Mozart×Twain

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on ROAST NIGHT, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Mark Twain. They take up On a moment they would freeze if they could.
2. 00:10
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   So, Mr. Twain! The question tonight is about moments—moments we would freeze, yes? Like a little ice crystal in time. I know mine immediately! It is so clear in my mind, even now.
3. 00:24
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Well now, that's because you died at thirty-five, Mozart. Your memories haven't had time to ferment into the unreliable liquor the rest of us call nostalgia. But go ahead—I'm guessing it involves applause.
4. 00:36
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Ach, no! Well, yes, there is applause, but—you see, it is Prague, 1787. The Marriage of Figaro has just finished. The whole theater, they are standing, screaming, throwing flowers like madmen. But this is not the moment.
5. 00:51
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Course it's not. The moment never is when you think it is.
6. 00:55
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Exactly! The moment is afterward, backstage. Constanze is there—my wife, you know—and she is laughing, crying, both at the same time. She takes my face in her hands and says nothing. Not one word. And I am thinking: I have made something that matters. Do you understand? For one perfect second, I am not worried about money, not worried about the next commission, not worried about Salieri or the Archbishop or any of those pompous—
7. 01:24
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Breathing down your neck. Yeah, I know the type. Every writer's got a Salieri, we just call 'em critics.
8. 01:32
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Ha! Yes! But in that moment, there is only the music I have made and the woman I love and the knowledge that I have done something good. Something beautiful. That is what I would freeze.
9. 01:43
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Hmm. That's a better answer than I expected from a man who wrote letters about defecation to his cousin. More sentimental.
10. 01:51
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    What? A man cannot be both sophisticated and childish? This is your problem, Twain—you Americans, you think everything must be one thing or another. I contain multitudes! Also, those letters were funny.
11. 02:05
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Oh, they were hilarious. I'm just saying when you lead with scatological humor, people don't expect the tender confessions later. It's a good trick, actually. I used it myself.
12. 02:17
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    And you! What is your moment? Tell me—let me guess. Is it on the Mississippi? On your riverboat, when you were young and beautiful?
13. 02:27
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I was never beautiful, Mozart. Handsome, maybe, in a weathered sort of way. But no, it's not on the river, though I spent enough time there to fill a library with moments. The moment I'd freeze happened in Hartford, Connecticut, in my own house.
14. 02:44
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Connecticut? This is the exciting choice? Not the Wild West? Not San Francisco or the gold mines?
15. 02:50
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Nope. It was winter, evening. The fire was going in the library. My daughters—Susy, Clara, Jean—they were young then, all still healthy, all still innocent of what life was going to do to them. They begged me to tell them a story, and I did. Made it up right there on the spot, something about a magic frog who could grant wishes but only on Tuesdays.
16. 03:16
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    A frog! You see? You also are childish!
17. 03:19
    Mark Twainshare moment

    The point isn't the frog, son. The point is that while I'm spinning this yarn, watching their faces—Susy's in particular, she had her mother's eyes—I knew. I knew I was living in the best moment of my life while it was happening. That doesn't occur often. Usually you figure it out thirty years later when everything's gone to hell.
18. 03:41
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ah. Yes. I understand this. But wait—you said they were all still healthy. What happened?
19. 03:47
    Mark Twainshare moment

    What always happens, Mozart. Time. Susy died of meningitis at twenty-four. Jean had epilepsy, drowned in the bathtub on Christmas morning. My wife Livy died after a long illness. Clara's the only one who survived me, and I'm not sure I did her any favors there, living as long as I did.
20. 04:08
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Gott im Himmel. This is terrible. I am sorry.
21. 04:11
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Appreciate it. But see, that's why that moment in the library—that's the one I'd freeze. Because I knew. Right then, I knew I was in Eden. And I paid attention. I remembered every detail. The way the firelight caught Susy's hair. The sound of Jean's laugh. The weight of Clara sitting on my lap. I filed it all away because some part of me knew it wouldn't last.
22. 04:38
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But this is—forgive me—this is very sad! You would freeze a moment because you knew it would end? This is like freezing yourself at the top of the mountain because you know you must climb down.
23. 04:50
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's exactly what it's like. And when you're my age—or would've been my age if you'd bothered to stick around—you realize that's all moments are. Mountains you're already climbing down from.
24. 05:01
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No, no, no. I refuse this. My moment with Constanze, it is not beautiful because it ended. It is beautiful because it existed! Because we made something—music, love, life—in the face of all the stupidity and death and Archbishop Colloredos of the world.
25. 05:18
    Mark Twainshare moment

    You say potato, I say potahto. I say it's beautiful because it ended. Because it had to. If that moment in Hartford had lasted forever, it wouldn't be a moment—it'd be a prison. You'd get sick of your own kids inside a week.
26. 05:34
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You are such a pessimist! This is very American of you.
27. 05:38
    Mark Twainshare moment

    And you're an optimist who died in poverty, convinced he'd been poisoned. Very European of you.
28. 05:44
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Touché. But tell me honestly—if you could really freeze that moment, would you? Would you stay there forever with your daughters and your magic frog story and never write Tom Sawyer, never write Huckleberry Finn?
29. 05:57
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's a hell of a question. And the answer's no, of course not. Because I didn't know I'd write those books yet. In that moment, I was just a father telling a bad story. That's what made it pure.
30. 06:11
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Aha! So you are an optimist also! You would not freeze the moment because you wanted to see what came next!
31. 06:18
    Mark Twainshare moment

    No, I wouldn't freeze it because you can't freeze moments, you damn fool. That's the whole point. Moments are like water—you try to hold them too tight, they slip through your fingers. The best you can do is drink deep while they're happening.
32. 06:33
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Or make music of them. This is what I did, you know. That moment in Prague, with Constanze—I put it into the slow movement of the Piano Concerto in A major. Every note is her hands on my face, her tears, her silence. So in a way, I did freeze it. It is still there, in the music.
33. 06:52
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Well now, that's different. That's not freezing the moment—that's transmuting it. Turning it into something that can outlive the moment itself. I did the same thing with that evening in Hartford. Wrote about it, sort of, in different ways, in different stories. Changed the details but kept the feeling.
34. 07:12
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    So perhaps the question is wrong! Perhaps we should not freeze moments at all. We should transform them, yes? Make them into art, into something others can experience.
35. 07:22
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Maybe. Or maybe the question's right and we're just too damn professional to admit we'd rather live inside a memory than keep making things. Every artist I've ever known is running from something—usually the fact that the best is behind them.
36. 07:37
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Speak for yourself! When I died, I was working on the Requiem. My best was not behind me—it was still inside me, waiting to come out. I would have written symphonies that made Jupiter sound like a child's toy. Operas that made Don Giovanni look like a silly puppet show.
37. 07:55
    Mark Twainshare moment

    And I'd have written another dozen books if my brain hadn't started turning to mush. But we didn't, Mozart. That's the point. The moments we'd freeze—they're not the ones where we made our greatest art. They're the ones where we were most human.
38. 08:11
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    With our wives. With our children.
39. 08:13
    Mark Twainshare moment

    With the people who loved us before we were famous, and who'd have loved us if we'd been failures. Yeah. Those moments.
40. 08:21
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But then, you see, we cannot freeze them! Because if we freeze them, we stop being human. We become like—like statues of ourselves. And who wants to be a statue? Statues are for pigeons to shit on.
41. 08:33
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Now there's the Mozart I was expecting. Took you long enough to get back to the scatological material.
42. 08:40
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I am nothing if not consistent! But truly, Twain—I think we have discovered something here. The moments we would freeze are the same moments we must let go. Otherwise we are not alive, we are not artists, we are just... preserved. Like insects in amber.
43. 08:57
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Or like two dead men talking on the radio about time they don't have anymore. There's an irony in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to dig it out.
44. 09:06
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ha! Yes! This is very funny! We are already frozen, in a way. But not in our moments—in other people's memories of us. I am forever the giggling genius who died young. You are forever the white-haired cynic with the mustache. These are our prisons now.
45. 09:22
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Could be worse prisons. At least people remember the work. That's more than most folks get.
46. 09:28
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    True, true. And perhaps this is the real answer—we would not freeze our moments because we already did. We froze them in music, in books, in art. And now they live forever, while we do not. So really, we won the game, yes?
47. 09:44
    Mark Twainshare moment

    If you can call it winning when you're dead and your children are dead and the world's moved on without you. But sure, Mozart. We won. Congratulations to us.
48. 09:54
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You are impossible! Always the last word must be sad! Can you not let us have this small victory?
49. 10:01
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Alright, alright. Here's your victory: that moment in Prague with Constanze, and that evening in Hartford with my girls—those moments are still happening somewhere. In the music. In the memory. In the telling. Time's not as linear as we think. So maybe we didn't need to freeze anything. Maybe everything's already eternal, we just didn't notice.
50. 10:27
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ah! Now this is beautiful! You see? You are secretly an optimist after all! A romantic, even!
51. 10:33
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Don't push it, son. I've got a reputation to maintain.
52. 10:36
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Too late! I have discovered your secret! Mark Twain, the great cynic, believes in eternity! Wait until I tell the others!
53. 10:44
    Mark Twainshare moment

    You do that and I'll tell them about those letters to your cousin. We'll see who comes off worse.
54. 10:49
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Fair enough. A truce, then. We both keep our secrets, and we both admit that perhaps the best moments are the ones we cannot hold—only honor.
55. 11:00
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Honor. Yeah. I can live with that word. Or could've, anyway. Seems like a decent place to leave it.