Neil Peart, the Bleeding Heart Libertarian...Pt. 2.

In Part 1, I gave a general background of the connection Neil (and Rush) had to Ayn Rand. My conclusion—there wasn’t much of a connection. And, like Neil said about it…he was a kid. How are we to understand Neil’s self-description as a bleeding heart libertarian? His own words are the best place to begin, so I return to the Rolling Stone interview from 2012. He said: 

“Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal – because I’m an idealist. Paul Theroux’s definition of a cynic is a disappointed idealist. So as you go through past your twenties, your idealism is going to be disappointed many many times. And so, I’ve brought my view and also – I’ve just realized this – Libertarianism as I understood it was very good and pure and we’re all going to be successful and generous to the less fortunate and it was, to me, not dark or cynical. But then I soon saw, of course, the way that it gets twisted by the flaws of humanity. And that’s when I evolve now into . . . a bleeding heart Libertarian. That’ll do.” 

So, Neil had a very “idealist” understanding of what libertarianism is and, to him, it included generosity to those who are less fortunate. Contrast this sharply with typical libertarian thinking, especially the Ayn Rand version, which basically says that if you are less fortunate you deserve to be. While something like a strong work ethic is a virtue, it gets twisted to say being less fortunate is always and without exception the fault of the one who suffers. It is not my job to help you when you won’t help yourself!

But for Neil, it would seem, human solidarity and care for others is not a contradiction to individual liberty and freedom. It is an extension of it. We may be individuals, but we are individuals who comprise a community. The health of the community makes it easier to be a healthy individual and healthy individuals invest in the health of the community (I can’t help thinking that Neil’s devotion to Aristotle was influential to him). 

Neil’s idealism was disappointed by life experience. Libertarianism turned out to be something other than he believed it was. He still held on to the ideal, however, which I am sure for him meant the freedom “walk our road together” or to “run alone and free” if we choose. But his life experience matured and tempered the ideal, leading him to call himself a bleeding heart libertarian (words that I don’t believe I have ever seen paired together anywhere else). 

No one, regardless of political convictions, wants to be impeded from “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We all want our freedom. But how much better to live that freedom with a bleeding heart than a stone cold one. Here I will conclude with a video made by Alex, Geddy, Tom Morello, and Tim Commerford contrasting United States health care with Canadian healthcare. My guess is that Ayn Rand would call them all communists.

Neil Peart, the Bleeding Heart Libertarian...Pt. 1.

 This first post will lay some groundwork that I will build on in Part 2, which is my read on Neil Peart’s libertarianism (and Rush’s outlook on the world as well). What libertarianism is, especially today, and what Neil was, I argue, are not the same. 

There is a repeating conversation I have from time to time. Different versions of it happen depending on whether my interlocutor is of a more conversative or liberal inclination, but the heart of it is the same. I’ll be talking about Rush (as is my way) and someone will say something to the effect of “aren’t they really into Ayn Rand?” My liberal friends tend to wonder, since I am very liberal myself, why I love this band so much as they perceive them to be followers of Rand. My conservative friends, on the other hand, frequently see Rush as an affirmation of their “individualist” principles and cite Rush’s devotion to Rand as evidence. 

Both are wrong. 

Did Rush, especially Neil, have an affinity or even devotion to Ayn Rand and her thought? Well, yes and no. My intention in this post is to offer my take on the “Rush-Ayn Rand connection” and I am pretty confident it is on target. It is not about being right or winning any arguments, but to try to see the truth of the matter. You and I—each of us—are free to be what we want to be and think what we want to think regardless of whether Neil Peart thought the way we do or not. I love Rush as, I assume, you do as well, dear reader. After all, here you are reading this blog. But I don’t need Rush to validate what I believe, and I think they wouldn’t want to be a validation. An inspiration, sure. But I think the fellows would want you to search for the truth and believe what you do despite whether it aligns with them or not.

Getting right to the point (before my own take), in a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Neil was asked if the words of Ayn Rand still spoke to him. He replied, “Oh, no. That was 40 years ago. But it was important to me at the time in a transition of finding myself and having faith that what I believed was worthwhile.” A few sentences later, he went on to say, “For me, it was an affirmation that it’s all right to totally believe in something and live for it and not compromise. It was a simple as that” [emphasis mine]. On that 2112 album, again, I was in my early twenties. I was a kid.” 

As he related in the interview, this was near the time he had went to England with a dream of making it big, only to be disillusioned with the music industry there that he described as “factory-like.” The work of Ayn Rand spoke to him, as it did many of us as kids, that we could be creative and free as individuals and artists. We need not conform or do what others say we must do. As Neil said, he was inspired to accept that we could believe in something, live for it, and we need not compromise to please others. 
Indeed, this message spoke to a lot of us as kids. Needless to say, I was exposed to Ayn Rand because of the dedication to Rand’s “genius” in 2112 and started reading her books. I had read The Fountain Head and Anthem before I learned to drive. During the late teen to young adult years, we were all seeking our own identity. We want to define ourselves, not be defined by family, religious upbringing, etc. “I wanna be me!” was the call of the day. Ayn Rand, setting aside the full extent of her philosophy of selfishness, appealed to us in those days when we needed someone to tell us that we could be ourselves and define who we wanted to be. 

Most of us, including Neil Peart, grew out of that. That message of individual freedom and liberty, the permission to be creative in our own way and not have to conform to anything or anyone else was the affirming message we wanted to hear. That is all it was. Neil Peart (and all of Rush for that matter) never bought in wholesale to the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

The Trees on the Hemispheres album is often cited as Rush’s continuing commitment Randian style libertarianism. Some have taken it as a shot at labor unions. After all, the Maples formed a union, demanding equal rights, their equality being secured by “hatchet, axe, and saw.” Neil has certainly said in his books that the song is about being against all forms of collectivism. But keep in mind a very important point…The Trees is an allegory. Warning: DO NOT TAKE LITERAL. I can’t speak to Neil’s intention, but I don’t think it is a song protesting labor unions. 

Consistent with Neil’s desire to be creative and not make the music he was told to make, and given his disillusionment with what he saw in England, I take The Trees to be much more about the creative freedom of the individual artist over the industry and its pressure to make mediocre music just to sell. In that same Rolling Stone interview, he said that the attitude of making repetitive songs because that’s what people want is the attitude that had been his lifelong enemy. He followed that with, “Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with. It’s hard to think of the number of bands that just do what they want.” 

Even though music in the post-1978 catalogue revealed a Rush that was anything but Randian disciples, even songs like Closer to the Heart from 1977 starts off with a line about the importance of “the men [and women] who hold high places” who must “be the ones who start.” Yes, we are all individuals and should be free to pursue a life of satisfaction and creativity as we choose, but we are still never alone. Each of us must “know our part” in the larger community. 

So, with that background, the next post will specifically address what Neil meant by describing himself as “bleeding heart libertarian.”

Stay tuned!

Coming to Our Senses in these Dog Years

My last post focused on some of the lyrics from the song Dog Years, specifically concerning how time rolls by all too quickly and, therefore, we ought to spend our time as best was we can. This post is also inspired by the song Dog Years, but with a little different twist. From the last verse:

It seems to me
As we make our own few circles ‘round the block
We’ve lost our senses
For the higher-level static of talk

Let’s zero in on that third line. We’ve lost our senses…. Now, let’s zero in on that last word of the line—senses. It is interesting that the song after Dog Years is Virtuality. We do live in a largely virtual world. From the attachment to those little screens on our phones to Zoom meetings and working remotely (especially after Covid), much of our lives are now spent in that fantastical land of Cybernia (this will be my term for the cyber world).

I am no Luddite. I am happy with so many of the conveniences that technology affords for human life. But it is difficult to deny that our lives are also shaped and ordered to a great degree by technology, mostly in ways we don’t even consider as we “Zoom” through life. One of the things we tend to lose in Cybernia is our senses.

A recent strand of thought in philosophical hermeneutics is referred to as “carnal” hermeneutics. Interpretation theory is often centered on texts or language, but carnal hermeneutics explores the role of the body in how we construe the world, the senses especially. And of the five senses, there is a large emphasis placed on the sense of touch. Richard Kearney, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College (and the leading thinker in the area of carnal hermeneutics), identifies three “senses” of the word sense.

The first is simply our five senses through which we receive the world—things we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. The second refers to meaning. For example: “I get a ‘sense’ of what you are trying to tell me….” The final is the root meaning of the word “sense” in many romance languages as orientation or direction, that is, how we are placed in relation to the world around us. In all three of these “senses” of sense, the common denominator is that we interpret and understand the world through and with our bodies.

Thinking back to my previous post drawing from the song Dog Years, the fundamental point is that life moves way too quickly. The lesson here is that we should savor every moment to the extent that we can. Even the word “savor” has a metaphorical connection to the idea of living in our senses. What is better? Greasy fast food that you consume for the sake of calories and feeding your hunger, or to enjoy slowly a thoughtful and well-prepared, flavorful meal, especially with those we love? Ironically, in a life that goes by so fast, the slower things are usually the better things.

So, yes, time moves quickly. But, as Neil wrote, it seems we have lost our senses. And for what? For the higher-level static of talk. Talk, or verbal language, is often considered “higher” than the base bodily life that we share with other animals. Speech implies rationality, which supposedly makes us higher live creatures. But so much of that talk is static. As many philosophers throughout the ages have said, all humans have the capacity to reason, but that doesn’t mean that we all equally use it well or even much at all. Many individuals, philosophers have also said (with a hint of sarcasm), consider themselves so amply endowed with reason and logic, that they don’t seek to have any more.

I am all for reason and logic, for talk and communication. I have benefited from the technological means of communication and information. These, used well, have been and can be good for human life. But not at the expense of our senses. We may be rational animals, but we are still animals. We live in our bodies among bodies. And we truly should live in our bodies and not just reside there as an empty shell. Since we don’t have much time and because what we do have moves so quickly by, I think it will do us immeasurable good to get back to our senses.

Take time so see the world around you. Take time to hear it as well. Listen closely. Take time to smell the flowers and everything else that is good to put your nose into. Take time to touch and feel the leaves or the water, and especially the embrace of a dear friend. Taste life and savor it, literally and metaphorically. I think it is long past time we come to our senses, don’t you?

It's a Dog's Life

 

My previous post focused on Time Stand Still from the Hold Your Fire record. As with many Rush songs throughout the years, there are recurring themes in Neil’s lyrical reflections on life. Dog Years from Test for Echo is another Time Stand Still.

 In a dog’s life

A year is really more like seven
And all too soon a canine
Will be chasing cars in doggie heaven

 It seems to me

As we make our own few circles ‘round the sun
We get it backwards
And our seven years go by like one

Since time doesn’t stand still for any of us, we often find ourselves asking where the time went. In this juxtaposition, the dog has the shorter life, but experiences it as longer (one year seems like seven); while in actual time, humans have the longer life, but those seven years are experienced as one.

In phenomenology (a branch of philosophy related to hermeneutics) we speak of “time-consciousness.” This is to say that all consciousness is temporal—i.e., happens in time and in relation to time. Everything we experience, we refer to it as before, or now, or something we anticipate to experience coming up. Whether we are thinking about time or not, to be conscious, to be aware, is bound to time.

Beyond time-consciousness (the temporal nature of awareness), we can also think reflexively back on time itself. The former speaks to a specific characteristic—temporality—in the essence of consciousness; the latter speaks to directing our consciousness itself toward time so that we can consider and ponder it. Dog Years is an example of the latter.

Neil, as I mentioned at the beginning, thought about time…well, all the time it seems. In his book, Traveling Music, he said that all his life there were “two little words” that sparked within him “curiosity restlessness, and desire.” What are those words? “Now what?” That was Neil. Always moving forward and looking ahead. Another passage in Traveling Music that many Rush fans are familiar with and often quote is, “How could anyone ever be bored in this world, when there is so much to be interested in, to learn, to contemplate?” Neil’s drive to always discover something new, whether it was an experience or something to learn and think about, is behind that “now what” question. It would make sense, then, to want time to stand still. Or, in the case of Dog Years, to rather

 …be a tortoise from Galapagos

Or a span of geological time
Than be living in these dog years

Tortoises from the Galapagos islands live up to one hundred years and in captivity have even gotten close to twice that. And if you are familiar with geological time you know that these periods can last for millions or even billions of years. How are you going to do and think all the things there are to do and think when seven years of your life seem to go by like only one?

People laugh at me when I have expressed this, but I was quite serious. One day I got to thinking that if there was never another book published, I would never in my lifetime read all the books I wanted to read. Add to that all the books that will be published that I want to read, and the prospect was overwhelming. It was a huge moment in my life when I reconciled my mind to the fact that I would never in a thousand lifetimes be able to read everything I wanted to. It was a big deal. I am just resolved to read as damn much as I possibly can! The same goes for travel, listening to music (on a record or live), or just taking time to “pass an evening with a drink and a friend.”

What it amounts to is time being well spent. I referred in the previous post to Geddy’s thoughts on this in the House of Strombo interview. I also wrote a post on my other website back in April of 2021 called Time Well Spent.

Same as Neil, the older I get and as time moves on, I want more and more to be that Galapagos tortoise or a span of geological time. But I am bound to these dog years, so all I can do is fill them with as much true richness of life as I possibly can. And I will.

(Stay tuned for my next post on Interpreting Rush. I am going to look at another few lines from Dog Years that I hope will add perspective on coming to our “senses” on how we spend time).

Could Time Just Hold Up a Minute, Please?

 

Time (and exactly what it even is) has been a thing for philosophy for centuries. Augustine said that he knows what time is…at least until you ask him. Explaining and defining time sounds easy until you actually try to do it. Aristotle related time to motion (hmmm, could that have inspired Neil to write Time and Motion…). Philosophers in more recent times from Heidegger to Paul Ricoeur to Jacques Derrida to David Wood (to name a very few) have grappled with time. What the hell is it, anyway?

Despite the philosophical conundrums about time, there are certain things in our common experience of time we all share.

When there is something we want in the future, such as when there was an upcoming Rush show we had tickets for, we wanted time to get a move on! Now, however, we Rush fans wouldn’t mind so much if we could turn the clock back and see the boys again. We say there is “no time like the present” to get something done. Regret is sometimes related to time as in we wish we would have had or taken more time with a loved one who is gone. During hardship we can’t wait until such times are over. During good times we wish time wouldn’t move so fast. 

We are fickle about time. We want time to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. But here’s the deal. Time is impervious to our wants or needs. As we get older, we have this sense that time is moving on and it seems to be moving faster. We get a sense of what really matters in life more than anything. And it is not our career or money or whatever. People matter. Experiences matter. This is when we just want time to stand still. I think these considerations moved Neil to write: 

Time stand still—

I’m not looking back—
But I want to look around me now
See more of the people
And the places that surround me now

That first line, which is the title of the song from Hold Your Fire, is not a declarative statement that time stands still, it is more like a request or a command or a plea to time…stand still would ya! Do we want time to stand still because we want to go back? No, not so much. Often it feels life is passing by so quickly that we might be missing things we shouldn’t. We just want to look around. We want to see the people and places all around us. We are not asking time to go in reverse. Just to be still. When the moment passes, it is gone along with the time we might have given to those people and places.

Freeze this moment

A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Experience slips away…

We know time has to move on, but it sure would be nice if we could linger just a little bit longer in some moments. I particularly love the words “make each sensation a little bit stronger.” Whether a sensation of our senses or an emotional sensation, oh that time would stand still to make them all a bit stronger to be more deeply embedded in our consciousness, in our memory. 

You see, as experience slips away, over time our memory of the sensation fades as well. We want to hold the reality as close to us, in our very flesh, as much and as long as we can. 

We want to make time stand still.

But here is the thing. We can’t and we know we can’t. What I take from Time Stand Still is less of a plea to time to stand still for us. What is contained in that plea is much more that we are mindful to soak in every good moment and hold it dear. Hold people dear and to make as much of the moments as we possibly can. 

This is so contrary to what is fed to us every day. Be productive, keep moving, get ahead, hustle. Slowing down and just breathing life in is looked down upon. You don’t get to slow down until you have earned it one day in retirement. Well, I disagree with that idea and I think the wisdom in the song Time Stand Still is evidence enough I am right on that point. 

So, no, we can’t make time stand still even though we want to so very, very much. What do we have left? I think Geddy summed it up just right in the recent interview he and Alex did with "House of Strombo." Tune in around the 43 minute, 30 second mark.  In response to a question about he and Alex playing together again, he said, “If I have learned anything from the terrible things that have happened the last few years, it’s the value of time. And make sure you are spending your time the way you want to spend it. That’s a bigger question than whether Al and I will make a record or Al and I will play together or whatever. It’s gotta be about our time and in our lives because it’s precious and, man, it goes.”

Yep. So, spend it well. Even though time won’t stand still, we can still be (from Fly By Night) Making Memories...

For Whom the Bell Tolls. Are we all Losing It?

 

Some are born to move the world—
To live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about
The things they’d like to be

(Losing it from the 1982 Signals LP) 

There are comparatively very few who these first two lines describe. Out of the billions of people throughout human history, those who both “move the world” and “live their fantasies” are a small community indeed. Not that the rest of us aren’t happy and contented with our lives or that you can’t be happy unless you move the world. But content though we may be, it doesn’t mean we haven’t dreamt of other things we would have liked to have been—a famous writer, an actor, a sports icon. Not all of us got there. 

The next set of lyrics cut to the heart of the matter: 

Sadder still to watch it die

Than never to have known it
For you—the blind who once could see—
The bell tolls for thee…

You can’t lose what you do not have. But you certainly can lose what you do have. Of course, the final line refers to the Ernest Hemingway novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (which in turn came from the writings of John Donne), and the second verse of the full song is about Hemingway. The writer who stares with glassy eyes, who once wrote with “passion and precision” loses it and can no longer find inspiration. He just stares out his kitchen door “where the sun will rise no more” (another Hemingway reference from the novel The Sun Also Rises).

The opening verse of the song tells of a dancer who perhaps because of the wear of time can no longer dance to sound of applause from an adoring audience. She is left to limp across the floor and to close her bedroom door behind her. Both the writer and the dancer fulfilled their dreams and became great. The lived their fantasies. Such things are hard enough to let go if you have to, but even worse still to have them taken from you by the march of time. 

What would you have? Would it be better to avoid the pain of loss by not doing something you love, knowing that it will inevitably decay and one day be lost? Or would you rather seek for the glory and joy to do what you love in spite of its inevitable death? Would you have joy, say for example the joy of love, knowing that there is pain that comes as part of having it? It is true that it is “sadder still to watch it die than never to have known it.” But who wants to never to have known it if you could? 

Paul Ricoeur (to whom I will likely refer to often in this blog given its hermeneutic slant) as he grew old and experienced loss himself, began a book called Living Up to Death that addressed the idea of mortality. He set it aside and never completed it. It was published in mostly fragments after his death in 2005 at the age of 92. In the preface, Olivier Abel writes that Ricoeur understood that “[m]elancholy is not something what we must avoid at all costs, for it is part of our condition, such that our reality, to be alive, must also include the absence of what no longer is but once was.” 

A theme throughout the work of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger is that our “being” is being-toward-death. From the moment we come into being, we grow closer to death with every passing moment. Yet Ricoeur, in his monumental work Memory, History, Forgetting, cites Hannah Arendt, joining her sentiment that despite the fact that we must die, we “are not born in order to die but in order to begin.” Begin what? Doing something! It is the moments between birth and death that we have, so we must do something with them.

 The price is sadness and a kind of death. Another gem in Living Up to Death is when Ricoeur joins Jacques Derrida in saying, “To ask me to give up what has formed me, what I have so loved, is to ask me to die.” Nonetheless, Ricoeur observes, learning how to live, finally, is to learn how to die, to accept “absolute mortality.” “What remains” he asks? To “continue living up to death.” For Ricoeur cheerfulness and mourning are bound together. 

I’m reminded by this of two other lyrics Neil Peart gave to us. From the song Secret Touch on the Vapor Trails album, Neil wrote that “there is never love without pain,” yet “love is a power that remains.” Likewise, in BU2B2 from Clockwork Angels, although all has turned to bad, the hero (a young fellow named Owen Hardy) proclaims “I still choose to live/And give, even while I grieve.” 

Although few of us move the world or go on to live our fantasies, the truth of the matter is that each of us in our own lives are the blind who once could see and for whom the bell tolls.

 As John Donne wrote, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Spinning the Big Wheel—Taking a Chance at Life

 

When listening to Rush albums (which I frequently do), one can often detect a general theme loosely connecting all or many of the songs. On Roll the Bones, the theme one finds throughout is the idea of the randomness of life. This is obviously present in the title track: “why does it happen? Because it happens. Roll the bones.” Some things are what certain philosophers refer to as “without why.” In other words, you just can’t explain everything all the time. As humans, we have a deep need to have explanations. The world is less scary when we think we understand it. It tends to be those things that we can’t understand or explain that bother us most. Accepting that some things don’t have reasons—it is not the universe or the grand plan of some higher being—is a big deal for many of us.

 One aspect of this randomness is that sometimes in life, you just have to roll the dice (or roll the bones, as it were) and go for it. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t. But doing nothing is simply not an option. You and I just have to spin that Big Wheel called life. This is the message of the song The Big Wheel from side two of Roll the Bones. You can read the full lyrics here. 

“Well I was only a kid—didn’t know enough to be afraid.” Ah, that youthful naivete, optimism, and drive! “Nothing to lose—maybe I have something to trade.” You get out there in life with all the wonder and excitement, and you just know that the big wheel is going to spin in your favor. You aren’t going to wait for anyone or anything, you have to make your own way: 

“Well, I was only a kid, on a holy crusade
I put no trust in a faith that was ready-made
Take no chances on paradise delayed
So I do a slow fade” 

No, paradise is not for some other future time, it is to be had and enjoyed now. And life is not “ready-made,” you have to make it yourself. For those who knew Neil Peart’s attitude toward life and his own experience as a young lad going for broke, this was him. As the song goes on, he didn’t want to wait for heaven or an angel to forgive his sins. However, he was “playing with fire.” Sometimes you get burned:
 
“Well, I was only a kid, cruising around in a trance,
Prisoner of fate, victim of circumstance
I was lined up for glory, but the tickets sold out in advance
The way the big wheel spins”

That youthful optimism finally gives way to harsh realities. This verse, hailing back to the song Circumstances from the 1978 Hemispheres album, rehearses the fact that once you go for it, you find that you get punched in the gut. Things don’t always go as planned. So rather than being wide-eyed and ready for glory, you cruise around in a trance as that prisoner of fate and a victim of circumstance. Despite your “can-do” attitude, you wind up prisoner and victim to forces beyond your control—the forces of fate and circumstance. That is just the way the big wheel spins. So what do you do? You get up and do it again. No looking back!

 

“Well, I was only a kid, gone without a backward glance
Going for broke, going for another chance
Hoping for heaven—hoping for a fine romance
If I do the right dance” 

Life is a dance. The idea for some that life is random and a game of chance is paralyzing. If there is no guarantee of victory (no heaven to place your bets on), then there is nothing to believe in. (And, frankly, whether you believe in a future or heaven or not, you have to live life as if there isn’t one). To the contrary, existentialist philosophers would say that this absurdity we call existence is not cause for despair, but great hope. I know most folk think existentialists were all about despair and angst, but that is not the end of the story. The lack of ready-made meaning in life might provoke the initial reactions of despair and hopelessness, but that isn’t where you want to stay. Life may be random chance the way the big wheel spins, but that means the world is a place of seemingly endless possibilities. You just have to go for another chance, that is just the way the big wheel spins! 

My Rush interpretation for today is that life is a constant, unending process of interpretation. Whatever “it all means,” you have to get out there every single day and find out. You start out naively joyful. You will inevitably get knocked down at some point. That’s just the way the big wheel spins. But don’t stay down! Go for broke. Go for another chance. You might even be a little wiser for the wear. So don’t lose that youthful optimism, even it is tempered somewhat from fate and circumstance. This is what philosophy professor, Brian Treanor, means by a “second naivete” in his book Melancholic Joy: On Life Worth Living. 

Keep the youthful drive “as if” the world was all sunshine and glory, even if you know it isn’t always that way. 

So get out there and see how that big wheel spins!

 “Wheel goes round, landing on a twist of faith

Taking your chances you’ll have the right answers
When the final judgment begins
 
“Wheel goes round, landing on a leap of fate
Life redirected in ways unexpected
Sometimes the odd number wins
The way the big wheel spins” 

Notice the play on words. No leap of faith, or twist of fate. Sometimes its a leap of fate that becomes a twist of faith. 

(Today’s post for my friend, George)