Billy Joel...on Longgg Island he is our music god...(and yes, after living here for almost 33 years I suppose I can say "our")...I always laugh a little...whenever Newsday seems to struggle to fill the Sunday Arts section...there is another article about Billy Joel minutia...I have always liked his music...and those lyrics...the catalog is staggering...when I spent my freshman year at Binghamton and would ache for the dirty streets of Manhattan...it was his "New York State of Mind" I would hear in my head when that bus would pull into Port Authority...Mike and I used his song, "This is the Time" for our first dance at our wedding...I only saw him once in concert...Nassau Coliseum, New Year's Eve 1989...singing in a new decade...the 1990's...from the nosebleed section...and I loved it...I never saw his residency at Madison Square Garden...don't throw things at me...I have a theory about remembering artistic genius a certain way...so, I was more than a little curious about the HBO two-part documentary, "And So It Goes"...I have to say, it hit me in ways I hope I can articulate...being a writer...being a writer who still struggles to call myself a writer...and I do have to say it loudly and with conviction...I think I've earned it...nothing hit deeper than listening to Billy Joel talking about writing and composing...the primal need to push boundaries and not stay complacent...the utter loneliness when creating...the protectiveness he feels for his songs...like they are children...the ones that were his favorites, which audiences did not necessarily see the way he did...the hits that baffled him...the associations that brought him to times in his life that he might not want to have dwelled on...the harshness of reviews and critique...and ultimately...when to put down the pen...it is hard to watch the documentary knowing he is not well right now...and if you fall down the google search medical rabbit hole, you might wonder if the prognosis is really what he says...but you hope it is...and then I hope that he will pick up that pen again...let his fingers dance the piano keys...and sing us his new experiences...new lyrics that we will all know by heart...he always is reaching for something...like every one of us...the search keeps us going...keeps us creating...makes me think of this line from "River of Dreams"...oh, and Billy has the lines that's for sure..."we all end in the ocean, we all start in the streams, we're all carried along, by the river of dreams"...
