The Shame of It All

I have a guilty pleasure to admit. Actually, I don’t know if it’s even a pleasure. I don’t really know what to call it. It’s something of a fascination, I guess.

Ready?

Here goes nothing.

I am fascinated by Sarah Palin. (I know! I KNOW!) The presidential election is long over, and I didn’t vote for McCain/Palin anyway. Yet I still find myself clicking on links to news stories about her. It started out with “Oh what dumb thing did she say now?” And, well, that’s still on my mind as I click. But it’s a compulsion to read about her latest exploits.

Let’s be clear. I don’t like her. I don’t like her politics. Her voice makes my teeth itch. I think she did a lousy thing by quitting her job as Alaska’s governor and leaving her entire state hanging. (Honestly, she couldn’t wait until her term was over and just not run for re-election? Really?) But I still click with the same curiosity that causes my head to turn and my eyes to look when I drive by the scene of a car accident on the way home from work. A few weeks ago, while I waited for Todd to join me at the blood donation center, I read the article in the Vanity Fair in the waiting room in which Levi Johnston was interviewed. He totally scorched Palin in the article, and I wonder how much of it is true.

I don’t like her, but so many people out there do. And I want to know why. WHY?? I mean, I don’t care for marshmallow fluff either, but people out there love that too and I don’t quite understand that either. (I wonder if there’s a correlation between people who eat fluff and like Sarah Palin.) I’ve asked the question to friends, but didn’t get an answer because their political leanings are the same as mine. I’ve heard people say that having Sarah Palin in the White House is the same as having your big sister in the White House. (I find this offensive, as I am certain that my sisters are way smarter than Palin.) My response to this has been, “Well, I don’t want my sister in the White House. I want someone who’s really really smart in there. I think my sisters are smart, but not White House smart.”

Last night I stopped at my local branch of the library and grabbed my reserved copy of “Going Rogue.” I tilted my head down as I retrieved it. I’ve become friendly with the librarians, and the one working the desk subtly raised her eyebrows as I took the book from the counter. I couldn’t look her in the eye.

But I am totally going to read this book. I didn’t buy it. I didn’t support Palin with my hard earned dinero by buying it. I will read it, and I will see if there’s an answer to my question in there.

I’ll let you know.

Deep in Thought. Obsessed. It's All Good.

In continuing with my recent mini-obsession with Neil Peart from Rush, I grabbed another one of his books from the library, “Travelling Music.” He wrote this one about driving from California to Big Bend National Park in Texas. He listened to a variety of CDs, from Sinatra to Limp Bizkit and talked about how music was, obviously, such a huge part of his entire life.

I am about 100 some-odd pages in, and am thoroughly enjoying this book—even more than I did “Ghost Rider,” which was his story about riding all over North America on his motorcycle after losing both his daughter and wife. This one’s more autobiographical, and I find myself chuckling at his anecdotes as I read. He really is a fascinating individual, but his books are like Chinese food. After I eat Chinese food, I find myself pawing through an open fridge an hour or two later. That’s how I feel about Neil Peart’s book. I devour one, and then a short time later I am pawing through the Internet trying to find something else he’d written that I can nibble on.

The book’s got me thinkin’ about the life of fortune and fame. Overall I’ve had a relatively low opinion of celebrities that complained about paparazzi and prying fans. My thought always was, “If you don’t like it, go buy a ranch in Montana and get the hell out of the limelight.” I imagine that people in that line of work have a love/hate relationship with fans and photographers. The photographers keep you in the news and maintain your worth. But at the same time, when you can’t go down to the corner to buy a newspaper without being photographed and wardrobe critiqued, then I am sure it’s a royal pain in the ass. I imagine there’s a great deal of fear that goes with that kind of lifestyle. A crazed fan shot John Lennon, after all. My big fear in life is running into a former boss or boyfriend with whom the relationship may have ended badly. I can’t imagine living with the fear of some rabid fan coming up to me and demanding my attention while I am out and about doing my thing.

Back when I was a huge Rush fan, when I was in high school, I couldn’t Google stalk Neil Peart. Now I can, and I stumbled upon his myspace page. I read the comments that people had left, “You’re my idol, man!” and the like. I sat there with my mouth hanging open as I read them and wondered what he thought of them as he read them. Here were thousands of people who wrote things like that to a man who, really, is a stranger to all those people. They don’t know him personally. They only know him through his music and his writing. In “Travelling Music” he mentioned fans coming to his front door of his home to ask for an autograph, and another story of a man who left beer for him outside his motel room, then called on the phone him to invite him to hang out. I could sense the unease those interactions caused him as I read. I wonder if he looks at his myspace page and wonders which one of commenters will be the next one to try to walk up to his front door? Which one will be the one that he has to avoid when he’s having a drink in a bar? John Lennon didn’t have myspace. He knew he had fans, but he couldn’t read their little online tributes to him as Neil Peart can. Is the phenomenon of the Internet helping famous people to be more wary of strangers? Would John Lennon still be alive today if...

I can see that it would be lovely to have touched so many people with your work. But how is it that fans cross these very definite lines? Every so often you hear about some crazed fan trying to sneak into a house of a celebrity. (Even David Letterman had one of those.) And ya gotta wonder what brings people to that point. What makes them think it’s OK to try to get into the home of a famous person? And what are they going to do when they get in there? Are they just going to plop down and join their object of obsession at the dinner table and say “Hi, and how was your day? Please pass the peas,” and be handed the peas like it’s just a normal day? There’s a big reason why these people are scaling a wall and not walking in the front door. They don’t belong there!

I listen to Neil Peart’s lyrics and I read his books, and they move me. They might make me think of something I hadn’t thought of before. Or they might make me sing along as I drum my fingers on the steering wheel in the car. Do I think I have a connection with him? Hell no. But his work sometimes inspires me, sometimes makes me feel happy and other times makes me feel sad. If I saw him in public would I stop in my tracks and say quietly and urgently to whomever I am with, “Holy crap! That’s Neil Peart!” Hell yes. Would I walk over and say hello to him, like he’s supposed to know me? Hell no.

Haunted

Just back yesterday from a mini vacation to Orlando and while on the trip I read Neil Peart’s “Ghost Rider.” I devoured 200+ pages on the flights from Providence to Orlando, in approximately 4 hours of flight time. Then I finished the rest while lounging by the pool at the hotel on Monday. This is one of those books that has kept me up at night with my mind racing for the last two nights.

See, I was a Rush fan when I was a teenager. “Presto” was in my car’s tape deck for some ungodly amount of time that can only be measured in months. “Hold Your Fire” was in my walkman, and got me through my jogs and psyched me up for field hockey and basketball games and track meets. I memorized every word, and Neil Peart wrote almost every one of them. Then when I’d learned that he’d written this book, I saved it for a time when I’d be in a “forced inactivity” situation, like in an airplane, so I could focus in larger chunks at a time. (As opposed to my normal lunch hour and before bed reading times.)

The book was about how Peart rode his motorcycle all over Canada, the western US, Mexico and Belize in the year or so after his teenage daughter and wife died just months apart. It’s an honest, yet guarded, account of his travels. He wrote about every thing he’d seen, hiked and ate with a slight taste of his grieving process.

And it was just that—his grieving process. I read the reviews of the book on amazon.com, and read the critiques which said that he “wrote the book for himself and not for his fans.” And now I pose the question, why does everything he does have to be for his fans? Yes, he’s made a name for himself as a fantastic drummer in a very successful rock band. But this was a book a man wrote about what he needed to do to get over a massive loss. It was personal for him, just like any grieving process is for anyone.

The first six months after I lost my mom, I was a useless, spontaneously sobbing mess. It didn’t help that I’d been laid off from my job the week before she died, so I didn’t have anything in my life that forced me into a routine. In those months, getting out of bed often took a Herculean effort. Lying in bed and staring out the window always seemed a more compelling way to spend my time. I shopped for a house as a way to give myself some purpose, because searching for a job and grad school weren’t enough to get me vertical every morning.

When I lost Mom, I lost my link to my past. I also lost the link to that one person that I could ask “So, what were you doing when you were my age? What did you think of life and the world then?” I am 35 now, and I would love to ask Mom, who had 4 children at the age of 35, her youngest not even a concept (surprise!) and ask her how her life was compared to how mine is now. But I can’t. And that’s the part of my loss that haunts me. And that’s the loss that I still grieve for nearly 8 years later—that I never really got the chance to experience Mom as a fellow woman, and not as just my mom.

But Peart lost his link to his present and his future when he lost his family so many years ago. I can live without being able to discuss history with Mom. I still have a future that I can look forward to. What did he have? His life as he knew it ended, and he didn’t know what to do next.

I look at my life now, and the concept of losing my husband or even one of my dogs scares the living hell out of me. And if I had a motorcycle and the means, I sure as hell would take off on the bike too.