BU2B

I've been a Rush fan for over 3 decades now. I really like the comments that ClosetRush made and will say I somewhat echo his sentiment except that I'm just a regular married guy with a kid, not at all a person of the cloth or anything, just a firm believer of God. And from my angle, no-one forces me to go to church or believe in God. In fact my wife doesn't go to church but is a firm believer in God. I would say I'm not a big fan of organized religion in general but I go to church to thank God for all I've been blessed with from time to time. The thing that I will say is that I can't judge Neil, I haven't walked in his shoes. I have no idea how I would react, feel or lash out if my son and wife were taken from me. I'm sure I would be devastated. Knowing how my life has gone though, I tend to include God more in my life when the chips are down. All this aside, I really like the album but I really hate being preached at. In fact when someone jams their faith down my throat it turns me off. Conversely, when someone tells me I'm an idiot for believing in God, it tends to turn me off just as much. I'm turned off by the lyrics on this album unfortunately. I love the bass line, the guitar work and the percussion is amazing again as always. I wish Pye Dubois (from Max Webster songs, Kim Mitchell and the writer of Tom Sawyer) would write the song lyrics for Rush though. I appreciate Neil's lyrics more when he's not trying to convince me God doesn't exist. We're all big boys and girls, let us decide on our own. One thing I will say, Neil knows the bible much better than I ever will. If you go to his website, constant bible references. To me, this doesn't make sense. I like to think of myself as open minded but if I didn't believe in God, I wouldn't spend a minute of my time reading the bible. For example, I don't believe in socialism, I've taken classes on it in college to understand it and it pretty much reinforced my initial take. So why would I cozy up to the Communist Manifesto and make references to it in my work everyday, my writings, my website, my blog, etc.? It's like one of those crappy TV evangelists that screams from the top of his lungs about God and the proper way to believe in God, how to interpret the bible, live your life according to God and then later he's in bed with a hooker or stealing money from the congregation, etc. Feel free to disagree, I'm open minded (I think) and opinions vary. Caravan is my favorite song on the album though, just can't get enough of it, and BU2B (musically) is fantastic as well, lyrics are just too much for my taste though.

Great conversation... I have a confession! Despite the fact that I am the senior pastor of a firmly, “Fundamentalist” Christian denomination, I confess to you that I am a big time closet Rush fan! Yes, I STILL listen to Rush after all these years, (in secret of course). I can’t help it, Rush rocks man!!! But I'm sure most Christians would not understand and may even call it sinful, or at the very least, spiritually immature. Perhaps they’re right, but I find a lot of truth in the lyrics that Neil writes, I always have. I have even quoted from Rush in my sermon illustrations, and I feel that I have the liberty to rock out with my favorite band from my youth from time to time. I just do it in the closet so that I won't stumble a weaker brother or sister in the faith. Having said that, I have to admit that it has becoming increasingly more difficult to justify that liberty as of late! Songs like BU2B, Faithless, Totem Pole, and Armor and Sword seriously push the envelope for me. But rather than turn me off to stop listening, they just grieve me and make me sad for Neil. Because they are still truthful in the sense that they are the true but bitter feelings and tortured thoughts of a man that has suffered great loss and the love of his wife and child. That’s brutal! He can't find the answers to give him the inner peace about that loss and you see that coming through in his song writing. I feel for Neil and all that he has gone through and is most likely still going through. He is obviously searching for truth and unhappy about not being able to find it in what he was, "Brought up to believe", but most of us can relate to that. But I can also see in his lyrics that he is definitely reading the Bible (Hey, “Armor and Sword” comes right out of Ephesians Ch. 6), and other religious writings, searching for meaning in this life, as we all are. He, along with Geddy and Alex, may very well be, if we want to label them as such, “atheists”. They are without a doubt, secular humanists at the very least. However, they along with everyone else riding this planet through space, headlong into eternity don’t have all the answers either and we are all seeking for truth whether we admit it or not. Sometimes it’s just easier to accept seemingly logical concepts such as evolution or atheism, so that you don’t have to deal with the obvious conclusions that you would otherwise come to… “The Watchmaker” Such concepts are found in Clockwork Angels. Peart writes in the song, The Garden… “The Watchmaker keeps to his schemes”, “The Watchmaker has time up his sleeve”. I see bitter anger toward God because of his loss in these lyrics, not atheism. Remember back to Power Windows when he wrote: “We sometimes catch a window, A glimpse of what's beyond. Was it just imagination, stringing us along? More things than are dreamed about, unseen and unexplained. We suspend our disbelief and we are entertained. Mystic rhythms, Capture my thoughts, Carry them away, Nature seems to spin, a supernatural way.” Now obviously, that is very metaphysical and new age lingo, but it shows clearly that in the past, Neil was thinking of the natural world in terms of spiritual implications. Something that, “any rational person” should do. If you find a watch in the forest, your rational response is that a watchmaker made the watch. If you find a universe filled with metabolic machines and complex life forms, you should rationally conclude that it didn’t arise by chance because of an explosion of nothing that created everything. Look, I realize that it is hard to reconcile the bible and the teachings of Jesus with the way his followers act sometimes, but that doesn't get you off the hook for believing the truth that is found in His words and His creation, that testify with super decibels of His existence. Ok, I’m done, now you can let me have it…

With this song placed at the beginning of the single release, and lyrical similarity to caravan, with this one setting up an ideology and caravan a bit of a narrative, along with the sleeve calling the two songs the "first two parts of clockwork angels", a song that is, according to wikipedia, going to be an epic multi-part, piece, I wouldn't be surprised with this being the first part of a narrative.

I also must add... (sorry for the addition...) a quote from one of the first songs Neil wrote with the band- Anthem. "Well I know they've always told you selfishness was wrong- yet it was for me, not you, I came to write this song." Sometimes, art it a complete expression from within. It's not always meant to preach or to explain upon another, but as a streak of blood created from your own proverbial slit wrist- unapologetically authentic and true, without censorship or rose colored lenses.

Agree with you Trisatr. Im an old timer Rush fan. Saw them first back in the late 70s. Lost count but ive seen them 30 times on many many a tour. Indeed Neil is getting more anti-religious......and you cant blame him for talking about this struggle after he lost his wife and daughter in the span of a year. What you see in Neils lyrics is a guy trying to make sense of the unexplainable and he is latching onto whatever truth he can find. Tragedy leads some towards God and some away. Im just getting tired of him dwelling on it in his lyrics. This new album is the best from Rush in a long time, but lyrically Peart was at his lyrical best when he focused on philosophy. This spiritual focus of his lyrics are just too damn preachy and turn me off. The poetry is pretty good but you can hear it that he is trying to convince the listener to his POV. No longer does Peart just opine and wax poetic on a subject from a philosophical POV, as a brief window into his mind, now he tries to PUSH his POV out and just comes across as forced and contrite. I hate it when people put their spirituality out there and claim it to be superior. Nobody knows jack squat about the metaphysical, so to all artists, dont feed me the line that you have all the answers cause you dont. Didnt mean that to be such a rant, I appreciate anything Neil has to say over the drivel that is the usual fare these days. And for the poster who said Peart is not an athiest.....yes he is, and so are Ged and Al.

Jesus preached about hell A LOT. He told people to go and sin no more. You need to actually read the bible rather than guess what he said. crossway.org/articles/what-did-jesus-teach-about-hell/

More so than many of their newer song this song seems to have generated alot discussion. I think Mr. Peart would be happier about that than anything else. Having heard the song, seen it perofrmed live, and read and reread the lyrics I don't agree with many of you who see this as a religous attack or an abandonment of spirituality. It is only an attack on dogmatism. Some organized faiths are very dogmatic and in some ways this can stymie independent thinking. I was raised amid such dogmatism and vividly remember the penalties and recriminations for daring to think for myself I will give an example. I was told a particular version of The Book of Genesis that included the following quote: "...And you shall be called woman because I have taken you from the womb of man." This was in reference to the creation of Eve. I was also told that the this was the very word of God and infallible truth as were all the words in the Bible. At a mere ten years old I dared to ask if the passage quoted above made sense in any other language beside English. Do the words for "Womb" and "man" combine phonetically in other languages to form a word meaning "woman." I already knew that in Spanish and Latin they did not. When asked why I posed the question I answered honestly. English wasn't formed as language until the middle ages. This word of God was the ancient text of more than 3,000 years. Why would such a sentence have been in the bible if didn't make linguistic sense when it was written? Why would it only work in one not-yet-existing language? It seemed to me that the sentence was added after English was formed and therefore so too might other passages. Which ones were original and which ones were "updates"? Well, rather than rewarding my logic and insight and/or offering me an explanation that would satisfy the question, I was instead punished for bringing it up. Knuckles beaten , stand in the corner, don't pollute the other children type stuff. Such is the fear of exposure that dogma creates. You see once you say that something temporal must be true because our very faith depends upon it being so, it is highly disruptive when that thing you said must be true isn't. (See Galileo, See Copernicus). My point is this. Religion is a good thing until handcuffs you. Any religious person should embrace our ability as humans to continue to evaluate and observe the universe in which we reside and form new truths as they are revealed to us. If God exists then he or she gave us brains to solve problems, make medicines, and help each other. He or she would not want you to close your mind on his or her behalf. Those who would chose to believe that faith and science are enemies have failed at both. clinging dogmatically to one or the other keeps you from reaching your potential intellectually and spiritually. For further advice from Mr. Peart himself I recommend a thorough listening of the complete song "Hemispheres". Mr. Peart is not faithless, he just refuses to be willfully blind on its behalf. Finally, please don't think that just because someone writes something that they are promoting it as a position. Poe often wrote in the first person from the perspective of a maniacal killer. No one I can think of has yet to suggest that he was proponent of actual murder. Sometimes writers write just to get the rest of us to think. Perhaps Mr. Peart has succeeded at doing just that.

I have to start out by saying I think one of the most beautiful things about music (in fact, art in general) is that it can be interpreted in many ways. There may be one specific theme the song the lyricist or band tends to reach out with, but it can always be admired from another angle. That being said... I'm a devoted Rush fan and an insatiable fan of Neil Peart. I can never get enough of his writings, his ideas and ramblings... His style is remarkable. He can tune in his listener or reader exactly how he intends and it's incredible. I've read all of his books and of course, like many, know of his tragedies. Neil has always intertwined a wonderful dose of skepticism about religion and the like and he did so far before coming back after his hiatus to produce Vapor Trail. As an atheist, I am very attuned to religious references. I must say, although Neil has directly referenced 'atheism' in his blog, he's never outright said he's an atheist. (And as an atheist, you don't have a dislike or hatred for god, you simply don't believe.) He may very well not be an atheist. Perhaps he doesn't prefer the term, or maybe he doesn't want to define himself with title. Maybe he doesn't know. In any shape or form, this song is not directly against religion. In a much larger sense, it's about indoctrination and challenging things you've been told and have accepted without your own careful, rational thought. It no doubt can be viewed through a religious lens, which of course I do. In that case, you would arrive at a viewpoint that sheds light on the false pretenses lended to our youth by way of theism. For a theist struggling with acceptance of the lyrics, in fevor to connect (like I always am with lyrics), try to think of it purely as challenging what you believe without outright acceptance of the ways of others. This does not have to be religion. This can simply be anything someone has told you was true that you have come to revisit. I've seen them quite a few times over the last few years and cannot wait to see them again this weekend. This song I hold close to my heart. Too bad they aren't ripping it up with BU2B on this tour. Love and respect, A Geddycorn

I dont get why Christians think he is necessarily singling out Christianity; no offense, but personally I think you might be missing the point. He could be referring to any religion that preaches karma or the idea that good will ultimately and inevitably triumph over evil. Heaven and the Devil are also common themes with only variations. This covers a great deal of religions, and his idea that the followers are "blind" could just as easily be referring to how every branch of any major monotheistic faith is rooted in a fixed vision of how the Universe works, and how in turn such thinking is fundamentally closed minded (again, no offense but its not like Im wrong; since when do Christian/Muslims/Jewish adherents see eye to eye on who God favors) Being familiar with Neil's lyrics I know he never singles anybody out, and if you are a Christian I'm sorry if his blunt words offend you; but if you are familiar with previous Rush albums you know he has always been critical of organized religion. I dont understand why you feel the need to bail out on one of the best bands of all time now when Neil is merely reiterating how he has always felt, albeit in a harsher tone.

Although the meaning is very clear, I would like to take this opportunity to be the first to comment on this amazing song.