Today at the Old School we’re going on a field trip.

Happy 200th Birthday, Fryderyk Chopin, old school piano genius. (painting by Eugene Delacroix, a close friend)
You were the Damsel’s first love. Yes, even before Brett Richards, who lived in town and had beautiful brown eyes and hair that waved down over his collar, there was you.
She’s sorry to confess her flirtations with Bach and Mozart, and even went steady with Brahms for a while, but you were her first. And you know how it is with first love.
But honestly, when you wrote those Etudes, what were you thinking? You were only 19, for crying out loud. They are so crazy hard they make the Damsel’s eyes bleed just looking at the score. And then there are those things you wrote when you were just a baby, only 25. How could you write something so achingly beautiful at such a young age? Could you possibly have lived enough of life yet to know that kind of emotion?
The Damsel would like to apologize for her unfaithfulness, at least on your birthday. She will be true.
But love, we gotta talk about those lavender gloves.



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