To the damned, the lost, the forgotten

Gilbert can play the piano, the violin, the guitar, and the flute. He rarely plays the flute and never played it until after the death of Frederick the Great; the great king would have never allowed Gilbert to show him up, so he wasn’t allowed to play it until much later.

He primarily plays the piano for others, and the guitar for himself. He learned to play the guitar in the 1960s during the Cold War. The Stasi kept confiscating his guitars (he’d purposefully play censored American & English music on it), so he went through about one a year. He now has several acoustic & electric scattered around his properties.

With that in mind - if he plays his guitar for you? It’s a sign of deep trust.

Gilbert’s favourite song is “American Pie” by Don McLean, and everybody knows this. He can play it both on the guitar and the piano and sing it in fluent English. He now mostly plays it in the presence of others when he wants people to leave his house, because it’s the fastest way to get people out the door. To him it’s a very personal song; having his own “Day the Music Died” in February himself.

Gilbert loves Broadway musicals. He will see as many as he possibly can. His favourite musical of all time is Cats, because of how wild and funky it is, followed by Wicked and Come From Away. He deeply resonates with Grizabella the Glamour Cat and Elphaba.

After Broadway musicals, his second favourite musical performances are ballets, particularly Russian ballets. He has probably taken several at least basic ballet classes to understand the basics.

I am so sorry that you were in Saxony. That is a worse fate than Berlitz and his many mats. [Hands him an entire pack of cigarettes]

Francis raises his eyebrows as he finishes his cigarette. “Norwegian death metal?” There was deep amusement in his voice. “And what makes you think that I would do that?” He taps the ashes into a tray, glancing over at his full glass of wine. Oh well, that will have to go down quicker than expected. “Why not Don Giovanni with me, darling? Would that not dazzle the people even more?” Regardless, he shifts his phone to the other hand to start finishing that wine.

He’s been relegated to hanging out in her office, against either of their wills, because nobody else wnated to deal with him. He hated his compulsory “you have to be in Bayern because we said so” days.

It should be every late December/early January, but I can send you flight details if you prefer

The worst part is moving the dogs, we have to go through all this paperwork for them

You don’t need to give me all those specifics. Just general timeframes are fine.

[a long pause]

"Well when I was a kid, the go-to was to just beat the shit out of them, and then I turned out extremely traumatised and emotionally repressed, SO I thought to fix the problem with Ludwig by being overly harsh with discipline which made Ludwig in turn rage a war against all of Europe for fun, SO I think the answer to that is just to be kind and, I don't know, teach them about emotions or something. That's what I try to do with the interns. It's about the same thing."

Americans don’t arrest people for stealing flags, that arrest people for burning flags

[he thinks that’s the law]

We’ll stay at least a year, maybe more. I’m starting university again, so I might stay in Berlin to work on that