“I have listened to this book—an extraordinary claim to make, an extraordinary way to feel, yet I have listened to this book because Chris McRae offers here the extraordinary opportunity to listen to his book. He accomplishes this through interlacing sensorily rich poetry and academically resonant prose, and most importantly through engaging readers with openness and curiosity and a striving to attune to us. What we need right now, when learning, when teaching, when performing, and above all when listening is practice in slowing way, way down; practice in taking more in; practice in allowing our world to move through us so that we might move through it with more care and compassion. McRae models in this outstanding book how we might learn together to listen slowly and inquisitively, with the care that sound and pedagogy need, and above all with the compassion that one another deserve.”—Keith Nainby, Professor of Communication Studies, California State University, Stanislaus