City Voices

LANDGREN HAPPY NEW YEAR?

WORCESTERIA

A wish for the New Year –We all deserve to be seen

Victor D. Infante

Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

I am, perhaps unsurprisingly, a fan of “best of” lists, yearend “people to watch” lists, “favorite albumor music video lists” and their ilk. Usually, they're pretty terrible – “Hey, fellow kids! Let's check out those new hep cats Ed Augustus and Jim McGovern! They really might make something of themselves!” – but when done right, they can help journalists illuminate the amazing people who surround us: Some who grab the headlines, others who toil in obscurity, but nonetheless the people who often make our world better in some way, and they deserve to be seen.

Worcester Magazine and the Telegram & Gazette do a number of these, of course, beginning on Thanksgiving with our “Hometown Heroes” issue and rolling into the new year with a few interesting odds and ends. I even enjoy reading the lists by our rival and frenemy publications, such as The Worcester Business Journal's “22 People You Should Know in 2022,” or Vanyaland's “21 Boston Songs of 2021.” Indeed, the reasons I love these things are probably a lot of the same reasons I'm so excited about the Telegram's Storytellers program: We can't tell every story, no matter how hard we try, but sometimes, we can give people the tools and forum to tell their own.

Mind, there are some limits to my love of these year-end lists. It was nice that the Bos-

FIRST PERSON

The eternal presence of Billy Joel

Meaghan Racicot

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

A few weeks ago, I piecemeal watched “Hired Gun” in my car as I waited to pick up my daughter from school, watching about 15 minutes each day. “Hired Gun” is a documentary about musicians who are hired by other, larger name musicians to play their hit songs “behind them.” They are not in the band, just part of it for as long as they are hired. It was a fascinating documentary, and I don’t want to

SeeJOEL,Page10

Billy Joel, performing in Austin in October.

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Worcesteria

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ton Globe included two local political figures in its “Bostonians to Watch” series, but I would never look too closely there to get a glimpse of life in Worcester, any more than I would look to the Globe for insight into the regional music scene. Its attention on either is spotty, only seeing the highest summits, not the work being done on the ground. The work being done on the ground matters. It, too, deserves to be seen. And that's the thing: We all deserve to be seen, and that's harder to accomplish than it seems. We've made great strides in equity – be it on race, religion, sexuality, gender identity or what have you – but always there's this pushback on the other side, one that seems to say, “OK. That's enough. You can exist, but we just don't want to have to hear about it.” Problem is, as a species, we have a long history of bad things happening when people are pushed into the shadows. There are all sorts of ways to disappear, after all. One need only look to the dismantling of the tent city near Walmart in October: It's easier to shuffle people out of sight than it is to solve a systemic problem. Listen closely to people discussing the plight of the unhoused congregating under the Green Street Bridge. Some clearly show concern for their welfare, while others worry how it looks, having the unhoused gather in the shadow of our shiny new baseball stadium, in a neighborhood that's gentrifying more with each passing day.

I'm reminded, as I contemplate this, of a story Craig Semon wrote, where he gave local panhandlers a chance to tell their own stories. It was a powerful piece of work, one that highlighted the humanity in his subjects. I'm also reminded of a story the late Telegram & Gazette reporter Lee Hammel wrote many years ago, spending a night in the old People in Peril shelter, and talking to the people he found there. Both pieces were rare, intense glimpses into not just the fact that people were unhoused, but also the realities of their world. We rarely ask ourselves why there aren't more shelters, or why people don't always want to make use of the shelters there are. We talk about drugs and mental illness, forgetting that we, too, are really only a handful of missed paychecks from that being our life.

I have no answers here, just a wish as we go into 2022: That we try to see each other. The people who build things, or create beauty. The people who struggle and survive, sometimes despite all odds. The people who are kind, when the world gives them every reason not to be.

The people who show us who we can be as leaders, or as neighbors, or both. Not all of us can be in the headlines, but all of us deserve to not be relegated to anonymous shadows, to have the sunlight fall upon our face.

People gather on Worcester Common for the Longest Night Vigil on the 31st Annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day. TAJONN NICKELSON PHOTO

Joel

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spoil too much for anyone, so check it out if you can. What I would like to talk about today is Billy Joel. Perhaps “Keeping the Faith” was featured in the movie, or perhaps it was mentioned somewhere, for I found the catchy tune had wormed its way into my ear, and it was the first song title I typed into YouTube. While listening, I realized I already knew almost every single word. Not having actively heard this song in decades (not including whatever songs play in the background at the dentist), I was mildly surprised at how ingrained this tune was in me, how it felt so natural, so comforting.

It took only a few more songs before I realized that I knew almost all the words to all of the big hit songs. Suddenly and rather bizarrely, it occurred to me that Billy Joel was a major part of my childhood musical experience, although nobody in my life was a “Billy Joel Fan” per se. I couldn’t help but wonder if my current strong connections to his musical themes and lyrics had, at least in part, been guided by the fact that I had grown up listening to his music on the radio. Every day.

Billy Joel was across the airwaves when I was born in 1983 and his songs were a tenant in my mom’s red two-door Chevy Cavalier, where I slid around the burning hot seats and stared out the tiny window. Back then, whatever was on the radio was what was on, and judging from my memory bank, my mom flipped her dial between Oldies 103.3 and 104.5 WXLO. Even as young as 3 or 4, I remember these songs as I ran around our 2nd floor unit of a 120-year-old three-decker up in Quinsig Village.

As I got older and my musical tastes began to form, I started stepping away from some of the music I grew up on to explore new genres and artists. I started listening to the local college radio, WCHC, the radio station up at the College of the Holy Cross. (Mostly because 88.1 was the only channel that came in on my old Chevy Cavalier, white with four doors.)

As far as I recall, I haven’t knowingly listened to a Billy Joel song in years but hearing tune after tune after tune of enormous hits which filled the charts, I can’t help but think what a wonderful artist he truly is. Listening to “Tell Her About It” in my kitchen while putting away dishes, I was taken back to being a young girl and hearing that on the radio. Memories of singing along to “Uptown Girl” and “Piano Man,” listening intently to the story inside “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” and trying to decipher all the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” came flooding back. Singing “River of Dreams” in middle school chorus. Hearing my sister’s class sing it again two years later.

The music I heard growing up got into me, made me, shaped me, turned car rides into music videos, got me through the most boring church sermons. These songs wriggled and wiggled and wormed their way into my life and are just as much a part of me as my very own heartbeat.

And Billy Joel was a huge part of the mix, and I didn’t even remember until I watched “Hired Gun.”

Rock ‘n’ Roll Forever!

Meaghan Racicot is a children’s author from Auburn. Read more essays by her at https://meaghanracicot.substack.com, and check out her picture books at www.meaghanracicot.com.