Had an interesting experience yesterday. I was sitting on the bed which belonged to my late mother-in-law, in the room in which she died. All of the photos, paintings, hangings and other works of art collected over a lifetime and carefully hung on her bedroom walls for 30 years had been removed. What lay beneath spoke something to me of the effects of time and light and, yes, chemistry, on human lives and relationships.
Where the various works had hung was revealed the walls' original color, almost azure; the rest of the walls, those portions which had been uncovered all those years, exposed to the passage of time and thus affected by the play of light upon them, were still blue, of course, but a washed-out, faded blue tinged with white, almost, like the horizon on a winter day when snow's on its way. And of course my metaphorical mind leapt into action and started to think about how that so mirrored life and human relations.
The world is changing every moment, even to the very cells that make up our bodies, and yet we usually don't, maybe even can't, notice. Change happens so slowly that it's imperceptible yet undeniable. I look very different from the way I did 20 years ago, and yet the guy I see in the mirror looks just like me. It's only when the veil is lifted, when I see photos of myself from the past that I realize fully the extent of the change time and light and life have wrought upon me.
No one noticed the gradual effect of the change in wall color on Natalee Fogel's bedroom walls, I'm sure, any more than we see day-to-day changes in ourselves or even others around us. But when we see ourselves or others in a different light those effects become impossible to ignore. William Maxwell, the late and noted editor at The New Yorker wrote a novel called Time Will Darken It, in which, really, nothing much happened except the quotidian (love that word, don't get to use it often), mundane events of a daily life. And sometimes time does darken it; I'm sure you've all had the experience of moving a rug or a piece of furniture on a wooden floor and being shocked by how much darker the surrounding, exposed flooring is than that which has been covered. The point is that time and light and events and elements change everything: lives, loves, all experience. Whether for darker or lighter may vary but, of course, the only constant in life is change.
"Fading" or "Faded" songs this week, then, on the radio. Among them:
Daylight Fading Counting Crows
Fading Away James Taylor
Fading Memory Eilen Jewell
Don't Fade Away Dead Can Dance
Don't Fade Away Milla
Don't Fade Away Willie Nelson
Don't Fade On Me Tom Petty
Fade Away Ernest Ranglin
Fade Into Light Boz Scaggs
Fade To Black Dire Straits
Fadeaway The Bodeans
Not Fade Away Rolling Stones
Not Fade Away James Taylor
Book Faded Brown The Band
Faded Ben Harper
Faded Love Delaney & Bonnie
Not Fade Away/Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad Grateful Dead
On Records, The Sound Just Fades Away Greg Brown
Faded From The Winter Iron & Wine
Sweet Dream Fade Laura Nyro
Fade Away Oasis
Fade Away Steve Tibbetts
Fading Love Amos Garrett
Summer Is Fading Jim Capaldi
Tuesday, noon til two on WOOL 91.5 FM, wool.fm on the webs. Hope to see you there.
And remember: rust never sleeps.
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