Random Notes on Music and Love at First Sight

SUMMARY: While reading fan fiction online

Started from a comment I left on this chapter   In Feb 2021 (and started this post March 3, 2021). (Finished July 14, '21.)

This fan fiction was for Captive Prince, a trilogy that I am newly (March 2020) a fan of, but that I suspect has only a certain demographic of fans. Auguste is one of the characters.

About that music

I had music in my life from my earliest memories. We always had instruments in the house, including an old crappy piano. My mom still sometimes got out her old cello and played a bit, very rusty. She played the piano, too. Advanced beginner level, I'd say. I liked to pick at playing it, too: major symphonies such as Chopsticks.

In the fourth grade, I learned to play flute and how to read music. 

And I was always in the choir in most of elementary school and high school. (And in the Sunday School choir, too, I suppose simply by being there. I remember singing songs in the church at Christmas: "I, said the donkey, shaggy and brown...".)

And in band in elementary school, junior high, high, and college.

I told the story's author, "I know so many of the composers’ names and the titles of music from your story so far. I love how you weave music all through it." Told me that all those years of playing and listening to (I have albums, as did my parents...) so-called classical music paid of in a deeper experience when reading this.

This is not the albums I was referring to. But I have this, too.

I also said that I laughed out loud when I read: “Choosing a song from Don Giovanni isn’t exactly the proper way to get a girlfriend, Auguste.”  But one has to know Don Giovanni to appreciate that line in the story more fully. Fully pleased with myself.

About that love at first sight thing

Because love-at-first-sight was something that happened in the story, that I believe one of the characters didn't believe in, I noted that I believe in love at first sight. Not because it has happened to me, because it hasn’t. But I saw it happen to two male friends and their now-wives exactly the way you describe Auguste. 

Friend#1, on the day we arrived at the University 300 miles from home, while I and friend#2 were up in the dorm room putting things away, went downstairs to drive his truck to the proper parking lot. He didn’t come back for an hour; should've been about 10 minutes.  He finally walked back into the room with starry eyes and said, as I recall, “I think I’ve met the woman I’m going to marry.” After chatting with a freshman girl in the parking lot. And he did. And they’re still married. After – – 40+ years? we certainly teased him originally. 

My left arm is on friend#1; his new girlfriend's (now also a friend) left arm is on me.
Friend#2 is in the center.

But then, eight years later, it happened to friend#2, too! We were long-time friends who had also ended up working at the same company.  Over the weekend, he went to a party that included a few mutual friends. He arrived at work Monday morning, and said, "I think I’m in love." The first time they met. This is a guy who had hardly ever even dated anybody. They’ve been married now for about 38 years.

The latter couple (friend#2) with rabbit ears behind him) came to visit maybe 15 years later
with their three kids. (Me on left in colorful shirt.)

Love and music?

When I hear music, I often feel many emotions. Some evoke the feeling of love.

When I think of love at first sight, I think of music. I blame the movies. ("Love at First Sight {A Montage of Movie/TV Couples}")

And that pretty much sums up life, doesn't it?

Sister and me at Mountain Winery for a Moody Blues Concert

Back in the day