(Phaysis)

If you’ve known me for long, you know that I really, really like the band Rush. Of the handful of arena shows I’ve been to, Rush has been the most frequent. I have all their studio albums, a stack of T-shirts, concert videos and a documentary or two. To say I am a fanatic is an understatement.

This week, among my internet friends and some sites I frequent, I’ve seen references to a lot of Rush stuff. A lot. Their current concert tour. A friend’s overview of their show this week in Dallas. An intimate interview with the band on Canada’s “Studio Q“. An interview with CNN before a show.  The full-blown documentary of the band released earlier this year. And in the news today is an article on the new Guitar Hero video game featuring the entire “2112″ suite (all 21 minutes), required to unlock a “Demi-God” to slay “The Beast” during the game’s Quest mode (how cool is that?). That’s a lot of Rush news.

These guys have been going at their thing for 40 years now, and that’s a huge achievement. But during most of that time, they’ve toiled in some level of obscurity. They have a gaggle of radio-friendly hits, but by and large their musical and lyrical content borders the fringe of what the mass culture is willing to accept. The main consumers of Rush music are the nerdier ones among us. That’s been the joke for a long while, but every joke has a thread of truth.

So, if they’ve been in the fringe for so long, enjoyed mostly by those who get their jollies on the weirder stuff, then why all the sudden press from the band?

Ah, yes, the press. Ever notice when disparate threads come together in your head and tie themselves together into a larger narrative? All the talk of the band this week reached a critical mass with me where it confessed the story of a band propelled back into the Limelight by a very skilled public relations firm whose sole job is to reestablish, in the public’s mind, the importance of their works and their worth to rock music at large.

I don’t need convincing, but apparently more outside people do. I can’t begrudge them that. If the Rolling Stones can keep going, selling out stadiums for more than $100 a pop (cheap seats), if U2 can still make an impact and elevate the people lucky enough to get a ticket to a show before it sells out in an hour, then why should Rush languish in the shadow? It’s noteworthy that the band even referenced these and other bands in their interviews, tying themselves and their career to the cannon of rock-and-roll. It’s a clever play.

The members have a certain level of humility in their interviews, and it’s somewhat refreshing to see a band of their caliber have that. But there’s also a subtle subtext of seeking recognition, of increasing the brand awareness, of getting the rewards they merit by sticking to it for so long. Of a band making a push to rocket into the stratosphere where the rock gods live. Of going out in a blaze of glory.

Our better natures seek elevation.
A refuge for the coming night.
No one gets to their heaven without a fight.

Two weeks ago, I got the itch to build a new desktop wallpaper for my laptop to replace the current one which has been there for a few months. I saw something that day that evoked a voice I’ve let sit silent, and I wanted to wake up that voice and weave it into something good. That voice spoke of an image I drew in November ’97 when I was in the throes of hungry creativity during my two-month stint of hardscrabble unemployment in North Carolina. During those two months, I wrote poetry, I drew art, I listened to music, I met people, I had a new relationship with an awesome girl. Even without a job, I was producing. I was in the springtime of my life.

The vision was to use this drawing, a box with circular vines weaving in and out of the box, in a layered tableau of drawing, ripped paper, a cherry branch, a few vines curling around, stick pins, all softly front-lit and backed up by a textured background. I could do everything in Pov-ray, but I needed a scan of that drawing. I remember scanning it some time back in ’99, so I searched my hard drive and all my backups for the image. It was nowhere. Disappeared to the ether. So my only option was to scour my room for the drawing and attempt to rescan it.

In my search, I managed to unearth a treasure. I found my birth certificate. Found some more poetry from North Carolina. Found a stack of love letters. Finally, I found it: the drawing, and all of the drawings I had created and compiled between late 1997 and 2000. Bingo.

I was really, really into vines, banners, fineals, things draping from suspended bars, very fine lines, crosshatching. Still kinda am. I had several mechanical drawing pens, and I used them with much attention on making the most miniscule drawings. I would fixate on an image for hours, touching here, shading there until I was satisfied. It was like sex. After all the work, something beautiful would be created.

In the span of a few hours, I had dug out and set up the scanner on a very obsolete computer and I rifled through my stack of drawings to find the best ones to scan and commit to pixels. Spent some time the next day cleaning up the vine box drawing while listening to Nine Inch Nails and Rush concert dvds. I was happy. For the first time in a while, I was happy again. Not just the memories that returned while I meditated on my art, but there was the happiness from meditating on art itself. Having a mind quiet enough to draw. And it was there that the Eros returned.

If life is not lived to create, then it is a lie. I can’t get any more truthful than that. The reason we are here is to create things that will outlive us. And I’m feeling that drive again, like it is the springtime of my life. I am insane for having kept the voice of the muse silent for so long.

Kind of shameful, really, that I kept quiet, but I kept quiet because of the shame; an endless cycle. I had created so much that the amount of crap scaled upwards with the output and I started seeing it; instead of loving all my babies, I hid them away and stopped producing. I heard the voices, the wrong voices, in the coffeeshops, on the message forums, in the channels, rambling about talentless hacks who take themselves too seriously, and that had a very chilling effect on me. I stopped producing and it became winter. The Very Long Pause.

I’m not finished with this image yet, but I will be soon. I worked on it all day yesterday and spent today taking care of necessary things instead. I don’t want to be done with the voice when I’m done with the image. I want to keep drawing, keep writing poetry, get back into music, keep speaking with that voice, the muse. To emote. To love again. To take my failures and abortions in stride as I keep up the creativity. To be a producer.

I’ve been living a lie. It’s time to speak the truth.

Update (Feb 3, 2008) The image is finished. I put the final touches on it a few days ago, and now comes the time to share. Enjoy!

The Rush concert friday night was excellent beyond expectations. After trudging through the heavy rains, the rush-hour traffic, and the hour and a half drive to San Antonio, my friend Nolan and I made it to the amphitheater an hour and a half before the show, just long enough to grab some food, do some requisite merchandising, and find our seat to watch the crowds accumulate as we dried off.

The lights went out and Rush came on at 7:40. Their show started out with a video on the jumbotron featuring Jerry Stiller in a Rush concert shirt. The video starts with Mr. Stiller asleep and snoring on his easy chair. He stirs awake, scratches his head, and says, “Oh, man, what’d they put in my tea? Ugh. Is the show over?” He looks around and notices the audience outside of the screen, and he exclaims, “Hey! What’re you guys still doing here? Wait, it hasn’t started yet? Huh. Where are those guys? Hold on, let me get them out here.” He looks to the left, off the side of the backstage and yells, “Hey guys! Get out here! You have a show to do! C’mon!” The band comes out, the crowd roars, and they tear into a 5-minute instrumental medley of songs from their 30-year history as the jumbotron shows vignettes of Mr. Stiller “rocking out” to the camera and a video montage of photos of Rush throughout the years. Yep, the show has started.

Set list:

1. instrumental medley, featuring photos of the band from over their 30 year history
2. “Spirit of Radio”
3. “Force Ten”
4. “Animate”
5. “Subdivisions”
6. “Earthshine”
7. “Red Barchetta”
8. “Roll the Bones”
9. “Bravado”
10. “YYZ”
11. “The Trees” (with “Day Tripper” interlude)
12. “The Seeker” (cover)
13. “One Little Victory”

INTERMISSION:

14. “Tom Sawyer”
15. “Dreamline”
16. “Secret Touch”
17. “Between the Wheels”
18. “Mystic Rhythms”
19. “Red Sector A”
20. “Rhythm Method” (drum solo)
21. “Resist” (acoustic)
22. “Heart Full of Soul” (acoustic cover)
23. “2112″
    • Overture
    • The Temples of Syrinx
    • Grand Finale
24. “La Villa Strangiato” (with strange diversion: Alex cuts loose on the mic)
25. “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”
26. “Xanadu”
27. “Working Man”

ENCORE:

28. “Summertime Blues” (cover)
29. “Crossroads” (cover)
30. “Limelight”

Yes, that’s “Xanadu”, “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”, and “Between the Wheels” you see there. Been ages since they’ve played those on tour; a real treat. And Alex, on the song “La Villa Strangiato”, was given center stage, to which he stood at his mic, played some odd songs as the other two tried to follow along, and sang, in a most lunatic falsetto, things like some kind of military song and stream of consciousness stuff like, “Oooh, I like to siiiinng, like to siiiing a looottt.” We were rolling in the aisles.

After the final encore song, Rush thanked us and left the stage, the stage lights stayed on, and the house lights came up. After a few seconds, the jumbotron roars back on to show Jerry Stiller again. He looks at the audience, many of them yelling for more, and he exclaims, “Hey, what are you still doing here?! The show’s over! Go home! Go away!” He looks at the bed behind him, walks over, takes off his shoes, and lays down, “Ah, bedtime. Good night, everyone.” He falls asleep as the video fades to black and the stage lights spell out, “Bye Bye”.

The stage setup was fairly impressive. Saw some new things I’ve not seen before on stage. Above the band were two semicircular rows of multicolor light bars which faced the audience; interlaced between those bars were strobe lights. It appeared to me that those light bars were made with high-output LEDs. Truly innovative. Small packages, surprisingly bright, instant color change. Behind the band was a jumbotron the size of the back wall, built with blocks of LED displays. In the center was a full size 16:9 screen, and to either side was a row of vertical screen bars each about three-feet in width and tapering in length from taller than the screen to about 10-foot tall at the outer edges. These strips had three-foot gaps between them, and they were configured to make the image evenly spread across the elements, really stretching the image out to a unique effect. And, of course, there was the usual over-the-top collection of varilights, lasers, smoke machines, and flame bars to go with all this high technology. It was a stage lighting candyland. Impressive. See-Factor, the stage lighting company that has toured with Rush for years, has done it again.

The show was over around 11. Just over 3 hours in a show. Not bad at all. We managed to eek out of the parking lot around 11:45 or so. Decided to just chill out at the car until the traffic jam eased off. Happily, this time around, I was able to leave the parking lot and head straight for the interstate, unlike last time where I was sent around the county on a farm to market road before I could even reach the interstate. Much happiness there. We reached Austin around 1:30, just in time to greet our friends at our usual friday-night gathering.

Overall, it was a good night.

I have a small problem…

See this?

That’s right. I have a pair of tickets to see Rush this Friday in San Antonio. I bought the pair in March of this year. Over that span of time, my intended cohort for the concert has backed out due to inability to pay for the already-purchased ticket. (!!) So. I have a small problem, and I intend to fix it with something like this:

Anyone interested in going with me, this Friday afternoon, to see Rush in San Antonio, TX, and has enough money for my low “fire sale” price of $35 (OBO), and has no problems with taking off on such short notice, CONTACT ME NOW. It is my plan to leave Austin around 2pm Friday afternoon.

It would be a damned shame, a travesty of sorts, if I went to the show alone. If that happens, I will have effectively paid $133 (!!) to see Rush by myself. It would be a damned shame.

Thank you. That is all.