Post by Gregory Schlueter

ROCK OF SAGES SERIES: "TOM SAWYER" Rush (#10) This morning I ran a mile. Nothing earth-shattering. No Olympic qualifiers were harmed in the making of this effort. The clock stopped at 8:31, which was just enough improvement to earn a modest fist pump and, more importantly, sufficient justification to report my accomplishment to a text thread composed of five 58-year-old high school friends who have collectively abandoned all illusions of athletic greatness. Our objective is no longer speed. It is survival. The unofficial motto of the group might be: “Keep moving. Avoid dying prematurely.” The encouragement is sincere. The hazing, sometimes relentless. As I was cooling down, however, my mind drifted back to another run. Another mile. Another soundtrack. The year was 1982. Ronald Reagan was in the White House. MTV was still playing music videos. Gas was cheap. Hair was not. I was in 8th grade, running track at Perry Tipler High School in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and like a great many teenage boys of the era, I had discovered Rush. More specifically, I had discovered the album Moving Pictures. If you were a runner, there was no better companion than “Tom Sawyer.” The opening synthesizer line felt like ignition. Then came Alex Lifeson’s guitar, Geddy Lee’s unmistakable voice, and beneath it all the astonishing precision of Neil Peart, perhaps the greatest rock drummer who ever lived. READ FULL: https://lnkd.in/e-DCMFR2