March 28, 2007
Neil Peart on Rush's Snakes and Arrows Cover Art
Early word is that Snakes and Arrows is Rush's most organic-sounding cd release in decades. If so the cover design is fitting - it's hand painted. The painting, chosen by lyricist/drummer Neil Peart, is by scholar/artist Harish Johari, and the story behind it's use as the cover design begins with Buddhist saints 2.000 years ago, weaves through 19th century British Colonies in India, lands in America in the 70s, and ends with a children's board game most of us know well.
Says Peart, "To my surprise, 'Snakes and Arrows' called up several links to something called 'Leela, The Game of Self Knowledge,' or, incredibly, 'The Game of Snakes and Arrows.'
Long story short, I followed that trail with growing enthusiasm, and learned that Leela (Hindi for 'the game') was at least 2,000 years old, and had been created by Buddhist saints and sages as a game of karma-like many games, a metaphor for life...The Leela player rolls a single die, said to be affected by his or her karma, and moves around the board. Each square on the grid represents a stage of consciousness or existence, and the player is raised to higher levels by arrows, and brought low by snakes. The children's game 'Snakes and Ladders' (sometimes called 'Chutes and Ladders') was adapted from Leela by the British during the 19th century Colonial period. After that, the original game almost disappeared-apparently only two gameboards existed in India when scholar Harish Johari revived the game and brought it to America in the 1970s...When I told Alex and Geddy about the Leela connection, and showed them the gameboard painted by Harish Johari, they were as excited by all that serendipity as I was, and we agreed to use his painting for the cover."
