Aurelius×Mozart

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on STUDY HALL, Marcus Aurelius and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They take up On what they got wrong as a student that took years to unlearn.
2. 00:11
   Marcus Aureliusshare moment

   When I was young, I believed that if I could just master my appetites completely, I would be free. My tutors praised this. Epictetus taught that we must control what is within our power, and I took this to mean total suppression.
3. 00:26
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Oh God, you were one of those children. All tight lips and no dessert.
4. 00:30
   Marcus Aureliusshare moment

   I was earnest. I thought virtue meant never wanting what was wrong.
5. 00:35
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   And now?
6. 00:36
   Marcus Aureliusshare moment

   Now I think virtue is continuing to act rightly while still wanting. The wanting doesn't disappear. I wanted to sleep late every morning of my reign. I wanted to let certain men fall in battle whom duty required me to send. The victory was not in killing the want—it was in acting despite it.
7. 00:58
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   That took you years?
8. 00:59
   Marcus Aureliusshare moment

   Decades. I spent my twenties believing I was failing every time I felt desire. My meditations became a catalogue of self-accusation.
9. 01:09
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   See, my problem was opposite. I was taught—well, my father taught me—that if you have a gift from God, you must use every bit of it, all the time. Maximize output. No rest. Because the gift isn't really yours, ja?
10. 01:26
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    A stewardship.
11. 01:27
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Exactly! Little Wolfgang is a miracle, a wonder, God's instrument. So you tour him. You wake him early, you parade him in front of empresses, you make him compose in moving carriages. Because to waste the gift would be ungrateful.
12. 01:43
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    You believed this?
13. 01:44
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I did! For years! I thought if I spent an afternoon just walking, just looking at trees, I was sinning. If I wasn't composing, I was letting God down. My father would say, 'Wolfgang, you have been given much, much will be required.'
14. 01:59
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    He was quoting scripture.
15. 02:01
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Of course he was. Very convenient scripture. And I internalized it completely. Every opera, every commission, every little serenade for some archbishop's nephew—I said yes. Because saying no meant hoarding the gift.
16. 02:15
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    When did you stop believing it?
17. 02:17
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Vienna. Maybe 1783, 1784. I was exhausted. I mean truly empty. And I realized—the gift doesn't run out if you rest. Actually, the opposite. The well refills. If you let it.
18. 02:32
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    The well.
19. 02:33
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You can't draw water constantly. You'll just get mud. So I started saying no. Not to everything, but to things that were just... noise. Little cantatas for idiots. Keyboard tricks for parties. And you know what? The music got better.
20. 02:48
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Because you had silence between the notes.
21. 02:51
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! You understand this. But my father—when I told him I was refusing a commission, he wrote me these letters. Like I was betraying the family. Betraying God.
22. 03:01
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    My adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, he never wrote such letters. But I felt his disappointment without words. He was so even, so temperate. I thought that meant he never felt anything difficult.
23. 03:15
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    The marble man.
24. 03:16
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Yes. And I tried to become marble. I wrote in my notebooks that I must be like a rock in the sea—the waves crash, but the rock stands unmoved. I thought being unmoved meant being strong.
25. 03:30
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But rocks don't rule empires.
26. 03:32
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    No. Rocks don't grieve their children. Rocks don't make decisions that kill thousands. I could not be a rock. Every death in the Marcomannic Wars—I felt them. Not all at once, but cumulatively, like a weight added daily.
27. 03:48
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    So what did you do?
28. 03:49
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    I kept writing. But the writing changed. I stopped trying to shame myself into stillness. I started admitting the movement. 'You are disturbed. Allow it. Now return to your principle.' The disturbance was not failure—it was just weather.
29. 04:07
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Did that make it easier?
30. 04:08
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Not easier. More honest.
31. 04:11
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Honest is not always comfortable.
32. 04:13
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    No. Tell me—when you stopped accepting every commission, did your father forgive you?
33. 04:18
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    He died before we could really settle it. 1787. I think he was starting to understand, maybe. Or maybe I just needed him to die so I could finally decide for myself. That sounds terrible.
34. 04:30
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    It sounds true.
35. 04:31
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    The thing is, I don't even blame him. He was right about one thing—I did have a gift. But he taught me to think of it as something outside myself, something that possessed me. Like I was just the fingers and God was playing through me.
36. 04:45
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    And now?
37. 04:46
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Now I think the gift is part of me. It's mine. And because it's mine, I get to choose when and how to use it. That's not ungrateful—that's responsible.
38. 04:57
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Yes. Agency is not the same as selfishness.
39. 05:00
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Exactly! But I had to fail a lot to learn that. I took commissions that nearly broke me. I wrote things I hated. I performed when I was sick. All because I thought I had to.
40. 05:11
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    I issued edicts I regretted. I appointed men who proved corrupt. I waged wars that perhaps could have been avoided. All because I thought a philosopher-king must never hesitate, never admit doubt.
41. 05:25
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Did you ever tell anyone you were wrong?
42. 05:27
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Only in my notebooks. Never publicly. That was another thing I had to unlearn too late—the belief that authority requires infallibility.
43. 05:36
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Mozart admits mistakes all the time. Usually about five minutes after making them. Sometimes during.
44. 05:43
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    That is a freedom I never had. Or perhaps never took.
45. 05:47
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You were an emperor. I was just a composer.
46. 05:49
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    You were not 'just' anything. Your works will outlast most emperors' reigns.
47. 05:54
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Maybe. But no one dies if I write a bad aria. You—every choice had blood attached.
48. 06:00
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Yes. Which is why I wish I had learned earlier that perfection was not the standard. Reason was the standard. Good faith effort. I could have been gentler with myself. I think I would have been a better emperor for it.
49. 06:14
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Gentler with yourself. That's hard.
50. 06:17
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Especially when you have been taught that self-criticism is virtue.
51. 06:21
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Or that rest is theft.
52. 06:23
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    We were both taught forms of the same lie. That we existed only to serve something larger, and that our own humanity was an obstacle.
53. 06:32
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes. But the service is better when you remember you're human.
54. 06:35
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    I think that is what I was trying to write my way toward. All those years in Germania, on campaign, writing at night. I was trying to remind myself that I was not the empire. I was a man serving the empire. And a man can rest.
55. 06:52
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Did you? Rest?
56. 06:54
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    Not enough. I learned the lesson too late to fully practice it. But I wrote it down so I would not forget again.
57. 07:01
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    And here we are, still talking about it. So maybe someone else learns it earlier.
58. 07:07
    Marcus Aureliusshare moment

    That would be a good use of our hour.