FADE TO BLACK

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I WAS NOT YET DEEPLY INVOLVED IN PHOTOGRAPHY in 1968, the first time I heard Jimmy Webb’s song Watermark, which he wrote when he was collaborating with the actor Richard Harris, who, owing to his role as King Arthur in Camelot, was briefly celebrated as an intriguing, if unconventional, singer. The lyrics of the song try to capture the essence of things that are not destined to be preserved, to rail against the fading and impermanence of memory. A half century had to pass before a song that I really enjoyed at first hearing became the very definition of the magic trick we attempt in making a photograph.

But enough talking. First, an image:

And now, the words that make all such images so, as Webb writes “draped with my regret…”

How delicate the tracery of her fine lines
Like the moonlight lacetops of the evening pines
Like a song half heard through a closed door
Like an old book when you cannot read the writing anymore

How innocent her visage as my child lover lies
Pressed against the rainswept windy windows of my eyes
Like an antique etching glass design that somehow turned out wrong
I keep looking through old varnish
At my late lover’s body
Caught on ancient canvas
Decaying, disappearing
Even as I sing this song

How tenderly the tapestry is draped with my regret
And the bittersweet inbroidery that hasn’t faded yet
But I see the details dying in that distant soft design
Like the taste of summer fading like from a dusty winter wine

How secretly and silently my sorrow disappears
You can’t see it with your eyes or hear it with your ears
It’s like a watermark that’s never there and never really gone
I keep looking through old varnish
At my late lover’s body
Caught on ancient canvas
Decaying, disappearing
Even as I sing this song