Roadshow: Landscape With Drums by Neil Peart

Roadshow: Landscape With Drums by Neil Peart

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, I suppose I eventually had to be done savoring this one. Neil Peart died on January 7th and I still had this unread on my shelf. There are three more travelogue/memoirs that I must find but for now, I say goodbye with this one. With the backdrops of Rush’s R30 tour and the countrysides he rode through on his motorcycle, Peart’s prosaic skill rolls smoothly, if punctuated with stops of interests. I have thought that Peart saw a lot – he rode more than 200,000 miles on his motorcycle as of that writing – but he seemed to only observe the things that mattered to him. I can appreciate that. I’ve found myself doing much the same in the past 20 or so years. And as with his previous books he recounts some of those observations here. I flagged several dozen lines and passages, and as is usual, I’ll have to sift for what I share here … his chapters are long! … but I’ll start with the first few paragraphs of his epilogue “on with the story”:

On a tour of fifty-seven shows, in nine countries, I played in front of 544,525 people, and went through 257 pairs of drumsticks, one 20-inch cymbal, three 18-inch cymbals, six 16-inch cymbals, two China cymbals, fifteen drumheads, 21,000 motorcycle miles, nineteen countries, twelve oil changes, five sets of tires, one lost luggage case (including Patek Philippe watch and Cartier engagement ring – as Michael suspected, my fickle Good Samaritan must have found them and changed his mind; he never did call back), thirty-four bottles of The Macallan (my riding partners helped), four cartons of Red Apples (ditto), 18,617 words of journal notes, an immeasurable outpouring of physical and mental energy, and an undetermined amount of hearing loss.
I celebrated my fifty-second birthday, almost forty years of drumming, thirty years of making music with Rush, twenty years of bicycling, ten years and almost 200,000 miles of motorcycling, and four years of marriage.
I laughed, I cried, I ached, I sweated, I despaired, I was joyful, I was miserable, I hated it, I loved it, I made friends, I made enemies, I made music, I made gas money, I made time to live and love.
[…]

Still confounds me that a man who thinks the way he does, reads what he does, appreciates the finer things of life – The Macallan! – can smoke “Red Apples”, but it was his life and not mine.

The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars: A Neuropsychologist’s Odyssey Through Consciousness by Paul Broks

The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars: A Neuropsychologist’s Odyssey Through Consciousness by Paul Broks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got a review copy of this from First To Read. The description (First line: “Paul Broks weaves together imaginative stories of everything from artificial intelligence to the Greek philosophers in order to sketch a beautiful, inimitable view of humanness that is as heartbreaking at it is affirming.”) grabbed me, so I requested a copy. The rest of the description follows…”When celebrated neuropsychologist Paul Broks’s wife died of cancer, it sparked a journey of grief and reflection […]” I had never heard of Broks so his celebrity might be localized. I am also not all that acquainted with neuropsychology, and had to do a little background research (unnecessary for reading this) to familiarize myself.

Broks writes in his prologue

This is not a conventional book and I think you should know what you’re in for.

He’s right. It’s not. Continuing:

What (I hope) you are about to read is a mix of memoir, neurological case stories, and reflections on life, death and the mind.

In short and long passages, he does all that and more.

Broks’ shares his grief following his wife’s death in PART ONE: A GRIEF OBSERVED, meandering through nonlinear memories, fantasy and myth, and talking points of his trade. (He mentions Julian Jaynes, whose Origin of Consciousness is on my to-read list, nudging the book up a notch or two closer to “eventual”.) The grief is palpable.

In PART TWO: A THOUSAND RED BUTTERFLIES, Broks delves more into his trade, musing much on the nature of consciousness between scientific research and theory and philosophical explorations. I kept having to set the book aside and digest his thoughts. One section prompted a mental WTH? and given that in his prologue he said that facts sit alongside fiction and that he thought the fictional elements were easily identified, I’m not sure if he was serious that not all humans are sentient – at least, that’s what a colleague discovered in that particular story (although…there was considerable evidence of such in 2016 and since, but that would make his 10% far too low…) I won’t spoil where the title of this second part comes from…you’ll have to find that out yourself. I admit that I was, because I am by nature, less enamored of the philosophy elements, but the stories are still good anyway.

Broks recommends reading the first chapters first and the last chapters last and the rest can be skipped around. I imagine that would work for some. I chose to read them in the order presented, and in the last section PART THREE: INTO THE LABYRINTH he mixes more myth and fantasy into his reality. He relives some final days again. Cathartic. And his concept of consciousness congeals here. The pace increases until his coda.

I enjoyed this the more I read. On one hand outside my wheelhouse and life experience. On the other, appealing to my scientific curiosity. I might have to look up Mr. Borks’ other work, but he left me with three other book recommendations that I really want to find and read first. Meanwhile, I expect to reread this again soon.

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Traveling Music: The Soundtrack to My Life and Times by Neil Peart – review

Traveling Music: The Soundtrack to My Life and Times by Neil Peart

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this and another Peart memoir in a used book store and snapped them up because I really like his writing. Interesting format, this…Peart says “Since childhood, music has had the power to carry me away, and this is a song about some of the places it has carried me.” Interwoven with the songs he loaded into his CD changer on a solo road trip in 2003 from California to Big Bend National Park in Texas (and back), this is part playlist, part memoir. He talks about the songs he chose, sharing the history of the music and his history with them. And he talks about other extraneous experiences, musical and non…cycling in Africa, motorcycling between gigs in America.

There is a lot here that speaks to me…when young, he wanted something exciting to talk about at the family dinner table, and “I guess I spent the rest of my life making sure I always had something to talk about […]” and a later observation that ties to that:

How could anyone ever be bored in this world, when there was so much to be interested in, to learn, to contemplate? It seemed to me that knowledge was actually fun, in the sense of being entertaining…

So true! How could anyone ever be bored? (I cringe when I hear that word…and fell sorry for the lack of imagination that allows it to be said.)

Apart from one specific … act…he has interesting and eclectic tastes in music, and I liked reading about how he came to enjoy Sinatra, Gene Krupa, the Beach Boys, Dusty Springfield, and more. How he held little appreciation for groups like the Rolling Stones who only pretended to be rebels because they conceded to changing their lyrics on the Ed Sullivan Show where The Doors, who were true rebels, refused to change their line in “Light My Fire” about the girl getting “much higher” (and were subsequently banned.) How he saw Woody Herman in a backwoods restaurant gig in the decline of his life, having to play those gigs because of IRS troubles. How he got rid of all of his vinyl LPs, holding onto maybe 100 of his treasures (I did the same, losing my 100 or so treasures to a fire in 2013…)

Reading how he hears Sinatra on Watertown is something I sadly can never seem to get (but I appreciate any insight to help me try):

Sinatra’s subtle, sincere expression of that character’s life carried all the emotional subtext Jake Holmes had woven into the lyrics so skillfully, reinforced by Bob Gaudio, Charles Callelo, and Joe Scott. For this listener, Watertown had more than stood the test of time, it had grown stronger, and remained not only a personal classic (the whole album perfect for in-helmet singing on a long bicycle or motorcycle ride), but also a great American work of art.

Okay, now I have to go find it and listen to it! I most likely won’t have the same reaction, but who knows? Same as with both Moby Grape and The Grateful Dead’s eponymous debut albums: I’ve never listened to Moby Grape and could never get into The Dead, but now I’m going to give them a shot. Same as with Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis…Peart piqued my curiosity.

He likes The Macallan…bonus points for that. He also …and it hurts to type this…likes..I can’t say it…{cringe} …Coldplay. Major points subtracted for that.

Something to ponder (on Jann Wenner on George Martin – the Beatles Martin – commenting on Brian Wilson…Wenner in the negative, Martin, the opposite):

Everyone’s personal opinion is worth the same, in religion, music, and politics, but some expert opinions are definitely more informed, more reflective, and more valuable.

I would say, probably on informed, possibly on reflective, but highly debatable on valuable. And on his reviews of his own performance, he asks himself What would I think of this if it wasn’t me? I keep seeing five-star rating “reviews” from authors on their own books and wonder if they’ve ever asked themselves that question!

So many well turned phrases pepper the text, one in particular I’ll share. When talking about Pasty Cline’s Heartaches collection album and a wandering soul slave to a sound of an “outward bound”

And what a sound that is, too, the distant blare of a train’s horn dopplering away in the night, and it echoing right back to my own childhood and all the way forward.

So, I have music to explore, and another book to read in a little while. I’ll thank Mr. Peart for the tacit recommendations.

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