Grace Under Pressure
Distant Early Warning
Lyrics by Neil Peart
An ill wind comes arising
Across the cities of the plain
There's no swimming in the heavy water --
No singing in the acid rain
Red alert
Red alert
It's so hard to stay together
Passing through revolving doors
We need someone to talk to
And someone to sweep the floors --
Incomplete
Incomplete
The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am I to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy --
But I worry about you
I know it makes on difference
To what you're going through
But I see the tip of the iceberg --
And I worry about you...
Cruising under your radar
Watching from satellites
Take a page from the red book --
Keep them in your sights
Red alert
Red alert
Left and rights of passage
Black and whites of youth
Who can face the knowledge
That the truth is not the truth?
Obsolete
Absolute
Absalom, Absalom, Absalom
Afterimage
Lyrics by Neil Peart
Suddenly --
You were gone
From all the lives
You left your mark upon
I remember --
How we talked and drank
Into the misty dawn
-- I hear the voices
We ran by the water
On the wet summer lawn
-- I see the foot prints
I remember --
-- I feel the way you would
-- I feel the way you would
Tried to believe
But you know it's no good
This is something
That just can't be understood
I remember --
The shouts of joy
Skiing fast through the woods
-- I hear the echoes
I learned your love for life
I feel the way that you would
-- I feel your presence
I remember --
I feel the way you would
This just can't be understood...
Red Sector A
Lyric by Neil Peart
All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves is stay alive...
Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones
I clutch the wire fence until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal -- a heart that cannot feel --
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow, we'll all be freed
Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger -- too weak to cry
I hear the sound of gunfire at the prison gate
Are the liberators here -- do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother, it's too late
But I must help my mother stand up straight...
Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings to survive?...
The Enemy Within
(Part one of Fear)
Lyrics by Neil Peart
Things crawl in the darkness
That imagination spins
Needles at your nerve ends
Crawl like spiders on your skin
Pounding in your temples
And a surge of adrenaline
Every muscle tense -- to fence the enemy within
I'm not giving in to security under pressure
I'm not missing out on the promise of adventure
I'm not giving up on implausible dreams
Experience to extremes --
Experience to extremes
Suspicious-looking stranger
Flashes you a dangerous grin
Shadows across your window --
Was it only trees in the wind?
Every breath a static charge --
A tongue that tastes like tin
Steely-eyed outside to hide the enemy within...
To you -- is it movement or is it action?
It is contact or just reaction?
And you -- revolution or just resistance?
Is it living, or just existence?
Yeah, you -- it takes a little more persistence
To get up and go the distance...
The Body Electric
Lyrics by Neil Peart
One humanoid escapee
One android on the run
Seeking freedom beneath a lonely desert sun
Trying to change its program
Trying to change the mode -- crack the code
Images conflicting into data overload
1-0-0-1-0-0-1
S.O.S
1-0-0-1-0-0-1
In distress
1-0-0-1-0-0
Memory banks unloading
Bytes break into bits
Unit One's in trouble and it's scared out of its wits
Guidance systems break down
A struggle to exist -- to resist
A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist...
It replays each of the days
A hundred years of routines
Bows its head and prays
To the mother of all machines...
Kid Gloves
Lyrics by Neil Peart
A world of difference
A world so out of touch
Overwhelmed by everything
But wanting more so much --
Call it blind frustration
Call it blind man's bluff
Call each other names --
our voices rude -- your voices rough
Then you learn the lesson
That it's cool to be so tough
Handle with kid gloves
Handle with kid gloves
Then you learn the lessons
Taught in school won't be enough
Put on your kid gloves
Put on your kid gloves
Then you learn the lesson
That it's cool to be so tough
A world of indifference
Heads and hearts too full
Careless of the consequence
Of constant push and pull
Anger got bare knuckles
Anger play the fool
Anger wear a crown of thorns
Reverse the golden rule
Then you learn the lesson
That it's tough to be so cool
Handle with kid gloves
Handle with kid gloves
Then you learn the weapons
And the ways of hard-knock school
Put on your kid gloves
Put on your kid gloves
Then you learn the lesson
That it's tough to be so cool
Red Lenses
Lyrics by Neil Peart
I see red
it hurts my head
guess it must be something
that I read
it's the colour of your heartbeat
a rising summer sun
the battle lost -- or won
the flash to fashion
and the pulse to passion --
feels red
inside my head
and truth is often bitter --
left unsaid
said red red
thinking about the overhead --
the underfed
-- couldn't we talk about something else instead?
we've got mars on the horizon
says the national midnight star
(it's true)
what you believe is what you are
a pair of dancing shoes --
the soviets are the blues --
the reds
under your bed
lying --
in the darkness
dead ahead
and the mercury is rising
barometer starts to fall
you know it gets to us all
the pain that is learning
and the rain that is burning --
feel red
still -- go ahead
you see black and white --
and I see red
(not blue)
Between the Wheels
Lyrics by Neil Peart
To live between a rock and a hard place
In between time --
Cruising in prime time -- soaking up the cathode rays
To live between the wars in our time --
Living in real time --
Holding the good time -- Holding on to yesterdays...
You know how that rabbit feels
Going under your speeding wheels
Bright images flashing by
Like windshields towards a fly
Frozen in the fatal climb -- but the wheels of time --
Just pass you by...
Wheels can take you around
Wheels can cut you down
We can go from boom to bust
From dreams to a bowl of dust
We can fall from rockets' red glare
Down to "Brother can you spare --"
Another war -- another waste land --
And another lost generation...
It slips between your hands like water
This living in real time
A dizzying lifetime
Reeling by on celluloid
Struck between the eyes
By the big-time world
Walking uneasy streets --
Hiding beneath the sheets --
Got to try and fill the void...