If Love Had a Piano, I Hope it Would Sound Like Billy Joel
I was never taught to love through music.
Others memorized formulas of romance, but i learned affection through old songs played softly in dim rooms, and songs that carried the weight of years without ever sounding tired.
And among them all, there was Billy Joel. Perhaps that is why, when i think of you, i don’t think in paragraphs.
I think in pianos. In melodies old enough to outlive us.
Like the opening notes of She’s Got a Way.
A quiet admiration. The kind that notices. The kind that pays attention.
The kind that looks at another person and says “there is something about you that makes the ordinary feel beautiful”.
And perhaps that is why i return to it so often. Not because I see myself in the song, but because I hope that one day, somewhere in this lifetime, someone might listen to the way I laugh, watch me in passing light, and love me gently enough to write about me the way Billy Joel wrote She’s Got a Way.
Oh, to be loved like an old song. To be noticed in all the little ways that make a person who they are. To be someone’s quiet admiration. To be written with that much tenderness.
If I could explain you through music, i would borrow Billy Joel’s hands. For there is a tenderness in the way he wrote love.
The quiet devotion of Just the Way You Are.
The gentle ache of And So It Goes.
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The impossible longing hidden between the keys of This Night.
I have come to realize that love is rarely loud. Love is not always possession. Sometimes it is simply attention.
The sacred act of noticing. The way sunlight rests on someone’s face while they are speaking. The way remember the stories they casually tell. The way they carry their words home long after the conversation has ended.
Perhaps that is why i have never feared distance. Some loves are not meant to be held. Only witnessed.
Like constellations. Like paintings behind museum glass. Like songs we return to when no one is watching.
Oh, Vienna.
People say it is a song about slowing down. But i have always believed it’s also a song about love. Not the kind that rushes.
The kind of waits. The kind that understands that not everything beautiful arrives when we ask it to.
Some cities wait. Some dreams wait. Some people do too.
Perhaps love is not always finding someone. Perhaps sometimes it is becoming the person who knows how to love gently when they finally arrive.
And if there is one thing Vienna taught me,
Don’t have to chase every beautiful thing. Some things remain beautiful because they are not caught.
So if I ever write about you, i hope it sounds like Billy Joel. Soft as old vinyl. Patient as piano keys.
And tender enough to survive time. For there are people we love loudly. And there are people we love like old songs — quietly, faithfully, and for much longer than we would ever admit.
One day, you will become an old song to me. And when that happens, i hope Billy Joel is playing in the background.
