1/26/24: The Weapon
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Or do we?
Can any part of life be larger than life?
Even love must be limited by time.
And those who push us down that they might climb—
Is any killer worth more than his crime?
We’re onto our second song in the “Fear” trilogy. We’re going in consecutive order of their appearance in the trilogy, not when they were written or released. Part 2, “The Weapon,” was the second to be written and released.
“The Weapon” is a deceptively menacing moment off Signals. The music fades in like an uncovered subliminal message, while the opening cymbals sound like an approaching, inescapable train. And that kick drum, steady throughout the song, sounds like the thump of marching feet.
Spooky.
Growing up, I wasn’t ever really sure what to make of this song. The rest of Signals spoke so deeply to my adolescence, but “The Weapon” is very much steeped in religious and Cold War rhetoric, and I was too young to really get that. By the time I was capable of internalizing what the Cold War was and what it meant to so many people, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the war, for all intents and purposes, was over.
As I got older, though, the song began to resonate more, especially in the past few years where where I’ve watched friends and family on all sides of the political spectrum be preyed upon and radicalized by their fears. Social media has a particularly calculating and efficient way of weaponizing fear in just the way that Peart writes about in “The Weapon.”
Lifeson has a marvelous, ominous guitar solo, heavy on the distortion, starting around 3:50. It meanders, it warbles, it coalesces into a rip-roaring melody… only for the song to once more peter out, become subliminal, faded, and gone... Or is it?
Like I said: Spooky.
I’m going to comment more a little later when I have more time as cooking and entertaining tonight. Meanwhile, as this is track 2/3 in the ‘fear based’ trilogy a little history lesson on when that quote first surfaced which may not be unfamiliar to most or all here. Fear would have been all consuming during the Great Depression.
Roosevelt stated in his first inaugural address that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." His objectives were to calm the economic fears of Americans, develop policies to alleviate the problems of the Great Depression, and gain the support of the American people for his programs.