Good Thursday to you all,
David and I recently returned from a weekend away in Charleston. Over the course of the pandemic and my mom’s illness, we tried to take some time away here and there, but it never amounted to much. Last weekend was good medicine for me: mostly unplanned (except for the restaurants, because OF COURSE), full of meandering around streets full of history and picturesque gardens, with a little soccer mixed in. Having grown up in Massachusetts, I always feel a little more at home in a city next to water.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: The Unfinished Conversation
On April 30, 1996, a young man stood at the edge of the balcony of Alden Hall at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He grasped an envelope in his hand, scribbled with a few notes.
On the stage facing him was the Piano Man himself, Billy Joel. Mr. Joel had come for an evening of Questions and Answers, as his tour at the time was called. Since the young man in the balcony was friends with an usher that night, he knew he would get a chance to ask his question. Having listened to Billy Joel for most of his adult life, the young man thought -- he prepared -- he agonized over what to ask. He took some notes on an envelope and waited for the moment when the mic would be passed to him.
The evening progressed, the spotlight swung around, and the mic was in his hand. As he took a breath, the envelope he’d been holding slipped out of his hand and into the rows of people below.
The young man was my husband, and he remembered his question in spite of his clumsiness.
He wanted to know about the song “Angry Young Man.” Here’s a bit of verse two:
Give a moment or two to the angry young man
With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand
He's been stabbed in the back, he's been misunderstood
It's a comfort to know his intentions are good
And he sits in a room with a lock on the door
With his maps and his medals laid out on the floor
And he likes to be known as the angry young man
The song explores the story of a young man who has striven for meaning and affirmation and is left angry. He is so angry that it’s now part of his personality to be angry all the time. So here he sits with his “maps” (his plans) and his “medals” (his accomplishments) laid out before him, still angry. The song puts Joel in the judgment seat of this man; he understands that this type of anger, regardless of the righteous cause it aspires to, is no definition of a life.1
David wanted to know -- if that’s not what Billy Joel is about, then what IS he about? “Where do you find meaning?” he asked. Suffice it to say that Billy was not prepared for David’s admittedly too long-rehearsed, agonized-over question. He answered:
“You’ve got a lot of psychological baggage you’re carrying around there, pal.”
*sad trombone*
Ultimately he gave an answer -- “in things substantive” was the phrase he used -- and then he delighted the audience by playing the prelude to the song, which is a rapid-fire percussive piece of piano music.2
This little episode in the life of my husband is, I believe, a universal one for anyone who spends time with art, literature, or music. The goal for any piece of art is that it finds someone to interact with it. Paintings are useless without patrons to enjoy them. Books find their readers, and music its listeners. As much as I buck at the word “consumer,” created pieces are ultimately consumed by people other than their creators. And the creators wouldn’t have it any other way.
There’s a popular quote often attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “Writing is easy; you just open up a vein and bleed.” Any artist or author worth his salt is giving a slice of himself with every finished piece. Sometimes the glimpses of the artist can be quite personal. The more specific a piece is, the more universally it resonates.
At the other end of this process sits the consumer; we are receiving these glimpses into the darkest caverns of the soul. The author or artist has, in effect, begun a conversation by sharing a piece of themselves. In our humanity we want to welcome them; we want to follow up, resonate, identify, and care.
A friend of ours once put it this way: “It’s as though, in that album, he’s begun a conversation with me that I can never finish.” I understand this frustration and I’ve made peace with living in it.
It is in very rare cases that we are allowed a chance to respond to the person who initiated the conversation. Most of them don’t know us; some are too famous; many are dead. The very generous artists who allow us to chat have probably heard the story a million times before.
So.
“You’ve got a lot of psychological baggage you’re carrying around there, pal.”
or
Nod, smile, and thank you.
Here’s to the unfinished conversations of the sub-creators who make our lives on earth more beautiful. I wish I could talk to so many of you about what you’ve given me; I know I never will.
For the Anglophiles
If you visit my home, over the piano you will see a picture of my husband standing next to a tiny boat: the James Caird. It is housed at Dulwich College3, South London. Here is a brief retelling of its significance and why we dedicated the better part of a day in London to go see it.
Reads & Listens of the Week
This American Life re-aired an old episode last week, but it’s one of my absolute favorites: Kid Logic. It’s full of stories about those misconceptions we might gain as children, and how we learn that they are wrong. For my part, for a long time I thought that narwhals were made up — and then I learned that they are REAL. (They seem made up, don’t they?! Unicorns of the sea, really?!)
Why Reason Isn’t Enough, by Malcolm Guite. “A hunger-bitten and idea-less philosophy naturally produces a starveling and comfortless religion.”
I was fascinated by this treatment of a secondary issue in Christianity Today: The Scottish Complementarians who Teach Women to Preach. Scotland’s schemes (housing projects), are generally understood to be a matriarchal society, so one complementarian ministry is making inroads by training women.
This was such a weird story: Cold Case: Office Fridge Food Theft Edition. Think Serial, but for a case of an officemate stealing small-but-still-obvious portions of your food.
Does anyone want to talk to me about Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods? I just finished it, and I’m still trying to decide what I thought about it. Leave me a comment below if you have thoughts or opinions.
Closer to Home
Last week I published my review of Ashley Hales’ book A Spacious Life.
I’d rather take coffee than compliments just now. — Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
You can hear David’s question and Billy’s answer on Billy Joel’s website. Warning: it’s a very cringey interaction.
Interestingly, Dulwich College is also the alma mater of PG Wodehouse. The library is named for him.