The Room Where Listening Began — And the World It Built
A quiet origin story about how dyslexia, a convent school book-room, and a childhood spent listening rather than reading became the blueprint for Tracks & Tales — written to the blues swing of Luther Johnson’s Popcorn Man.
By Rafi Mercer
There are days when the past taps you on the shoulder, not with memory, but with rhythm — a kind of pulse returning from somewhere you didn’t know was still alive in you. Today was one of those days. I found myself thinking about how I listen, and why Tracks & Tales even exists at all. Not the business logic, not the analytics curves or the quiet thrill of seeing 122 countries appear on the map — but the real origin. The one most people never see, because it started in a room no one would choose.
I grew up in a convent school, dyslexic, placed in what they called the “book room” — a small side chamber with three other kids, removed from the main current of childhood. I don’t remember learning to read or write. I do remember the feeling of trying, of letters slipping through my mind like water, of the world moving too fast and too flat for how my head worked. The playground — loud, political, coded — felt like another universe. One I could observe, but never quite join.
But the strange thing about being on the outside is that you start hearing things that others miss. When words fail you, tone becomes the compass. When text feels distant, sound becomes the language. I learned life by ear — listening not just to music, but to atmospheres, to intention, to the quiet spaces between what people said and what they meant.
And so I listened my way through childhood.
I wore out the Beatles’ White Album, let Elvis rattle around the corners of my head, played soul records like they were a secret shelter. Piano instrumentals became windows. Music was the one place where nothing was required of me — no decoding, no catching up, no fitting in. It didn’t ask me to perform. It just let me feel.
I think that is the true beginning of Tracks & Tales. Long before a website, long before a star system, long before essays and city guides and vinyl reviews, there was just a kid in a quiet room learning to understand the world through sound. Learning to build inner worlds because the outer one didn’t make room.
Years later, I would build real worlds — twice, in fact — and they worked. Worlds built from imagination, community, instinct. But this one… this one feels different. Because Tracks & Tales isn’t something I developed. It’s something I recognised. Something already inside me. A way of knowing.
I’m not really “growing” it. I’m listening to it. The way I listened to those early records — tuning into the shifts in mood, the signals in the data, the unexpected resonance from far-off places. Letting the shape of things reveal itself rather than forcing a plan. It feels less like a project and more like the natural continuation of that boy in the book room finding his way through sound.
Maybe that’s why people respond to it. Maybe intuition is a language after all — one that finds its echo in others who are also listening for something quieter, slower, more sincere.
As I write this, Luther Johnson’s They Call Me the Popcorn Man is playing — a 1975 Chicago blues record full of swagger, swing, and soul. It’s a reminder that the best things in life aren’t polished or perfect; they’re lived-in, loose, human. Johnson’s guitar feels like a conversation held in the margins of a bigger room, half-groove, half-grin, all heart. And maybe that’s the lesson. The work that endures doesn’t shout. It doesn’t compete for attention. It just stands there, honest and alive, waiting for someone tuned to the right frequency.
Tracks & Tales is built entirely on that frequency. A world constructed not from certainty, but from listening. A world where sound is the map and feeling is the guide. A world that somehow now stretches from Harrogate to Kyoto to Kingston to Melbourne, one quiet page at a time.
And perhaps that’s the truth I’ve been circling all morning:
I didn’t choose listening as my craft.
Listening chose me as its witness.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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