Blog / 2025 / Listening Well

They were listening to me. Sort of. What I mean is that they weren’t interrupting me and I know they could hear all my words.

I was talking through my feelings about an online art teaching business telling everyone who watches YouTube that my work is AI-generated. I went on at length about how betrayed I felt by the founders and owners of this company. John, Elli, and Dimitra Milan are all artists themselves, but they still choose to disrespect my work, even after I asked them to make it right. When I ran out of things to say about what it means to be a professional artist and how social media’s obsessive counting of views-likes-follows seems to encourage people to be petty, the listener waited a beat and then changed the subject. In other words, they didn’t respond to my monologue of ire, except to make it clear that they found it tiresome.

Fast forward a few days and I was still talking about Milan Art Institute broadcasting to the Internet that I’m a robot—the views on their video had gone from 40k to 70k in the interim. This time, I was recounting Milan Art Institute’s meanness to someone new. When I finished my torturous tale, this second individual responded by saying we should sue the company for libel.

Since I think the legal system is built to favor people who already have a lot of money and since I’m not a fan of hiring lawyers to control how people use my art in general, I dismissed the idea. But the suggestion still tickled me. In fact, it made me smile—my first real smile in relation to Milan Art Institute’s unequivocal churlishness. And with that grin, I felt relief.

Unlike the unlistening listener, this second individual had validated my feelings. They’d told me my anger was justified. And even though I didn’t want to take legal action, it soothed me to know that they’d really been paying attention.

I’ve been thinking a lot about listening recently. Last year, Princeton University hired me to make this painting of two tigers in conversation. It’s part of a mental health initiative on campus where faculty and staff display this image to let students know they’ve been trained to be good listeners.

The making of this painting went through plenty of phases, including this silly notion that Princeton’s tiger mascot should hang out of a human ear.

Eventually I settled on a slightly less surreal approach, working to get the big cats to really look engaged with each other.

This was the final mock-up sketch, before starting on the painting.

And this animation shows how I built up the layers of paint to create the image.

I’m not part of Princeton University. I’ve exhibited my art a few times on campus, most recently in the counseling offices where my Everything’s Fine coloring book is also available for students. But I’m not faculty or staff at the University, so I don’t know a whole lot about the Princeton Distress Awareness & Response Partner program outside of the information necessary to make this sticker.

Still, the idea of people making the choice to learn to listen better pleases me. What if there was training available to help everybody pay closer attention to each other?

I can’t help but wonder if, in that world, John Milan and his family would be appalled to think that they have allowed 100k people to so egregiously misunderstand another artist’s work. (Because, yes, Milan Art Institute’s error-riddled video is still on YouTube and it continues to rack up tens of thousands of more views than almost all of their other videos.)

And I like to think that the original unlistening listener would figure out that validating another human being’s feelings is not only a kindness to that human being, but also a kindness to themselves. The connection that comes with listening well is a beautiful gift to all involved.