I
swear I must be the most ridiculous person ever when I'm in love.
Because I can't just leave you alone for a second, can I? Even when
you're asleep! Please excuse me.
I've been listening to Roll the Bones
since I sent you that last email and when the album got to "Heresy," it
struck a new chord with me. I love how my love and understanding of
Rush's music grows as I grow. I really want to share this with you too.
Among everything else today. It's just that now the gates are open
again, and wider than ever before, all this stuff is flooding out of me
and I realize again how I had been dying to share so much more with you
when we weren't talking. I literally can't stop. We're open to each
other again, and I don't want to miss an opportunity.All those precious wasted years
All around that dull gray world
All around this great, big world
These lines hold so much meaning for me. They obviously focus on the emotional stress the world suffered under the paranoiac headspace of the Cold War. That time encompassed two whole generations. The Russians and the Americans glared at each other across the planet, from miles under the ocean, and far above in orbit. The sticks and rocks got bigger, uglier, more elaborate, and more numerous. It's no small wonder that this time saw a huge boom in post-apocalyptic literature. After the crushing shame that the lyrics reveal about that time in history, you can really feel how drained the world must have been in the stanza above. It's a relief that no one ever expected. As far as anyone in the world knew, the Cold War might have lasted for centuries...as long as no bombs exploded. The feeling of sudden, unexpected freedom from that "fear and suffering" is so confusing that the world has to ask itself: "Do we have to be forgiving at last? What else can we do? Do we have to say goodbye to the past?" "Yes, I guess we do," perfectly encapsulates that weary and yet hopeful acceptance of a brighter and different future. Alex Lifeson's beautiful guitar interlude at 3:41 is a strong, almost blinding ray of sunlight streaming through a window whose shutters have been torn away.
Hand cannot erase this love
So when you reached out over 1,298 miles to me and I answered, we knocked down our own Berlin Wall. We reunited like those tearful families that had been separated for nearly fifty years. Though only a little over a year passed during our radio silence, it felt so much longer. The whole Cold War seems ridiculous to me because, for all the ideological and socioeconomic differences NATO and the Warsaw Pact shoved in each other's faces, they forgot that they were still human. And that they were still sharing a planet that they were less than an inch from blasting into extinction. I forgot that my love for you is a significant part of what makes me who I am. I forgot that and that seems ridiculous to me. In those moments before we finally reopened communications between us, I asked myself: "Do I have to be forgiving at last? What else can I do? Do I have to say goodbye to the past?"
Yes, I guess I do. In fact, I know I do.
No more "bombs and basement fallout shelters." The iron cross I dragged through the dreary days of 2015 has disappeared, but the strength I built up remains and now I'm putting it to much better and healthier use. So now, I think you can understand a little more why it's so weird for me to contemplate our future and to fully accept that, yes, we are in love, and that we're finally together, after all these years. But no part of those years was ever wasted. Not even the time we spent apart, as much as it may seem so.
You can never break the chain
There is never love without pain
If my love for Roll the Bones and "Heresy" has grown out of this intensely personal experience, my love for you has grown exponentially and beyond the scope of even my love for music in general. Our relationship has endured the worst life has thrown at it so far and my confidence in us grows every single day. Every single time you tell me that you love me. You're helping me fill in the lines, colors, shapes, and details of my vision of the future we're going to share. This is why I say that I haven't experienced a joy like this before in my life. It's perfect that the next song on the album is "Ghost of a Chance."
Even the title of the song prompts me to think about what a heresy love is when you set it against the insanity of the world. Being in love with you is heresy against what I thought was law in my life. What I used to think was immutable and irrefutable. The existence of our polyamorous love is heresy against the heteronormative, monogamous narrative enforced upon our society. Approaching the world's problems with love is heresy. And love is a heresy against the most implacable forces of the universe. Entropy, even with its inevitable victory over the existence of matter itself, has no rebuttal against the far greater power of love. Entropy can attempt to snipe love with pain, but it only makes love stronger. It is my greatest hope and my greatest power. And with it, you and I can face anything.
A love like this
Makes us strong
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