All this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted
It's really just a question
Of your honesty, yeah your honesty
One likes to believe
In the freedom of music
But glittering prizes
And endless compromises
Shatter the illusion
Of integrity, yeah
(Did any rock band use “one” as a pronoun as often as Rush?)
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice!
Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage
Cast in this unlikely role
Well equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact
Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out!
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out!
And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality
Closer to the heart
Closer to the heart
The blacksmith and the artist
Reflect it in their art
They forge their creativity
Closer to the heart
Yes closer to the heart
Days of barefoot freedom racing with the waves
Nights of starlit secrets, crackling driftwood flames
Drinking by the lighthouse, smoking on the pier
Still we saw the magic was fading every year
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
'The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw
He's noble enough to know what's right
But weak enough not to choose it
He's wise enough to win the world
But fool enough to lose it
He's a new-world man
For the words of the profits
Were written on the studio wall
Concert hall!
And echoes with the sounds,
of salesmen,
of salesmen,
of SALESMEN!
Suddenly ahead of me
Across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air car
Shoots towards me, two lanes wide
I spin around with shrieking tires
To run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase
Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Experience slips away
Experience slips away
The innocence slips away
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