I Told Him the Truth

And He Didn’t Know What to Do With It...

A couple of months ago I was at a conference. One of the organizers came up to greet me and asked how I was doing. I took a beat, stopped myself before answering and because I like this person very much, I decided to tell him the truth. So I did. Nothing huge or life-shattering, just real honest sharing. And no big story either, mind you.

As I spoke, I could feel his attention wandering. His eyes drifted around the room. His body became restless. Finally he looked at me and said, “Well… I didn’t expect THAT kind of answer!” And I remember saying words to the effect, I’m giving you the truth. Wouldn’t you rather have that than the usual? But I understood where he was coming from. Dozens of people were there, and I could feel how everything was pulling him somewhere else. So I smiled and let him off the hook. “It’s okay. I get it. You’re busy. There’s a lot happening here. You probably don’t have space for this kind of conversation right now.” And with a quick sigh of relief, he hurried away onto his next thing.

I don’t know why this particular event stuck in my mind so much. It happens all the time, every day. I know you know what I’m talking about, because we’ve all had this experience. It’s the norm. We do surface communication. I learned it from my parents, you probably learned it from yours. “Hi, how are ya?” (spoken with a hefty Bronx accent.) “Okay.” or “Fine.” or “Good.” And you move on with your day without giving the interaction a second thought. As a professed introvert and card-carrying member of the “please don’t make me engage unless I really have to” club, I can assure you, this dynamic is alive and well in my own life.

As a musician, I think about listening a lot. Deep listening. It’s something that gets trained into you the longer and more intensely you devote yourself to your art. Listening to the silence between notes, the harmonics, the notes inside the notes. Listening to the space at the end of one phrase as it leads into the next. All these things become part of the music and the deeper you listen, the more beautiful becomes the sound.

But most people don’t move through the world this way. Conversations get built around information and facts, and we glide from sentence to sentence looking to land in the literal and the expected. So of course we tune out. When you are truly listening, though, underneath the language and the words, there is almost always something else going on.

A friend is telling you about their day, and underneath the words you can feel the anxiety, or the anger, or sadness, frustration, or bone weariness — and all of this is happening while they’re looking at you with a big smile on their face. We’ve become so accustomed to this level of communication that we often begin formulating our replies while the other person is still speaking. We’ve already stopped listening. We maneuver our way through conversations so we can get onto the next thing — the next obligation, the next distraction, the next important moment in our day.

We’ve become transactional listeners.

We exchange information, we react, and we move on. It’s no wonder loneliness has reached epidemic levels.

Real listening asks something very different of us. It asks us to become present, to pause, to breathe, and to genuinely connect with another human being. Real listening is intimate. It’s vulnerable. And it has the power to open the door to compassion and understanding — something that feels increasingly compromised these days.

This is one reason why I create music the way I do. People often ask me to sing certain songs from my albums — particularly their favorites from Jewels of Silence, or The Embrace, and now Orion’s Song from the upcoming album We Are Here to Love. I always have to laugh because the truth is, these pieces are not written in the traditional sense. There’s no verse, no chorus, no repeated lyrical structure to return to, no lyrics whatsoever. The music is entirely improvised — not improvised from the mind, but improvised through listening. I couldn’t tell you what note comes next if I tried. And try to perform it live?? Whatever I do is going to come out different from anything on the album version. It’ll be new every time.

That’s how Orion’s Song emerged. The feeling surrounding it was deeply cosmic and galactic. It felt as though I was in the presence of a collective intelligence communicating through frequency rather than language. Not exactly a conversation. More like taking dictation. I wasn’t receiving words. I was receiving feeling, tone, emotional intelligence — and following that frequency through every sound, every nuance, every movement in the phrasing. It was Ancient. Wise. Vast. And far beyond the smallness we humans often get trapped inside. There was an understanding being transmitted that we are not alone, that life is interconnected in ways we barely comprehend, and that there is intelligence rooted not in domination but in harmony, reverence, awareness, and profound respect for life itself. And underneath all of this, an overwhelming sense that we humans carry far greater potential than we currently embody.

The colors of this music felt like indigo, deep violet, gold, and light. At times it felt as though I was singing somewhere out in the vast cosmos, while completely at home on Earth.

Orion’s Song releases TODAY!

I invite you to give it your full attention for a few moments — headphones on, eyes closed, no multitasking.

Just listen.

And perhaps notice not only the sounds, but what is happening underneath them. Because that, I think, is where the real music has always lived. And it may just be where you’ve been listening from all along.

With love,
Ashana