Chapter 2 - All beginnings are pink
I met him when I was about 19 years old. He was 26 at the time and I met him at a concert of the band I was playing accordion in at the time. After the concert, he spoke to me and regretted the poor sound of the system. He said he was sad that my instrument hadn't been heard at all. That stuck because someone showed serious interest in me. He was also a professional, which thrilled me. That doesn't happen very often. Apart from that, he was simply very nice and empathetic.
He was still in another band with my guitarist at the time. So I met him at concerts from time to time, but never really had anything to do with him. I also never thought that he was interested in me. After all, we hardly had anything to do with each other. He had a large, well-running creative workshop for young and old, and his hobby band was very popular, at least locally. Although I was a fan of his music, I had no personal interest in him. It felt like he knew millions of people and I didn't think he even had me on his radar. I also had my own musical circles and there just weren't enough interfaces.
Surprisingly, he approached me again at another concert. He asked me if I was a bit arrogant. After all, I would never greet him when I saw him. Even though we knew each other. It was such an unusual conversation opener that this encounter also stuck with me. I would never have thought it possible that he would even remember me, let alone that he would have expected me to make contact with him. His unusual mannercaptivated me right from the start. In principle, he had already shown me with this sentence that he was the powerful, the dominant one in his relationships. From then on, we talked more and more often at concerts when we met and got to know each other better and better, even becoming friends.
My friend Dani described her first meeting with him as follows:"The guy really put me off from the start. Why did he think he could get away with such arrogant behavior? And why was my friend Carlotta so willing to be the weaker one in their relationship?"
"Why, Carlotta, did you want someone to have power over you? Or did you massively overestimate your skills and couldn't admit to yourself that you couldn't handle this"great" guy? Did you see yourself as a failure? Did you want to prove something to him?"
For me, our friendship felt equal, we met as equals. In my opinion, his dominant manner in some conversations was balanced out by his very sensitive and delicate manner in others. He told me early on about his broken family relationships and aroused pity and compassion. I had the impression that it did him good to be taken seriously and perhaps comforted. However, from my perspective at the time, I didn't develop a helper syndrome. I didn't want to save him. I just wanted to be there for him as a friend. On an equal footing, just like he was there for me.
He was an extraordinary, multi-talented musician, which totally fascinated me, as I had also been making music all my life. He was self-employed with a creative workshopand offered all kinds of courses in the artistic, and in some cases musical, field. His clientele consisted of children, young peop
