Sobriety, if I may, is a singular
emancipation—an event that arrives not unlike a telegram in the dark hours,
bearing tidings, ominous but anticipated. Thirty-eight years prior, the
crowning stone was placed atop a life dedicated to spontaneous mischief, and
thus commenced an arduous, intricate pilgrimage toward a more measured
existence. It was a time of blundering, of tentative exploration—one learned,
not by precept, but by doing, by colliding against the furniture, as it were,
of one’s own limitations. The classic narrative, as recounted by the devotees
of Alcoholics Anonymous, is almost quaint: one pledges, with a grimace of
resolution, to remain unsullied by drink, to accept—unflinchingly—the
consequences. “No matter what,” they intone, as though the phrase itself were a
talisman.
Permit me to observe: the
consequences, whether clutched in sobriety or inebriation, are not so much a
departure from chaos as a clarifying of its contours. It is as though the fog
of dissipation lifted, not to reveal a new Eden, but the same labyrinth, rendered
in sharper relief. Providence, in its inscrutable wisdom, kept certain hands
from the tiller, for the early years of sobriety—while an improvement over the
bibulous epoch—were something akin to a private demolition derby. The world was
navigated with a map drafted by a dipsomaniac, the roads serpentine, the
landmarks woefully misleading.
The detritus, of course, was
self-generated—a concatenation of dilemmas, each demanding redress. The
restoration was neither swift nor glamorous: it meant crafting apologies,
reconstructing battered relationships, and at long last acknowledging one’s role
in the parade of misadventures. The labor was Sisyphean, the pain stubbornly
persistent, the repetition dreary. Gradually, the realization dawned: the
proper aim was not to force the world’s multifarious phenomena into coherence
with obsolete, mangled logic; rather, the challenge was to conjure coherence
within oneself, to become someone who might make sense in the world as it
stands.
Those old tempests—rages, fits of
irritability, the paroxysms of the “dry drunk”—were but variations on a theme,
all performed by the same maladroit orchestra. They never succeeded in
persuading people, events, or circumstances to conform to parochial expectations.
It was a misbegotten amalgam, a cacophony, devoid of melody. Authentic
transformation, the kind that allows one to breathe with a briskness unknown to
the bemused, is fundamentally a reversal—a relinquishment of the urge to
conduct, a willingness instead to find the rhythm, to improvise as befits the
evidence at hand. Only then, I submit, does the music begin truly to swing.
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Now, as regards Billy Joel’s “Piano
Man”—the archetype of the self-conscious balladeer, casting pearls before a
self-conscious audience—it is, in its early measures, almost parodic. The
harmonica, wheezing and plaintive, seeks resemblance to Dylan, but achieves
something more akin to a department-store simulacrum of “Like a Rolling
Stone”—sufficient to lure the casual listener, but never to stir genuine
sentiment. The lyricism, striving for Cheever-esque gravitas, is overwrought,
mistaking theatricality for insight. Harry Chapin performed similar feats, with
perhaps more adroitness, if such is your proclivity. The composition traffics
in a kind of pre-packaged melancholy, offering despondency in digestible
portions to those who would have their sadness delivered in five-minute
increments.
Yet, a salutary transformation
occurs. Joel eschews literary excess in favor of conciseness, a fidelity to the
architecture of pop. The ear, now privileged over the ego, becomes his guide.
The melodies grow nimble, the words—pruned of superfluity—convey emotion with
economy. “Uptown Girl” sparkles with retro bravado; “Just the Way You
Are”—sentimental though it be—remains a respectable ballad; “Big Shot” delivers
its pleasures without apology. Even as he flirts with the ponderous (“You’re
Only Human,” the history-light “We Didn’t Start the Fire”), his mastery of
tuneful fabrication deepens. This is, after all, the triumph of the craftsman
over the would-be artiste—an inversion, rare and blessed, of rock’s penchant
for pretension.
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exhilarating.
But the internet then, I hasten to
add, was primarily a textual commons—one could read essays, articles, and, in
so doing, become edified in realms previously unimagined. High-speed, however,
ushered in a new era: articles shrank, graphics proliferated, and the corporate
hydra seized dominion over the spaces frequented by users. It became a Babel of
advertising, an unremitting parade of commercial enticement. Alas, the
technology that once promised deliverance from solitude began, ironically, to
entrench it. A tragedy, but one, I suspect, of our own devising.
