““Marie-Louise Mallet emphasizes the decreased control over the experience of listening as opposed to looking: To look is to choose one’s point of view. [ . . . ] To listen is to be “touched” without ever being able to touch what touches us, without being able to seize or retain it. [ . . . ] It is to hear what one listens to take its distance, lose itself like a fleeting echo. To listen is to not be able to maintain, to keep present. It is not being able to retain. It’s to not be able to come back. [ . . . ] What has been heard will be kept only in memory, that is, kept as lost, without ever assuring that we have heard well, without being able to reassure ourselves.””
