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 is not about me. It is about a song. Or perhaps, more accurately, it is about what happens when a song refuses to keep pace with the rest of the world and asks you to take a breath, both literally and metaphorically.
Ironically, Vienna is not the kind of music I would normally choose. Yet every now and then, it finds me. The first few notes are almost suspiciously slow. Not soothingly slow. Inconveniently slow. There is a small part of the brain that instinctively begins searching for the ×1.5 button we use for long voice notes.
We have become impatient. We accelerate voice messages, podcasts, audiobooks and videos. Even a walk becomes an opportunity to count steps rather than simply enjoy being outside. Somewhere along the way, we appear to have decided that life itself should be completed more efficiently.
Then Vienna begins.
The song does not apologise for its pace or rush to earn your attention. It almost feels as though Billy Joel visited the future, saw what we would become and quietly concluded that everybody needed to calm down.
My first response is usually resistance. Slow down? Really? Have you seen my diary? But if I continue listening, something changes. The song is not asking me to abandon ambition, achieve less or stop caring about the future. It is asking a more unsettling question: what exactly am I hurrying towards?
There is a difference between moving through life and constantly trying to get past it.
The music itself seems to understand this. It gathers pace, relaxes, rises and settles. It does not remain slow merely to prove a point, just as it never rushes for the sake of movement. It breathes. It recognises that there is a time for energy and a time for stillness, a time to work and a time to notice where we are. The beauty lies not in choosing one pace forever, but in being able to move between them.
As the music opens, it feels as though I have wandered into a European café where nobody is in any particular hurry to leave. Whether it sounds Austrian, Italian or simply like somewhere beautiful hardly matters. It feels warm, civilised and wonderfully unhurried. For a few minutes, the song removes me from my routine without asking me to go anywhere.
Nothing around me has changed. The work remains. The messages remain. Life continues exactly as it did before the first note. Only my perspective has shifted.
That is rare.
I have never been to Vienna. Perhaps that is why it has been waiting for me for so long. One day, I will visit. I will sit in one of its famous cafés, order too much cake and spend far too long over a single cup of coffee. I will ride the old Ferris wheel, wander through the parks and convince myself that I have become terribly sophisticated simply because I am carrying a book under my arm.
Until then, there is another Vienna. The metaphorical one Billy Joel reminds me to visit from time to time. The real city will still be there when I arrive, and I suspect the other Vienna will wait too.
Perhaps that is the point. Vienna is not really a place. Everybody’s Vienna is different.
Sometimes Vienna is allowing a conversation to remain a conversation, getting to know another person without trying to rush towards the next stage simply because that is what people seem to do. There is something wonderfully underrated about curiosity, about asking another question instead of reaching for another milestone. Some things become meaningful not because they happen quickly, but because they are allowed to unfold.
For one person, Vienna may be the journey postponed for years. For another, it is a long lunch with friends where nobody checks the time. It might be buying yourself flowers simply because you want them, switching off your phone for an afternoon or reading a novel in the middle of the day without defending the decision. It may be dancing in the kitchen, walking through a park without headphones or deciding that one extraordinary life is worth more than a perfectly organised calendar.
We spend far too much time 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. There is always one more email.
Everywhere we look, somebody is telling us to hurry. Work harder. Reply faster. Achieve more. Optimise everything. Billy Joel suggests something quietly radical instead. Slow down. Not because dreams do not matter, but because there is a difference between living with purpose and living in a permanent state of urgency.
Life is not waiting patiently at the end of a completed list. It has been happening while we were trying to finish it.
So find your Vienna. It does not have to be expensive, impressive or far away. It does not need to involve travelling at all. It only needs to remind you that your life is something to experience, not merely something to organise.
And if you have forgotten where it is, play the song.
Just do not listen to it at ×1.5. The world will still be asking you to hurry when those few minutes are over. Vienna will still be waiting.
Leave a comment