MOZART AND THE WRITERS

Written a very long time ago, but something to say on the occasion of another  notable January Birthday, that of Wolfgang A. Mozart, a fellow I liked so well he appears in three of my books.

Mozart sends telepathic messages!

 

I saw this headline in the '90's, in one of those papers where Bill Clinton could be seen  shaking hands with a friendly alien.

 

As a Mozart fan, however, I understood it to be true. After Amadeus, there were legions of us, out of the classical closet. We saw the play, then the movie. We began to collect Mozart music. CD and videotape were still new, and so we had to buy those and the new, and, in those early days, expensive, equipment. My poor vinyl collection took a back seat to digital perfection. I searched in for small businesses that would carry opera tapes. I volunteered constantly at my public radio station because they were kind enough to feed my Mozart frenzy on a daily basis.

 

I was not alone, however, in this mad Mozart revival. Every opera singer with a recording contract put out a Mozart album. Neighbors in posh NYC apartments sued neighbors after hours and hours and days and weeks and months of The Requiem played continuously and at full volume. Like so many phenoms, Mozart had surged over the top, infecting the planetary consciousness.

 

Love me! Love me! Listen to me! Do what those 18^th Century fools did not!

 

  

The single party I gave every year was to honor his birthday. My writer and poet friends, all of us struggling with manuscripts, attempting to find agents and publishers, to hold onto  day jobs, were loyal attendees. We could share our woes with that mostly impractical, humiliating, and perilous passion for writing.

 

I will always be grateful to those brave souls who drove through snowstorms from other states because they wanted to be in my kitchen, share their woes and then find a way to laugh about them.  It was a fun fellowship in the gray cold January world.

 

There was champagne and 18^th Century food of all kinds, steak and kidney pies, syllabub, etc., prepared, over the course of days and after trips to the butcher and the import shop, by the hands of Juliet the Certifiable. The Cake came from a now OOB bakery called Dingledein's, who certainly knew how to make a Mozart's Birthday Party Cake.

 

A warm winter pick-me-up among friends!

 

So, Happy Birthday, creator of musical joy, Wolfgang A!  

~~Juliet Waldron

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