Listen

Director Statement

The most important moment of my life is one I don’t remember. I was thirteen, under anesthesia, while Dr. Chappie Conrad cut a bone tumor out of my pelvis. I wasn’t there, but my body was. The fog around that day makes it hard to understand or feel the weight of what happened. There’s no memory to ground it.

For years I took that as a relief. Why would I want to remember something so violent? I pushed forward, praised for my nonchalant resilience. But eventually I noticed a numbness—not just around cancer, but around everything. Life felt far away, like I was watching it instead of living it. 

So my interest in "listening" didn’t begin with sound. It started with trying to hear what my body remembered from dozens of surgeries. I miss playing soccer. I miss wrestling my brother. I feel small and disabled. I’m afraid. I don’t want to die. When these memories poured back into me, it was painful but also a relief—like dissipating fog revealing a bright, fresh world.

Around this time, I met Hank. Over campfires we talked about his work listening to creatures. We picked nettles at the tide line and cooked them with venison he had hunted. We wandered tide pools, watching nudibranchs and hermit crabs. We drank from cold forest streams with our hands. It was simple and full of laughter. What struck me most was his joyous love of the more-than-human world.

We are losing so much of that world, and most of us barely feel it. I saw a parallel between my disconnection from my body and our disconnection from the natural world. My hope is that Listen helps people feel connected.