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REPRODUCING THE IRREPRODUCIBLE
What would my life be like if I only heard everything once, only experienced everything once, only saw everything one time?
What if Playback had never been invented? What if there were no snapshots, selfies, cameras, recording devices, image reproducers?
What if echoes were the only evidence I had that my voice existed?
What if each moment in time was complete in and of itself, never to be reviewed except in memory and imagination?
My idea of a perfect day is one in which nothing is repeated to me or regurgitated in my direction.
This cannot easily occur.
Maybe this attitude is driven by my short attention span. Once I experience something, enough is enough. I don’t need to synthetically experience it again. Unless it is really, really important.
Fireworks? They are lovely, but why do I need to see them more than once? I cherish the memory of their sound, their piercing beauty, the awesome effect they have on viewers. As a writer, I can weave tales about fireworks, I can examine them again and again from every angle, through the lenses of different philosophies, right here, inside my mind. I can appreciate a fireworks display and hold it in memory for a lifetime.
Another way of explaining this: Why would I need more than one wedding ring? The one I received is the only one I will ever need to contemplate. I don’t need to be given a new wedding ring several times a year. Memory and affection suffice.
Watching a news or sports event, I wish to see it once. I do not require several dozen re-plays of every single play, pounding away at me until all life is wrung from it. I only wish to view that home run as it happens, then I can go away and contemplate it. I need watch a horrible disaster one time—it loses all meaning after battering my senses repeatedly through re-play.
My point, if I have one, is that the purity of a single moment is so much more powerful when it is allowed to exist on its own intrinsic terms, when it is not rendered listless through endless repetition and yadda yadda yadda commentary.
Of course, there are moments in life worth re-viewing. These are the big, important, life-changing moments. These I would keep. They are worthy enough.
For me, the way to watch an athletic event is to mute the punditry and avert my gaze during the repetitions. The way to appreciate a book is to read it once, then contemplate it for a few months until it settles itself and becomes part of a continuing self-assembling jigsaw puzzle in my heart. The way to appreciate you is to listen to what you have to say, observe your presence, savor your being, then wrestle with what I have learned and silently assimilate it into my life.
Meanwhile, I hope to find pleasure now and then in spending just one day avoiding visual addiction—that modern-times need to view hundreds of times an image of something that only happened once and is important enough to merit silent appraisal, deep within
© Jim Reed 2017 A.D.