Tag Archives: dreams

Rush and Nostalgia for the Future

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Growing up I found intense comfort in the music and lyrics of the iconic Canadian band Rush. Rush hold a particular place in the history of rock music, as they were both iconoclastic and unapologetically moral and humanist in orientation. Their songs were not the realm of edge lords or shock rockers. They didn’t make songs about sex, drugs, violence, or stupidity. Much to the contrary. They thought deeply, expressed those thoughts intensely, and were able to stand out in completely unique ways because of the quality of their unified talents.

Rush pioneered rock music as an intellectual pursuit. They were compelling because they stood on principles, and communicated deep commitment to human concerns without couching it in schmaltz. You can sense honesty in their dedication to their musical craft and in the meaning embedded in the lyrics Neil Peart wrote.

John Dewey, a central philosopher of the pragmatist movement, established much of the foundation surrounding art as a moral structure in society. Don’t misunderstand me; I don’t mean propaganda or dogma being used within art to influence or instruct. I mean deeply human values translated into actionable expressions of yearning and awareness.

“Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
Wonders in the world”

–Anthem

In Rush we see full expressions of a world where reason, empathy, and the better angels of our nature have had free reign. We find artifacts proving the best human capacities for love, attention, and hope.

When I think back on what inspired me and what stuck with me for all of these years, I think it is the sense of hope and expectation that they created. Actually, maybe hope is the wrong word… I think yearning might be a better way to describe it. Hope, in a sense, lacks agency. It sees life as something that happens to a person rather than what a person chooses, navigates, or constructs for themselves and alongside others.

“They travel on the road to redemption
A highway out of yesterday, that tomorrow will bring
Like lovers and heroes, birds in the last days of spring
We’re only at home when we’re on the wing
On the wing

We are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we’re only immortal
For a limited time”

–Dreamline

Yearning, on the other hand, is motivational and self-actualization in process. It’s visualization. It’s being the change you want to see in the world. The ability to reflect, imagine the world you want to inhabit, and take real steps to make it real in some way… that’s yearning. It’s the combination of instinct and clear-sighted determination.

-Kramer, on Seinfeld Season 3 Episode 23, ‘The Keys’

In some very real ways, Rush was the soundtrack to my own determination to at least TRY to expand my world. To get educated. To travel. To live as an artist. To read, think, and feel deeply. Songs like Middletown Dreams and Subdivisions called me to broaden my horizons. The lyrics of Dreamline and Ghost of a Chance made me dream, and then helped me transform those dreams into practical plans.

“Dreams flow across the heartland and feeding on the fires
Dreams transport desires
Drive you when you’re down
Dreams transport the ones who need to get out of town, out of town”

–Middletown Dreams

“Like a million little crossroads
Through the back streets of youth
Each time we turn a new corner
A tiny moment of truth”

–Ghost of a Chance

One of the other realms that Rush inspired me to think about and explore more fully was science. As a young person I was exposed to young earth creationism and other forms of science denial. Songs like Natural Science and, later on, Earthshine, prove that transcendent awe and appreciation for the wonders of the universe are not the purview of religious belief. As I read about the science behind everything from evolution to astrophysics, I unlocked a sense of astonishment and pure joy that had not been available to me before. In reading folx with diverse perspectives, from Stephen J Gould and Annie Dillard to Douglas Adams and Ellen Dissanayake, I found that there was a way to be excited about the glories of space, time, and biology without appealing to supernatural explanations. There’s so much that we can see, hear, touch, measure, and practically explore without needing to imagine things outside of the universe to justify them all.

“Wheel 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”

–Natural Science

In some way, the feeling that I’ve always had while listening to Rush is a kind of nostalgia for a past dream of a future where good truths prevail. Where the right thing is done, and everyone can see it. Where the light of knowledge is appreciated. Where attempting to understand “life, the universe, and everything” is given the highest of accolades, appreciated more than fleeting beauty or physical ability. Where honesty, good faith, and mutual aid are seen as true societal values. I think that future is possible, and I think we are actually closer to it than we’ve ever been as a species. In a time where this country is divided and anxious, it’s easy to think that future is not possible. But it objectively is. This is the best time to be alive for most human beings.

Click here to hear Jason Pargin talk about this reality

This Thanksgiving week, I’m thankful for the world, for life, for music, and for Rush. Here’s a link to a playlist of some of my favorite songs they’ve made:

Atticus Garrett Ballou

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image 2

The boy cometh.

I have to admit that I have fears about raising a boy. Sure, I have worries about my girls, too… but I am a male. I know something about being a boy. Perhaps in some sense the otherness of girls is a comfort, or a kind of blessed distance. And I just don’t think of females as the ones creating epic problems – starting wars, hurting others, crafting systems of denial, demagoguing themselves into power… that is all stuff that men do naturally and perennially.

And so that scares me. Am I up to instilling something true and real and deep in this little guy? Can I give him the transcendent perspective that helped me? Can I encourage him to learn the lessons only his mom and big sisters can teach? God knows I needed the presence of my mom and sisters and wife and mother-in-law and daughters to temper me, transform me, change me from a yell-happy dolt to someone with a bit more self control and thoughtfulness. The process is forever ongoing, and it’s all a matter of grace that it has worked at all. It’s taken me 37 years to be halfway acceptable as a human and it terrifies me to think I’ll be responsible to make a man of someone else. If I can’t force it to happen in myself, I certainly can’t manufacture it in anyone else.

image

Of course, it won’t be all my job, thank Jesus. But I’m wary of the process.

And so it’s important to name well. To cast a vision with that name. To use that name as a witness and a source of power. I’ll think about our son’s namesake right now to quell some of these fears. I’ll speak his name as a prayer of hope and a charge of confidence. Atticus:

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

~

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

~

“Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

~

“There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. That’s never possible.”

~

The quotes above were spoken by Atticus Finch. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

~

To close, here are a couple momentous posts from when #1 and #2 were named: MGB and MCQB.

The Star Road

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A little more than two decades ago my cousin Chris and I began to take long drives northward from our home in central New York State. We almost never went south. There were many adventures on those forays; our families knew what it meant when we said we were going “up North.”

StarRoadThe Star Road’s length over the geography of New York State

Many hours of conversation accompanied the drives, as did many hours of silence or reverie to the music we loved then. Over time the purpose of these trips showed itself in clearer and clearer form: the road was for a kind of tandem contemplation of what had been before us, what lay beyond us, and what was permeating our existence. We drove north to explore. Though moving through space we were motionless and silent in our souls. We found transformation and dreams along the road.

Untitled-14Heading out in the mid/late 90’s in Christopher’s old Nissan pick up truck

One of our favorite routes is an iconic stretch of highway that runs nearly 250 miles through the interior of New York State. State Route 3 begins (or ends, depending on your perspective) near Fair Haven State Park, practically in sight of the southeastern end of Lake Ontario. After a short jaunt eastward, Route 3 turns emphatically north and holds the eastern shore of Ontario for 60 miles. The road’s great northeasterly meander across the deep woods, lakes and mountains of upstate New York commences in historic Sacket’s Harbor, soon passing through Watertown and Carthage, then running just to the south of the Fort Drum Military Reservation. Roughly 70 miles from the streets of Sacket’s Harbor, Route 3 enters the great Adirondack Park.

Untitled-31Chris adjusting his old Pentax SLR during a photo stop, 2003 or so.

Just near this entrance to the Adirondack Park sits the hamlet of Star Lake and its eponymous body of water. The section of Route 3 that runs between Star Lake and Tupper Lake is majestic and ephemeral to drive at night. Tupper Lake is a crossroad of sorts, situated as it is along Route 3 running east/west and other routes running north/south. Though it is often a center of activity in daylight, especially in the summer months, Tupper Lake in the twilight – or at midnight – is glorious. The ancient, rounded-off Adirondack Mountains seem to circle in and provide a black frame for the jeweled vault of the sky. Chris and I have seen this many times.

This effect – a dark horizon circumscribing the grandness of the Milky Way, or Polaris, or Cassiopeia – is perhaps the reason why we started calling Route 3 “The Star Road.” It could have been the presence of Star Lake near the entrance to the Park. It might also be that there are, in fact, two real Star Roads off of Route 11; one between the towns of Malone and Ellenburg along a stretch of Route 190 and the other very close the border with Canada on County Road 17. We’ve traveled both of those roads and they could have influenced us.

Untitled-1A dusty old photo of the shore of Lake Ontario near Cape Vincent

Whatever the reasons, we spent many a dark, snowy night driving along Route 3, or glimpsing northern lights amidst the summer stars beyond Saranac Lake. The ending – for us – was to either come into Plattsburgh then strike a new route home, or to break off The Star Road early and head north toward Malone or south toward Lake Placid and Mt Marcy. There were many nights we merely ran along Route 3 for a short distance beside Lake Ontario, then slipped onto Route 12E from Watertown up to Cape Vincent. There, at the inflow of the St Lawrence River, we’d creep out of Cape Vincent toward Tibbetts Point to sit beneath the lighthouse with all of Ontario spread out westward before us.

Untitled-3Tibbetts Point Lighthouse near Cape Vincent, NY

I loved those drives and talks and silences. I loved listening to the Chateau D’Isaster Tapes while cruising along, angling across the brow of New York State, and imagining what the future might hold. In some ways these trips are behind us. We have families, homes, and other responsibilities. But I know we both still feel the pull of those hills and lakes and forests. I’m sure we’ll aim headlights northward sometime soon, and find ourselves in dream-driving together once again.

~

UpstateNYmapA section of one of the old, fold-able NYS maps we used to use