The Thief of Now

Having now established Terra Firma in this fated fifth decade of life, I’m afforded the power of prescient hindsight, where memories carry far greater existential significance than the original moment. This, perhaps, is thanks to the strange phenomenon of retrograde perspective. In other words, my mind now, remembering the then, involuntarily imbues memories with weight they were incapable of bearing at the time.

Take these lyrics from the standout single from Rush’s twelfth studio album, the much-maligned “Hold Your Fire”. Aside from containing the only other voice ever to grace a Rush LP (the fabulous and ebullient fellow Canuck, Aimee Mann), “Time Stand Still” contains some of the most achingly sublime lyrics ever laid over a new wave prog beat. Peart managed, in two short verses, to perfectly encapsulate the tone and timbre of my current existential reckoning.

Summer’s going fast
Nights growing colder
Children growing up
Old friends growing older

Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger

Second only to Roger Waters’ equally crushing lyrics from “Time,” where once again, somehow an artist in the summer of his career managed to look ahead to the coming winter and not only anticipate its chill, but also have the presence of mind to stock up on logs of perspective, enough to keep the soul warm during those cold nights of existential dread.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again

The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

You have to give it to Peart and Waters, each uniquely weary of their success, to be able to channel their frustration into an eloquence that would stitch itself into the fabric of an entire generation’s spirit. Perhaps they too heard the echoes of future mortality pleading with them to not “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way” and to defiantly demand that “Time Stand Still”.

Now, here, securely grounded in my fifth decade, mentally and emotionally preparing for a sixth, I look back to the moments that I first heard each of these songs.

High school.
Late ‘80s.
Head full of ideas.
Heart full of hope.

No idea what would follow, other than the growing suspicion that time is the ultimate thief of now, robbing us of the experience that, as Peart so eloquently put it, “slips away”.

The now me, remembering the then me, realizes those backward echoes of this future existential reckoning had already begun to stick, resonating forward and forever coloring both the life I would remember and the life I would actually live.