Between the Ears

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 662, 14 March 1952, Page 12

Between the Ears

‘| HOSE socially-significant broadcast talks which have largely taken the place of the weekly sermon must similarly, I feel sure, often fall upon unretentive ears. The best-intentioned talk, the best-constructed talk, the bestdelivered talk is all too likely to, glide effortlessly and pleasantly through the space between ear and ear, leaving no fertile sediment behind. Even the bestintentioned listener, though keenly, tratefully aware that here is something real and earnest is often powerless to prevent the relentless seepage out the leeward ear almost as soon as it has been received by the windward... But

the situation is not entirely hopeless. Often a talk will, perhaps by chance, perhaps by design, provide listeners with some sort of catch-phrase that has power to lodge itself obstinately in the stream of consciousness and snag-like collect round itself intellectual flotsam and jetsam. Such a phrase was provided by H. C. D, Somerset in the first talk of the series Settlers in a Strange Land when he spoke of "two-way assimilation." I hope that, after the next three talks, I shall be able to point to a regular permanent island of enlightenment in that desert of waters, my infer-aural space.

M.

B.