A song you should know

KU is stealing away my fun time tonight, so I don't have the time to give this the grand introduction and discussion it deserves (I'm sure there will one day be a lengthy essay on my love for Billy Joel... just not today.). But as I type artificial words about a highly artificial discussion (Why do I have to document conversation with my cooperating teacher when we talk every day? Oh yeah, because some people aren't quite as awesome as we are. And that's only slightly tongue-in-cheek.), iTunes gifted me with some authenticity by shuffling to my favorite Billy Joel song. It never fails to astound me in its poetics, so while some of my work spends some more time in the oven, please enjoy:


"Summer, Highland Falls"

They say that these are not the best of times,
but they're the only times I've ever known.
And I believe there is a time for meditation
in cathedrals of our own.

Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes,
and I can only stand apart and sympathize,
for we are always what our situations hand us -
it's either sadness or euphoria.

So we'll argue and we'll compromise,
and realize that nothing's ever changed.
For all our mutual experience,
our separate conclusions are the same.

Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity;
our reason coexists with our insanity.
Though we choose between reality and madness,
it's either sadness or euphoria.

How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies;
perhaps we don't fulfill each other's fantasies?
So we stand upon the ledges of our lives
with our respective similarities.

It's either sadness or euphoria.


From Turnstiles, copyright Billy Joel 1976
(punctuation and line breaks are mine... I typed it out from memory because typing is soothing.)

Be sure to listen to the Songs from the Attic version - this song is meant to be played live. He broke my heart three years ago when he offered it as a choice but went with the rest of the audience and played "Vienna" despite my frantic, second-row screaming for "Summer, Highland Falls." I've held a grudge against "Vienna" ever since.

Summer, Highland Falls - Billy...