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Listening for What’s Real
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| Photo by Daniel Flores: https://www.pexels.com/photo/tranquil-ocean-sunset-with-silhouette-31494106/ |
We are not starving for information. It is
cast on us like a stream of projectile vomit that we attempt to avoid, only to
slip and fall in the still warm pile of dog crap already left in our path. No,
it is not information we are starving for, but meaning.
We live in a time where almost everything can
be heard—yet almost nothing is truly listened to. The world hums with data,
voices, opinions, instructions, algorithms. But beneath it all, something
quieter waits.
Something more real.
And the question we must ask—gently, but
persistently—is: Am I still able to hear it?
To listen for what’s real means turning away
from the noise. It means becoming suspicious of urgency. It means letting
silence speak first—loudest.
That’s not easy.
Because what’s real rarely announces itself.
It doesn’t arrive with a ping or a banner ad. It doesn’t clamor for our likes
or rise in the algorithm. What’s real is often inconvenient. It dwells in the
quiet corners, the unscripted pauses, the spaces where there is nothing to gain
by pretending.
We’ve built a culture where immediacy is
mistaken for importance. Where the most visible is equated with the most
valuable. The louder something is, the more it seems to matter. And so we begin
to conflate volume with truth, attention with connection, speed with relevance.
But these are false equivalences.
They train us to react, not reflect. To
perform, not be present. And in that performance, we begin to lose contact with
the deeper signal beneath the noise—the signal of what is real. Not just in the
world, but in ourselves.
What is authenticity in a world built to
reward simulation? How can we know what’s real when our attention is constantly
redirected, when our identities are mediated through platforms designed to
commodify the self?
Sometimes, the only way to find out is to
notice what remains when everything else fades.
Has urgency ever made something seem real to
you—only for it to evaporate as quickly as it came? Has the presence of
someone, or something, once given you a sense of reality, only to reveal itself
as illusion in its absence? Has desire ever constructed something that felt
true, only to collapse into a hollow space once the craving passed?
These moments aren't failures of
perception—they're reminders of how fragile our sense of authenticity becomes
when it's tied to externals.
The deeper work, the more honest inquiry,
begins in stillness. In the ache that doesn’t resolve. In the breath we finally
notice after hours of forgetting we were breathing. In the words we speak when
we’re not trying to be understood, just to be real.
Realness is not a performance. It’s a
presence.
And presence is hard to cultivate in a world
that’s allergic to pause.
But maybe the path back is not grand. Maybe
it’s not a retreat into the wilderness or a deletion of every app. Maybe it
begins with something simple: walking without headphones. Leaving a message
unsent. Sitting with a thought that hasn’t been processed into content.
The real things don’t beg for attention. They
wait.
And in that waiting, they teach us patience.
They teach us how to hear again. How to recognize the timbre of our own voice
beneath the layers we’ve constructed to survive the noise.
To live with authenticity is not to reject the
world, but to remain intact within it. To carry something unmarketable inside
you and guard it, not out of fear, but reverence.
Because once you know what’s real, you begin
to know who you are.
And that is the beginning of everything.
Stone and Signal – Episode 1: Listening to the Quiet - Transcript
Welcome to Stone and Signal. I’m Lawrence Nault, and I’m grateful you’re here.
This is a podcast for the ones who still listen. The ones who feel the pulse of the world changing—beneath the noise. The ones who carry memory like stone, and send hope forward like signal.
[Segment 1 – Who You Are & Why This Exists]
I’ve always believed in the quiet power of words. Not the kind that shout across a room or try to win an argument—but the kind that stay with you. The kind you find yourself remembering at the edge of sleep, or in the wind between trees.
I’m a writer. A poet. A documentary storyteller. I’ve spent most of my life trying to understand the world by writing through it. Some of my work is grounded in fiction—stories for youth, shaped by dragons, environmental collapse, and resilience. Some of it comes out as poetry, usually when I need to speak in symbols instead of facts.
I live close to the land, in the Badlands of Alberta. I walk often. I listen more than I speak. I spend more time with my two collies than I do with people—and I’m okay with that.
I’ve been called a mountain hermit, half-jokingly, but it fits. I don’t chase spotlights. I’m not built for social media or spectacle. What I’m built for is noticing: the way the world is changing, the way we are changing with it—or resisting that change.
A lot of my work wrestles with questions around artificial intelligence. Not just how it works—but what it means. What happens when the tools we create start to reflect our worst impulses back at us? What happens when we can no longer tell what’s real—or even who we are?
In my stories, that tension between nature and machine, memory and data, identity and programming, shows up often—because it’s something I feel every day. I use AI tools in my work, including this podcast. But I’m also deeply wary of what we’re building, and what we’re forgetting as we build it.
Stone and Signal was born out of that tension—and a longing for something slower, older, more rooted. A space to sit with questions instead of rushing to answers. A space to remember that not all signals are digital, and not all stories are engineered.
I’ve tried podcasting before. I’ve started and stopped. I always felt like I had to speak louder, be more visible, or compete with the noise. But this—this podcast—is different. It’s not built for scale. It’s built for depth.
If you’re someone who feels overwhelmed by the pace of the world…
If you’re grieving what we’re losing…
If you’re trying to understand where technology, nature, and identity collide…
Or if you just want to hear a voice that isn’t trying to sell you anything…
…then you’re in the right place.
[Segment 2 – Why "Stone and Signal"]
Why Stone and Signal?
The name came to me as I was walking near home—here in the Badlands, where the wind feels old and the earth holds memory.
Stone is what grounds us. It’s the past, the place, the permanence.
Signal is what we send forward. What we hope someone—somewhere—might receive.
That tension lives in everything I write. In the stories I tell. In the questions I ask.
This podcast sits in that space too—between what’s ancient and what’s arriving. Between what we know and what we fear.
I didn’t create this podcast because I needed something to say. I created it because I needed a space where I didn’t have to perform.
There is so much pressure with social media to be out in front of everyone, putting on a show, trying to get followers, and gain attention. And to do that, you have to try and be what you think people want to see and want you to be.
No, I created this podcast because I needed a place where I could speak with care—not to inform or convince, but simply to connect.
We’re so used to information being immediate, polished, and productive. But meaning doesn’t work like that. Meaning shows up quietly. When we’re not trying so hard. And so often, it’s missed.
There’s the noise out there, shouting, the scrolling, the outrage. But then there is the noise that we carry inside. The voice that says you’re not doing enough. Say something clever. Make it land.
That noise is harder to escape because we start mistaking it for the truth. We confuse urgency with importance. We think if we’re not loud, we don’t matter. Somewhere in there, our voice gets buried beneath the noise, that we’ve accepted as normal.
This podcast is one way I am digging my voice out. Not to prove anything, but to remember how it feels to speak without performing.
[Segment 3 – What to Expect This Season]
Each episode this season will explore something I keep circling in my work:
How do we live in a world that’s burning, buzzing, unraveling?
What do we still owe each other, the land, the future?
I’ll be sharing essays, poems, stories. Reflections from my books. Moments from life. You won’t find guest debates or interviews here—not yet. Just quiet thought and honest words.
New episodes will arrive every few weeks—like a shift in the moon. Not rushed. Not fixed. Just part of a quieter rhythm.
[Segment 4 – Finding My Voice]
I’ve spent a long time wrestling with voice. Not just how to use it, but when, and why. The world tells us to be louder, faster, always visible, but I have never really fit that mold.
I come from the quiet places. From the wide-open lakes and the forests of Ontario, to the quiet shores of Prince Edward Island. From the Northern reaches of Quebec, to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. From the wind-bent prairie and the hoodoos of the Badlands.
I write fiction and poetry because it lets me speak truth without shouting. And now, with this podcast, I’m trying to do the same. Speak, but speak softly. Because soft doesn’t mean weak. And quiet doesn’t mean empty.
There’s a poem that I recently wrote. I’d like to read that for you. It’s called Layers of Becoming.
What I was,
I am not.
What I could have been,
I never was.
What I am,
I will not be.
What I will be,
I am searching for,
Scanning the depths of my soul,
Crawling the darkest reaches of my heart,
Probing the abyss of my mind,
Seeking my authentic self.
It’s there,
Beneath the layers of life lived,
The layers of joy,
And the sediment of disappointment,
The layers of love,
And the dregs of loss,
The layers of anger,
And the debris of rage,
The layers of energy,
And the residue of fatigue,
The layers of pain,
And the mire of suffering,
The layers of years,
And the crust of assumed wisdom.
Can I dig deep enough,
Fast enough,
To find that authenticity,
And breathe in that truth,
Before time shuts down the exhuming,
Of my truest self.
[Segment 5 – A Moment from the Wind]
There was a night not long ago when I walked out into the hills behind my place, along the river bank—no phone, no music, just me and my dogs. Just the wind and a sky that didn’t need anything from me.
And it struck me: how long it had been since I had heard my own thoughts without interruption. Which seems odd because my last podcast was called When The Only Sound Is Your Thoughts. Because, unlike a lot of people, I have that separation from the world, and the busyness.
We don’t get many chances like that anymore. Even our silence is filled with alerts, algorithms, ambient dread. But that night, I remembered what it feels like to simply exist. To be one breath in a larger pattern.
And I knew I wanted to make something that came from that place.
[Segment 6 – A Breath]
So, wherever you are right now. Walking, resting, driving, or doing nothing at all, I invite you to pause with me. Just for a moment. Breathe in. Let it go. Notice what’s around you. The sounds. The feelings. Even the resistance to slowing down.
This isn’t a meditation podcast, but it is a space for attention. And attention is something we’ve been taught to surrender too easily.
[Segment 7 – Final Thoughts]
Stone and Signal won’t always be like this. Some episodes will be rooted in stories. Others, in poetry. Others in protest. But all of them will come from the same place, the belief that stories matter, even now. Perhaps especially now.
I’ll talk to you about youth and grief, about voice and silence. About AI and ecology and the tension of living honestly in a collapsing world. And I’ll do it slowly.
Before we end, I want to leave you with a question. One you don’t need to answer now. Or even out loud. Just hold it for a while.
When was the last time you heard your own voice and recognized it as your own? Not the one shaped by expectations. Not the one tuned for an audience. But the one that’s beneath all that.
Because there is a kind of peace in finding that voice. Not the peace of everything being easy or resolved. But the quiet strength of no longer hiding from yourself. Not needing to bend, perform, pretend.
It doesn’t always come with clarity. Truth is, it’s probably going to come with some discomfort. But it’s always going to bring you closer to what’s real.
That’s the voice I hope you find here. Not my voice. Yours.
[Segment 8 – Closing & Book Mention]
If this resonated with you, stay. Listen to it again. Share it with a friend. Come back again when you are ready.
And if you would like to explore my other works, like my books, you can find those in online bookstores. My essays and poems you can find on my blog at lawrencenault.me. Just click on ‘Journal’.
Sales help to support this podcast, and this podcast helps to support me. Transcripts and reflections are live on my blog.
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