DORIS LESSING
13
the kind of books that we're now used to, all in little bits, or the kind of
programs that we're now used to, or some of the films that we now see,
which are so fast that sometimes I find it hard to keep up. None of the
young people do . The other night I saw a very gray, very slow, very beau–
tiful film. A young person in the room was saying "cut, cut, cut, cut, cut."
He couldn't stand it. He's used to "flick, flick, flick, flick, flick." I'm used
to the long, slow narrative and a look on someone's face that tells you
about a life and the slow way two people cross a room so you can see what
they are like from how they move, and so on. There are two completely
different sensibilities here.
Now this inconsequentiality, which we are educating our children to,
teaches them they have nothing to do with what's going on. If there's a
narrative, you are a part of it. If it is little bits of plot all broken up, then
the person does not connect with it, and I wonder if this leads to remarks
like that of a young man who murdered someone and said, "Oh well, I
didn't realize it would hurt him." This was in London, a young man tor–
tured a half-grown child and said afterwards, "I didn't realize it would hurt
him." Well, he's been watching films all his life where torture goes on and
he's not connected with it. He's not in the story.
Quite a big question involves music. Once upon a time, music, civi–
lized music, was listened to by a few educated people. What is happening
now, as we know, is that everybody is assaulted by music from every direc–
tion and young people might spend years of their lives with very loud,
thumping music going straight into their brains. Now music is in fact
extremely potent, very emotional, and has always been used by govern–
ments and authori ty to affect people. It has been used by churches very
efficiently. It is used by governments when they send young men off to war
hoping that they will be so tanked up on music that they won't mind being
killed. Shamans use it all the time either for healing or for ecstatic pur–
poses. People know that music is very powerful, but apparently we never
acknowlege that. Has anyone who is responsible, teachers or educators,
thought that this music could in fact damage a young person? It is my
belief that a whole generation of young people, and soon it will be more
than one, are emotionally disturbed because of music, which goes straight
into the emotional centers. There was a very interesting bit of research
done in reply to that cliche we used to hear so often, "Well, he's a very
refined person because he loves Beethoven." They subjected a whole lot
of people
to
very high levels of a spiritual kind of music and after that put
questions to them. They were much more bloodthirsty than they were
before they heard the music. What they had been listening to had affected
them in such a way that they were ready for sensational punishments, I
mean, punishments that afTected them with pleasure because they were
