The blacksmith and the artist/ Reflect it in their art/ They forge their creativity/ Closer to the heart OR If you choose not to decide/You still have made a choice !

Back when I decided to join facebook, senior year of college ( so it must have been fall of 2007 ) they had a place where you could basically put up quotes that defined you or some such.

What I put up was the lyrics to Rush's Closer to the Heart:

And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality
Closer to the heart
Closer to the heart

The blacksmith and the artist
Reflect it in their art
They forge their creativity
Closer to the heart
Yes closer to the heart

Philosophers and plowmen
Each must know his part
To sow a new mentality
Closer to the heart
Yes closer to the heart, yeah, oh

Whoa whoa
You can be the captain
And I will draw the chart
Sailing into destiny
Closer to the heart

It seemed as good a summation of me as I could find. And the song is still one of my five or so favorite songs of all time.

Of all the fandoms that I belong to , the one that connects to me most deeply in an emotional level is music. I have no talent in music whatsoever, and in fact basically got kicked out of my High School's theatre troupe when they moved on to Musicals and it turned out I could not hold a tune...and yet there is no art form I admire more. My username is a testament to this... people ask me why i have such a long and bizarre username but if they googled it the would know it's the name of an obscure Beatles song ( if there is such a thing as an obscure Beatles song)

Which is to say that I probably should have not been surprised to find myself bursting into tears yesterday when I heard that Neil Peart, lyricist and drum god for prog rock power trio Rush had died of brain cancer. It came as a huge shock to all of course, Peart, an intensely private man ( I can't pretend a stranger/ is a long awaited friend) kept his brain cancer diagnosis a secret for more than three years. Indeed his death was announced two days after it happened, the late announcement certainly at his request. But more than the shock , I was surprised how much this meant to me. I normally cannot fathom or stand celebrity worship. But yes artists in particular can mean something to us.

So who was neil peart?

Some years back , my baby brother was in middle school. He was getting into rock and asked me who I thought the greatest rock singer rock guitarist etc was .

Since his favorite instrument is the drums he was particularly keen on whom I thought was the greatest Rock Drummer.

I answered Neil Peart. He asked me what band he played for and I said of course Rush. He had never heard of either. we were in my car and I just happened to have Exit... Stage Left in the car. I slipped it into the CD player and played "YYZ"

By the time we got to the four minute mark , when the kickdrum kicks in , he understood.

Neil Peart played the drums. He was good at it. In the way Shakespeare or Stanley Kubrick were " good".

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But apart from being rock drummings greatest virtuoso, he also wrote the lyrics to most of Rush's songs. His band members Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee deputized the lyrics to him, since he was forever buried behind science ficition and fantasy novels.

and oh what lyrics! Complex, nuanced, philosophical lyrics that were often so dense Geddy Lee puzzled over how on earth to sing them in a rock concert setting. Apart from the above " closer to the heart" a good sample pack from my end

would include:

Freewill:

A planet of playthings
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
The stars aren't aligned
Or the gods are malign
Blame is better to give than receive

You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will

Limelight :

Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage

Cast in this unlikely role
Well equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact

Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem
Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme

Natural Science

I. Tide Pools
When the ebbing tide retreats
Along the rocky shoreline
It leaves a trail of tidal pools
In a short-lived galaxy
Each microcosmic planet
A complete society

A simple kind mirror
To reflect upon our own
All the busy little creatures
Chasing out their destinies
Living in their pools
They soon forget about the sea…

Wheels within wheels
In a spiral array
A pattern so grand
And complex
Time after time
We lose sight of the way
Our causes can’t see
Their effects

Witch Hunt:

The night is black, without a moon
The air is thick and still
The vigilantes gather on
The lonely torchlit hill

Features distorted in the flickering light
Faces are twisted and grotesque
Silent and stern in the sweltering night
The mob moves like demons possessed
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best

Oh
Oh
The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill

They say there are strangers who threaten us
Our immigrants and infidels
They say there is strangeness to danger us
In our theaters and bookstore shelves
That those who know what's best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves

Quick to judge
Quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand

VItal Signs:

" A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a soft filter
Everybody need reverse polarity

Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to elevate
From the norm

and really so many more.

If you have never seen the excellent Documentary on Rush ' Beyond the Lighted Stage" well, tonight is your night: