This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
All around that dull gray world
From Moscow to Berlin
People storm the barricades
Walls go tumbling in
The counter-revolution
People smiling through their tears
Who can give them back their lives
And all those wasted years?
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
All around that dull gray world
Of ideology
People storm the marketplace
And buy up fantasy
The counter-revolution
At the counter of a store
People buy the things they want
And borrow for a little more
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes, I guess we do
Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes, I guess we do
All around this great big world
All the crap we had to take
Bombs and basement fallout shelters
All our lives at stake
The bloody revolution
All the warheads in its wake
All the fear and suffering
All a big mistake
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
What else can we do?
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes, I guess we do
Yes, I guess we do
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
All those precious wasted years
All those precious wasted years
All those precious wasted years
All those precious wasted years
From Moscow to Berlin
People storm the barricades
Walls go tumbling in
The counter-revolution
People smiling through their tears
Who can give them back their lives
And all those wasted years?
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
All around that dull gray world
Of ideology
People storm the marketplace
And buy up fantasy
The counter-revolution
At the counter of a store
People buy the things they want
And borrow for a little more
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes, I guess we do
Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes, I guess we do
All around this great big world
All the crap we had to take
Bombs and basement fallout shelters
All our lives at stake
The bloody revolution
All the warheads in its wake
All the fear and suffering
All a big mistake
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
What else can we do?
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes, I guess we do
Yes, I guess we do
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
All those precious wasted years
All those precious wasted years
All those precious wasted years
All those precious wasted years
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Page
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Peary wrote about these lyrics in the tour guide book from the RTB tour. It was my first Rush concert and I still have that tour book, though not in front of me atm, so I'm paraphrasing what he said.
The fall of Communism made a lot of people happy, but it made Neil Peart MAD. Not because he approved of Communism, but because for years the people living in those countries had wear ugly suits, drive nasty cars, and drink bug spray to get high.... and it was all a mistake?! We were all so proud of ourselves for being on the "winning" side of the Cold War, but he felt that our victory dance was like telling those people living in those Eastern Bloc countries that didn't do anything wrong that the 50+ years of suffering they endured was all for nothing. That's a very heavy price to pay for some mad man's misguided ideology. And that waste of life and time and resources is the ultimate Heresy, which he refers to in the title.
There IS a reference to consumerism, in that people could buy the things they want and "borrow for a little more." Not American consumerism per se, but the kind of free wheeling consumerism common to Western nations, while it has its problems, is still preferable to having nothing to buy at all, and so it became all that we could do for them in the end, to export our brand of consumerism so they can, finally, buy things we take for granted like toilet paper, napkins, aspirin, make-up, and for once they had a choice.
So he was saying it was good for the people that he Wall fell, but also that we shouldn't overlook the terrible, awful cost to those people of our "winning" the Cold War.