to myself, but check it against my experience of the world, where the sense of "I" seems to grow in direct proportion to the sound of "I." Stronger, it seems, is the urge to speak, to make my points, to make my voice heard than the urge to keep quiet, listening, contemplating. Hemingway claims to have overcome this seemingly eternal urge that has bed...