ol' blue eyes

...this encounter, which seemed to bridge a canyon of time: on the one side, a composer who had been born in 1864, before the founding of the German Empire; and, on the other, Americans who had come of age with Frank Sinatra. 
---Alex Ross

When two worlds collide...In the mirror of the past...

That's it. London, where worlds often collide (mixed marriages, say, or a church that becomes a nightclub, a street that has changed uurecognizably except for one grubby, worn down building with high windows flung open in a last act of desperation). But more often it's just worlds glancing by, strangers in the night.

What gets passed down and what gets lost over time? The sheer randomness of it (war, chance encounters, missed trains) means some cast of mind will fade into obscurity, or someone will stutter a few half-remembered words. A tune remembered as soon as the first chords are struck, even if only just, and as faintly as a dream is remembered, but the words are forgotten. What we see and hear is nothing but a distillation of the past, filtered down through some unknown process. A bright image remains at the centre of the mirror and we imagine it to be true, vital; others withdraw as the silver inherits the black. 

The first step away from home by some dim witted ancestor all those years ago explains where you are today. Some ill-fated adventure snuffs out a long line of possibilities; the wild imagination of someone else opens others up: the hinge of history: a series of mistakes or lucky breaks. If I were another...

The old and the new bustle side by side sometimes. An old man thinks to himself: once I was young; and a young man thinks: one day I will be old like that. And so the two meet. Time is a bridge.

The truth is, of course, none of the old ways were really yours-but few of the new ones are either. Some people exist-insofar as they exist-in a grey, indeterminate zone, waiting for God, for God knows what.

In the mirror of the past all that happens seems like only a vibration, a slight disturbance, of past events and temperaments: a refraction, a continuing ray, a red thread noticeable among the elaborate patterns, the hint of some old notes, played in the same sad way.