It is 10:20pm on 10/20 as I write this. It has been a long day. I took this photo between senior sessions this afternoon. Nothing really to edit. It is not cropped. It just is. A moment of color before the leaves drop.
I started editing early this morning, followed by sessions and more work. The only time I really stopped all day was a few minutes ago. My music is on random. I have a broad range of stuff on shuffle, but a song I had not heard in a long time played. And to be honest, I may have never really listened to the message before. It stopped me.
The live version of Fred Jones Part 2 by Ben Folds. A line caught me, and I listened to the rest. “All of these bastards have taken his place.” The song is about a man, Fred Jones, being forced into retirement, or forced to move on, and he is not happy about being replaced.
It came out in 2001. I remember buying the album. I listened to it on my drives up and down the East Coast, working at Kodak as a kid in my late 20s. The song opens with Jones having worked somewhere for 25 years, and now it is time to go. Well, it has been 25 years since the song came out. I am 25 years older. Not sure why the song hit me, but it did.
“He is forgotten but not yet gone.”
Not sure if it ties to the leaves, the fall, or just my age, but it is now 10:28pm on 10/20, and the song playing now is Life in One Day by Howard Jones, telling me not to go speeding my life away.
I think I need to stop for the day.
tr/trp