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.
And all too soon a canine
Will be chasing cars in doggie heaven
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
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).
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