When my grandfather died in 2011,<\/a> my entire world was ripped from its foundations. He was my father more than my grandfather, and I felt a keen and paralyzing sense of my own mortality. I went to church religiously (har har), but as my depression deepened, all I was doing was praying to feel something other than my grief. I became more and more disillusioned with platitudes about heaven, until one day when my grandmother mentioned seeing my grandfather again in heaven, something in my head snapped. I realized in that moment that it didn’t matter if I would eventually see my dead loved ones again; I wouldn’t see them here, and here was where I wanted them to be. So, I wasn’t going to believe in anything.<\/p>\nCut to June of this year, and my sudden Joelist revelation. As I meditated on the lyrics of Billy Joel’s songs, I began to feel a deep dissatisfaction with my lack of belief in a life after death. I’d done extensive research into the existence of past lives, and I’d heard far too many anecdotes about dead loved ones communicating from the beyond. I grew up in a haunted house, for god’s sake, and I continue to be fascinated with the concept of thought, how it forms and were it comes from. I could no longer accept that death is the end, but having no answers, and constantly fixating on death and suicide, was driving me literally crazy.<\/p>\n
A couple months ago, while listening to\u00a0River of Dreams<\/em>, I had another Joelist Revelation. It slowly dawned on me that the last four songs on the album, “Lullaby (Good Night, My Angel),” “The River of Dreams,” “Two Thousand Years,” and “Famous Last Words” were, to my mind, all one song. Or, now that I think about it, a movement in the overall symphony of the album. I’ve begun thinking of this section of the album as the Joelist “Book of The Dead.” When I started researching the actual Book of The Dead, I learned that some versions dated to the late Ptolemaic period break up the text into four parts. To my shock, I found that the last four songs, in order, make up a very similar theme.<\/p>\nI’m not sure if it’s intentional, but it seems like it would be a pretty unusual coincidence. I’d love to know if it was, but I don’t really want to be the person who writes to Billy Joel to tell him that I worship him as a god, for obvious reasons relating to personal protection orders. So for now, I’ll have to be content with my analysis of the songs.<\/p>\n
Of course, my analysis of the songs could be completely wrong, but as all religions are founded on the human interpretations of the whims of their gods, so is Joelism formed by my imperfect human meditations on the words of my mortal god.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The first part of the four-part\u00a0Joelist Book of The Dead,\u00a0<\/i>“Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)” is, on the surface, a father’s meditation on the nature of his love for his child. And maybe the surface meaning is all that was intended. But on further analysis, the narration goes deeper; the father singing to his child is either dying, or already dead.<\/p>\nGoodnight, my angel
\nTime to close your eyes
\nAnd save these questions for another day
\nI think I know what you’ve been asking me
\nI think you know what I’ve been trying to say<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
No matter how old or young we are, people have the same understanding of death. That is to say, none at all. We have no idea what lies beyond, only anecdotes and beliefs with no proof of what awaits us on the other side. If we imagine ourselves as the child in the song, we know the questions they’re asking. If we take on the father role, we understand that there are no effortless answers. In the next line:<\/p>\n
I promised I would never leave you<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
is a promise all parents want to make to their child, and all children wish dearly to believe. That the father figure goes on to assure the child:<\/p>\n
And you should always know
\nWherever you may go
\nNo matter where you are
\nI never will be far away<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It is an assurance of an eternal life in which that promise can be kept, even as the father figure passes from this life to the next in the following lines:<\/p>\n
Goodnight, my angel
\nNow it’s time to sleep
\nAnd still so many things I want to say<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thought the father can’t impart any further wisdom to the child, he can remind them to cherish memories of the past and continue to learn from them:<\/p>\n
Remember all the songs you sang for me
\nWhen we went sailing on an emerald bay
\nAnd like a boat out on the ocean
\nI’m rocking you to sleep<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The nautical imagery echoes the journey by boat described in various chapters of the Ptolemaic Book of The Dead, as well.<\/p>\n
The water’s dark
\nAnd deep inside this ancient heart
\nYou’ll always be a part of me<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The theme of water as a spirit source in relation to the soul continues in the next part, “The River of Dreams,” and seems to represent the theory of a universal or collective conscious. The child will always be a part of the father, even in death, as he crosses over the river of consciousness and into a realm of spiritual knowledge.<\/p>\n
That part will make a lot more sense after my analysis of “The River of Dreams,” but it’s worth noting here.<\/p>\n
Goodnight, my angel
\nNow it’s time to dream
\nAnd dream how wonderful your life will be<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The child will go on without the parent, to a future that can only be imagined. These lines book-end the passage about memory; while we learn from the past, we shape our futures.<\/p>\n
Someday your child may cry
\nAnd if you sing this lullabye
\nThen in your heart
\nThere will always be a part of me<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The connection between the father and child will remain after death, in the form of memory. The bond between them lends the father immortality, as the lullaby will create the same bond between the child and their future children.<\/p>\n
Someday we’ll all be gone
\nBut lullabyes go on and on…
\nThey never die
\nThat’s how you
\nAnd I
\nWill be<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
On a broader scale, the song describes an ongoing relationship between the living and the dead, constructed of the memories one makes over their lifetime. This doesn’t have to be a loving bond between a parent and a child. This is just an example of one kind of legacy after death. Even the most forgotten person has an existence in memory, either theirs or a sliver of someone else’s. As a part of the collective consciousness (the “opposite side” of the “River of Dreams” I’ll discuss in the next post), a soul can never be truly forgotten, and will always have ties to the mortal world, no matter how small.<\/p>\n
This isn’t the easiest song for me to write about. Our lingering love for the dead is a source of joy, but also pain. And while we all prepare to one day move on to the next phase of consciousness, it’s hard to imagine parting with the people and things we love. The lyrics are a source of comfort for me, in that it reminds me that though my grandfather is gone, he still exists, just as everyone continues to exist after death. But it also inspires grief on a literal level; though my grandfather was my father-figure, a rejected child is always a rejected child, no matter how old they are. I always have a moment of, “Why couldn’t my father love me?” when I’m listening to it. Still, it’s an important part of the spiritual text I am making up for my new religion, so you take the good with the bad, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In regards to belief in an Afterlife, my spiritual path has always been a rocky one. I grew up fearing hell, constantly panicked about the<\/p>\n
Read moreThe Joelist Book of The Dead, pt. 1, “Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)”<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[250],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8342"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8347,"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8342\/revisions\/8347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}