I was introduced to most of my music through peer pressure. I went from spending 6th grade at a tiny Catholic school to 7th grade in the public junior high, and quickly learned that much of your status came from the bands you liked. When I figured out the music the junior high hallways taught me I should be listening to, I worked to catch up. I began listening to classic rock radio. I joined the Columbia House Record and Tape Club more times than I can remember. I drew album covers on the brown paper bag covers wrapped around my textbooks.
Back then in early, early 80s, AC/DC was the apex predator in the hallways and boom boxes, with other now classic rock staples like Foreigner, Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, and even Billy Squier earning what seemed to be permanent spots in the Ring of Honor. Another band with an unquestionably deserved spot on the list of our musical titans was Rush.
I learned about Rush mostly from the radio, since they had a good number of songs deep in rotation from previous albums. They weren’t the kind of band you’d dance around to while playing air guitar in your bedroom, but the kind you’d actively listen to. All of that complicated music was coming from only three guys — Alex Lifeson, playing insane guitar lines, Geddy Lee, playing bass with his hands and using foot pedals to operate keyboards while singing at the same time, and Neil Peart, a drummer who clearly was not human and played like he had nine arms. Being a drummer in the junior high and later the high school band, I was drawn in to Neil Peart’s playing. I knew to ever play like him was beyond my capabilities, but there were still things there to try and learn.
In our microcosm of the world, Rush was mostly known back then for the song “Tom Sawyer,” and primarily for the drum solo. I recently told a colleague that every music fan from my generation had air-drummed to “Tom Sawyer” at least once, and I feel confident that’s a truth. The song, and the solo, were that important to the time.
Rush has been one of my bands for decades. No matter which musical era of the band an album represents or what influences were on display in the music, I could always find something about it to like. For the longest time they were mostly just present and reliable, resurfacing every year or two with an album of new songs or one of their many live recordings. After a few decades, you come to realize you’ve connected with them more deeply than you have with you most of your other favorite artists.
They are still the only band I’ve seen twice on the same tour, once at the Minnesota State Fair and nearly a year later at The Gorge in Washington state. My friend Erik and I would amuse ourselves during marching band practice, dancing with our drums the same way Geddy Lee danced with his bass guitar in the video for “Distant Early Warning.” When I drove out of the city after presenting the summary paper for my Master’s Degree, hearing the song “Marathon” come up on my car stereo was the moment it sank in that I was actually done. The song that ran through my head in the days surrounding the birth of my first nephew was “Manhattan Project,” mostly for the lyric, “All the powers that be / and the course of history / would be changed forever more.” It seemed appropriate then for the first baby born into my family, and it was. When I had to think up a four-digit passcode on my first smartphone, I used 2112. While talking with my friend Staci at an after school happy hour, I mentioned the only thing I wanted for my birthday was Rush’s newest album, “Vapor Trails,” and I didn’t think anyone in my family was going to buy it for me. She did instead. I played through it for the first time in my classroom. Years later, when Rush released a Blu-Ray concert of the final show of their final tour before retiring from touring, that same first nephew, now an adult, gave it to me for Christmas. It came packaged with a keychain — a small Gumby figure, wearing a Rush t-shirt. I still keep it with my keys today.
It was bittersweet when the band announced their retirement, because you know they meant it. Neil Peart had been drumming at a level of virtuosity that had him widely recognized as the best drummer in popular music for four decades, and his body was wearing out. I couldn’t blame any of them for retiring, and respected them for making it an all-or-nothing decision: If one guy was ready to be done, they were all done. The way I saw it, they deserved it after giving the fans so much music for so many years. The word was that Neil was ready to spend more time writing — he had been the primary lyricist for the band throughout their career, and already had a few books to his name as it was.
The artists who produce your favorite songs become companions for you, communicating with you through the ideas and perspectives they’ve shared through their art, and the opportunities they’ve given you to interpret these ideas, either literally or through any number of degrees of metaphor. Sometimes you’ll find something buried in a song you can apply to your own life and beliefs, and sometimes, and just as importantly, you’ll find a soundtrack for the key events of your life, even elevating events from the mundane to significant by the addition of their music. Their songs become a language of shared experience with other fans; you only need to drop a song title like “Red Barchetta” for another Rush fan to know how that song affected you.
Now that I’m in the back half of middle age (at best), I’ve reached a time when the musical heroes of the generation ahead of me are becoming the ones we lose and miss. When I first heard that Neil Peart had died earlier this month, after a mostly private struggle with brain cancer, a shadow crossed my heart (to quote the man himself). I had not been as strongly affected by the loss of a musician I admire (I won’t say hero, knowing how Neil would have bristled at that term) since Freddie Mercury died in 1991. And I named my dog after that guy.
The weekend after his passing, I watched “Beyond the Lighted Stage,” a documentary about the band that I’ve seen a double-digit number of times. The movie ends with a scene of Alex, Geddy, and Neil getting together for a “business meeting” at a nice restaurant in a private room, which amounted to little more than the three of them joking and laughing like the friends they were. When I think about losing Neil now, one of the first things I think of is how hard it has to be for those other two guys as they miss their longtime friend.
The relationship the fans like me had with Neil was nothing like that, but it was just as real. Knowing that he’s gone now, that we’ve lost someone who worked so consistently hard to be as perfect as he could at what he did, leaves the world feeling a little less pure.
When my sister Erin died, fifteen years ago today, her biggest fear was that the people in her life weren’t going to remember her. This was a ridiculous thing for her to worry about, of course. However, this is the year I can kind of understand where she was coming from. It wasn’t so much the idea that we’d all forget she had ever been here and a part of our lives, but after so much time passed and the world would move on and carry us (but not her) along with it, she wouldn’t be the same presence for us she’d once been.
Truthfully I think that can be said about most of the people in our lives, though. Just in the years since she had passed, I’ve had relationships that, at the time, had seemed close enough that I felt for sure those people would always be with me, regardless of what paths our lives took. Things absolutely did not go that way, though; even though a number of these friendships had been some of the strongest of my life time, they’ve faded into little more than social media echoes. Relationships are living things that both ends have to work at to keep alive, and it can be a cold realization to bear witness to how easily things can disappear. Sometimes it can come from physical distance, or mental distance, or emotional distance. Distance itself isn’t enough to wrap things up; my closest friend lives two time zones away and has for at least a decade now. Not every relationship is strong enough to survive, as powerful as it might seem while it’s happening. Life happens the way it does, and sometimes it sucks.
I never worried about Erin fading out of my life. I have millions upon millions of formative memories of her, along with the memories held onto my my parents, my sister, some of our longtime friends, and so many others in my family. Unfortunately, but realistically, one of the things that keeps me tied to her now is this quietly pervasive pain that will never go away. I’ve said before that in grief, you aren’t sad all the time but the sadness is never far away. It’s an undercurrent to everything you do and think. It comes with a crushing weight, but it also twists into a version of nostalgia when you have happier moments and feel more capable of facing it. You can tell yourself you’ve found peace with the loss, and I believe it’s possible to reach a point when you truly have, but finding peace isn’t the same thing as being released from the pain. I know a lot of people seeking to be comforting, with the best of intentions, would try to fall back on the Thoughts and Prayers chestnut of “She’ll always be with you,” but I promise you that 99.985% of the time it does not feel that way. She is decidedly not with us anymore. Her time with us came to an end, and the rest of the world continued to turn.
I can honestly say that fifteen years out usually means it all doesn’t hurt anywhere as much as it has before. But times like the days or weeks leading up to important days, like this anniversary, can come back and smack you in the head like a boomerang you forget you had tossed. Fifteen years feels like a landmark anniversary number, and that got me thinking about how different the world is for those of us still alive since the time we lost her. Just to give you a perspective on how much distance there is now between our losing her and an understanding of how hard the pain can hit if it can still breach that distance on occasion, here’s a list of things I thought of while I spent a good amount of time lying awake in bed early this morning — fifteen of them — that Erin never lived to experience:
*She never knew anything about my brother-in-law David.
*Between my sister, my parents, and me, we’ve had a total of seven dogs in the family that Erin never met.
*There is not a single book I’ve written that she had the chance to read.
*The house where I’ve lived for well over a decade now, and the house where our parents are spending their retirement? She never saw either of them.
*The iPhone didn’t exist until three years after she died.
*Facebook had still been the domain of a few thousand college kids.
*She didn’t know anything about the car accident that came so close to taking our sister.
*The first Iron Man movie was still four years away, so she never saw any of the “Marvel Movies.” (Thor: Ragnarok and Captain Marvel would have been her favorites, and she would have giggled at never scene with Ned in the most recent Spider-Man movies.)
*She left the world when people still dominantly bought compact discs for their music.
*She probably never even heard the name “Barack Obama.”
*She never saw an episode of “The Office.”
*She never had the chance to read a single of the 500+ posts I’ve written on this blog.
*She missed the entire academic career, from kindergarten through starting the freshman year of college, of my youngest nephew.
*She never heard Green Day’s “American Idiot” album. To be fair, she might not have been all that interested in it anyway, but since it was released only weeks before she died and I listened to it almost constantly during that time to help purge the anger and frustration I was feeling, it would be impossible for me to disassociate that album from that specific moment of my life.
*She wasn’t at either my 40th or 50th birthday parties.
The relationships Erin had with those who love her did not end, despite the ultimate distance being between all of us now. We’re living in a different version of the world from the one we experienced with her, though. That can be a lot to think about.
Dear Nephew #3:
I’ve written one of these for each of your brothers. As I looked back at what I shared with them, I found a lot of general going-to-college advice that would apply to you as well, so I’m recycling the ideas that seem the most useful. However, we all know that as similar as you are to your brothers, there are also things that make you very much an individual. Your experience will not be theirs. So here is my abundant wisdom, tailor-made for you, from which I am certain you’ll benefit if you take it to heart. You’re very welcome.
*The first 48 hours I spent on campus were some of the most intimidating of my entire life. Things will likely feel very foreign at first. I promise it won’t last. If I was given the chance to revisit any period in my life, I’d go back to any random month I spent in college. The learning, the newfound independence, the constant discovery, the emerging self-definition, the failures and successes, the hundreds of casual friendships, the evolving relationships — both long-term and temporary; it’s an exhilarating time. I’m a tiny bit jealous that you’re about to be immersed in all of that.
*The blank slate is a beautiful thing. You'll settle in, meet new people, and spend the first few weeks being whoever you want to be. No history, no baggage, no labels; everything completely neutral and waiting for definition. You'll live in glorious, intoxicating anonymity for awhile, and even after you establish your new circles of friends and acquaintances, that's how things will be most of the time. Enjoy it.
* Many people go to college because it seems like the next step they’re supposed to take in life. The truth is college isn’t for everyone, and by no means does it guarantee happiness and success. Happiness comes from getting to do what you want with your life, and hopefully with enough security to avoid any severe and constant worries. Having a degree will result in more choices and opportunities being available to you. It wouldn’t be the worst idea to occasionally reflect on why you’re in school and what you hope to get out of it. Having said all that, I have no doubt that you belong there. You will love the experience of it and will greatly benefit from everything it has to offer.
*Some of the best memories I have from college were the results of the chances I took, while all of my biggest regrets were from the ones I didn’t. Try to imagine how different high school would have been if you weren’t involved in your list of arts and activities. I’m not saying join every club or try out for every activity you hear about, but be open to possibilities. Don’t let hesitation ever choose your path.
*When you throw yourself into doing your best and things don't work out, let that be okay. You'll make mistakes, or things will take a wrong turn of their own accord, or even a combination of the two might happen. Just pick up the pieces and move on. Don’t make it bigger than it needs to be, and learn what you can from the experience. In the end, remember your GPA will only wind up being one line on your resumé. It's important, but it shouldn’t define you. Today’s trials are tomorrow’s footnotes.
*The time might come when you’re tempted to blow off some of the classes that seem easier. Don’t give in. The grades you get in that first year carry a lot of weight when it comes to establishing a baseline GPA. Trust me, you don’t want to find yourself hundredths of a point away from graduating one level of honor higher than you will, especially if it means knowing it would have made all the difference if you’d just gotten a B instead of a C in that one freshman class where you spent half your time playing with the light reflecting from your watch onto the ceiling instead of paying attention. That kind of thing can stick with you.
*Set goals to work toward. Plan for ways to work around any patterns that become obstacles, and take advantage of the ones that work. Find a routine to get your class work done, and seriously, get your class work done. It won’t be just completing assignments; your goal isn’t the grade anymore, but the knowledge. You have a SWEET work study gig; use that as an opportunity to learn how to prioritize and manage your time.
*Give everyone you meet a chance to show you the best version of themselves.
*College is a great time to get the stupid out of your system before you have to officially join the real world as a full-fledged adult, but you will still be held accountable for your decisions and actions. You’ll hear people frequently using excuses like “Dude, I was so wasted,” or “Oh crap, I totally forgot” as reasons for not getting things done or making complete asses of themselves. But: Teachers won’t care. Employers won’t care. Police won’t care. (Not that I expect you to have any run-ins with the police, but still.) People will see your actions as a result of the decisions you make, and they will take that as a representation of who you are.
*NEVER walk into a dorm bathroom with bare feet. Never, ever. There’s more awful going on in there than even the CDC could categorize.
*You’re 18 so you could probably nutritionally absorb cardboard without experiencing so much as a stomachache, but there’s going to be an extraordinary amount of pizza in your future. Walking all over a huge campus will help you maintain a respectable step count, and having a bike on campus won’t hurt either. College is a good time to begin establishing good habits. Maintaining even minimal exercise routines will make a big difference in how you feel, both physically and mentally.
*When you feel insecure about things, remember that everyone around you will be insecure as well. Everyone is just trying to get by. Everyone is looking to define themselves and figure things out, even the people who either seem like or act like they’ve already figured it all out. They really haven’t.
*The teacher in me has to get this out: In high school it was the job of your teachers to teach you. In college it will be your job to learn. If you don’t find a way to do the learning, you can’t blame anyone else for it, and it’s not always going to be a ride around the lake. Professors won’t care about which clubs people were or were not in, who took advanced placement or had IEPs, who had a letter jacket and who didn’t. To some of them you’ll be nothing more than a face in the crowd, a name on an assignment, or most likely a number on a list. Some will recognize and appreciate what you have to offer, but be ready for that to be the exception. It’s just the way the machine works, especially in the early years.
*You’re going to be surrounded by a lot of people who have awful taste in music, and yet they’ll feel as passionate about their music as you do about yours. Resist the urge to point out how misguided they are. You’ll only come off like a fifth grade boy dramatically covering his ears and complaining about how much BTS sucks.
*It’s always good to try and get along with your roommate as much as you can. Not all pairings turn out great, but most are at least workable. Agreeing on some ground rules can help. My roommate in the dorms was different from me in a lot of ways, but we lived together well because understood each other.
*If you have a professor tell you there are multiple forms of a test and you’re using a bubble sheet to mark your answers, pay very close attention to which form you have and where you should hand in your answer sheet. That way you can avoid studying really hard the night before and scoring an 11 out of 50 because you put your answer sheet in the wrong *&%@! pile, and then you won’t have to miss attending Game 7 of the 1987 World Series because you can’t afford to have another failing grade on one of the only three tests given during the term.
*Respect the people, and especially the women, around you. Luckily you and your brothers all have strong relationships with your mother, so that’s going to give you a head start. Demonstrate that respect in ways that will help you earn it from others. At the same time, remember that you can’t control how other people think and feel and act, and that no one has the right or the power to marginalize you.
*The people you'll know and the friends you'll make will come from three groups: The ones you live with, the ones you learn with, and everyone else. How big Everyone Else is completely depends on how involved you decide to be in campus life beyond your dorm room. I cannot emphasize this next part enough: These coming years will be the very last time in your whole life when you will be almost exclusively surrounded by people your age. Take advantage of that. One of my clearest college memories was a day I was cutting through the student union and I saw a girl I knew from a class sitting with a cup of coffee and studying. I stopped to say hi and we talked for a few minutes. The reason I still remember this is because it was a such a perfectly representative moment of what so many days of campus life were like. Soak up and enjoy all the minuscule details that make up college, whatever that ends up meaning for you. I’m not saying to forcibly embed yourself into every aspect of the campus community, but dip your toes into something new once in awhile.
*Text your mom sometimes, just because she’ll miss you.
*Take advantage of this time to discover who you are and to prepare for the life you want to have. Learn to recognize the importance of small events as well as the big ones. Pause and occasionally allow yourself half a thought to appreciate what’s happening to you in the moment, because, believe it or not, these next few years will absolutely fly by.
*Remember there are all kinds of us who want to see you succeed and are cheering you on. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you ever feel it’s becoming too much. We’ve always had your back, and we always will.
