When will you realize, Vienna waits for you? It’s alright, you can afford to lose a day or two Joel wasn’t even 30 years old when he wrote the lyrics that spoke to 19-year old me: “Slow down, you’re doing fine / You can’t be everything you want to be before your time.” And I would still offer those words to all the college-age students I am responsible for today! But it was a later verse that really got to me this summer:Īnd take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while With its opening lines-“Slow down, you crazy child, / you’re so ambitious for a juvenile”- it seemed at the time to be a song for the young: “Where’s the fire / What’s the hurry about? / You better cool it off before you burn it out / You got so much to do and only so many hours in a day.” Who knew I would only start thinking about it- really thinking about it-more than four decades later, in my 60s? I had sung it at the top of my lungs with a cassette tape in various friends’ cars in those late ’70s summers-all those Brendas and Eddies from my high school days.
It came out during my first year of college, and I owned the LP.
Billy joel vienna waits for you full#
The next day, with my symptoms in full bloom, I had a text from my sister Missy: “You missed the concert last night, but listen to this and pay attention.” And she attached the song “ Vienna” from Billy Joel’s 1977 album The Stranger. Fully vaccinated and doubly boosted, I had outrun the virus for over two years, but just a few hours before I was supposed to join my three sisters, my mom, and a friend for the Billy Joel concert in Notre Dame stadium, I sensed the little chill that accompanies a fever, felt suddenly exhausted, and took the confirmatory home test. After a period of extreme busyness in May and June-two commencements, two reunions, a workshop in Colorado, a Board retreat, a quick trip to Texas, and a conference in Chicago-I tested positive for COVID. July seems like the perfect month to slow down and ask: “What’s your Vienna?” And you don’t have to be a Billy Joel fan to understand what I’m talking about.īut it was a Billy Joel moment that got me thinking about this question.
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