! ! A Pencil Sketch Of Mozart

It’s a snapshot, except before the age of the camera yet more of a decisive moment than any posed painting; as any photographer, lighting director, would see, he’s next to you, could be round about the fifth row back of the stalls; looking so straight ahead that it doesn’t seem to be the stage box; and it must surely be a grand theatre, the lighting’s strong on his white neck-stock, his powdered hair, even catching the lower white of his focussed eye; he all there, he’s all here, and attentive as a critic; the opera, as it surely is, is playing and engages all his faculties; and yet there’s an appreciation holding his lips far from the childish joke, the poverty, the family deaths, or even from the unimaginable creation of music that speaks of something deep in human hearts, speaks of something beyond the human heart. He’s listening to the music as if he’d never heard it before yet you can see it’s all inside him, too - whatever ‘inside’ means to genius; it’s Mozart, there beside you as you sketch him; as the music you’re not watching as you watch him and your pencil - the music is telling you what life’s about; and more. Back to the sketch, with all the care you muster - this will be the record for a thousand years of watching Mozart listening to the music of his self. * (revised)