Billy Joel: Professional Counselor?
From the Graduate Student Association Newsletter
February, 1998, Volume 2, Issue 1, p2
©
I have been a Billy Joel fan for 28 years. Perhaps it is because I am three days older
than Joel; perhaps because we are both native Long Islanders. Regardless of the reasons for my admiration,
it is Joel's talent as a singer-song writer that has endeared him to me, that
is until this past Christmas.
I received a copy of Joel's (1993) River of Dreams album
as a gift from one of my children; I had asked for it and the request was
heard...ah, the listening skills of a counselor educator's child. Since Christmas morning I have listened to
the album no less than a dozen times, enjoying the music and words more with
each visit. His talent has never been
more obvious nor his music and lyrics more pleasing than in this collection of
songs. But it was not until this past Saturday that I ever considered Joel a
counselor.
On Saturday, I took a break from domestic chores I was
doing around the house and turned on the stereo. I put in two BJ CD's, Storm Front (1989) and River of Dreams
(1993). As serendipity would have it,
my mind began to drift to a couple of difficult counseling cases I am currently
working with as I lay on the couch listening to the music. At first I thought I heard just a touch of
Joel the counselor,
"Some days I have to give right in to the blues
Despite how I try to keep fightin'
It's a sure shot I'm going to lose
And I'll tell you why
You think I'm crazy
It's such a sad composition
But can you blame me
For what's been causing my bad disposition?
Ain't nothing new with my blue situation
And nothing's fine, just a minor variation.
Whoa, that was as good a definition of depression, well,
at least dysthimia, as I have read in any of my counseling texts. So I changed my aesthetic perspective and
started to listen as Robert the counselor rather than Robert the Joel devotee...
"And I've had enough
I'm ready for the next time it hits me again
'Cause I've gotten tough
It doesn't faze me
And now I've made my decision
I may be crazy
It's not as though I don't know that condition
Until I'm through with this blue situation
Pass me the wine, it's just a minor variation.
(A minor Variation)
Okay, drinking when depressed might not be such a good
idea, but he's talking about looking at "the blues" as a part of
being alive, being alive in the sense of experiencing what life is all
about. Jim Croce had a line in one of
his songs, just which one escapes me at the moment, "Nobody ever had the
rainbow until they had the rain."
It's the realization that always being "on" might just result
in "on" becoming a boring experience. This sounds remarkably similar
to a theme in many counseling sessions I have conducted over the years, life is
a journey, or as John Lennon said, "Life is what happens while you are
making plans."
My curiosity was piqued. I started to listen as a counselor interviewing a client...
"...When I come to the enemy line
Black and white was so easy for me
But shades of grey are the colors I see
Now with the wisdom of years, I try to reason things out
And the only people I fear are those who never have
doubts
Save us all from arrogant men, and all the causes
they're for
I won't be righteous again
I'm not that sure anymore."
(Shades of Grey)
Sounded almost like a lyric to an Ellisonian rational
thinking song.
And in Joel's love song, All About Soul, while speaking
of a lover, he does so in each variation on the chorus that, for me, captured
the essence of what the spirit of counseling is about...
"It's all about soul
It's all about knowing what someone is feeling
The woman's got soul
The power of love and the power of healing
This life isn't fair
It's gonna get dark, it's gonna get cold
You've got to get tough, but that ain't enough
It's all about soul."
He continues in the next chorus...
"It's all about soul
It's all about joy that comes out of sorrow
It's all about soul
Who's standing now and who's standing tomorrow
You've got to be hard
Hard as a rock in that old rock 'n roll
But that's only part, you know in your heart
It's all about soul.
There is something about words set to music that seems,
at least for me, to capture the pure essence of the human condition. Perhaps it is the confluence of two powerful
media such as music and the written/spoken word, but the ability of this
particular means of expression to cut to the heart of what separates humans
from all other animal life on the planet, to think and to reason, and to emote,
is a powerful vehicle for therapy.
The difficult case I mentioned earlier involves a client
who suffered a significant and sudden loss.
The combination of these two realities characterizing the loss has made
it difficult for the client to focus. The client has had difficulty moving
beyond the denial stage of grieving.
Even tried-and-true cognitive-behavioral techniques have done little
more than enable the client to cope.
The relationship was so close and the loss so profound, the client has
been "stuck" on the question "why?"
In Joel's (1993) Lullabye: Goodnight, My Angel, his
lyrics suggest a possible answer...
"Goodnight, my angel
Time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you've been asking me
I think you know what I've been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
And you should always know
Wherever you may go
No mater where you are
I never will be far away...
...Goodnight, my angel
Now, it's time to dream
And dream how wonderful your life will be
Someday your child may cry
And if you sing this lullabye
Then in your heart
There will always be a part of me."
While steeped in symbolism, perhaps to the point
inconsistent with a more behavioral approach to therapy, when more behavioral
interventions fail to produce the desired results, alternative approaches are
warranted. Prochaska, DiClemente and Norcross, (1992) outline the importance of
targeting a client's need to change by recognizing in which stage of change
that client currently exists and intervening therapeutically with techniques
shown to be effective in helping the client move towards treatment objectives,
the heart of the Transtheoretical model of counseling.
In the title cut from the River of Dreams CD, Joel seems
to speak of the existential angst with which clients so frequently struggle
when they present for counseling. Each
successive version of the chorus begins with the subject..."in the middle
of the night, I go walking in my sleep" and embarking on a journey that is
confusing if not frightening,
"From the mountain of faith...Through the valley of
fear...Through the
jungle of doubt...Through the desert of truth To a river
so deep."
As the lyrics of the song progress, we see the subject
"...must be looking for something...searching for something..." and
it is "...something sacred I lost...something I would never lose,
something somebody stole." As the
ballad ends, there is the sense that this journey, some might say life, with
all its fears and doubts, is as it is supposed to be,
"We all end in the ocean,
We all start in the streams
We're all carried along
In the middle of the night."
While I have yet to figure which theoretical orientation
best captures the essence of Joel's lyrics--perhaps he is the quintessential
"eclectic"--it seems more and more likely to me that Joel has the
spirit of a healer that drives his creative talent. And if this is true, I wonder if there is merit to a counselor
offering a client a new type of therapeutic prescription, "take two CD's
and call me in the morning."
What do you think?
Joel,
B, (1993). River of Dreams. Sony Music
Entertainment Inc. Columbia
Records, New York:NY
Prochaska,
J., DiClemente, C., Norcross, J., (1992).
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