What is your mind doing?

Recently, in the novel I'm currently writing, I needed a song that a 12-year-old character could sing a cappella.  The words weren't especially important, but using lyrics from a published song is fraught with many hoops through which to jump.

So, as others have done, I wrote half a song.  There was a tune in my head, and it has meter and rhyme, but no one will hear the melody.  They will just read the lyrics.  I added additional info, such as the song sounds like Appalachian folk, or old-time folk, so that might help.

It occurs to me that someone reading it will actually have to grab a different gear in that part.  As we read, we have to create the vision, the sound, the scent based on the clues the author provides.  It is yet another step to imagine the music that might go with these lyrics.

I was listening to a story on the radio, and a woman was having her brain activity studied.  The scan showed that while her brain was active while she was signing, it was even more active when she silently imagined she was singing.  

Imagining took more work than the doing!

We see this as well when brains are scanned while people watch a video recording vs. reading the same scene without pictures.  The reading involves more brain activity, probably because the reader has to imagine rather than just see and hear.

Fewer young people read today than a few decades ago, ergo they do less imagining.  These younger generations are wonders at multi-tasking, but deficient in singular focus, compared to members of Gen X, but it seems clear that they likely imagine less. 

I see this as a real shame.  Don't get me wrong, I'm amazed by the next few generations, and I certainly don't fall into the camp of saying they are not motivated or lazy or helpless.  They are none of these things, but they seem to be less imaginative.

Partly because the internet has left little to wonder about, they've seen more by age 8 than I saw by age 14, but also because they haven't done that sort of mental lifting.  We teach persuasive writing, over and over, and neglect fiction writing.  We assign books that have so much in common with the last book we assigned, often with a heavy-handed story, and almost always filled with unrelenting sadness and trauma.  When was the last time a school assigned a novel that was a side-splitting comedy?  

So, they multi-task well, but absorbing instead of imagining.  When we stumble across an artist or voracious reader among them, it's as if we've run into Livingstone in Ujiji.  Again, I'm sure someone will respond with, "Nonsense, kids today read twice the books we did, paint many more paintings, are expert potters, and most have full-sized looms in their bedrooms where they wove their families' blankets."

Shut up.

I already said, I have great admiration for the younger generations, and pointing out a difference in how they think and have thunk is not a condemnation.  I also know that a call for them to "read more" doesn't really make sense, although I'd like to see it.  It would be like a member of Gen Z trying to teach a GenXer to type a story, with music playing and the television on, while texting with a friend.  

We'd say, "Yeah, I could learn to do that.  Why would I want to?"  Just as they would if we said, "Turn off all other distractions, get on your bed, and in silence read for two hours."

Neither generation is better, but an adaptation has occurred.  While there are exceptions, younger people adapted to the new world around us, and also adapted away from imagining things.