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Neil Peart news update: Theme and Variations

Wed, Aug 4, 2010@7:40AM | comments removed/disabled

[NEWS, WEATHER, and SPORTS: August, 2010 - Theme and Variations]

As he usually does during any extended break on tour, Neil Peart has updated the News page on his website with some stories from the road. This update is titled Theme and Variations and Neil describes some of his recent travels between shows on the Time Machine Tour. He makes this interesting travel analogy involving his current drum solo:

... when I stand before a Road Closed sign, it's all a matter of reading the "signs," literally and metaphorically, and deciding whether I wish to proceed in that direction, while accepting that I may not be able to. That is "Roadcraft," and it occurs to me that I have been finding a musical parallel lately.

This tour I have deliberately designed my drum solo to be more improvisational than ever before, and that has led me into some "adventures" that have their analogues to the art of traveling.

Even as I consider that comparison, it makes me smile—because sometimes on the drums it absolutely does feel that I'm playing myself into a Road Closed situation, with dark forest all around, treacherous puddles ahead, and an unknown outcome to this rhythmic path I've set myself upon. I can only hope I'll come upon a mobile home and some fresh gravel to lead me back to the "paved road." ...

He continues with several more road stories and then says the following regarding his attitude towards touring and how it is particularly difficult this go-around because of his baby daughter:

... I wouldn’t trade jobs, or lives, with anyone. In our song “Bravado,” there’s a fitting line I adapted from John Barth, “We will pay the price, but we will not count the cost.”

That cost has many facets—physical pain, exhaustion, psychological alienation from home, family, and friends, homesickness, performing even when you feel bad, and all the while, missing out on days and nights and countless little events in the lives of your loved ones. A whole part of your life goes on without you. Why the “fantasy” other people imagine doesn’t include these elements is because they don’t know what it’s like to miss those moments of everyday life, so they don’t value them highly enough.

But this time the price was made especially sharp for me. Before starting this tour, I had spent nearly every early morning with baby Olivia, all through her ten months of life, quietly watching sunrises together, playing on the floor with her toys and books, sitting side by side on the sofa, my arm around her little form, while I read aloud from What Makes a Rainbow?, Wake Up Little Ones, or Big Red Barn.

Then, after a month away, I returned home to an eleven-month-old baby who didn’t know me, shied away from me, and clung to her mother.

I know I just have to hang back until she gets comfortable with me again—but it still aches. ...

All in all another bit of great prose from Neil.

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