This piece started off as a simple dedication to Neil Peart, who is most succinctly described as one of the four best drummers in Rock n’ Roll history (thus far),* but eventually it started to sprout some interesting and far deeper roots that reached towards some unexpected, mysterious underground springs, the first of with was the idea of a so-called ‘World-Building Phrase’, which is one of those things that is a writer’s wet dream.

There truly is nothing that can save a writer so much work in the early stages of telling his story, where he might otherwise be tempted to to take the reader-alienating, slog-through approach of ‘begging-and-screaming-for-a-distraction’ info dumps, which professional, Chicago Style Manual-worshipping critics react to as a non-‘Eddie-the-Sparkly-Veggie-Vamp’ (i.e., actual, self-respecting vampires), reacts to a crucifix.

Additionally, when one is thinking of Neil Peart, how can one not find themselves wandering down the odd, Ayn Rand-worshipping phase of Rush’s early, 2112/Farewell to Kings career, for all its ‘Priests of the Temples of Syrinx’ and visions of Coleridge’s Xanadu?

Likewise, in a purely Canadian reference, I have hearkened back to the memory of really unique and cool old show called ‘Magic Shadows’, which was produced by TVOntario, and which ran from 1974 to the mid 1980s, hosted by Elwy Yost, and which had some uniquely trippy theme music and opening credits.

Oh...
I would also like to very strongly point out that my use of the word ‘Aryan’ is intended simply to capture/encapsulate the type of eroticism that Ayn Rand put forth in many of her books, and how the descriptions and the flow of her words that, while oddly evocative of twenties and thirties German propaganda on the surface (when it still attempted to appeal to positivity and pride, and before it just turned uglier and uglier as war loomed), still, nevertheless couldn’t ever seem to escape the ‘Worker’s Paradise’ appeals of her Soviet youth, no matter how desperately she strove to mock and lampoon it.

As ‘Aryan’ has, nowadays, become such a loaded word, and for all the obvious reasons, I would like to quite categorically state that there is no deeper message hidden in this piece other than that, which I have already laid out, and it certainly does not reflect any of the writer’s own, personally-held opinions, lest anyone get a bee in their bonnet that it might.

(and it’s only because satire is dead, that such a caveat is necessary in the first place...)



(*According to Rolling Stone Magazine, the other three members of that ‘top four drummers in Rock n’ Roll History are sadly, likewise departed from this life, and were listed as being John Bonham, Ginger Baker and Keith Moon.)