By Qarol Price
When the merry month of May rolls around, if you are a Johnstonian playing along, it is time to closely examine honesty, the county schools character trait of the month. This is my fourth year preparing to evaluate this crucial human virtue for the pages of JNOW Magazine.
The more I meditate on its meaning, the more it is inevitable that I wind up examining how I personally measure up to honesty’s challenging standards. (Who am I kidding? I undergo this brutal, personal examination every ding-dong month!)
So, allow me to confess (if I may demonstrate an instance of honesty): I suffer from Imposter Syndrome. You know, the fear of being exposed as a fraud. Here I am, presuming to speak on matters of ethics and morality when my “own house” is not exactly in order! I should be walking the talk, right?
So how is it that I have come to be known as the Character Czar anyway?
This backstory starts exactly 50 years ago when one of the best bands ever, RUSH, released their album 2112. (Yes, we called them “albums” back then).
I was a wayward tenth grader at the time who had clocked 72 days of cutting classes for things yet to be confessed. Not only did this album really rock my world, but it also made me think! RUSH’s lyrics were poetic and philosophical. They fed a hunger I didn’t know I had as a stoner suburbanite teen of the seventies. They prompted me to read philosophers like Ayn Rand, William James and others. I became so interested in Philosophy that I decided to major in it in college.
Finding this academic interest really saved me. I corrected my attendance problem immediately. In junior year, I took classes that helped me to score my first job as advertising manager at the local K-Mart. I won awards, I bought my first car (a sweet little, used Opel GT), and my grades soared. All to my long-suffering parent’s delight.
Twenty years later I went on to write Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of RUSH, the first book that examines their lyrics, with my husband Robert M. Price. Neal Peart, the lyricist and drummer of RUSH, told me, after perusing the book, that he was proud to have made me do all that thinking!
So, back to honesty. A great number of RUSH’s songs deal with the many facets of honesty and integrity. For instance, “Tom Sawyer” is about facing reality without illusion – one of RUSH’s recurring themes. It deals with the tension between self-definition and social expectations. “Witch Hunt” is about collective dishonesty driven by fear and mob mentality. “Closer to the Heart” is about truth and integrity as a path to a better world. It is in the spirit of this last song that I take up my cause:
Philosophers and ploughmen
Each must know his part
To sow a new mentality
Closer to the heart
