Listen Harder

I asked my friend to lunch this week and she didn’t hesitate.

“How about Fable? I know you didn’t like it, but I want to try it again. Maybe you’ll give it a second chance.”

“I just think they’re kinda pretentious,” she said.

“It’s called Fable,” I laughed. “Stark black-and-white sign. I think they’re going for pretentious.”

“In this town?!”

“Absolutely. They have the only full liquor license in town. Come get a drink.”

“Ohhh…” her Irish eyes sparkled.

I ordered a $20 patty melt with a kale Caesar and a Mexican Coke. She had a $14 margarita. A little pretentious.

And she liked it.

But we had linen napkins, lovely service, and excellent food.

“So… a bargain, right?”

“They make you shake the dust off coming through the door here,” she said, smirking.

“Wanna see the itinerary I built for Italy?”

“Heck yeah.”

There were tunes, mostly arias, suggested listening to accompany the trip. Verdi, Vivaldi, Puccini, Mozart.

“You just know these things, I suppose?”

“My mother sent me to college to study classical voice.”

A beat.

“Kinda pretentious, huh?”

“Kinda,” I said. “But wonderful.”

“Dude,” I said, laughing. “Look at where we live.”

“That’s my point,” she shot back. “You have a septic tank and live in a cowboy town.”

“How many actual cowboys do you know?” I asked. “We just like the hats.”

“It’s a cool style.”

“It is,” I said. “And Santa Fe is super pretentious. Own it.”

**********************

I’ve spent a lot of my life learning when to tuck things in, when to make them smaller, when to laugh first so no one else has to. But watching her flip through that itinerary, watching her curiosity outrun her skepticism, something clicked.

Not long ago, Timothée Chalamet said something about opera and ballet, that it felt like trying to preserve something no one really cares about anymore. The response was immediate. Some people heard honesty. Others heard dismissal.

I had a reaction. Part of me relished the backlash. I watched dancers respond with brilliance. Artists like Misty Copeland reminding the world, without saying a word, exactly why these art forms endure. But another part of me hated it.

I love his work. I love the sensitivity he brings to his roles. So, hearing him dismiss something I care about didn’t just feel wrong. It felt personal.

**********************

We’re too quick to label things we don’t understand. And instead of stepping closer, we label them.

Pretentious.
Too much.
Unnecessary.

But often what we’re really saying is simple. I haven’t spent time here yet.

Not getting something isn’t a failure. It’s the beginning of a relationship. The risk isn’t that we don’t know things. It’s that we decide too quickly that we don’t need to. I don’t live that way. I’m a junkie for experiences. I want more of them, not fewer. More music, more art, more perspectives I don’t fully understand yet. Dismissing something too quickly doesn’t make us discerning. It makes our world smaller.

**********************

I’m not a saint. I’m just like my friend. I lead with judgment. Luckily, neither of us stop there. It takes practice.

When I was little, my mom made me take three bites of everything. I hated it. But it trained me to stay in the experience long enough for something to change.

Now, as a producer, I have my own rule. I listen three times all the way through before I say anything that matters.

Exposure is the cure. Not instant understanding. Not instant taste. Exposure.

We used to talk about “acquired taste.” Things you didn’t love at first but learned to. Music like this. Food. Art. Even people.

But acquiring taste takes time. It takes repetition. It takes attention.

And I have to ask: in a world built on scrolling, on instant reactions, on deciding in seconds, do we even acquire taste anymore? Or have we decided it’s too much work? Because if we don’t build the capacity to stay with something, we don’t just lose taste. We lose the ability to develop it at all.

**********************

That’s why what’s happening right now matters.

While I was writing this, the city where I built much of my music life proposed cutting arts funding by 85 percent. The choirs and small organizations I’ve sung with, the ones that give people their first real shot at listening harder, are on the chopping block.

I keep thinking about my three bites rule. About how nothing that actually matters reveals itself the first time. About how quickly we decide something isn’t worth our attention. This isn’t really about money. It’s about whether we still believe exposure matters. Because if we don’t protect the spaces where people get to listen harder, we don’t just lose art. We lose the ability to acquire taste at all.

**********************

Certain themes show up over and over in my life. You’ve probably seen them in my articles. I keep them close, sometimes literally. Tattooed on my body, echoed through my work. This one’s been with me for years.

Listen harder.

It’s on my forearm. A reminder I see a thousand times a day, especially when I’m tempted to decide too quickly.

**********************

Here’s your homework.

Put on a headset. Or turn your speakers all the way up. Don’t let this sit in the background. This music doesn’t work that way. It’s drama. It lives in the smallest dynamics, the quietest breath, the softest phrase. If you don’t hear those, you miss everything.

Start here:

2. “Miserere mei, Deus” — Gregorio Allegri
   The Sistine Chapel. Listen for the space between the notes as much as the notes themselves. A lone voice rises, then another answers from a distance. It feels less like a song and more like a room you’ve stepped into, one that asks you to be quiet enough to hear it.
3. “Pines of the Appian Way” — Ottorino Respighi
   Ancient Rome at dawn. It begins almost imperceptibly, low, steady, distant. Stay with it. The sound grows, layer by layer, until it becomes a force. By the end, it isn’t background anymore. It’s physical.
4. “Lacrimosa” — Mozart
   One of my favorite things to sing in a choir. Metal before electric guitars. Grief trying to become beauty. Listen for the rise and fall of the voices, how the sound swells, then releases. It carries weight without shouting.
5. “O mio bambino caro” — Puccini
   The first real aria I learned in college, an easy thing to love. Super relatable spoiled teenager energy. Florence, a bridge, and a girl telling her father that if she can’t marry the man she wants, she’ll throw herself into the river. It’s The Little Mermaid, the original version, with real stakes. Listen for how the voice stretches and softens. It pulls you in before you realize you’re already on her side.
6. “Spring” — Vivaldi
   Arrival. Light, movement, air. Listen for the conversation between instruments, the way one line answers another. Bright at first, then more detailed the longer you stay.

Stay with them. Come back to them. Listen more than once. And when it finally clicks, you’ll understand. Listen harder.

Francesca Valle is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, writer, producer, and entrepreneur. Originally from Los Angeles, she spent 12 years in San Diego and still stays closely connected to its arts community. She’s the founder of BugByte Studios and WiseJack Marketing, now based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Costa Rica, with creative roots planted in the people and stories that have shaped her.