Another post copied from Facebook.

Rush and an inability to accept…

At some point I got the impression of Neil that he was inflexible and kinda “careful.” I don’t really know how else to describe it, honestly, but it’s an impression formed over a long time and with a lot of tiny, barely significant data points.

Most of them are simply being sensible - wearing leathers as he rides his BMW, for example. But at the same time, it’s like he doesn’t really roll with the punches well - even as I acknowledge that a lot of the punches he’s taken are pretty rough.

The thing is: yes, he’s taken some terrible blows in his life, but… so have others. While I can’t say whose pain is worse (every person’s pain is individual, and people deal with it differently on a case-by-case basis), sometimes Neil’s gets… magnified.

My first datapoint was “Afterimage.” I get having a friend die young; the band would have been in their early thirties, I think, when Robbie Whelan passed away. And it’s hard having a friend die on you… but “this just can’t be understood” left a bad impression even while it’s something I fully appreciate as a sentiment.

Worth noting: I grew up in high-risk wards as one of the patients. I don’t know how many dead kids I’ve known. This isn’t a criticism of Peart’s sincerity — I believe it — but when he seeks catharsis for those losses, I can’t help measuring it against my own familiarity with similar ones, of similar magnitude. And I don’t share those stories, except maybe through humor or in the hope of some small enlightenment.

After that, I started noticing more demands on the part of the lyrics. The thing is: the demands weren’t onerous: “Hold your fire!” “Do not go gently into that night!” … but it was there, all the way through Vapor Trails, when it seemed like, lyrically speaking, all of a sudden he started experiencing life - good and bad - rather than telling us how to interpret things over and over again.

(I find that I preferred those songs that described experiences far more than those songs that told me how I should be reacting to stimuli. To be fair, there were a LOT of songs in that period that fit the mode I prefer… but there were a lot in that period that tried to tell me how to think and feel, too, if only by endorsement of ideas.)

Then you have songs like “Working Them Angels,” and… dude, Neil, I get it, you’ve not always had an easy road, but your road has been easier than many people’s roads. You’re “working them angels overtime,” sure, but compare that to your average listener and their angels would look at your angels’ lives as a blissful vacation.

Is this criticism? Yeah, I guess it is - it’s also part of a continued search for understanding of Rush’ lyrical development over time, and if it’s criticism, it’s meant to be pretty gentle. After all, while I might consider the events of my own life a lot more traumatic than Peart’s life, the truth of the matter is that we’ve lived different lives, and his pain and mine don’t necessarily translate the same ways.

I also more than happily acknowledge that I don’t have his actual life experiences, nor does he have mine - I know some of his, from his public history and writings, but that doesn’t mean I know what his life actually is like.

I only see the gilded cage, after all, and what he tells me of it.

It’s just interesting (to me) to think about, and wonder about, and share with other Rush fans.