UnlearningSilence.blog

This blog will make a little more sense if you listen to Vienna by Billy Joel first, or while you are reading it. Consider this my invitation to you rather than a request. Find a comfortable chair, make yourself a cup of coffee(or any other beverage of your choice) if you have the time, and allow yourself three uninterrupted minutes to listen to this remarkable song. Enjoy.

Today’s blog isn’t about me. It’s about a song.

Or perhaps, more accurately, it is about what happens when a song refuses to keep up with the rest of the world and asks you to take a breath, literally and metaphorically.

I’m talking about Vienna by Billy Joel. Ironically, it’s not even the sort of music I would normally listen to. And yet, every now and then, it finds me.

The first few notes are almost suspiciously slow. Not soothing slow. Almost… inconveniently, or irritatingly, slow. The first time you listen to it, there is a tiny part of your brain that instinctively searches for the familiar ×1.5 button we all use when listening to WhatsApp voice notes.

We’ve become remarkably impatient. Voice notes. Podcasts. Audiobooks. Videos. Even walks have become opportunities to “get our steps in” rather than simply enjoy being outside. Somewhere along the way, we subconsciously decided that life itself ought to be accelerated.

Then Vienna begins.

It doesn’t apologise for its pace. It doesn’t try to impress you. It almost feels as though Billy Joel wrote it after visiting the future, discovered what we would become and quietly decided that we all needed to calm down.

At first, I almost find the song irritating. Slow down? Really? Have you seen my diary? But then something wonderful happens. Without noticing, you stop resisting it.

You realise the song isn’t asking you to achieve less. It isn’t questioning ambition. It isn’t suggesting that goals somehow don’t matter. It is asking a far more interesting question.

What exactly are you hurrying towards? There is a difference between moving through life and constantly trying to get past it.

Then the music begins to move. Almost without noticing, it gathers pace before relaxing again. It builds into a gentle crescendo, settles, and then rises once more. The more I listen to it, the more I realise that the music itself is telling the story. It isn’t simply accompanying the lyrics. It is reinforcing them.

The composition is remarkably honest. It never stays slow for the sake of being slow, just as it never rushes for the sake of rushing. Instead, it moves naturally between moments of stillness and moments of energy. It breathes. It pauses. It gathers momentum. Then it allows itself to slow again.

Like life, it understands that there is a time to move quickly and a time to be still. A time to work, a time to celebrate, a time to rest and a time to simply notice where you are. The beauty isn’t found in one pace or the other. It lies in the balance between them.

As the music opens up, it feels as though you’ve wandered into a little European café where nobody is in any particular rush to leave. Whether it sounds Austrian, Italian or simply “somewhere beautiful” hardly matters. It feels warm, civilised and wonderfully unhurried. For three minutes, the song quietly removes you from your routine.

Nothing around you has changed. Life continues exactly as it did three minutes earlier. The only thing that has changed is your perspective.

That is very rare.

I’ve never actually been to Vienna. Perhaps that’s why it has been waiting for me for so long. One day I’ll visit Vienna, the capital of Austria. I’ll sit in one of its famous cafés, order far too much cake, spend far too long over a single cup of coffee and see whether the city really is as unhurried as everyone says it is. I’ll probably take a ride on the old Ferris wheel, wander through its parks and convince myself that I’m becoming terribly sophisticated simply because I’m carrying a book under my arm.

Until then, there is another Vienna. The metaphorical one. The one Billy Joel quietly reminds me to visit from time to time. Perhaps that’s enough for now. The real city will still be there when I arrive. And, somehow, I suspect the other Vienna will be waiting for me too. It is almost as though the city understands something the rest of us keep forgetting. Then it occurred to me that Vienna isn’t really a place.

It’s a metaphor.

Everybody’s Vienna is different.

Sometimes Vienna is allowing a conversation to remain just that: a conversation. Getting to know another human being without feeling the need to rush towards the next stage simply because that’s what people seem to do. There is something wonderfully underrated about curiosity. About asking another question instead of reaching for another milestone. Some of the best things in life don’t become meaningful because they happen quickly. They become meaningful because they are allowed to unfold.

For one person, Vienna might be finally taking that trip they have postponed for years. For somebody else, it might be a long lunch with old friends where nobody checks the time. Sometimes Vienna is buying yourself flowers simply because you’ve spent years being rather fabulous without ever properly acknowledging it. Sometimes it is switching your phone off on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes it is reading a novel in the middle of the day without feeling guilty. Sometimes it is dancing in your kitchen. Sometimes it is walking through a park without headphones. Sometimes it is deciding that one extraordinary life is worth more than a perfectly organised calendar.

We spend astonishing amounts of energy waiting for permission to enjoy ourselves. Permission after the promotion. After the children grow up. After the mortgage. After retirement. After next month. After one more email. The list is endless.

Everywhere we look, somebody is telling us to hurry. Work harder. Reply faster. Be more productive. Achieve more. Optimise everything.

Billy Joel quietly suggests something rather radical instead. Slow down. Not because you should give up, stop dreaming or settle for less, but because there is a difference between living with purpose and living in a permanent state of urgency.

Life isn’t waiting patiently at the end of your to-do list. It has been happening while you were trying to finish it. So today, find your Vienna.

It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t even have to involve travelling. It simply has to remind you that your life is something to experience, not merely something to organise.

And if you’ve forgotten where it is, play the song. Just don’t listen to it at ×1.5. The world will still be asking you to hurry when those three minutes are over. Billy Joel will still be quietly reminding you that it’s perfectly all right to slow down.