The power of human imagination is tremendous, when one chooses to use it. For me, this is important and even essential while composing music. You imagine specific players playing in a specific situation and in your inner ear you hear their sound and you can imagine the situation to great advantage (when all your circuits or spark plugs are working well.)

The human imagination can be loads of fun. Today I’ve been imagining, with astonishing success. Astonishing to me that is. Imagine actually being Neil Armstrong, for example. In this example, I  start with an experience I know first hand (breathing using SCUBA gear) and then using whimsical flights of fancy, I add props…like putting on a motorcycle helmet (imagined only), and a big bully winter coat with fat mitts. I can hear my voice, not tinny and phone-like as humans on earth were able to hear, but my real voice inside the helmet saying “one small step”, as I put my big fat snow boots on the ash and dust below the bottom step. And then adding the rest, “One giant leap for mankind”. If that’s what he actually said. I know there is some argument about what was actually said. Imagine that. I mean, IMAGINE that was YOU doing that.

And saying….”One giant leap for mankind”.

Then an interesting development can take place. You can start to consider the situation in a real context. What was actually happening? Man’s first footprint on the moon was history with a capital “H”.

But was it? I mean, “a giant leap for mankind”? Maybe it was no more important than the first time a human jumped over a horizontal pole 7 feet off the ground. Unassisted. Or when Beethoven completed the final draft of the 9th symphony. Or when the first West African slave ship came ashore in the southern USA.

Maybe it WOULD have been a giant leap if Neil had found some ash or dust or even a rock up there that turned out to be a cure for all cancers.

Other experiments for the imagination. Imagine being the first person ever to ride a bike. Or set fire to something. Put yourself there. Imagine the astonishment. the sense of achievement. You probably would have wanted to run around shouting your word of choice (assuming eureka hadn’t already been taken, you certainly could shout that – or you could shout eureka anyway). How must have it felt for Wilbur Wright to experience the first moment of lift in the early part of the 20th century? Eureka!!! Bloody hell!!! Holy SHit!. I’m pretty sure the word, fuck was not used back then, but,…maybe?

There have been so many firsts. So many PROFOUND firsts. Some astonishingly beautiful or horrific. Some so destructive that their effects will never die away. Some so magnificent that human life will forever be the richer.

Just imagine!