Cygnus wrote:

rushfan1 wrote:Ok, my friend gave me his explanation of Vital Signs. Basically, you have to vary yourself or fall victim to human problems.

I think his friend means that if you fall victim to a repetitive schedule, it is dangerous to yourself. It can drive people insane. Also, if you keep doing the same thing, you won't be ready for when someone uses your schedule to take advantage of you.

rushfan1 wrote:As for all the bastards who gave smart ass replies mocking me, laughing, etc, I thank you. Your replies have been truly enlightening.

rushfan1 wrote:As for all the bastards who gave smart ass replies mocking me, laughing, etc, I thank you. Your replies have been truly enlightening.
Steve, I do see where you're coming at from Vital Signs. It is quite unclear as to the meaning of Peart's writing. May I present a different a different song, one more clear? I present Losing It:


Ok, so the first 3 stanzas are describing a dancer. She appears to be aged somewhat, as she is struggling with her dancing. It appears she was once a successful dancer ("The flooding through her memory/The echoes of old applause). In the third stanza, she just gives up her dancing.
The next 3 stanzas describe an old writer who was also once a great writer ("Thirty years ago, how the words would flow/With passion and precision"). He, however, has grown old and sick, and he can no longer write as he used to. This frustrates him. He too gives up, and the sixth stanza foreshadows his death ("And he stares out the kitchen door/Where the sun will rise no more").
Now, both these people had lived their dreams, had done what they wanted to. The last stanza addresses this. It says that people have dreams, but often they can't live them; their dreams just die. So the last two lines ("For you the blind who once could see/The bell tolls for thee"), the "blind who once could see" are those who lived their dreams, but are now unable to, due to old age and/or sickness. Or, it could be the people who once had dreams, but could never achieve them. "The bell tolls" is just like a tribute to those people.

You see, you can categorize something based on one piece of evidence. That's called stereotypes. You need to get a variety of sources and evidence in order to make a conclusion.

rushfan1 wrote:As for all the bastards who gave smart ass replies mocking me, laughing, etc, I thank you. Your replies have been truly enlightening.
Steve, I do see where you're coming at from Vital Signs. It is quite unclear as to the meaning of Peart's writing. May I present a different a different song, one more clear? I present Losing It:

The dancer slows her frantic pace
In pain and desperation
Her aching limbs and downcast face
Aglow with perspiration

Stiff as wire, her lungs on fire
With just the briefest pause
The flooding through her memory
The echoes of old applause

She limps across the floor
And closes her bedroom door...

The writer stare with glassy eyes
Defies the empty page
His beard is white, his face is lined
And streaked with tears of rage

Thirty years ago, how the words would flow
With passion and precision
But now his mind is dark and dulled
By sickness and indecision

And he stares out the kitchen door
Where the sun will rise no more...

Some are born to move the world
To live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about
The things we'd like to be
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...

Ok, so the first 3 stanzas are describing a dancer. She appears to be aged somewhat, as she is struggling with her dancing. It appears she was once a successful dancer ("The flooding through her memory/The echoes of old applause). In the third stanza, she just gives up her dancing.
The next 3 stanzas describe an old writer who was also once a great writer ("Thirty years ago, how the words would flow/With passion and precision"). He, however, has grown old and sick, and he can no longer write as he used to. This frustrates him. He too gives up, and the sixth stanza foreshadows his death ("And he stares out the kitchen door/Where the sun will rise no more").
Now, both these people had lived their dreams, had done what they wanted to. The last stanza addresses this. It says that people have dreams, but often they can't live them; their dreams just die. So the last two lines ("For you the blind who once could see/The bell tolls for thee"), the "blind who once could see" are those who lived their dreams, but are now unable to, due to old age and/or sickness. Or, it could be the people who once had dreams, but could never achieve them. "The bell tolls" is just like a tribute to those people.

You see, you can categorize something based on one piece of evidence. That's called stereotypes. You need to get a variety of sources and evidence in order to make a conclusion.

The Man on The Dump

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho...The dump is full
Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.
The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,
And so the moon, both come, and the janitor's poems
Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,
The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box
From Estonia: the tiger chest, for tea.

The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.
The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says
That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs
More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.
The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green
Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea
On a cocoanut--how many men have copied dew
For buttons, how many women have covered themselves
With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads
Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.
One grows to hate these things except on the dump.

Now in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on),
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.

That's the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That's the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man),
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That's what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow's voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Pack the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher's honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes, and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

rushfan1 wrote:Just so we're clear, the first interpretation is my own, personal interpretation. The second is my father's

steve wrote:

rushfan1 wrote:Besides, it's not really fair you choose pictures of them in the 1980's, when everyone had a mullet, and everyone looked like that.

Forgot to mention this earlier. No, not everyone looked like that in the '80s. Only douchebags looked like that in the '80s.

gcbv wrote:But I digress. Please continue with the squirrel circuit semantic debate.