Rishi Keshe Hirway

It's easy to get distracted, and we tend to listen to other people that way, too.

But you can't really get immersed if that's the case.

Imagine trying to listen to a song while singing a different song in your head.

You can't do it, or you can't do it well, and you can't fully appreciate what someone else is saying if you're thinking about something else.

I started to wonder, could I try listening to people the way that I was trying to listen to music?

Because when someone tells you something, just like with a song, there can be all these layers within it.

There can be all this context that you're missing.

I've been in love with music my whole life, both as a musician and as a listener.

But as a listener, sometimes songs feel a little like houses to me.

Houses that you can only see from the street.

You can stop and admire them from the outside.

You can say, wow, look, the architecture is amazing.

you might be able to get a little peek inside through one of the windows.

But it's this thing of beauty that you have to appreciate from a distance, because it's not yours.

And as a musician, when you put a song out into the world, it can sometimes feel like you're trapped in the backyard of this house that you built.

There might be people looking at it, but you never get the chance to show them anything inside.

Inside a song, there are all these parts that get imagined and written and recorded that are so full of thought and beauty, but only the people who've made the song ever get to hear those pieces on their own.

All those pieces get smooshed together in the final version that comes out.

Whenever I put out a song, I was always a little sad that no one else was going to get to hear the things that I had heard when I was making it.

Let me show you what I mean.