 A really beautiful documentary about my friend Daniel Kish was recently released by The New Yorker. I watched it with a full heart.
Daniel and I caught up on the phone recently. He’s in California and I’m in Tennessee. We’ve known each other for years, but like many friendships, ours deepened during the pandemic. We became weekly ritual FaceTime buddies, sipping whisky and having long, wandering conversations, the kind of curious talk that helps you make sense of the world when the world itself feels somewhat unsteady. We spoke about life, storytelling, how we mentor and teach, peacebuilding, and many more shared interests and ideas. Daniel has been, and continues to be, a big influence in my life. Many people know Daniel as the world’s leading specialist in human echolocation, the ability to create soundscapes to perceive and navigate the world, much like a bat. Through clicks of the tongue and attentive listening, Daniel and those he teaches learn to read space, distance, texture, and movement. What looks impossible to most of us becomes not only possible, but deeply freeing. For years, Daniel has worked with people, particularly blind and visually impaired people, to help remove fear of the dark. He’s also trained marines and travelled the world over sharing what he knows with all different kinds of communities. He does this not by denying risk or difficulty, but by cultivating deep listening, trust in one’s own perception, and an intimate relationship with the unknown. Over time, Daniel and I have found ourselves returning to a question. If humans can literally learn to navigate darkness, learn to remove fear, what might that teach us, metaphorically, about how society could face its fear of the unknown? What would it mean for our communities, cultures, and institutions to listen more carefully? and what would that do to help imagine possibilities, together. To move through uncertainty not with panic or paralysis, but with curiosity, imagination, and care? Daniel once wrote: “We essentially remove fear from ourselves and our lives. Life then becomes an intriguing tapestry of puzzles, adventures, and discoveries.” He has also described echolocation as “establishing the knowns within the unknowns, something like navigating by the stars.” You don’t need to see everything at once. You chart your way by listening, by noticing patterns, by creating reference points as you go. In his words, it’s “a bit like making it into a story.” That framing idea, making it into a story, is where Daniel’s work and my own storytelling practice most clearly connect. (Daniel is also a brilliant storyteller, singer, and artist). Stories don’t eliminate uncertainty. They help us move through it. They give us bearings. They allow us to imagine beyond the present moment, to glimpse into futures that aren’t yet visible, or even fully real, but are still possible. A few years back, Daniel came to stay with me for a week. We hiked on the Appalachian Trail. He met my friends and family. We ate local BBQ. We talked late into the night, about listening, about trust, about what it means to be human in a world that can feel fragmented and afraid. I wrote about that time, and some of what Daniel taught me, here: The Art of Deep Listening Watching The New Yorker documentary brought all of this back. Daniel himself told me he appreciated what they created, and I do too. The film captures not only the extraordinary nature of his work, but also the care, generosity, and love he brings to it, and into the world. At a time when so much of our collective life is shaped by fear, fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of one another, fear of futures we don’t yet understand, I find Daniel’s work deeply poignant. It reminds us that the answer isn’t to harden ourselves or build a tough exterior of so-called “resilience,” but to listen more closely. To build new ways of sensing the world together. And to trust that step by step, we can navigate what lies ahead. I hope you’ll watch the documentary and spend time with Daniel’s work. I hope it offers you, as it continues to offer me, a sense of inspiration and a reminder that even in dark times, there are ways we can imagine, personally and collectively, how to move forward together. I keep returning to it as a reminder that fear doesn’t have to be the thing that defines our next steps. With care, curiosity, and deep listening, even the dark can become a place of discovery. That feels like something worth holding onto right now. Watch the New Yorker documentary here: Kiran Singh Sirah This blog is part of Storytelling: A Gift of Hope, a curated initiative and blog series that explores the art of storytelling and its tremendous power to transform how we see ourselves and each other, not just despite our differences, but because of them. |