Needing some mood music, I went to my CDs, and pulled one that I’d not listened to in a while — Danny Elfman’s score for the original Tim Burton Batman film.
As I put it in the CD player and leaned back in my office chair, a sudden realization struck me.
This summer, it will have been twenty years since Michael Keaton first donned the cowl and cape. Twenty years since Tim Burton transformed the cinematic Batman from a camp figure into a tragic, gothic figure. Twenty years since Jack Nicholson said, “This town needs an enema.” Twenty years since I fell in love with Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer” as Vicki Vale’s love theme.
Twenty years. Two decades.
Twenty years.
Which means that next year… a high school reunion. A twenty year reunion.
When ten rolled around, I said, quoting the ever-quotable Martin Blank of Grosse Pointe Blank, “I don’t have anything in common with those people anymore,” and skipped it.
Anniversaries.
Then, a few weeks ago, on January 19th, Edgar Allan Poe’s 200th birthday came and went. A few weeks from now, Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday will be celebrated.
Every year, I suppose, is an anniversary of something.
Yet, how many years are anniversaries of things important to me?
The Tim Burton Batman. Poe. Lincoln.
Even May sees the tenth anniversary of my grandfather’s death.
Ten years. A decade. Yet, it doesn’t seem as though it’s been anywhere near that long.
Tempus fugit, indeed.