The Unspoken Sounds of Somatic Silence: Composer David Shea on Listening, Failure, and Compassion, Part One (S4E5)

What if listening isn't something we do with our ears, but something we experience with our entire bodies?

Composer, improviser, and educator David Shea joins Ari again this season for the first of two conversations exploring the relationships between sound, chaos, creativity, and human connection.

Drawing on more than forty years of friendship, they consider what it means to pursue artistic excellence without demanding perfection. David challenges familiar ideas about mastery, failure, and authorship, suggesting that composition itself is an act of listening — and listening an act of co-creation.

From Buddhist practice and experimental music to cultural appropriation and the vulnerability of performance, their conversation opens into a larger inquiry: Can we make room for one another without needing to control what happens between us?