The day the iPhone was mainlined into the mainstream, I set up my 25-year-old turntable in the basement and got out my old records. That night, I played deejay-to-myself and mixed songs, singles, EPs and LPs, and, finally, long after the family had turned in for the night, settled on my teenage soundtrack to late-night car and bike rides around these city streets and lakes and creek: Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman.

Side one and all her revelations came and went, and I got up off the couch and flipped it over to side two. When the music stopped, the tone arm lifted and there was nothing but silence.

It was an odd moment, far more revelatory than any of the songs had been, as if the universe itself had paused to reflect, and took me by the hand into another portal of wisdom, and whispered secrets to me I never would have heard had I stayed plugged into the all-stimuli-all-the-time-repeat-play world I normally live in.

Henry Miller: “Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. By simple external pressure, by force of surroundings and example, by the very climate which activity engenders, one can become part of a monstrous death machine, such as America, for example. What does a dynamo know of life, of peace, of reality? What does any individual American dynamo know of the wisdom and energy, of the life abundant and eternal possessed by a ragged beggar sitting under a tree in the act of meditation?”

I make time for listening, which requires practice and reminders to do so, especially in this MySpace YouTube miasma, where everyone is getting their message out. Our leaders are terrible listeners—President Bush being the most obvious example, but the other day I saw Oprah Winfrey skewer a married man when he said he cheated with his best friend’s wife because he, a devout Christian, was “mad at God.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Someone on primetime television was saying, “I’m mad at God,” the way I suppose so many are, and I wanted to know more. But Oprah never asked the follow-up question. She was too busy getting ready to pontificate. She was like the popular girl at the party who looks over your shoulder, looking for someone cooler to talk to. She couldn’t wait to talk. She fried him. She said, “Whoa whoa whoa. Wait a second. You need to get right with God.” Duly emasculated, the guy sank into his electric chair, the “applause” sign came up, and they went to commercial.

Anyway, I’ve spent the summer listening—to myself and others and silence, but also to the birds. It’s almost as if I’ve never heard them before, like a veil has lifted from my ears, and I’ve been struck by what beautiful solos and harmonies they sing, in spite of the bleakness we the people have brought upon the planet.

I suppose I’ve long sensed that birds have a message for us, which is not the kind of thing you can say out loud in certain circles, especially in this uptighty-whitey town, without getting accused of being on acid or master of the obvious, but when I said it to a shaman friend of mine the other night she said that in many spiritual circles bird songs are in fact the dead, talking to us; giving us messages.

I mentioned my bird theory to a few other nutjobs like me over the last couple weeks and they said the same thing: It’s not just the birds, it’s everything. The sound of the wind, river, leaves, lawn mowers, airplanes, motorcycles, footsteps in empty churches and museums, all giving us messages from the dead on how to live and be alive at this crucial juncture where death is all around us, all the time, trying to seduce us into joining them instead of letting, as Christ said, “the dead bury the dead.”

I’ve also spent some of these summer nights biking to bars. It feels very Irish somehow, like I’m just jumping on my bike to go down to the pub for a quick pint, and it’s amazing what you can hear as you tool through the city and all her neighborhoods. All the languages, backyard barbeques, sirens, conversations, music, roses. For example:

Last night at midnight, I was on my way home from a bike ride that took me through the West Bank and into a chat about music with some Somali men who were a little taken aback by the white guy’s questions about African music. Then it was on to the Varsity Theater, where that old soul JoAnna James sang her uberblues to me and you and everyone we know, and then to O’Donovan’s, where I ran into a couple of friends, and then to the Entry, where there were more friends and John Doe and an awesome new band, Dead Rock West, tearing it up. But perhaps the highlight of my night came after the Entry, as I was pedaling down Hennepin Avenue, ears wide open.

From the sky came the sound of a magnificent drummer. I followed it. The cymbal crashes and feral snare were impossible to ignore. I rode my bike up the ramp past the Cherry Spoon and onto the bridge that goes from Loring Park to Walker Art Center. Three young white men—MCAD students, maybe— were set up on the bridge and trancing out on drums, keyboards, vocals.

It was hypnotic, wordless, primal, tribal, elegant, perfect. I dropped my bike, lay down on the cool concrete, and looked up at the stars. Two of the musicians’ friends videotaped it. An older black man, a couple of white teenagers, and a vampire girl stopped: communion. I closed my eyes and listened for a good long while and let them—all of them, all of it—have their way with me.