It’s an actual thing that as you grow older you perceive time differently, mainly in that it seems to fly by faster. Waiting a year for something to happen when you were nine years old felt like FOREVER. At, say, 49, it feels like the proverbial blink of an eye.
A few days ago, Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac died, at the age of 79. This made me think back to the reunion of the classic Mac line-up that led to the live album The Dance, which I bought in the now quaint CD format. The concert, album and subsequent tour all happened in 1997–25 years ago as of this writing, yet when I think back to it, it feels like it happened far more recently, more like five or ten years ago. It’s weird. McVie was already 54 at the time. She rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 2014 at the age of 71, yet in my mind she seems to be eternally around 40 years old. This may admittedly be in part to how music videos “preserve” people as they were, but I think the time thing plays a big part, too.
I don’t have anything more profound to offer on this, only that it’s something that has become more obvious to me after I moved from my 40s and into my 50s. The death of McVie made me think again how my brain doesn’t easily wrap around how much time has passed on so many things.
Although it does feel like it’s been about a hundred years since I had a decent head of hair.