Billy Joel: There Is Always a Thorn

 

There are just some people you have never met that you nonetheless feel a kinship with. Billy Joel is one of several actors or performers I feel that for and with.  It's because, yes, he's a New Yorker, born in the Bronx, like me, although unlike me he didn't grow up there, but in Long Island, where I barely ever set foot. I lived in the Bronx until I was 27, and peripatetically practicing law--moving to Los Angeles with dreams of breaking into the entertainment industry. And no matter where we have gone in this life (he far more places than me), we are always New Yorkers, with an energy and a sometime abrasiveness (I have often been critiqued or eschewed for being too pushy, although folks, I am one of the least pushy New Yorkers you'll ever meet; just spend a day there and you'd see--I'm a proverbial powder puff) that can turn people off or make them crazy.  I am thinking of a secretary I had once who went to Human Resources  asking to be reassigned, because I was too "intense". Yeah, that's it. New Yorkers. We are intense.  Forty plus years in lazy Los Angeles never changed that in me.  And having watched the five hour, two part story of his life called "Billy Joel: And So It Goes" recently, it surely never changed for Billy. 

Billy Joel channeled a great deal of his intensity into being one of the most amazing performers ever. And a writer of lyrics that tapped into his intensity, and energy, and yep, moodiness. That's another thing we share. He dealt with his moodiness in a far more flamboyant way than I ever have, but it's something for which I feel a deep camaraderie. The other reason I feel such a kinship is that he and his music have been with me since 1973, and his second album, Piano Man. I was a 19 year old just beginning a gig that almost made me decide not to be the lawyer I did become, at our college radio station, WFUV, the "Radio Voice of Fordham University", where students did everything under the watchful eye of the late Frank Seitz, the seasoned professional. And Billy Joel was played and played. 

Billy Joel is one of those people we say, "He's been part of the tapestry of my life." And how. 

As you can see, on one of the returns for a visit to the East Coast, in 1987, I saw the now quite seasoned Billy Joel at the Meadowlands. This is a photo of my actual ticket for that performance. I know I saw him at least once at some other point, here in LA I think, but alas, my memory of the where and when is gone. 

When it comes to affairs of the heart, well Billy has had quite a number,  including marriages, something of which I cannot boast. My relationships were so few I can count them on one hand. Some might not even really properly be in the count. And they were very short.  And they reflected my psychological avoidance of getting close. I have been the queen of the platonic relationship. I admire Billy for his high dives into the pool of love. And the pain concomitant, still it seems, unresolved, as he says in the song, "And So It Goes":  "And every time I've held a rose it seems I only felt the thorns."  Our wounds are quite different, but I suspect we can all sing some version of "And So It Goes".  No matter who we are the reality is, there always is a thorn.

This puts me in mind of one of Billy's songs, a really popular one, "Only the Good Die Young",  in which he sings about trying to get a Catholic school girl to let down her moral guard and have a sexual relationship with a bad boy. "I'd rather laugh with the sinners, than cry with the saints." I was a Catholic School girl. I am a Catholic adult. I remember feeling conflicted and that the combination of my strict in school upbringing and my psychological familial and individual context made me feel like I was locked away indeed, and that I was paying and would pay a price. That's been part of my thorn. "A price for the things that I might have done", as the song says. But when you watch the biography, there was a price for the things that Billy Joel did. The question always is--was it worth the price paid? What was the goal? What is the ending? Neither of us are yet at our ending, and I hope we have a long way to go.

I won't go too religious on y'all in this entry, but I think there is a lacunae in Billy Joel's thinking and pursuit. He came from a family of non-practicing Jews--though there was a devastating connection to the holocaust which no doubt always threaded its way into his psyche. He assumes a lot in that line in Only the Good Die Young, as many people do about laughing with the sinners and crying with the saints. Could it perhaps be faulty? As so often is the case, it misunderstands Catholic theology and the reality that hard though it is for us to see it, that God wants our happiness. How long does "laughing with the sinners" pertain? When you get to the end of the frolicking road in this life laughing away, what happens?  And are the saints actually crying in the long term? Or is it the opposite, both in this life, and if you haven't closed off the idea of the transcendent, the next, sinners stop laughing and the saints breathe easy and joyfully. Let me clarify. We are all sinners. The key is repentance. Saints are repentant sinners. 

Does the thorn have a purpose since we all have one? Is it perhaps to wake us up? That's the subject of another blog entry, or someone else's. Anyway, greater thinkers than me have opined on the meaning of life. 

One thing I do know, is that Billy Joel is a seeker. He still is seeking.  His music and lyrics alternately give pause and bring a smile. 

And this biography is a wonderful snapshot of the complex, and brilliant Billy Joel. 

I have added a plethora of his hits to my Amazon music playlist. Thanks, Billy! 

Truth by Constantine Gochis

I did a bit more editing of this story than I would otherwise. In the original version, it never became clear how dad had the first conversation unless the girls who so interested him had boarded the bus with him. So I just had them walk and arrive at the same time as the bus, which would not be impossible in the short distance involved, given LA traffic. 

It was oppressively hot, this Sunday afternoon, as I awaited the 217 Bus for the short ride to my apartment. I could have walked but for the groceries I had bought. 

There were two of them. They had crossed the street and were starting in my same direction by foot.   I did not have time to observe more closely as my Bus interposed its noxious presence. I had seen enough to note that they were both dressed in unusual sleeveless garb, one in red, the other in white. The gowns were street length.  The red one had the look of the synthetic red material of Christmas stockings.  It occurred to me that some cooler attire would have been called for, though she seemed serene enough under the caustic sun.  The dresses were inscribed with hand-written proclamations, written with felt pens.  I couldn't decipher anything, except one word, "Truth". 

On my short ride, I thought of my street bum friend, Diogenes, with his luxuriant, unkempt white hair and efflorescent beard, his tattered clothing and ponderous staff.  Surely it would be fitting for him, in these prophetic times of dire augury to proclaim some verity, some nugget of wisdom discovered in the homeless shelters or some soup kitchen, some eternal Y-2K warning.  I wondered whether he might have gone to a greater glory as it has been over a year since he has appeared for his periodic allotment of change that I always felt duty bound to provide.

I am a sucker for the unusual, the bizarre, the fabled goddess who appears in the guise of a crone to probe the "Truth" of mortals, and when treated with civility, grants a miraculous boon--in the case of one story, a bottle of wine that is perpetually full.  

Now, I do not want to suggest that I felt this mystical quality about the comely girls whose silent street peregrinations inspired my curiosity. But they bordered upon it. 

Take the one in red.  The bus was naturally painfully slow in its lurching to my home stop, and when I got there, the girls had arrived there in their walk at the same time. I thought the girl in red would look great in a form-fitting black, bare shouldered evening gown.  She was that comely--even to these eyes clouded by the mists of many years.  I do not mind the caricaturing of those less physically endowed, but I lament when the gifts of beauty are tampered with by eccentricity. 

As I stepped off the bus and passed in front of her, I still could not read the legends inscribed so liberally on her dress. I decided to inquire.

"Can you impart some of that there truth?" I said.  

She stopped.  We talked and it became manifest that she and her companions were engaged in some esoteric exercise.  They were, she said, "an actress and a teacher".  I cannot swear that our conversation went exactly in this way, but my recollections are indeed substantially true.

"Are you an honest man?" she asked.

"No," I answered.  "One cannot be honest in this world that does not value it, where the gloss of a frame is more important than its content."

"Do you object to this state of things?" she further asked.

"No," I said. "I think we are genetically programmed to survival and the hedonism of our species.  I was taught in Economics 101 that human wants are limitless.  It is not possible to accord these certainties to honesty.  Aggressive self interest can only be served by dissimulation, charmingly, or with the aggressions of power."

"Have you been dishonest?" she followed.

"Probably less so than more accomplished dissimulators."

"Why not a more aggressive approach?" she countered further.

"Perhaps a wee bit of cowardice, insufficient capacity in the necessary art, and the calculation of the consequence of the mathematical odds of failure."

We parted, and I arrived home, and deposited my groceries. I thought there might be time to grab a camera and catch the girls still in the street orbit. I was right.

The one in white was crossing toward Beverly Boulevard. She had a forthright complaint. "There are too many children in the world. . ."

"In the world or in the country?" I queried for clarification. 

"I'm thinking of this country.  Women must resist that God driven impulse to have children."

"I think they are resisting that drive very well", I observed. "The nuclear family is down to one point something. . ."

"Not any more," she said.

"But is that urge God driven?" I asked.

"That's an interesting question," she said.

I wondered what she found "interesting" about my query.  I guessed that she, the girl in white, might put on her current costume, or another, depending on the cause, to inveigh against the wearers of fur, the hole in the ozone, or secondary smoke, with equally reasoned passion.

I thought to assure her that the so called God driven drive to bear a child was no longer an issue. Even the old "biological clock" is no longer an imperative.  I assured her that science will have removed, within her lifetime, the onerous travails of having babies, and the psychological imperatives; that all this would occur in synthetic wombs, or ovens, whatever one preferred. Humanity will be allowed to pursue its higher purpose du jour without the burdens of natural consequence.

"Will you write something on my dress?"  She handed me a magic marker. I thought this a great idea. There should always be a record of significant events for posterity, or at least for the other girls waiting impatiently down the street. 

"I will if you allow me to take a photo or two."

She was pleased.  I took five shots.  I wrote in a little space above her left shoulder some verity of my own.

"To a lovely child. . ."

"You can send me a copy of the photo by e-mail," she offered.

I did not tell her I had not advances far enough in this simple feature of computer technology, but I wrote down the address anyway.  It was long, but I include some of its legend.

"UFO and the inevitable, "@earthlink.com."

Of course. I should have known.