W. J. Z.

LET'S TALK IT OVER

Monday

2:30

MURIEL DRAPER

NOVEMBER 1, 1937

Good afternoon. . .

Our first reaction to a new thing -- a new system of government, a new theory of the universe, a new discovery of science -- anything which may change our accepted way of life -- is an emotional one.

It is very apt to be felt as an emotional resistance, because, though the human organism has developed through change and the ability to survive it, we are prone to forget how inevitably we adapt ourselves, and only remember -- hearing some dim atavistic echo of fear within us -- that new circumstances may threaten the security of the old.

I must confess that I put up a stubborn, and even bitter resistance to the gramaphone when it began to make its persistent way into my range of hearing, and elaborately denied any claims made for it as a method of increasing the enjoyment of music.

I protested that people who wanted to hear music could always get to where music was being played, that to fully understand music, one must

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participate as closely as possible in its actual performance, and that children
growing up in an atmosphere of music made available by the mere turn of a mechanical
handle, would have no more interest in listening to it than they would in turning
on an electric light switch!

All pure poppy-cock, of course and entirely disproved in
these times of impeccable recording.

I remember some one saying to me, at the climax of one of
my tirades, "Well, its good, and its come to stay, and you'll like it." He was
right.

Somewhat chastened and ashamed by this exhibition of bad
judgement and false prophecy, I was a little more wary in my response to radio --
I listened to football games and prize fights, because I liked the fluctuating
and exciting sounds of the crowd, and the thrilling immediacy of the description
by the announcers on the spot; I listened to political campaign speeches because
I wanted my side to win, and estimated the chances of success by the tone of the
different candidates' voices.

But it was sometime before I really listened,--really received
what the radio offers. There was a lingering emotional resistance
to thinking about what I heard instead of what I read.

Our eyes have been so over-burdened as the way into our thought,

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that it is time we used our ears. When you think of how much we READ, how
dependent we are on the printed word for what we learn and believe, it is
staggering a staggering weight to put on one sense organ.

Even if we don't read -- and maybe there are a few people
intelligent enough not to! -- our eyes are everywhere and at all times attacked
by written words and reproduced pictures -- signs, advertisements, newspapers
and billboards, with their various advices and commands . . .

No one sense organ can transmit all this to the brain so
unremittingly, without some loss to true thoughtfulness in transit.

Why, we almost never describe a thing or event in any terms
but those of sight. We seldom say "He sounded so and so", "They made such and
such a noise" -- We say "He looked happy", or "They looked angry". We read
about sounds, but we don't listen to them very sensitively. . .

This constant reading is, in my opinion, one of the reasons
why printed matter is less and less effective as a means of convincing people,
or persuading them to think. We need to use our ears again.

"In the beginning was the word", to be sure, but it wasn't
always be the printed one!

Radio has made me sharply aware of this, though at first

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I was a careless listener, refusing to make the effort to assimilate what I could not see.

As music is one of the imperishable valuable things in the world to me --- I believe everything happens first in music --- it was this feature of radio programs that claimed my serious attention.

I think the amount and variety of good music that has been made available to the American public in recent years through the medium of the radio is one of the pure miracles of fact for which we may feel profoundly grateful in a perplexed and turbulent world.

Not only do I feel grateful for its direct benefits, but for the new audiences for all kinds of music, particularly chamber music, it has created. No concert of chamber music could command the audience ten years ago that it can command today. People were a little inclined to look upon a passion for chamber music as an affectation --- star soloists, with an orchestra considered thrown in as a necessary evil, were the only musical performances worth listening to. In fact Chamber Music was a bore! . . While now people are turned away from such concerts by the hundreds --- (and by the way, we haven't enough concert halls in New York -- We must do something about it -)

It is not only the millions of people who thought it

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snobbish to like what they referred to as "classical" music who are now enjoy-
ing a wider field of music -- the really snobbish ones are having a new ex-
perience too, and beginning to discover the musical integrity and value of
our popular music, which, both by composition and performance is making American
music -- American folk music, if I may call it so, one of the most vigorous
and lovely in the world today.

In short, radio brings more and more of the whole melodious,
irridescent body of music into our daily hearing. And music is one of the most
exquisitely integrated methods of thought we have devised.

Hearing alone is not enough to make us think, any more than
seeing. Nothing alone is enough! Thought that is unrelated to feeling is a
fruitless function of the brain, of no use to mankind: it is just an intellectual
game.

Nor is the sheer unthinking expression of personal emotion --
the almost indecent habit of "self-expression" -- of any permanent value, what-
ever temporary releif it may offer to the person who expresses. . .

But when we are impelled by what we feel to use our brain --
the resulting thought is likely to become action -- and surely the human voice
reveals the quality of emotion behind the words more subtly than the printed