Near Presence #1 - Why

Why listen?

Hello, I’m Kin Teal, and I’ve been thinking a lot recently about listening, and being present (AKA the real world™️).

My mission with this newsletter is to help you awaken the joy of truly listening, and to bring you back in sync with yourself in the process.

I imported my email list from Bandcamp to get started, so if this feels random, feel free to unsubscribe at the bottom.

What’s this thing?

I came up with this idea in December 2025, at a time of the year when blasting content onto social media platforms usually reaches a fever pitch.

I feel very detached from social media, detached from my sense of time, and from real conversations on the internet. When making an Instagram post, usually I’d like to say so much, but then I censor myself, because the format is just not good for any sort of extended thought process. Also, like most others, I don’t want to transform myself into a content machine, producing videos for the sake of a giant advertisement platform, that get seen for a day or two before disappearing in the deluge of other videos. I’d like to bring back a bit more thoughtfulness to how we think about sound and music, even if it means that my social media reach won’t be sky high.

I just want to listen, and be listened to.

As an electronic musician, sounds fascinate me, be it a cello, or the dishwasher making a weird noise. Sounds take you closer to your body. If you really listen, sounds make you feel viscerally that you’re alive in the world right now, which is a beautiful feeling, and one we’re moving away from as a society. More and more of life is happening online, in these placeless spaces that pull your mind away from where your body actually is.

Sounds also take you closer to your emotions. What you hear is incredibly subjective. You can imbue anything with meaning, even though someone else next to you hearing the same sound might not feel anything at all. Since seeing takes up so much of our brain, it’s hard to actually listen, and maybe that’s why it’s easier for sound to reach across to our emotional selves. What your hear has to carry so much meaning, or so much energy that it gets through to our normally vision-addled brain.

There will be a short essay or a thought in each post, as well as a sound I have recorded, or one I just found fascinating. I might also attach short segments of music I’m writing currently, if I find it interesting for some reason.

I constantly record little snippets of my environment with my phone or portable recorder, and listening back, I can often only vaguely guess what the context was. This is beautiful, because it breaks the barriers of preconception, and allows me (and you) to hear without knowing what to expect. I’d like to instill this same curiosity in you.

Sound #1

Here’s the first sound:

When you listen, try to feel each material, how it interacts with the world around it. Have a listen, and then another one where you pay attention to the sounds beyond the obvious ones. What’s the environment? What’s happening far away? What could the weather have been like that day?

See what you notice.

Until next time,

Bye