((**This entry was written on scrap paper at Mohegan Sun**))
Jamie loved Billy Joel.
I remember burning the cd at his Applewood house when he moved his room upstairs into Kathryn's old one. That was six years ago when we had just finished high school and I was wondering if I still loved him, or if I could love the new person that he had become.
Today... Right now, the Billy Joel is 20 feet away from me singing "we didn't start the fire". I can see Jamie's fat head in my mind, bobbing along to the tune, singing every word. He loved Billy Joel.
Now I work as an accountant during the day and by night I am an usher for an arena that has housed dozens of celebrities a year. Some celebrities and their music do nothing to me, some of them move me for their musical talent and every once in a while i will get an artist who kicks up emotional dust. Each one that brings me to tears is over a person that is no longer part of my life.
Part of them is resurrected in the notes and words that fill the air. I'm suddenly transported to another time and place and it's like I'm there all over again and i can smell the leather seats in Jamie's car or the perfume in the hall from Jolene.
Today, May 31st, the "Italian restaurant" plays and Jamie's face haunts me. These people who I loved with parts of me I didn't think I could, will never be gone from me. I'll store them away when I can but the Billy Joel's, Rod Stewart's (yes, I know.. I'm old) and the Josh Groban's will bring them all back out up to the surface and I'll end up face to face with them again.
So much of me wants them in my life but more of me knows that they only come with chaos and are gone for legit reasons.
I'm not asking for easy love and easy relationships. Just a certain amount of forgiveness and more acceptance than people want to pass out.
We lost each other for a reason. For too much pain back then and the amount that still remains. My heart aches when the piano plays and I want to laugh, dance and fall down crying all at once.
Maybe I appreciate music; maybe I appreciate people, words and the like more than the average person. Or maybe I'm just like everybody else.
Maybe it's just an intricate case of missing people and an ultimate test of will to stay away from them. I don't know, even for myself. Now I have new faces and new loves, fresther scares and cleaner breaks.
But the piano man sings now, his own song, "Piano Man". The crowd screams and everyone is sill when the harmonica sounds.
The stage lights are blue and the drunken crowd (on both excitement and booze) is swaying in all opposite directions, making an arena of 9300 appear to be a human ocean and I'm happily drowning in, out of tune, voices. You get lost in their emotion sometimes. As though I could swim through their sound and movement. The arena brings out the strangest feelings in me sometimes.
The song ends. It was the final encore, so Billy stands and says:
and he left the stage.
I remember burning the cd at his Applewood house when he moved his room upstairs into Kathryn's old one. That was six years ago when we had just finished high school and I was wondering if I still loved him, or if I could love the new person that he had become.
Today... Right now, the Billy Joel is 20 feet away from me singing "we didn't start the fire". I can see Jamie's fat head in my mind, bobbing along to the tune, singing every word. He loved Billy Joel.
Now I work as an accountant during the day and by night I am an usher for an arena that has housed dozens of celebrities a year. Some celebrities and their music do nothing to me, some of them move me for their musical talent and every once in a while i will get an artist who kicks up emotional dust. Each one that brings me to tears is over a person that is no longer part of my life.
Part of them is resurrected in the notes and words that fill the air. I'm suddenly transported to another time and place and it's like I'm there all over again and i can smell the leather seats in Jamie's car or the perfume in the hall from Jolene.
Today, May 31st, the "Italian restaurant" plays and Jamie's face haunts me. These people who I loved with parts of me I didn't think I could, will never be gone from me. I'll store them away when I can but the Billy Joel's, Rod Stewart's (yes, I know.. I'm old) and the Josh Groban's will bring them all back out up to the surface and I'll end up face to face with them again.
So much of me wants them in my life but more of me knows that they only come with chaos and are gone for legit reasons.
I'm not asking for easy love and easy relationships. Just a certain amount of forgiveness and more acceptance than people want to pass out.
We lost each other for a reason. For too much pain back then and the amount that still remains. My heart aches when the piano plays and I want to laugh, dance and fall down crying all at once.
Maybe I appreciate music; maybe I appreciate people, words and the like more than the average person. Or maybe I'm just like everybody else.
Maybe it's just an intricate case of missing people and an ultimate test of will to stay away from them. I don't know, even for myself. Now I have new faces and new loves, fresther scares and cleaner breaks.
But the piano man sings now, his own song, "Piano Man". The crowd screams and everyone is sill when the harmonica sounds.
"He says, bill, I believe this is killing me.
As the smile ran away from his face
Well Im sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place"
-Billy Joel
The stage lights are blue and the drunken crowd (on both excitement and booze) is swaying in all opposite directions, making an arena of 9300 appear to be a human ocean and I'm happily drowning in, out of tune, voices. You get lost in their emotion sometimes. As though I could swim through their sound and movement. The arena brings out the strangest feelings in me sometimes.
The song ends. It was the final encore, so Billy stands and says:
Don't take any shit from anybody,
and he left the stage.
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