“Where did all that time go?” “How can that have been X years ago?” “Time seems to pass much faster as you get older.” We’ve probably all used at least one of these terms, particularly we seniors when reposting memories on social media. Because time does seem to flash by at an alarming rate of knots as we become part of the geriocracy, as I call it. A certain Professor Adrian Bejan suggests that time actually does appear to go faster as we get older and has presented a theory as to what’s happening, as our brains begin to slow down and disintegrate. However, a theory is all that it is and as far as we are currently aware, time actually isn’t speeding up, even if it feels like it. And if I pause long enough to think about it, time is flying faster than a speeding bullet.
Astonishingly, to me, ten years has passed since I left the wacky world of full time work. Sure, there was a near decade long financial hit, but the life I have had has been infinitely better than the one I had before. I am simply able to do more of what I want to do rather than what someone else is telling me to do. Whereas, for example, my writing was previously confined to a brief period once I finished work for the day, usually too weary mentally to write anything I was happy with, I have had time, the most precious resource.
I can’t deny that I do my fair share of looking back, but what I don’t do is to endlessly plough through old photographs or even look at, never mind share, social media ‘memories’. As Mike Hugg and Dick Le Frenais so aptly put it in their song Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?: “Tomorrow’s almost over, today went by so fast. It’s the only thing to look forward to, the past.”
Another thing I try not to do is adopt the old fogey attitude that actually things were always better in the old days. I know there is a temptation to slip on the rose-coloured glasses and remember a time when everyone looked after everyone else, no one bothered to lock their doors because there was no crime, how all the summers were hot and sunny (“We don’t have seasons anymore” ad nauseum), and how things were SO much better before that wretched internet came along. Sure, many things are worse these days than they used to be, but many more are better and I am not sure constantly looking back and remembering a brighter day that actually wasn’t brighter helps anyone.
I used to be find of saying something along the lines of, “I feel exactly the same as I did X years ago“, and in some ways I still am. Although I am hurtling towards my demise, I still haven’t worked out what I want to do with my life and while I am sure my mental faculties are beginning to decline – and that’s sadly inevitable for all of us – it’s happening so slowly I barely notice. It’s only when I go upstairs to get something and then, when I get there, forget what I went up there for in the first place that I think, hang on a minute. And missing the bus the other day by about five seconds when my achy breaky rheumatic knee refused to allow me to jog was a timely reminder that I am gradually falling apart, physically as well as mentally. This I know will not get better.
The past is comforting. That’s why I occasionally listen to the music of the past and watch stuff on YouTube from yesteryear. But by the same token, I need to do new stuff, too. Go to different places, read more books, discover new music; make the best of the time I have left. This, for me, cannot include too much musing about the time that has already gone.
In some ways, it does feel like yesterday when I saw Steely Dan at the Bristol Hippodrome but I also understand that actually it was 50 years ago yesterday and that I was, in every sense, an innocent man when Donald Fagen and Walter Becker did their stuff. If I was to look at a photo of myself from that time, I am not sure I would know or recognise who it was. I mean, it is great to look back, but I have to be honest and admit that actually I am far happier about the gigs to come for the rest of the year, including Lack Of Afro, Terry Reid, Jason Isbell and Jordan Rakei. And the lesson for me about the upcoming gigs, with the notable exception of Terry Reid, who I have never seen before, is in Rick Nelson’s song Garden Party where he sings this: “If you gotta play at garden parties,I wish you a lotta luck. But if memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck.”
In truth, time passed quickly because time does pass quickly. Our time on this Earth is less than the tiniest speck in history and unless we have some kind of religious superstition whereby we expect to survive our own deaths, if the only thing we have to look forward to is the past we might just be missing out on today.