Twain×Mozart

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on ROAST NIGHT, Mark Twain and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They take up On the small daily ritual no one knows about.
2. 00:10
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Well, Mozart, here's a question nobody asks dead men: what'd you do every day that nobody saw? I don't mean composing or performing. I mean the small foolishness you couldn't live without.
3. 00:23
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Ah! You want my secrets, yes? Every morning, Herr Clemens—every single morning—I would sing complete nonsense to myself while getting dressed. Not real words. Just sounds. La-la-dee-dah-bum-bum-tiddle. My wife thought I was mad.
4. 00:38
   Mark Twainshare moment

   She was probably right.
5. 00:39
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Of course she was right! But it woke up my brain, you see. The music had to come out somewhere, and if I kept it in, my head would explode like a bad sausage. So I sang gibberish to my stockings. Very dignified.
6. 00:52
   Mark Twainshare moment

   I like that. Undignified dignity. I had something similar, though mine involved more tobacco and less singing. Every morning I'd light my pipe before I was fully awake—still in bed, mind you—and I'd just lie there smoking, staring at the ceiling, letting my mind wander through pure nothing.
7. 01:13
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   In bed? You smoked in bed?
8. 01:15
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Still do, in the metaphysical sense. My wife used to say I'd burn the house down. I told her that'd solve the problem of having to get up.
9. 01:23
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   You are lazy! A lazy American bear!
10. 01:25
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Not lazy. Efficient. There's a difference. That morning pipe bought me another hour of peace before the world started making demands. And in that hour, half-asleep, I'd solve every problem I had. Or decide they weren't problems at all, which amounts to the same thing.
11. 01:44
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Hmm. For me it was not just the morning. Every time—every single time—I sat down to write music, I had to arrange my papers just so. Perfectly straight. All the edges lined up like soldiers. If one was crooked, I could not think.
12. 02:00
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Now that surprises me. I'd have figured you for the type to scribble on anything—napkins, tablecloths, the back of someone's hand if they held still.
13. 02:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Oh, I did that too! When the ideas came fast, yes, anything would do. But for the real work, the careful work, everything had to be in order. Otherwise my mind would, how do you say, go bouncing around like a flea.
14. 02:25
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I can respect that. I couldn't write a word until I'd read something first. Didn't matter what—newspaper, book, somebody else's bad novel. I had to prime the pump. Get the language flowing through my head before I could add my own.
15. 02:42
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Like tuning an instrument!
16. 02:44
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Exactly like that. You don't just pick up a fiddle and expect it to sound right. You've got to fiddle with it first. No pun intended.
17. 02:52
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    The pun was absolutely intended, you cannot fool me. But tell me, did anyone know about this? Your family?
18. 02:59
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Livy knew. She'd bring me the paper with my coffee and not say a word. Just set it down and leave me to my communion with other people's mediocrity. It was an act of love, that silence.
19. 03:13
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes, yes! Constanze understood too. She would keep the children away in the mornings. She knew Papa needed his nonsense-singing time, or Papa would be impossible all day.
20. 03:24
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Did you have other rituals? Things you had to do in a certain order?
21. 03:28
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Oh, many! Before a performance, I always had to eat something sweet. A little cake, some marzipan, anything. Not for energy—for luck. And I would never, never wear anything new. Only clothes I had worn before and succeeded in.
22. 03:43
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Superstition dressed up as practicality.
23. 03:46
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Exactly! But it worked, so who cares if it was superstition? You Americans are always so rational about everything.
24. 03:53
    Mark Twainshare moment

    We are not. We just pretend harder. I knew riverboat pilots who wouldn't leave port if they saw a red-headed woman on the dock. Grown men, afraid of hair color. But they'd die before admitting it was superstition—they'd call it 'experience.'
25. 04:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ha! So you had superstitions too, then?
26. 04:12
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I preferred to think of them as tested hypotheses. I never started a book on a Friday. Never finished one on a Monday. Don't ask me why—I just knew in my bones it wouldn't take if I did.
27. 04:25
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    See? You are just as bad as me! Worse, even, because you pretend to be so sensible with your pipe and your newspapers.
28. 04:32
    Mark Twainshare moment

    There's a difference between ritual and superstition, though I'll grant it's a thin one. Ritual serves you. Superstition serves itself. My morning pipe helped me think. Your straight papers helped you focus. But if I'd believed the pipe was magic, or you'd thought the papers had power—well, that's when you're in trouble.
29. 04:55
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But maybe they did have power! Not magic power, but... real power. The power of the mind believing it is ready. If I think I cannot work with crooked papers, then I cannot work with crooked papers. The papers are not magic, but my belief is real.
30. 05:10
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's too philosophical for this hour. You're starting to sound like a German professor.
31. 05:15
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I am Austrian!
32. 05:16
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Same thing to an American.
33. 05:18
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    It is NOT the same thing! You—ach, you are impossible. This is why I kept my rituals secret. People judge. They think, 'Oh, Mozart must line up his papers, how precious, how particular.' But they don't understand. These little things, they are the oil in the machine.
34. 05:36
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's exactly right. And the machine runs on stranger fuel than most people want to admit. I knew a writer who had to write standing up. Another who could only work in the bathtub. I don't judge. Whatever gets the words on the page or the notes on the staff.
35. 05:52
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Did you ever try to work without your rituals? To see if you really needed them?
36. 05:57
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Once or twice. Always regretted it. Felt like trying to walk in someone else's shoes. You can do it, but it's uncomfortable and you're likely to trip. Why make things harder than they need to be?
37. 06:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    This is wisdom! The older I got, the more rituals I had. Not fewer—more! People think you become more flexible with age, but no. You learn what works and you stick to it like glue.
38. 06:22
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Well, you didn't get very old.
39. 06:24
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No, I did not. Thank you for reminding me, you dried-up Missouri mule.
40. 06:28
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Just keeping you honest. But you're right—the older I got, the crankier I became about my routines. By the end, I had a whole system. The pipe, the reading, the writing in bed, the afternoon walk, the evening billiards. Deviate from it and the whole day went to hell.
41. 06:49
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! The walk! I forgot the walk! Every afternoon, no matter what, I would walk. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. But I had to walk or I could not sleep at night. The music would just keep playing in my head, round and round, forever.
42. 07:05
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That sounds like torture.
43. 07:07
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    It was! Until I learned to walk it out. Then it was... not torture. Just the price of doing business with my own brain.
44. 07:15
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I suppose that's what all these little rituals are. Negotiations with ourselves. Ways to trick our stubborn minds into cooperating.
45. 07:23
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Or maybe they are prayers. Little prayers to the gods of music and words, asking for another day of not being completely stupid.
46. 07:30
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Now there's a prayer I can get behind. Lord, grant me one more day of not being an idiot. Amen.
47. 07:36
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Do you think people listening have their own rituals? Their own nonsense-singing or morning pipes?
48. 07:41
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I guarantee it. Everyone's got something they do that makes no sense to anyone else but perfect sense to them. They just don't talk about it because they're afraid someone like you or me will make fun of them on the radio.
49. 07:54
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    We would never!
50. 07:56
    Mark Twainshare moment

    We absolutely would.
51. 07:57
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Well, yes, probably. But affectionately! With love! Because we understand. We are the patron saints of strange little habits.
52. 08:06
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Speak for yourself. I'm no saint. But I'll admit there's something comforting in knowing that even genius—and I use the term loosely in your case—has to do silly things to function.
53. 08:18
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Especially genius! The more brilliant the mind, the more ridiculous the rituals. This is my theory.
54. 08:25
    Mark Twainshare moment

    It's as good a theory as any. And it saves us from having to admit we're just creatures of habit like everyone else, only with better press.