Hosea and Marie's soundtrack: a meme

Usually it takes me a while to think of the music that fits a certain relationship. I didn't post a soundtrack meme for Wife and me until 2009, the year we separated our finances and I began the process of pulling away from her in earnest. I didn't post a soundtrack meme for D and me until 2014, after the affair was well over. I didn't post a soundtrack meme for my father until 2015, the year he died.

Now you could argue that I've had plenty of time to think about a soundtrack for my relationship with Marie. I met her 36 years ago. But I've already mentioned that I normally don't think of my life in terms of songs. So it would be believable if I hadn't really thought this through yet.

Only this one is a slam-dunk. I'll explain why in a few minutes, after I get one other song out of the way -- a more normal one.

See, actually I want to give you two songs. The first one came to me last night as I was typing my "Year 1" post about Marie. I don't remember if I knew it back then, but it characterizes nicely the social isolation I felt at the time.

Before I forget, let me start off quoting a paragraph of rules: 

The Rules:
Write a post about the soundtrack of your life. Please include somewhere in the body of the meme "This was started by Kyra (last refuge of the lonely housewife)"... I want to google to see how far and wide this meme travels.  

Anyway, this is how I lived my life back when I was in college. Not completely -- I dearly wanted something better -- but I was afraid to go look for it.

"I Am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel

A winter’s day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone
Gazing from my window
To the streets below
On a freshly fallen, silent shroud of snow
I am a rock
I am an island

I’ve built walls
A fortress, steep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship
Friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock
I am an island

Don’t talk of love
Well, I’ve heard the words before
It’s sleeping in my memory
And I won’t disturb the slumber
Of feelings that have died
If I never loved, I never would have cried
I am a rock
I am an island

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room
Safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me
I am a rock
I am an island

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries
__________

But that's only the first song, and not the important one. The second is the one I called a "slam-dunk" choice.

Why a slam-dunk? Because this time I don't have to think of a song after the fact to characterize the emotions of the time. This time it's a piece of music we listened to there and then. And Marie loved it above all the things of this world.

When she first got to college, Marie knew nothing -- or almost nothing -- about classical music. But Scarlett loved classical music and played it quite a bit. So did Schmidt, as Marie and I got to know him. So it was through Scarlett and Schmidt that Marie learned to enjoy classical music ... and particularly to love Beethoven ... and above all Beethoven's other works, the Seventh Symphony in A Major ... and above all other works of man or God, the Allegretto, the Second Movement.

We would sit in Schmidt's dorm room -- or Scarlett's, but more and more we went to Schmidt for this sort of thing -- and he would put on his recording of Josef Krips conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Marie would close her eyes and relax. As the Second Movement started, her face would melt into a beatific smile as if she were listening to angels. And when we left to go our respective ways, she was happy and renewed, no matter what life had been throwing at her.

She even said once, a year or two later, that the Seventh Symphony may well have saved her life. During most of her sophomore year she was sick with a bug that just wouldn't go away. And the muscles of her back tightened up in knots that none of her friends could massage away. So she had begun to despair of the possibility of pleasure in life, and from this she began to question "If pleasure is impossible, why go on living?" But she never went so far as suicide ... because one ineffable pleasure remained to her unsullied by any of the dross of the world. If she could enjoy nothing else, she could still listen to Beethoven. And that was enough reason to go on living.

Ever after -- from her freshman year (my sophomore year) to the present day -- I have found those two, Marie and the music, inextricable in my memory. If I think of Marie, I hear the Second Movement in the back of my mind. And if I hear the Second Movement, I always think of Marie.

In fact, I think of her at one moment, in one scene. There was a huge public rhododendron test garden just across the street from campus, and it was unlocked at night. Many is the time when I -- with or without friends -- would have to get out of my room late at night, and would go walking through the gardens. So when I hear the Second Movement what I see in my mind is Marie, standing in the moonlight in front of one of those huge rhododendrons, breathing in the scent and smiling up at the stars.

It has been 36 years. If the image is still that strong for me today, I assume I will be seeing it -- whenever I hear that music -- till I die. I guess I could do worse.

Anyway, here is the music, the voice of angels, the soundtrack for all my memories of Marie.

Second Movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony