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The art of listening Gill Johnston
GillJ@aspen-waite.co.uk
A couple of years ago, I went to a restaurant in London called Dans Le Noir. It provides dinner or lunch in pitch darkness. The waiters who are blind, take you to your table. You need to put your hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you, forming a small chain. The waiter then pulls back your chair and seats you, takes your hands and shows you by touch where your glass and cutlery are. The feeling of sitting in absolute darkness, not even a chink of light was both strange and invigorating, and a little eerie.
The experience showed how your other senses went into overdrive within the environment. Your sense of hearing became so acute that you could hear conversation from what felt like tables away. Your sense of taste, without being able to see what you were eating, highlighted how we use our eyes to decide which part of the plate to eat from and to decide what looks appetising. The whole sense of smelling, touching and tasting was so very different. The basic things we take for granted like putting food on a
fork and expecting it to still be on the folk when it reaches your mouth was an experience to remember. We ended up using our fingers to eat; nobody could see so it didn’t really matter. We enjoyed good humour with the people we sat with, who we didn’t know and had no idea what they looked like. This experience makes you realise that the art of listening is just as import as the art of speaking.
