Rush's Dreamline

"Dreamline"

He's got a road map of Jupiter
A radar fix on the stars
All along the highway
She's got a liquid-crystal compass
A picture book of the rivers
Under the Sahara

They travel in the time of the prophets
On a desert highway straight to the heart of the sun
Like lovers and heroes, and the restless part of everyone
We're only at home when we're on the run
On the run

He's got a star map of Hollywood
A list of cheap motels
All along the freeway
She's got a sister out in Vegas
The promise of a decent job
Far away from her hometown

They travel on the road to redemption
A highway out of yesterday -- that tomorrow will bring
Like lovers and heroes, birds in the last days of spring
We're only at home when we're on the wing
On the wing

When we are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we're only immortal
For a limited time

Time is a gypsy caravan
Steals away in the night
To leave you stranded in Dreamland
Distance is a long-range filter
Memory a flickering light
Left behind in the heartland

We travel in the dark of the new moon
A starry highway traced on the map of the sky
Like lovers and heroes, lonely as the eagle's cry
We're only at home when we're on the fly
On the fly

When we are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we're only immortal
For a limited time

We travel on the road to adventure
On a desert highway straight to the heart of the sun
Like lovers and heroes, and the restless part of everyone
We're only at home when we're on the run
On the run...

YOUTUBE SONG LINK

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Rush's 1991 Dreamline, from the Roll the Bones album, is by and far my favorite Rush song. The music alone has a heavy laden tempo that beckons the heaviness of Rush's early prog-metal styling, but without the trappings of traditional prog or metal. The ear-candy from the music alone appeals to me, but its lyrics are why we are here.

A quick read of the lyrics reveals a sense of wanderlust innate within the human psyche. Growing up in the United States, with its sense of exceptionalism, Puritan or Weberian work-ethic, westward expansionism, and manifest destiny, a grandiose sense of individualism permeates the culture. This is encapsulated by the seldom realized American Dream. I don't know if the nebulous idea of an American Dream influenced Neal Peart's lyrics or the song's title, but this is my sense of the song.

I watched a documentary a couple of years back regarding a third world country where the chief daily dream of the nation's poor was merely survival. There was no time or real impetus for big future dreaming. People lived a life of subsistence and the only joy was found within their immediate relationships. As an American birthed into a culture cropped from Enlightenment philosophy of inalienable personal rights, and motivated by the high morality of the Great Awakening, matters of life, liberty, happiness, and conscience for me has been individualistic. The American spirit is ill at ease confined to one spot or pressed by external social compulsions. Overall, Americans are suspicious of communism, socialism (despite progressive elements within our politics), government, and even one another. We even erect blockades to distance one another, such as in the colloquialism, "Fences make good neighbors." 

The American dreamline is a constant pursuit and Rush highlights this with images of maps, stars, new jobs, and the expanse of earth. We Americans tend to drive onward for new opportunities, new adventures, and the goal of leaving our marks. We are a restlessness lot ("We are only home when we're on the run"). Yet, the pivot-point of the song is the chorus, which reads, "When we are young, wandering the face of the Earth, wondering what our dreams might be worth, learning that we're only immortal for a limited time." 

It seems to me that the heart of the song is not the search for meaning and purpose in so much as the expiration date stamped on each of our lives, limiting the achieving of our wants and dreams. As we grow older we all learn that time presupposes death -- our last enemy. People have midlife crises and nostalgia creates within us a sense of longing for times past, while at the same time illuminating how much of our youthful ambition has gone unmet. C.S. Lewis highlights this sentiment well in his book The Weight of Glory.

Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.

The truth is that the American Dream precludes our ability to sit still and dream simpler dreams or the dreams of others. Heck, we can't even envision cultures and people beyond our own. We speak of building walls and putting America first. We do all we can do to hoist individual rights, and then we panic when we are challenged by roadblocks to our Freudian egos or our corporate sense of rightness. This leads to xenophobia, racism, classism, and when we do get charitable, it comes off as a patron giving out of social obligation, pity, or even disdain. We hunger for something more, but with age the realization sets in that most of us are ever only ordinary and never the monuments of our own dreaming. We are truly only immortal for a limited time. 

In the New Testament, Jesus tells people in Matthew 6:34 not to worry about tomorrow, because it will have its own worries. In short, live for the now. This is not a hedonistic teaching, but Jesus' way of allaying the stresses that come with constant striving for what this world has. So what that we may never store up for ourselves the wealth and renown we'd like in this riches and celebrity-saturated world. This is idolatry at its purest. It's a phantom of constant tension. Our very pursuits can stymie what's truly important in life. I wonder, are third-worlders better off in a way? Even in their lack of resources and social momentum, they have a seemingly better grasp of community and relationship, which suggests the wealth of knowledge and wisdom passed down orally through the generations. Are we the ones impoverished? 

If we are truly immortal for a limited time (at least from this side of the ether), then ought we put aside our passions for stuff, success, and even individual rights for the sake of others, relationships, and the pursuit of something more eternal than our pet ideologies? I don't mean to say that we should give up the inalienable rights noted in our polity, but that we abandon our fruitless search for the American Dream, and dream simpler dreams that we can truly attain, today and now. Just my thoughts.