Call me old-fashioned, but in many ways I am still much more tied to the music of my growing-up years than I feel I can ever be to the things you find coming out today.  Perhaps that is true for everyone.  Maybe we are just put together in such a way that the music of our formative years will continue to resonate with us as we grow up in a way that nothing else quite can.  I have a friend who refers to this as “the soundtrack of a life,” because the music we grow up with becomes so intertwined with the experiences of growth.  Perhaps there is something to that.

So, that said, I suppose it would not be surprising that I would call a more-than-30-year old piece “Music of the Future.”  My labeling it thus has nothing to do with when the piece was written, obviously, but has more to do with the piece’s connection with the sort of books and movies that speculate about possible futures for humanity, and explore those possibilities in artistic form. For me, Rush’s “concept album” 2112 is a nice fit into this genre of speculative fiction.

As a kid growing up, I loved the thoughtful lyrics Neil Peart consistently produced for Rush, and their various concept albums are still amongst my favorites.  Hemispheres is a mythic piece, with 2112 standing as more of a sci-fi musical epic tale.  These two are probably their best-known concept albums. The story of 2112 is set in the future, in a world taken over by the Solar Federation, and “every single facet of every life is regulated from within” (from the album notes, available on the website with the lyrics linked above).  The Federation is a smoothly-run society, led by the Priests of Syrinx. 

One day, a young man in this society, our narrator for most of the song, finds and learns to play a guitar.  He is thrilled, sure that the priests will be pleased with his finding.  He is enamored with the new instrument and its ability to open up new worlds of self-expression.  The priests, however, are not so pleased.  They have set up a tightly controlled totalitarian society, and this idea of self-expression is completely out of place.  Our narrator can’t believe it, and so runs away from the restrictive society.  He is shown in a sort of vision that humans too fled this society, moving to the far reaches of space to live.  The vision leads him to deeper depression, and he commits suicide.  After this, apparently the humans return to take possession once again of Earth.

According to this pair of articles by Paul Rutherford and Tim Ferrell, the lyrics were inspired by Ayn Rand’s Anthem.  That’s just the sort of lyrics one expects from Rush, though -- thoughtful and thought-provoking, and a good space for interaction with some of the great minds of our times.  Rush is a band that has proven many times over that no topic is too big for their hard-rocking consideration.

I think that is what I enjoy so much about books like After the Fire or The Postman, and music like that of Rush  -- that there is such a nice inclusion of serious thought in their crowd-pleasing artifacts of popular culture.  “Popular culture,” in the best expressions of it, doesn’t have to exclude the serious or meaningful.  Speculative fiction, in all its various forms, might just be the place where this is most true.

©2007 Shelly Bryant

I stumbled across some nice videos on Neil Peart’s website,  for anyone who is interested.  The animated video of “YYZ” is my favorite.