Rush - Losing It

Wondering if what once brought such joy and self-expression has been lost

"rush" by musicmoon@rogers.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Two artists/bands at the top of the list of musicians who shaped me into the person I am today are Prince and Rush.

It’s telling that after almost two years of writing Earworms and Song Loops —more than 125 posts — I have yet to feature either of these formative influences.

It’s not for lack of trying. If you could see my drafts folder, you’d find a half dozen abandoned essays, ideas that seemed good at the time, even a little inspired, but soon devolved into a mess of half-baked threads and personal stories that went nowhere. Not even the king of tangent shepherding (me) could corral those unwieldy pieces.

How could I possibly narrow down what I want to say about either Prince or Rush in a thousand (or even two thousand) words? I typed out more than 1500 on Robert Hazard and his song “Escalator of Life” last summer, and his impact on me was minuscule.

Robert Hazard - Escalator of Life ('82)

Perhaps the right earworm hasn’t appeared yet to help show me the way.

Lost and Found

One of my goals for 2024 was to write daily.

I know from experience that when I write every day, I can tap into the real shit much quicker. The brain/body connection doesn’t require an hour (or five) of warm-up word vomit in order to access THE TRUTH.

But I’ve written, at best, a third of the days so far this year. Sure, I can come up with a list of reasons excuses — chronic carpal tunnel, a work schedule that changes week to week, insomnia — but when I distill it down to its essence, I land at the word focus. A lack of it. Also, endurance. Again, a lack.

I’m not the type of writer who can bang out a near-perfect first draft in an hour. I’ve never been bitten by my muse, never flew off in a feverish bout of inspiration, spitting out a story so moving and hilarious that readers become blubbering messes, unsure whether their tears are of laughter or catharsis.

That does sound fucking amazing, though. If that’s you, consider me jealous.

With little exception, each one of these essays has been a multi-hour, multi-day arm-wrestle with doubt, fear, joy, false memories, Wikipedia and Songmeanings.com. I do get inspiration, but it comes in single words. Maybe a pun. (That might be more infection than inspiration.) I’ve always felt that my “nose to the grindstone” methodology, my unwillingness to stop working on a piece until it felt complete, has kept “writer’s block” at bay.

I write with a chisel. Breaking blocks is my jam.

Except when it isn’t.

When I started this newsletter, I saw it as a way of exploring my love of music and personal essay writing. I wanted to take my writing seriously and build a community of supportive readers and writers. I wanted to become a better writer.

I gave myself a goal of one essay a week for six months. Over those months, I began to hone my craft. With the support and encouragement of IRL friends and my new Substack friends, Earworms and Song Loops began to take shape and gain a bit of a following.

Six months became nine, and then a friggin’ year! 52 weeks and more than 52 new essays. As someone who likes to quit before he’s tried everything, I found myself buoyed by the momentum, ready to show 18 months what I had in store.

But year two has been a challenge. Despite doubling the number of subscribers from months 13-18, feelings of overwhelm, anxiety, imposter syndrome, and doubt have made regular appearances. The pressure to provide content for “the hungry subscribers” has been constant and challenging to ignore. It’s all internal pressure. Folks have been incredibly supportive and encouraging.

I’ve talked about my struggles with anxiety before, and I’ll surely write about them again, but lately, I’m starting to feel like a broken record. Man up, Steve. This isn’t easy for anyone. Put on your big boy pants sweats.

The broken record is a perfect metaphor for how I’ve felt this past month in regard to writing new essays. I can tell that I’m expending a lot of word energy, but it’s not amounting to me saying much of anything.

It’s not just unfinished Rush and Prince drafts piling up; there are a dozen others as well. To the glass half-full folks, this might seem like a bounty of potential riches. But to the glass half-filled with broken glass folks like me, it’s a constant reminder of mounting failures.

I don’t necessarily want a muse: something or someone outside of myself to keep the creative juices stirring. But it would be a wonderful nice-to-have, maybe as a rental. Is there such a thing as a Muse Rental service? If there happens to be such a business out there, I hope it is called A Muse Bouche. If I had an editor, they’d tell me to take that joke out.

I truly believe in the Buddhist concept of impermanence, that everything — good, bad, indifferent — rises and then fades away. It’s more comforting when considering the hard things in life. Yay! My insomnia will one day become sleep again! Less pleasant is accepting that the joys in life have an expiration date. Like the muse, our bodies are rentals. One day, they will have to be returned, and hopefully without any late fees for our surviving humans to pay.

All is not lost, though. As you will see below, I was able to fight past the urge to throw in the towel and have not only gotten another earworm essay written but also one featuring Rush.

Sometimes, it takes several flashing bright signals to get me to see what is right in front of me.

Signal #1

I have to first thank

Lara

, who writes the wonderful Rush-centric newsletter, One a Day Rush, for helping inspire today’s earworm. Taking on the insane task of writing about a different song from Rush and Rush-adjacent projects every day in 2024, Lara not only proves that it is patently untrue that there are no female Rush fans but that they are perhaps the most obsessive. Also, the ladies can air-drum just as passionately as the dudes.

Reading her posts each day has been a bit humbling. It’s made me realize I’m not as much of a Rush fanatic as I thought I was. Which is amazing! There’s so much more for me to learn about the band that helped me survive my unbearably awkward teenage years.

Signal #2

When I opened YouTube on my computer last night to look up something that I cannot recall (because that is what YT does; it liquifies memories), at the top of my “suggested videos” was a clip of a Rush tribute band named Natural Science playing the song “Digital Man.” (“Natural Science,” to the newbies, is a song from Rush’s 1980 Permanent Waves album.)

Although the band looks like they are playing on the lawn in someone’s backyard, apparently, it’s at a golf course. The audio mix is stellar. I was super impressed with how tight they sounded and, especially, how the Geddy Lee stand-in, Carlos Costa, was able to switch from bass to keyboards and even incorporated the synth pedals. Drummer Greg Russell (who, I learned, produced videos for Rush for their last few concert tours) and guitarist Zephry Lyne equally impressed me with their stellar chops.

I had to wonder, though, why this video appeared in my feed. Outside of leaving a few comments on Lara’s Rush Substack, I hadn’t played any Rush videos in years. I hadn’t streamed any Rush songs on any platform.

Perhaps it was the universe giving me a sign. The universal algorithm. Could YouTube be my muse?

Signal #3

Once I clicked on the Natural Science video, a flood of Rush clips poured forth.

One of them featured a classical composer named Doug Helvering. Doug posts reaction videos of progressive rock and heavy metal songs. On occasion, he will react to entire sides of albums. The album that appeared in my feed was side 2 of Rush’s 1982 album, Signals.

I don’t like to play favorites, but if forced to choose, nine out of ten times, I’d probably pick Signals as my favorite Rush album. I was 15 when it came out, a sophomore in high school in a suburb of Southern California called Agoura (now Agoura Hills).

The album’s themes of alienation, technology, trying to fit in, aging, and outer space….it was manna from heaven to this awkward teenage boy.

Watching Doug listen to side 2 of the album, I found myself, like Doug, stunned once again by Signals’ penultimate track, “Losing It.”

It’d been years since I played this deep cut, and although I had heard it hundreds of times before, I wasn’t prepared for my tearful emotional reaction once guest musician Ben Mink’s gorgeous violin began playing. And then the incredibly sad lyrics, sung by Geddy Lee, coming around a minute in:

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

And she limps across the floor
And closes her bedroom door

The writer's 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

Rush gets unfairly maligned for writing 25-minute epic fantasy songs that have nothing to do with earthly struggles. But Neil Peart has written many poignant, heartbreaking songs throughout the band’s 40-plus-year career. And Geddy’s voice, often ridiculed in the press as the equivalent of sheep bleating, is simply sublime on “Losing It.”

I’m not yet ready to be put out to pasture, but I can certainly relate to the concept of “losing it” and wondering if my best work is in the past. But the song is not just a meditation on aging and adjusting our expectations when our bodies and minds are no longer as supple as they once were.

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

This bridge is the part of the song that resonates with me the most: the idea of dreaming about the things we’d like to be but never taking action toward realizing them. Watching them die without ever knowing what could have been.

I’ve got two unfinished novels, an unfinished memoir, and countless other unfinished projects. I don’t want to die never to have released my stories out into the world. Whether anyone reads them is almost beside the point.

What does “Losing It” mean to you? The concept, yes, but also the song.

Rush very rarely collaborates with other musicians on their albums. When they do, it always makes me wish they’d done it more often. On their 1987 album, Hold Your Fire, singer-songwriter Aimee Mann sings on the album’s best song, “Time Stand Still.” Yet another tune exploring the concept of time, and the passing of it.

Ben Mink, who plays violin on “Losing It,” deserves a mention here, as his playing is integral to the musical resonance of the song.

Mink has played with tons of artists over his 50-plus-year career¹. His most recognized collaboration was with K.D. Lang, who he produced and co-wrote with during her heyday of the late ‘80s-early ‘90s. He’s also played with Barenaked Ladies, Raffi, Jane Siberry, Feist, Daniel Lanois, Sarah McLaughlin, Roy Orbison, Elton John, Heart, and many others. If you are unfamiliar with Ben Mink, he’s worth seeking out.

I write these essays as a way to understand myself. If there’s not an element of self-discovery, if I haven’t learned something new about myself or the way I relate to music, then I haven’t succeeded as an essayist. Of course, not every essay is going to reach these lofty goals. Some will be silly; some will be glorified playlists.

Knowing that I’ve finally written about Rush, I feel incredible relief. And exhaustion. I was sure I’d never finish it until the year 2112.

If I ever feel the urge to dip my toes back in the Rush River, I can always visit

Lara

’s substack and get my fix. Perhaps her newsletter was the muse I needed to get over the Rush hump.

I will get to Prince one day, too. I am sure of it. It won’t be tomorrow, and probably not next week or the week after, but it will happen. To quote the great Deborah Iyall of Romeo Void, “Never Say Never.”

• If you aren’t much of a Rush fan, I hope you will click the link for “Losing It.” It’s truly a great song.

• Feeling like you are ‘losing it’ is not uncommon, especially for artists. How have you worked through the times when you were in the weeds of "feeling lost”?

• If you are a Rush fan and aren’t subscribed to Lara’s

  One A Day Rush
  newsletter yet, what are you waiting for?

• I do hope to get back to a regular posting schedule, ideally Tuesday or Wednesday, but for now, they come out when they are ready. I unfortunately had to return my A Muse Bouche. 🤣

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Mink