I was eight years old when my brain got rewired.

It happened at the Thornhill Public Library. I was there with my Mom — probably looking for something wholesome and educational, because that’s what good parents do — and I wandered into the record section.

And then I saw it.  The back cover of 2112 by Rush.

These three guys. In kimonos. Looking like space monks who’d just returned from conquering a galaxy. There were stars. There was that massive, unapologetic 2112 splashed across the cover like it was a prophecy instead of an album title.

It did not look like anything else in that library.

It certainly did not look like anything else in my eight-year-old life.

I didn’t have a clue what progressive rock was. I didn’t know about concept albums. I didn’t know that side one was an entire dystopian sci-fi epic about creativity being crushed by authoritarian control. I just knew that whatever this was… it wasn’t ordinary.  Mom got me my first library card and I used it for the first time.

And then we got home and the needle dropped and my world exploded into a million pieces.

From the very first notes — that spacey, swirling synthesizer opening of “Overture” — it was over for me. It didn’t sound like a song. It sounded like a portal opening. Like someone had cracked the ceiling of the universe and said, “You want in?”

 Holy shit yes I wanted in.

When the guitars finally slammed in, it wasn’t just loud. It was architectural. It felt meticulously built, layered and obsessively intentional. It felt like grown-up music that had no idea a third grader was listening — and didn’t care.

I clearly remember opening the gatefold album and reading Neil’s lyrics while I listened, and as every word unrolled and became the music I lay on my bed, mouth agape and eyes wide open.

Priests of the Temples of Syrinx. Forbidden guitars. Discovery. Rebellion. Hope. Despair.

Obviously eight-year-old me did not fully grasp the politics of it. But I understood the feeling. The scale. The drama. The sense that music could be more than background noise. It could be a universe.

By the time the final words of Side 1 hit —

“Attention all planets of the Solar Federation… we have assumed control.”

— my little mind was not just blown – it was violently occupied and annexed.

That was probably the moment music stopped being something that played in the room and started being something that took up residence inside my head. It wasn’t entertainment anymore. It was architecture and storytelling and rebellion. It was theatre without a stage.

It hijacked my brain forever.

I didn’t become a musician in that moment. That happened way later. But I did become something way worse.  I was an instant addict who would forever chase that feeling. The glory of the dynamics and the soul of the words. That idea that art doesn’t have to fit in the shelf it’s sitting on.

For me there are albums I like and albums I love.

And then there are the rare few albums that kick open a door in your brain and say, “By the way, this room exists.”

For me, that room opened in Thornhill. Between the stacks. With my mom probably three aisles away. And a vinyl record that looked like it had fallen out of the future.

Listening to 2112 now doesn’t feel nostalgic as much as it feels current.  In the worst way possible.

The idea of centralized authority deciding what is acceptable thought?  The pressure to conform?  The quiet erasure of nuance in favour of ideology?

That’s not science fiction anymore.  It’s just America.

A country shouting about freedom while banning books.  Corrupt politicians invoking “liberty” while deciding which identities are legitimate.  Entire school boards debating which stories children are allowed to read — as if imagination itself needs supervision.

What Rush captured in 1976 wasn’t just a dystopian fantasy. It was a distant early warning about what happens when fear and control start masquerading as stability.

For my eight-year-old brain, it sounded epic, but at fifty-eight it’s a fucking headline.

Buried inside that story is a kid who finds a guitar and hears something new. Who refuses to let the system decide what he’s allowed to love.

And I was a suburban kid staring at an album cover that looked like it came from another dimension and feeling something crack open inside his skull.

Suddenly art wasn’t decoration.  It was resistance and identity and the aggressive refusal to let someone else curate your imagination.

I was electrocuted by Rush in 1976 and I’ve been chasing that voltage ever since.