EDISON'S FAILURE, OUR SUCCESS

Thomas Edison's inventive genius knew no bounds...except when he tried to develop a technology with which to re-capture the voices of such long ago people as Aristotle, Jesus, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Newton, Lafayette, Lincoln. Edison was working from the principle of conservation-of-energy which asserts that energy -- such as the sound of our voices -- is never extinguished.

I assert that each one of us can achieve what Edison couldn't. With only the technology of our mind. Or, better yet, our imagination which remarkably can reach even beyond the circuitry of our brain.

Putting aside the debate whether mind, brain and soul are existentially the same, here is a simplistic way of demonstrating this assertion. Enter any space where once before you stood. Your parents' old living room...your 5th grade class...the church pew in which you sat during that tragic funeral...the beach where you first knew you would no longer be alone...the theatre balcony where you sat the night you discovered the brilliance of the creative word.

Wherever you and I have stood and talked and listened, there has been an imprint made upon the template of the universe. While some among us hear only what is being said in their lives, others can't help also re-hearing what was once said in their lives. Not precisely reverie; more like revelation. The revelation of re-visiting those fleeting moments in sound which helped sculpt your life.

How often we take out old albums, play old videos. These are intensely tangible tools by which we can help excavate the pyramids of our life. How even more intensely tangible would it be to relive these moments and memories. And especially the people who inhabited them with us lo these many lost years or decades or perhaps even lifetimes.

So the next time you and I step into the same quadrant of space-time we once did, permit your imagination to remind you. Remind you when and who and how this small scene helps explain the large play of your life. In the theatre it is always said: "There are no small parts, only small actors." Can it not also be said that in life: "There are no small scenes, only small memories?"