Let me paint the scene. You’re chugging along a foggy road, mapless and confused. All you have at your disposal is a supposed friend sitting shotgun, letting you know that it’s not really about the destination. What is it about then? They’re happy to fill you in on the matter while you navigate a darkened highway, carefully avoiding flora, fauna and incoming text messages.
It’s about Journey, of course. Power chords and power ballads. Overwrought refrains and saccharine stanzas. Regardless of where you’re headed, once Steve Perry’s voice pipes through the car, it no longer matters. You could be going anywhere you want. You could stop believing your gas tank has enough fuel to make it. It's not like you're going to get there.
You let your Perry partisan prattle on, knowing soon you will have to correct the record. As much as the songs of Journey have served as the soundtrack of so many lives, that can’t be what life is all about. Especially since Perry himself left the band over twenty years ago, watching from afar as he’s been replaced like so many American workers. It must’ve been what King Charles felt during those wild first Cromwell days, when all he had was his trusty spaniel and those royal locks.
Because it’s not about Journey, it’s about the predestination. What’s done is already done. John Calvin knew it long before synthesizers dominated popular music – not that he didn’t see it coming. Or, to be precise, hear it coming.
Predestination is freeing, not that it depends on your warm embrace. But it’s nice to know that the turns you make are immaterial. The route you take is irrelevant. You’re there, whether you know it or not. With or without Steve Perry.
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