I recently watched Rick Beato's interview with Billy Joel, expecting to enjoy an engaging conversation between two musicians with an obvious reverence for composition. What I didn't expect was that the interview would quietly unlock rooms within myself that I hadn't visited in years.
Those rooms weren't forgotten.
I had simply stopped walking through them.
Listening to Billy speak about classical music, composition, and the craft of songwriting reminded me that music has always been more than entertainment in my life. It has been a map.
As a child, I was introduced to Billy Joel through my Scoutmaster, Pat. I remember sitting on the floor beside his stereo, surrounded by records that felt almost sacred. *The Stranger*, *Goodbye Yellow Brick Road*, Queen albums stacked nearby—they represented a world of discovery. I wasn't simply hearing music. I was learning that music deserved attention, patience, and respect.
Time moved differently then.
An afternoon could disappear into reading liner notes, studying album covers, and listening with complete presence.
As an adult, I've realized I'm searching for that feeling again—not because I wish I were a child, but because I miss that quality of attention. Today, slowing down is no longer automatic. It has become intentional.
When I put on a record now, I am choosing to return to that place.
I am choosing presence.
Billy Joel's music has become a vehicle for that return.
It doesn't transport me backward with regret. Instead, it gently reconnects me with the curious boy who first learned to listen so carefully. The songs know the way home.
That realization has surprised me. Home, I've discovered, is not always a physical address. Today, I live several hours away from the places where those memories were formed, and I cannot physically walk back into those rooms. But music allows me to revisit them whenever I need to—not as someone trying to reclaim the past, but as someone carrying it forward with greater understanding.
There is a wiser heart now.
The boy sitting on the floor beside the stereo could never have imagined the life that awaited him. He couldn't have imagined the losses, the healing, the work of supporting others, or the quiet strength that would come from surviving difficult seasons. Yet I think he would recognize the way I still listen.
The curiosity remains.
The reverence remains.
The willingness to discover remains.
Watching Billy Joel speak with Rick Beato reminded me that art does far more than entertain us. It reconnects us to ourselves. Sometimes an interview, a song, or a single chord progression opens a door we didn't even realize had been closed.
Art doesn't simply preserve memories.
It preserves ways of being.
For me, rediscovering Billy Joel has become a gentle act of coming home—physically, emotionally, spiritually, and musically. Not all at once, and not by force, but at my own pace, in the quiet privacy of my own home.
Perhaps that's one of art's highest callings.
It helps us cope.
It helps us soothe.
And every once in a while, it reminds us that the deepest parts of ourselves were never truly lost.
They were simply waiting for the right song to lead us back.
—E