Neil Peart decided to drive his BMW Z-8 automobile from L.A. to Big Bend
National Park, in Southwest Texas. As he sped along "between the
gas-gulping SUVs and asthmatic Japanese compacts clumping in the left
lane, and the roaring, straining semis in the right," he acted as his
own DJ, lining up the CDs chronologically and according to his possible
moods. "Not only did the music I listened to accompany my journey, but
it also took me on sidetrips, through memory and fractals of
associations, threads reaching back through my whole life in ways I had
forgotten, or had never suspected.... Sifting through those decades and
those memories, I realized that I wasn't interested in recounting the
facts of my life in purely autobiographical terms, but rather ... in
trying to unweave the fabric of my life and times. As one who was never
much interested in looking back, because always too busy moving forward,
I found that once I opened those doors to the past, I became fascinated
with the times and their effect on me. The songs and the stories I had
taken for granted suddenly had a resonance that had clearly echoed down
the corridors of my entire life, and I felt a thrill of recognition, and
the sense of a kind of adventure. A travel story, but not so much about
places, but about music and memories."
