In Ways of Seeing, from 1972, John Berger wrote, “To look is an act of choice.” Based on his BBC television series with the same name, the collection of essays sought to demystify the process of viewing visual art while emphasizing the context inherent in each glance.
Rollie Pemberton adapts both Berger’s title and his framework (though without explicit reference) in Ways of Listening. The Toronto writer and musician, who published Bedroom Rapper in 2022 about his career as Cadence Weapon, conceptualizes this book as a contemporary guide to engaging with music. “I wrote Ways of Listening as a love letter to the more intentional and deeper way of listening to music that I grew up on, one that is slowly being forgotten,” he says in the introduction. We listen only to what we hear, and to hear is an act of choice. Increasingly, he suggests, we are making the wrong choices.
Where Ways of Seeing considered how mass...
Rosie Long Decter edits Maisonneuve and is half of the Montreal duo Bodywash.
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