Socially Distant Miscellany

Have I collected some new blogworthy topics in these days of viral isolation?  You bet.  Let's juxtapose them with the tried and true "five things make a post."

(1) C2TH << AF2K ?

My previous post, as well as my lengthier 2015 musings -- both about Rush's classic tune Closer to the Heart -- managed to neglect one important thing: it doesn't exist in isolation.  This song is the first track on side two of its album, and it rhapsodizes about possible solutions to personal and societal problems.  However, it's the first song on side one, A Farewell to Kings, that both lays out those problems...

When they turn the pages of history,
When these days have passed long ago,
Will they read of us with sadness
For the seeds that we let grow?
We turned our gaze
From the castles in the distance.
Eyes cast down
On the path of least resistance.

...and indicates, indirectly, at the end, that solutions may be forthcoming:

Can't we raise our eyes
And make a start?
Can't we find the minds
To lead us closer to the heart?

I have a feeling that these songs are best when played back-to-back, like Queen's inseparable pair of "We" songs.

(2) Grognardia is Back

On my "2020 weird events" bingo card, alongside the tiger kings, murder hornets, and babies named XÆA-12, I didn't think I'd be noting the return of one of the main D&D OSR (Old School Renaissance) bloggers after 8 years of silence. But a few weeks ago, we started seeing posts from James Maliszewski again -- sometimes 2 or 3 in a day now -- like nothing at all happened since that last post from 2012.  I haven't been reading so closely to know if he's talked about the gap, but it's good to see him back again.  I'm kind of surprised that YDIS hasn't mentioned it...

(3) Alpha-Bytes Redux

For a while, I posted a lot about my obsession with weird alphabets.  Recently, when re-watching the classic movie The Fifth Element, I rediscovered a bit of odd linguistics that doesn't get talked about a lot.  Usually, when commenting on this movie's creative use of language, one sees a lot of discussion of the (spoken-only) alien "Divine Language" that director Luc Besson had star Milla Jovovich try to commit to memory.  But there was something interesting happening back on Earth, too.  The police had the word "Police" written in two parallel scripts on their uniforms and equipment.  Some searching found a high-resolution version, and it's possible to search for some phonetic realism in those two sets of characters...

 
For example, are there only 5 letters on the right, thus dispensing with the English oddity of a silent E?  Or do the stacked dot and dash count as two?  Both P and L are backwards, but the order still seems to go from left to right.  I can find no explanation of how or why anyone associated with this movie came up with this alt-alphabet, or if any real-life script inspired it.  Does anyone know anything more about it?

(4) Sci-Fi Reading & Reviews

Last year, I really enjoyed reading through the 1967 Dangerous Visions anthology, and I've been pondering a bit about doing another one.  I've got a copy of 1972's Again Dangerous Visions, but I suspect my reviews wouldn't be very positive.  I recently dug out a set of Fantasy & Science Fiction pulp magazines from the 1980s, and I noted a few favorites in them that I could reread and review, too.  However, I'm not too excited about either of those options.  If I'm going to reread something, I think it will be Neal Stephenson's Anathem.  When it came out in 2008, I breezed through it quickly, mostly on planes... but I think it deserves another go.  We'll see.

(5) Sad News

A few days ago, I learned that one of my personal heroes and mentors, Charles Cameron, has passed away.  I blogged about him several times, and it made my year when I saw that he showed up in the comments!  God speed, Magister Ludi.

All I really need to know...

...I learned from Closer to the Heart.

I'm not sure why I felt the need to post about this, given that I probably said all that needs to be said about this fiery manifesto of love a few years ago.  But the last time I posted to the blog, the world was in a very different place.  I think this message is needed.  So maybe just a few pictures here.

The song -- by Canadian prog-rock trio Rush if you don't know -- is only 75 words long, but I've held each of those suckers close to my own heart for more than 30 years.  You want to see the super-sophisticated Macintosh word-art that was pinned up on my desk for several years in college, don't you...

(Click to zoom for dot-matrix printer goodness)

I saw Rush live 4 times over that time...

...and it's kind of hard to believe that these peak experiences, in total, cost less than what's now one month's cable/internet bill.

I don't know what else to say except that I still miss Neil, who left us back in January.

(Okay, not my best photoshop, but not my worst)

I'll continue to sow, and mould, and forge, and try to help chart a path to somewhere positive.

C is for Closer to the Heart

Long-time blog readers will know that I'm a die-hard fan of the Trio from Toronto... the Three Men of Willowdale... the prog-rock band Rush.  Their music is great, but the main draw for me has been the lyrical literature of Neil Peart.

Peart has written thousands of words of song lyrics, and tens of thousands of words in his autobiographical books.  Today, though, I'm focusing on one of his shortest songs -- and one of the few on which he collaborated with someone else on the lyrics (more on that below).  It's the opening number of Side 2 of their 1977 Farewell to Kings album, "Closer to the Heart."

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

There's certainly a manifesto-like feel to it, right?  Crafting a new reality is pretty monumental, and it makes some sense to look to the experts -- the people in the know (not necessarily the people in power) to get it started.

The Blacksmith and the Artist

Reflect it in their art

[They] Forge their creativity

Closer to the Heart

Here Neil harkens back a bit to his quasi-Objectivist roots (i.e., songs like Anthem) to sing the song of the sole auteur, reaching for lonely pinnacles of creativity.  But I think he had broadened his perspective a bit by this time, since the next verse says that

Philosophers and Ploughmen
Each must know his part
To sow a new mentality
Closer to the Heart

I don't think he went to the opposite extreme here, despite the fact that it kind of sounds like "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need."  (And you may still be surprised that I used the letter "C" for this song and not that other famous manifesto!)  But no, it's still individuals he's championing here, and the point of "the Heart" is to work together harmoniously and freely...

You can be the Captain
I will draw the Chart
Sailing into destiny
Closer to the Heart.

Thus, I guess it's only fair that this song be one of the few lyrical collaborations that Neil Peart has undertaken.  The album credits a friend of the band named Peter Talbot with writing the first verse, and then Neil filled in the rest.  I couldn't find much about Peter Talbot online, but I did find one site that claimed he is the same person as John Michael Talbot, a wizened Christian evangelist and songwriter.

I can't vouch for the truth of it, but the timing is about right... he's close to the same age as Peart, and he put out a solo album titled A New Earth the same year that "Closer to the Heart" was written.  (Oh, and when did famous atheist Neil Peart decide to release the single?  Christmas Day 1977!)  A quick look at John Michael Talbot's life and work also conveys a mystical and visionary side, for which Neil has shown some appreciation.  Although the sentiment behind Revelations 21:1 (where "a new earth" probably comes from) is probably one with which Neil Peart doesn't agree literally, it certainly shares the renewal-vibe of this righteous manifesto of a song.

From: The Word and the Pictures, Vol. 2

N is for Narpet

There's nobody else for the letter N but famed drummer and lyricist Neil Peart.

I could write paragraphs upon paragraphs about his thought provoking lyrics (oh wait, I have), but for now I think your time will be best spent just listening to his rhythmic skill.  Please feel free to devote your next 8 minutes and 43 seconds to THIS.

If you see him do this live, your heart soars.

For a long time, I wasn't quite sure how to reconcile my high views of Neil's lyric-writing genius with some... other views of his choice of musical instrument.  I suppose I always sorted out the relative "importance" of the various pieces of a song or a band in the following order:

1. lyrics (vocals)
2. melody (lead guitar; sax; etc.)
3. bass & rhythm guitar
4. percussion

But as I've gotten older and hopefully wiser, I've come to appreciate the solid foundations and creative possibilities afforded by the steady (or not so steady) beat-beat of the tom-tom. :-)  It would be a cliché to talk about the subconscious, dreamtime-evoking power of drumming, as realized by shamans both ancient and modern.  But maybe it would be a less of a cliché to refer you to what Johnny Cash had to say on the matter!

PS: The title of this post comes from a much shorter (1 minute exactly) and more avant garde drum solo, Didacts and Narpets, that Neil included on 1975's Caress of Steel.  Didacts are teachers, but nobody is quite sure what narpets are supposed to be.  In an interview, Neil noted that "narpet" is an anagram for "parent," but I've always been more intrigued by the fact that it's also a nifty little anagram for "N Peart."  :-)

Review: Clockwork Angels, the Novel

In June, I posted a review of Rush's newest album, Clockwork Angels.  I also reported that drummer and lyricist Neil Peart was in the process of collaborating with an author to devise a sort of "novelization of the album."  The book was published a short time ago, and I just finished it.

It's an odd little bird, I'll tell you.

We can get the most of the bad out of the way quickly.  My initial impression of it can be boiled down to one word: "simple."  Peart and author Kevin Anderson took the basic adventure plot from Voltaire's Candide, removed nearly all of Voltaire's wit and subtlety, and substituted in some stale steampunk set dressing.  Having to take the plot through the rather linear set of situations suggested by the songs was a bit plodding and ho-hum.

Other than a few exceptions, the characters were cartoonish.  The evil "Anarchist" is motivated by a backstory only Lex Luthor would see as viable.  His counterpart, the evil "Watchmaker," micromanages his kingdom like a mad puppeteer, determining everyone's careers and approving their marriages and living situations.  That's okay on its own, but to drive the point even more to the edge of overkill, he also forces scientists to hew to a literal Ptolemaic cosmology.  The deviations of the planets from perfect circular orbits is recognized as a "problem" by some, but it's a problem that all have faith in the Watchmaker to fix by (someday) moving their orbits into their proper, anal-retentive shapes!

And the "Easter Eggs."  Oh, the Easter Eggs.  I get that Anderson is friends with Neil Peart, and is probably a huge fan of the music.  But the insertion of out-of-context song lyrics from Rush's 40-year history -- pretty much one every 3 or 4 pages -- was jarring and annoying.  I'm not misusing the word literally when I say I literally turned my exasperated gaze skyward whenever I came across one of these groaners.

Okay, the worst is over.  What's left?

The negative points listed above were just about all that were filling my head as I was reading the first few chapters.  But then, somewhere around a third of the way in, I had a mental shift that made me far more forgiving of its flaws:  I pictured reading it to my son.  He's 11, and will soon be a wistful teenager looking to break away and have adventures of his own.

Actually, this book couldn't be a better guide for that.

Its simplicity can be forgiven as the allowances that (I assume) must be made in all Young Adult type fiction.  In that vein, it does remind me a lot of the overall reading level of the Harry Potter books.  (And by "reading level" I don't just mean vocabulary and sentence complexity, but also the themes, ideas, and challenges the main character is exposed to.)  The cartoonish characters are no worse than those created by George Lucas, and they may be just as memorable for someone who doesn't know the dozens of literary originals that were plundered to create them.  The Rush lyrics wouldn't be a problem -- unless a prog-geek Dad like me would be constantly pointing them out and talking about each song they come from!  :-)

There's one other troubling aspect that I discussed in my review of the album.  ("Spoiler alert," I suppose.)  In both the lyrics and the book, we see that the main character eventually finds a happy home and leaves behind the grand battle.  We learn in the book that he was a symbolic "pawn" that both the Anarchist and the Watchmaker desired to convert to their way of thinking.  He said "No thanks" to both and went his panglossian way.

I know that a protagonist doesn't always need to defeat the bad guys and save the world, but I still felt the lack of righteous "comeuppance" for the villains as a pang of emptiness at the heart of this thing.  They need to be checked, or their darkness will grow.  The Watchmaker will always want more.  If I can quote myself from my review of the album:

Okay, maybe I'm not at that point of inner peace where Neil Peart abides.  I still want to see the redeemed Prince By-Tor defeat the Necromancer.  I want to see the apotheosis of my namesake Cygnus, the god of balance, who teaches silly Apollo and Dionysus the errors of their extremism.  I want to believe (yes, there's Fox Mulder again) that the death of the guitar-discoverer in 2112 wasn't in vain, and that the elder race of man really did return in the end to knock some Syrinxish heads.

I guess I'm guilty of including Rush Easter eggs, too, but the book didn't give me the kind of closure that Neil has espoused in the past.  Maybe it's the mature choice, the choice that will help guide young readers to live healthier lives full of forgiveness.  But it's enough to stop me from loving this story wholeheartedly.

Review: Rush's Clockwork Angels

I'm not sure if there's much of an audience here for music reviews, but this one called out to me.  Each new album by Canadian prog trio Rush has been a big event in my life since 1984's Grace Under Pressure.  Clockwork Angels is their first studio album in about 5 years, and I'm still mulling a lot over after just one listen to it all the way through. Still, I thought it worthwhile to get my thoughts down on virtual paper...

For the spoiler conscious (to the degree a rock album can have spoilers!) I'll put my comments on the lyrics and "story" below a cut at the bottom.

Before getting into the music, I must mention their use of alchemical symbols on the album cover.  They've always catered to their geeky fans with stuff like this, but this goes above and beyond!  Each of the 12 songs gets a unique symbol whose alchemical meaning resonates somehow with the lyrics. The full set corresponds to the clock-face in the image above, too.  (Notice that the time on the clock is 9:12?  If that's PM, then it's 21:12!)  I was happy to see a few that I was considering for my April A-Z posts on symbols, so, yeah, I'm the target audience, here.  In the liner notes, it gets even more geekily complicated, with a nested inner ring of 8 symbols surrounding an even smaller ring of 4 symbols (the four elements, I think), surrounding a central core that's divided into two halves (day/sun and night/moon).  We'll be analyzing that quite a bit, I think!

The band has been lauded for getting back to its prog-rock "concept album" roots with Clockwork Angels, but I'm not sure how much that extends to the actual music.  They do some stretching by bringing in some guest instrumentalists (strings and piano) as well as a BIT of flirtation with the synthesizers of old (e.g., some almost psychedelic sound effects on the title track).  But, overall, I'd say that 80% to 90% of the music is straight guitar, bass, and drums, and the style wouldn't be a surprise to people familiar with their last two studio albums.

The composition and execution of the music is technically flawless (as far as this non-musician can tell).  For dudes who will soon be celebrating their 60th birthdays, they're still in top form.  However, there's one thing that prevents me from truly lavishing complete praise on the music.  I think many people may recognize that you can split up Rush albums into two distinct time periods:

1. Phase One (1974 to approx 1991): The era in which they knew how to write good, singable melodies.
2. Phase Two (1991 to present): Um, not so much.

I'm using 1991 as a stand-in for the time period running from Presto (1989) to Counterparts (1993), during which the melodies seemed to gradually fade away.  Does anyone else see this?  To me, it's a major seismic fault running through their career.  For some reason, the recent songs are plagued by lyrics that (though the ideas and poetry are brilliant) aren't just that suited to be melodic lyrics at all.  It almost seems like there are too many syllables in each "line" for Geddy to sing. The end result is that he can't do anything other than just modulate up and down, up and down, by little half-steps of pitch, without the melody actually going anywhere.  Certainly makes it hard to have a memorable hook to sing in the shower!  :-)

But, for me, the music is secondary.  It's really about the mind of this guy:

Professor Pratt Narpet

and please click down past the cut to hear more about what words and ideas come pouring out of that mind...