Bells Toll.

Rush’s Signals is an oft-maligned piece, which left many people to either become new Rush fans, or for other to leave the fold. It was not without its diatribes of musical pundits bantering back and forth about what this meant for the future of Rush, much like Van Halen’s 1984, causing a similar rift amongst die-hards. Considering I ended up mainly listening to the older Rush, for me it was a bit of a harbinger of things to come. However, I also stopped listening to Dokken, Vandenberg, and Whitesnake around the same time, so that does not mean much as I still listen to Rush, but unless startled by VH1, none of the latter. Neither here, nor there, sort of.

Signals was the end of a Rush era, things did change.  This song haunted me throughout high school though. Being known as “the Swimmer,” I knew that there would be a day when I would “lose it,” and no longer be the fastest. It terrified me.

That day did happen, and it was hard, very hard.

This song did capture that feeling quite well. I recently thought of it though in a different light, actually in the opposite way. What happens if you do lose it, if you lose nearly everything that you thought was “you,” what happens then? How will you react? Those are the questions that temper the meddle that we are made of, the ones that determine how that sun will rise again tomorrow.

Losing It

The dancer slows her frantic pace

In pain and desperation,

Her aching limbs and downcast face

Aglow with perspiration

Stiff as wire, her lungs on fire,

With just the briefest pause

The flooding through her memory,

The echoes of old applause.

She limps across the floor

And closes her bedroom door...

The writer stares with glassy eyes

Defies the empty page

His beard is white, his face is lined

And streaked with tears of rage.

Thirty years ago, how the words would flow

With passion and precision,

But now his mind is dark and dulled

By sickness and indecision

And he stares out the kitchen door

Where the sun will rise no more...

Some are born to move the world

To live their fantasies

But most of us just dream about

The things we'd like to be

Sadder still to watch it die

Than never to have known it

For you, the blind who once could see

The bell tolls for thee...

lyrics by Neil Peart of Rush