by Matt Barr
Peaceable Kingdom
Peaceable Kingdom is a song by Rush from their 2002 album Vapor Trails. It's about September 11 and the global war on terror, superficially expressing belief and hope in a peaceful, just world. The lyrics are after the "more" link if you're reading this on the blog home page.
There's more going on, and I for some reason got to thinking about it while travelling last week. What sticks in your craw about the song is its utter hopelessness. The moral of the story is that we shouldn't bother, it doesn't matter what we do, we're going to be overrun by evil. Not, to say the least, your normal 9/11 Let's Roll, This Flag Ain't No Rag fare.
I was interested to learn that in 1997 and 1998, Neil Peart, the Rush drummer who writes the band's lyrics, lost his 19-year-old daughter and wife a year apart, Mrs. Peart to cancer and the daughter to a single car crash in Brighton, Ontario. If I were working this post up for publication somewhere I would be judicious about this, but as this is a blog, I'll just say Peaceable Kingdom is the kind of September 11 song you would write if you'd lived through that tragedy recently.
The song's lyrics have four parts. In one, we're shown a conflict against overwhelming odds. For instance, "All this time we're talking and sharing our rational views/While a billion other voices are spreading other news." Superficially, these seem to describe a West vs. Islamic world dichotomy, but you have to pay closer attention. It's always "a billion" on the other side, but each "we" in the song seems to be only a couple or few people -- the western world doesn't talk and share rational views, for example. A conversation involving the whole westerern world would be a cacophany or rational, irrational and everything in-between views. Later, "we're hoping and praying we all might learn." Again, this isn't everybody, because most assuredly not everybody on the good guys' side in the war on terror is hoping everybody learns.
So, the conflict described is truly against overwhelming odds, a billion versus a couple. A billion versus 500 million would be long odds, but not utterly hopeless. The conflict described here is the latter. Just as importantly, this is not a conflict both sides engage in willingly (a parallel with September 11). The outnumbered "we" is, besides talking, "living and trying to understand." There can't be anything more passive for a song narrator to be doing than "living."
Another part of the song involves Tarot cards, either two cards in contrast or a card augmenting or illuminating some other condition. Justice and the Hanged Man are in opposition, which intuitively makes sense; Justice is order, cause and effect, while the Hanged Man is counterintuitive, succeeding by failure, keeping by letting go. The Hermit is opposed to the Lovers, again, intuitively: The Hermit is self-centered, introspective, while the Lovers are open, connected.
"Swords against the kingdom" is repeated in both stanzas involving Tarot, a reference, presumably, to the war; "Time against the Tower" would seem also to be a reference to September 11. The line "The Wheel against the rules" seems to reinforce the conflict between Justice and the Hanged Man -- the Wheel of Fortune denotes an inner compass guiding an individual to his destiny, and the rules are often such that individual destinies are discouraged.
The overarching theme of the Tarot stanzas is inner conflict. Two sides don't sit down and draw Tarot cards against one another in some game, of course; what a Tarot draw means to the subject involves conflicting cards and interpretations. So where two cards are "against" one another, this is an inner, personal conflict.
We have a personal, inner conflict against overwhelmingly bad odds, then. What is the goal of the conflict? For that we turn to the "peaceable kingdom" refrains. The "we" in the song are talking about and dreaming about a peaceable kingdom, a place without fear or war. They can't convince "the ones we wish would listen" that they deserve it, though. Superficially, the refrains seem to be talking about governments, the Bush administration in particular, being hardheaded and moving to war when the we's with the rational views want peace. I submit though that in context of the rest of the song the "ones we wish would hear us" are a few pay grades above the President.
Consider the 1987 Rush song Second Nature, which begins:
A memo to a higher office
Open letter to the powers that be
To a god, a king, a head of state
A captain of industry
To the movers and the shakers
Can't everybody see?
In that song there is at least an attempt to convince the powerful that they ought to pay attention. In Peaceable Kingdom the refrain is that it's not even worth talking about it, they're "never going to hear." Stubbornness, ham-fistedness, the kind of thing the Bush coalition is charged with with regard to war? Maybe, but I submit that you wouldn't ask a President to settle an inner conflict against overwheling odds, you'd ask God. (Or "a god," I suppose.) We have hopelessness to the point where it's not even worth asking God to put a stop to it, much as you "wish [he'd] listen."
As you delve further and further into the song, it becomes less and less about politics and war and more about fate and evil that touches you personally. It's about, in the end, the death of a loved one, or more than one loved one. I have no idea what "a wave toward the clearing sky" means, but I do know that if an angel is "homeward" which direction she's going.
A wave toward the clearing sky
All this time we're talking and sharing our rational views
While a billion other voices are spreading other news
All this time we're living and trying to understand
While a billion other choices are making their demands
Talk of a peaceable kingdom
Talk of a time without fear
The ones we wish would listen
Are never going to hear
Justice against the Hanged Man
Knight of Wands against the hour
Swords against the kingdom
Time against the Tower
All this time we're shuffling and laying out all our cards
While a billion other dealers are slipping past our guards
All this time we're hoping and praying we all might learn
While a billion other teachers are teaching them how to burn
Dream of a peaceable kingdom
Dream of a time without war
The ones we wish would hear us
Have heard it all before
A wave toward the clearing sky
A wave toward the clearing sky
The Hermit against the Lovers
Or the Devil against the Fool
Swords against the kingdom
The Wheel against the rules
All this time we're burning like bonfires in the dark
A billion other blazes are shooting off their sparks
Every spark a drifting ember of desire
To fall upon the earth and spark another fire
A homeward angel on the fly
A wave toward the clearing sky
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