Vienna Waits for You

Spring Playlist Enclosed

Where's the fire, what's the hurry about?
You'd better cool it off before you burn it out
You've got so much to do and
Only so many hours in a day.
—Billy Joel: Vienna

Do you ever think back to the music you used to listen to over and over when you were very young? I find it so interesting how listening to our favourite albums now can still take us right back to who we were and where we were — and how they possibly helped shape us.

The Shadow and the Wisdom

When I had just started at university, Billy Joel’s album The Stranger was one of my favourites. The cover photo of him sitting on a bed, looking down at a mask lying on the pillow, sharpened my interest in the archetype that Jung calls the shadow which I was very fascinated by as a child (even though, of course, I had no knowledge of Jung then): Why were you so surprised that you never saw the stranger, did you ever let your lover see the stranger in yourself? A haunting and classic Joel line.

The quiet wisdom of the song called Vienna set me dreaming. The insistence — for an extremely ambitious young student like me — that life wasn’t a race really spoke to the part of me that was so impatient to do everything, to become everything, all at once, as soon as possible. The life philosophy woven into the lyrics of Joel’s songs helped shape how I saw the world—how I dreamed of living, how I made choices, and how I have managed to always balance ambition with joy.