The Music of Longing in “Amadeus” (1984)

If an understanding of music implies a love of structure, perhaps the musician’s relationship to his art mirrors the one he has with authority, both human and divine. Salieri, whose father was a man of commerce, sees God as a kind of bank manager who records prayers and sacrifices as payments on a long-term loan of musical talent. Salieri’s economics work just fine until the arrival of Mozart, who seems to have put up no collateral—he’s ”a giggling, dirty creature” in the words of Salieri—but has received the equivalent of a billion-dollar loan. Are Mozart’s gifts a glitch in divine accounting? Or are his flaws attendant on or even the result of his genius? And how can we account for the glitch in Salieri’s design, which permits longing to go unanswered by talent? Wes & Erin discuss the 1984 film “Amadeus,” directed by Milos Forman. Upcoming Episodes: Susan Sontag’s On Photography; Withnail & I; Waiting for Godot Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:11 Erin: If an understanding of music implies a love of structure, perhaps the musician's relationship to his art mirrors the one he has with authority, both human and divine. Salieri, whose father was a man of commerce, sees God as a kind of bank manager who records prayers and sacrifices as payments on a long term loan of musical talent. Salieri's economics work just fine until the arrival of Mozart, who seems to have put up no collateral. He's a giggling dirty creature, in the words of Salieri, but has received the equivalent of a billion dollar loan. Are Mozart's gifts a glitch in divine accounting? Or are his flaws attendant on or even the result of his genius? And how can we account for the glitch in Salieri's design which permits longing to go unanswered by talent? Today we're discussing the 1984 film Amadeus, directed by Miloš Forman. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, this is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, do you think that Salieri murdered Mozart? 1:17 Wes: Are we talking historically or are we talking within the world of the film? 1:24 Erin: Let's say both. 1:25 Wes: Well, historically, as far as I know, it's very inaccurate. Yeah, Salieri was very successful. And there's no evidence he was worried about Mozart. 1:34 Erin: Well, there's a little evidence. 1:36 Wes: Okay, all right, well, you have to tell me about it. So within the world of the film, is he an unreliable narrator? That really honestly didn't occur to me, but I guess it's possible. What do you think? 1:47 Erin: Well, his being an unreliable narrator or. 1:50 Wes: Yeah, within the world of the film, did he not kill Mozart? I mean, is there a possibility he's misreporting? 1:57 Erin: I think so. The one scene that really makes me think directly about that dynamic of this unreliable narration is actually after Salieri's opera when Mozart comes down and gives his non compliment compliments to Salieri, which I find really painful. And it occurred to me as I was watching that maybe this was something Salieri's sort of impression of what Mozart said to him, that maybe Mozart was actually giving him real compliments, in other words, and Salieri was remembering it as this cruel mockery. Like when one hears such sounds, what can one think but Salieri or something like that. He didn't know such music was possible. And that was just a moment where I thought, well, that's really kind of a matter of perception on Salieri's part. And it just reminded me that we are getting all of this filtered through his perspective. And what else might he have misinterpreted, exaggerated? I'm not saying that that is either of those things, but it could be. I mean, Mozart himself thought that he was poisoned at the end of his life speech. Yeah. Which gave rise to the theory that Salieri had poisoned him because they were competitors. And Mozart did think that Salieri had iced him out of certain positions. Talked badly about him, though. Salieri was really well loved. He was the teacher of, among others, Mozart's own son. So presumably there was no ill will there. But Beethoven was a good friend of Beethoven's, actually, which is not an easy thing to be good friends with Beethoven. 3:38 Wes: What did you say? I know it's more than deafness probably, but. 3:43 Erin: Yeah, yeah, just a really kind of unpleasant guy. There's a list in this article I gave you I really like and listeners will really enjoy this. Albert Borowitz, who was kind of a true crime expert, wrote lots of books about crime. He has this article from the 70s called Salieri and the Murder of Mozart. And this predates the Shaffer play by a couple of years. So it doesn't get into that. You know, maybe it even kind of precipitated that cultural moment of everyone being obsessed with Mozart again. But he gives a really great outline of the cultural milieu of Mozart and Salieri, what we actually know from the record, from letters, and then how the story of Salieri poisoning Mozart ended up kind of blowing up into this urban myth. And then Pushkin. 4:33 Wes: Did it not start with Pushkin's? 4:35 Erin: No, it was in the ether before that. 4:37 Wes: Mozart and Salieri. 4:38 Erin: Okay, yeah, it was in the ether before that. And then Pushkin took it and ran with it. And then of course, that play was the basis of Amadeus, this article that 4:47 Wes: you're about to read from. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to read it, but I do want to read it. But yeah, I'm curious. Yeah, tell us. 4:54 Erin: He writes about what a well liked guy Salieri was. He was undoubtedly one of the leading composers of his period and an important teacher of composition, counting among his pupils Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Hummel, Süssmayr, Sechter. I don't know how to say that. And Meyerbeer. He was also a famous teacher of singing. All his students loved and respected him. Friends remembered him as generous, warm and kind hearted and even had the ability to laugh at himself, at least at his difficulties with the German language. He must have had a way with people here, Borowitz says, since he apparently established a close personal relationship with the difficult Beethoven and then he goes on to say that Mozart's son was also a student of Salieri's. And if Constanze was really that concerned about Salieri having murdered her husband, she hardly would have allowed the son to take lessons from him. But as I said, and as the article outlines, there was a little bit of rivalry between them that was recorded in the letters. And Mozart felt he had been pushed out, passed up for opportunities because of Salieri's influence. But there was a great deal of court politics going on at the time. A lot of what the film shows, actually, I think kind of accurately captures some of that. And so there's a great deal of spiritual or poetic truth about what the film captures, certainly in terms of the wider world of the court, but also really shocking and kind of unbelievable, true things. It captures almost every detail about Mozart's funeral correctly or lack thereof. Also, the Requiem was commissioned by a masked stranger who was intending to pass off the Requiem as. As his own composition. An amateur composer, not Salieri, but the exact same dynamic. And he was kind of haunting Mozart during his last days. And Mozart literally was working on the composition on his deathbed, not with Salieri, but with another composer. So, you know, there's a lot in here, actually pretty interestingly accurate. Maybe not the pink wigs and maybe not the laugh, but. 6:54 Wes: Yeah. Where did that laugh come from? Do you know? Do you know the lore of that? The lore of the laugh? 6:59 Erin: The Tom Hulce, the director you worked with that he would not name? Yeah. 7:04 Wes: Oh, wait, say more about that. 7:06 Erin: Oh, Hulce said that he based it off of a director he worked with, but wouldn't name the guy in Adam. 7:13 Wes: Yeah, okay. But yeah, he came up with that himself. Right. Although, I guess, is it a direction within the original play to laugh like that? 7:22 Erin: I don't think so. I think it was a Hulce flourish. 7:25 Wes: Yeah. So he went from being Pinto in Animal House to being Mozart. As far as I know, that was his trajectory. Quite a force of nature with that laugh. Yeah, the giggling dirty minded creature is what Salieri calls them. 7:43 Erin: I'm curious, you've seen the film before? 7:46 Wes: Yeah, I think I saw it in the theater. 7:47 Erin: In theater as a kid. 7:49 Wes: Yeah, I saw it in the theater. Or not too long after. On vhs. 7:54 Erin: Right, right. 7:55 Wes: To date myself. 7:57 Erin: Yeah, vhs. 7:58 Wes: No, I know. I know your relationship to vhs. 8:03 Erin: You're not going to get any guff from me. Are you annoyed by Mozart? You know, I feel some people have really strong reactions to Hulce's portrayal. I find him Weirdly charming, kind of adorable. 8:19 Wes: Yeah. I think I'd find it. I don't know if charming is the word. I find it entertaining. Yeah. 8:24 Erin: It's a little strong, actually. Yeah. Entertaining. Okay. That's good. 8:26 Wes: Yeah. He falls into a category that the character, as he's portrayed. I have trouble putting him into one category or the other. Is he annoying or charismatic? I think the contrast between the beauty of Mozart's music and I suppose the kind of character that we're supposed to associate with that and then the characters he's portrayed, I think that's very effective. So it's counterintuitive. And maybe like Salieri, we wish that he were a more dignified kind of person, but I guess for the most part, it's funny. I suppose I wish he were more dignified. Right. If I'd learned this about the historical Mozart, if I. I'd be. I. That's disappointing, right? 9:15 Erin: Yes. 9:16 Wes: Or would you Would. Would you mind if Mozart turned out to really be this way in real life? 9:22 Erin: No. 9:22 Wes: Why not? 9:23 Erin: Well, the way to really think of him is he was a child star. 9:27 Wes: Right? That's a good point. Yeah. 9:29 Erin: So how surprised can we really be by crude behavior? Not only that, but much mentioned in Mozart lore is his actual love of scatological humor, which is in his letters. Though another element of that, which perhaps exonerates him a little bit, is the fact that in Vienna, people were apparently obsessed with scatological humor at the time. So he is this sort of dirty little imp occasionally in the letters, but not any different from anybody else walking around Vienna. He just wasn't this sort of lofty musician priest that F. Murray Abraham's Salieri seems to be. 10:09 Wes: Yeah. Was European civilization in its kind of kindergarten phase with respect to social transgression. 10:18 Erin: I suppose. 10:19 Wes: So they hadn't yet reached the John Belushi level of sublime transgression. They were still at the scatological phase. Just come back to the Animal House reference. Is that a movie we're going to do at some point in Animal House? 10:38 Erin: I would be very surprised if we. 10:40 Wes: Were you disappointed to find out that John Belushi was a cocaine addict. All right. So, yeah. So that's interesting. I did find that out. I did a little research into how much of this was accurate, and I did find out that, yeah, he. He liked scatological references in his. In his letters. But I'm curious about what. How those looked, actually. I don't know if you've seen details of that, but specific examples. 11:07 Erin: There's a lot of Ass related stuff. 11:11 Wes: Okay. 11:12 Erin: But yeah, I mean, nothing like, I mean, it's weird, but apparently nothing beyond the pale for what the. You know, it was like everybody was obsessed with spongebob or something. It was constantly quoting spongebob and he 11:23 Wes: really, he really was a child prodigy. And when did he compose his first symphony? 11:28 Erin: I don't know, 12 months, 13 months? No, like seven. 11:31 Wes: In the womb. 11:32 Erin: Yeah. He did something at four, something else at seven. 11:36 Wes: They were trying to play him Bach in the womb. 11:40 Erin: Cause they didn't have baby Mozart yet. 11:44 Wes: They heard Mozart coming back out. 11:46 Erin: Yeah. Baby Palestrina. Hildegard of Bingen. The child star element and the sort of arrested development quality I think actually works really well. It was funny. I was with a friend last week and I was asking her about the desert island disc selections that she would choose and talking about how, oh, it's always so easy. It's easy to pick your number one choice. The problem is when you get into the later numbers in the top 10, you know, what do you save and what don't you save? I knew that her top choice was going to be the Mozart piano sonatas. And mine was, was Judy at Carnegie Hall. And I just suddenly made the connection in my head between Mozart and Judy Garland. Like, oh, right, of course. You know, both child stars, you burn out quickly, you die young. 12:33 Wes: Right. 12:34 Erin: Both geniuses. Once in a. Once in a century, perhaps more talents. Both with really strange and difficult relationships to authority. Though that's something I want to talk about with Salieri too. I really love the flashbacks at the beginning when Salieri, who looks so much older than Mozart throughout the film is a little boy hearing of Mozart, an even younger little boy becoming famous and hearing of him. And they're both wearing blindfolds in the two parallel childhood scenes. Mozart blindfolded as he's playing the piano, this little tiny, maybe four or five year old boy, and Salieri blindfolded, playing blind man's buff in the streets with other kids at maybe 12. So not too much of an age difference between them. And so they're sort of peers or siblings vying for a parent's affection and attention. Or Salieri is vying for it anyway. But I really loved that parallel. 13:30 Wes: Yeah. So it's interesting because in a way the suggestion is that Mozart has been corrupted by being a child star. Oh, yeah. And he was taken by his father around Europe. Right. For tours and to show his tricks. 13:45 Erin: Yeah. With his sister Nannerl, in certain ways, equally gifted as a prodigy. 13:50 Wes: Okay. 13:51 Erin: Yeah. 13:51 Wes: You know, in one Sense, he's corrupted by that. Or less mature. But in another sense, he has music in his bones in a way that Salieri can never have because it's almost like a cradle language. I'm assuming Salieri probably started out young, too, but we get this impression that, yeah, Mozart is effortlessly musical. It's part of his character. It's part of his freedom being in essence. And because of that, he doesn't have to try that hard, almost. That's the way it seems. At least everything comes effortlessly. He can play from memory anything he's heard. Therefore, he gets to be in a world that's completely a world of play, as opposed to seriousness and difficult effort. And so the playfulness comes out in his character is just immaturity. 14:43 Erin: We could argue that that's a criticism we could levy against the film. We do see him writing at the pool table. Lorl, A very young Cynthia Nixon reports back to Salieri that Mozart writes all night long and he is engaged in a lot of effort. I do wonder if the film makes it seem too easy in a sort of unrealistic way. 15:07 Wes: Yeah, he works constantly. We get the idea he works constant, but he's not revising, for instance, manuscripts. It's not, ooh, I wonder what. He's just taking his genius and putting it down on the page, which takes hours and hours and hours. But, yeah, I think the film does a good job of showing both those aspects, actually. You know, the amount of labor involved, but also the lack of agonizing and worry and concern that someone like Salieri in the film would have about. Is this the right phrase or. 15:39 Erin: Yeah, yeah. It seems he's taking a sort of. I think maybe even. Maybe even Salieri uses this phrase at some point, but taking divine dictation or something like that. 15:50 Wes: Yeah. Okay. 15:51 Erin: Salieri seems to be doing that, too, when he's composing the welcome march for Mozart and has the crucifix over the piano as he's working it out and then says, grazie, signore, you know. 16:04 Wes: Yeah. 16:05 Erin: And then, of course, he'll return to the crucifix angrily later and sarcastically say, grazie, signore after Mozart has embarrassed him by improving on the march in front of Salieri and the other people in the room, including the emperor. You know, there's this interesting problem that Salieri seems to have almost as a result of his deep understanding of music and his ability to really see these structures and the difficulty so intensely. I don't know what one would call that other than, say, a problem with embodiment or Something he sees Mozart as this pure vessel for this divine dictation. Just this spirit of God walking with this angel of God being given, flesh walking around. And the element of collaboration or of the idea that there is a tremendous amount of, say, mediation or it seems that Salieri is just externalizing. It seems as if he's skipping some sort of step of embodiment. Like we can connect artistic inspiration back to God if we're believers or to the Holy Spirit because ultimately God made us. But any inspiration is also kind of the result of our own gifts and what use we put them to and what's being channeled and what's been properly developed in us and all of these other factors that have to deal really intensely with how we are collaborating with that kind of inspiration. And it seems like there's just this idea in Salieri that Mozart is just a vessel. And when he sees the incarnational reality of him, Salieri is so disillusioned because he doesn't somehow understand humanity in a really fundamental way which, of course means that he's never going to be a great musician by default. Right? Because he doesn't understand that embodiment element, that incarnational, if you like, element which, you know, I think there are a lot of parallels being made sort of winkingly between Mozart and Christ throughout the film. But, yeah, that incarnation, I don't know how else to put it. It's a sort of weird thing because it's about inspiration rather than anything related to morality or something else which we might tie more distinctly to a kind of embodiment. 18:27 Wes: Well, this is, you know, it's the old question of can we separate the artist from their art? And in this case, he seems to think that the character of the Creator ought to be reflected in the character of the thing produced. Or rather, it's the other way around. So if what Mozart is producing is beautiful, why wouldn't he, as a character, be. Why wouldn't his character be beautiful, which is to say, somehow morally upstanding? And that's the kind of bargain that Salieri, early on thinks he's made with God. It's interesting because he will. He will call Mozart the voice of God which is a very different relationship to God than what he imagines himself having early on, where he says, lord, make me a great composer. Let me celebrate your glory through music and be celebrated myself. Make me famous through the world. Make me immortal after I die. Let people speak my name with love for what I wrote. In return I will give you my chastity, my Industry, my deepest humility every hour of my life. Amen. That's a kind of bargain where he's going to be ascetic, morally upright, in return for a gift that he can use to glorify himself, both himself and God. It's not like he produces beautiful things because he's morally upright. It's just he's gonna give me the talent, and then I'll trade you back the moral uprightness. But in the case of Mozart, he has this expectation that a vulgar person couldn't possibly produce such beautiful things, which, you know, I'm kind of sympathetic on one level. We know it's not true. Of course we know that the character of artists and thinkers and all kinds of brilliant people, they're not necessarily such great people. Even if what they're producing is great. It doesn't work that way. But somehow it's hard to give up that wish or that expectation. I don't know what you call it, that one would match the other. And why is that? Why do we. Well, I don't know if you feel the same way, but if you do, why do we have that need for them to line up? 20:46 Erin: Well, I'm certain I do have that need when it comes to certain people. For me, in this film, it seems important or maybe even essential that Mozart, for instance, be obsessed with scatological humor or be kind of a philanderer or be this person who's burning really brightly, living really intensely because he needs to be a kind of a rebuke to Salieri, though Salieri is not really understanding what that rebuke means or what it constitutes. I think that this bargain that you're talking about, which is. Which is a great word for Salieri and this. This divine accounting that he seems to be doing, it's very much, of course, the result of magical thinking. It's very similar to music itself, which is, of course, the most abstract art form, which is, I think, the reason why it's so closely identified with. With the divine or why music can be called, you know, the Voice of God or something like that by Salieri. Mozart's down and dirty. Mozart's in the weeds. Mozart gets what it is to be human. And it's like Salieri only has half of himself. It's not really maternal or paternal thing, but it's as if Salieri only has one parent, one father figure, one divine, authoritarian father figure. And we see throughout, you know, Salieri is really about conforming with authority. Doesn't challenge authority at all until he. He breaks with God. And he's still really interested in being in with the authority figures around him at the court. But it's as if he just has this one parental element in him. And he's this. This angel who turns bad. This thing which is not fully incarnated. And Mozart has. He has another interesting relationship with. With a paternal figure, an authority figure, but one of rebellion. He has, obviously, the love of structure and complexity and authority and divinity implied in his great understanding of music. But then he's also fully human. He's about the personal. He's about pleasure. All of the messy complexity of life, cruelty, beauty, just everything mixed together. And so it seems to me that he's flawed. Of course, he's flawed in these ways which we might find annoying or even perverse. But that seems evidence to me of him being a sort of a full person in a way that Salieri is really not. And what Salieri is missing he just doesn't get throughout the entire. You know, he just sees it as. He's not been given, you know, a proper amount of gift in his sort of divine bank account from God. God hasn't deposited enough money in his account in this imaginary accounting system. And he thinks that all he needs is just to get more of that divine money. And really he should be looking in a kind of a different direction. I don't know if that means he should be, like, actually going out and sleeping with people or, like, drinking or having a good time. I mean, Salieri, actually. It's even noted in the. In the article that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode that he didn't drink. He's Italian. He doesn't drink. 23:58 Wes: But he did have eight. Eight kids and a mistress. 24:02 Erin: There you go. There you go. That's a lot better than the. Than the. The filmic Salieri. But, yeah, you know what I mean? Like, it's. It's. That seems to be the problem. He doesn't really understand people or life or fun or anything that has to do with real life. You can't really live like a priest. And I don't mean that you. You have to go out and have a lot of sex and get drunk and stuff like that. But I also don't think that you can live a fully ascetic life. And. Well, unless you're Gerard Manley Hopkins or Dickinson or something like, I don't know, like you'd have to have a really exceptionally strange personality in order to. In order to live that way and 24:44 Wes: still produce works of genius to live ascetically and still. 24:48 Erin: Yeah, I think so, yeah, I mean, in certain instances, I know it can actually maybe even be a benefit. But I'd say in Salieri's case, there's something. There's a chip missing there. 25:01 Wes: Yeah. It's kind of an interesting contrast, maybe between an obsessional character and a perverse character. Notably, he doesn't ask to be the voice of God. Right. The thing that he calls Mozart over and over again. He asks to be given a voice that can be used to glorify God, but not to have God speak through him, maybe, if I'm getting that right. And so it's not in the mode of inspiration or being taken over by the muse or something like that. It's more about work ethic and discipline. And that's where the asceticism, the moral asceticism fits in. You can't be creative unless all your energies are directed away from the lower things in life towards this one thing. So maybe this is. You know, I had this thought actually when I was watching the film. It's a comparison I don't think you're going to like, between Cuckoo's Nest and this, where it's like Nurse Ratched versus. 26:02 Erin: Oh, sure. 26:03 Wes: But it's. Yeah. So it's a little bit of a Dionysus, maybe, versus the Apollonian here, or it's not quite it, but, you know, the Dionysian versus someone who's much more rigid. 26:17 Erin: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's what I'm talking about with the fact that Salieri seems to have one parent and Mozart really two. I mean, it's sneaky, but he seems to be actually the fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian because he's. Because as a great musician, that Apollonian element is already baked in. Right. Those structures are already there. 26:38 Wes: Yeah. There's a lot of formal complexity and structures, as you put it. But, I mean, as a character, though, he does seem to me to be lopsided, like the Only. When does he seem like an adult? I mean, there's an adult like feeling to him when he's composing, when he's at the pool table you know, concentrating, or at the end of the film, when he's involved in creating music. In a way, a serious side of him does seem to come out in those. In those moments, because he's engaged with sublimity and this almost maybe a worshipful quality, but there's an intensity about it. But, yeah, I don't think of him. There's no maturity to him at any other point, is there? 27:20 Erin: No, I Don't think so. That's another interesting element of genius we might hone in on. Or specifically this child star kind of genius where Mozart really seems, I mean, you know, of course whenever I say that, I mean the film Mozart, he really needs a keeper. It seems he needs someone to take care of him, someone to be the responsible one. He needs some guardrail and that, you know, like Stanzi working to make sure that he's actually getting money or, you know, it seems this, this relationship with the parent and the child who is a child star, is one which hobbles their ability to really be a grown up for the rest of their lives. And yet as you've already said, the parents determination to imbue the child with all of these gifts puts them in this other category where they can't really function in the real world, where they are not really part of normal human society. You know, they become a performing monkey, as Salieri's father says. You know, they become in essence a freak. Of course they have these, these freakish gifts already that are then also properly developed and properly channeled. It's like they're, they're lopsided or they're, you know, one can imagine that they're almost like top heavy or they have these. If we're to sort externalize it in a kind of metaphor, part of their body is abnormally huge and they need like some apparatus to get themselves around because they have some big head and so they keep falling over and they need somebody to hold them up or something. You know, they have that kind of dynamic going on inside them and that seems to be part of what genius is or how one part of you is this freakish part. And then maybe the rest of you is underdeveloped or, or maybe even normal, but the freakish part of you is so freakish that you need some support, somebody to take care of, someone to help you navigate the world. 29:11 Wes: Yeah. And I think maybe part of the disappointment of finding out that the beauty of the artistic product is not reflected in the character of the creator. Right. Because immaturity, there's an incompleteness about immaturity. And the exceptional art object is there's a completeness to it. And maybe the wish is that we think that the creative process should be redemptive, right? To be able to be creative like that. In a way that's sort of one of the things that gives life meaning. It should be deep and transformative and make us better people and improve our quality of life overall, not just give us this thing to do when we're not drinking ourselves to death or something like that, or when. 30:01 Erin: Which you can only do when you're drinking yourself to death. 30:03 Wes: Right, right. It really is kind of a paradox, and I think Jung pointed this out very well. He makes some point, the effect that if all your energy is going into creativity, if you become obsessed with that in a way, it can lead to self neglect. There's a kind of narcissistic quality to it. And as we know, Narcissus becomes fascinated with his own image to the point of self neglect and dies looking at himself in the pool. He can't attend to the real self because he's attending to this imaginary, more perfect self. Art is. And other high cultural activities, thinking and art and all sorts of things. I mean, they're supposed to reflect a cultural maturity, I think, and supposed to reflect something that's deeply important in life, and yet they can be accompanied by self destruction, self destructiveness, self neglect. 31:02 Erin: You're making me think of. You know, I'm probably like such a. Such a Salieri, certainly in the magical thinking department, but you're making me remember a time in my life where I thought that if I wasn't. If things weren't going well for me spiritually, that I wouldn't be able to write anything that, like, if I were not doing well, like, doing all the things I needed to do spiritually, that. That kind of channel, you know, that I, like, wasn't. I wouldn't be open to inspiration if I wasn't open to grace, because these things seemed to me so twinned together. And then I. I was obviously, you know, disabused of that notion when I must have been depressed or something, and. And, like, not maybe not going to Mass or something like that, and was then able to write something I thought was really good or something like that. Right. So it's like, wait a minute, that can't work. I mean, and like, I knew logically also that that was not the case. Like, I knew it, but there's. But still, I think when you have those religious structures in your mind, it's very, very difficult to tweeze those things out, to separate them and understand the difference between. I mean, I still don't fully understand it. Right. Like, I don't. Like, this is why I'm kind of struggling to make the distinction in Salieri's way of thinking between inspiration and grace. Sorry. This was related directly to something that you were saying then about Mozart, which now I've, like, lost the thread now that I've embarrassed myself by telling this story. But no, it's not. But yeah, we want or we think that these things should line up because it kind of doesn't make any sense unless they do. And yet we can even see that there's a way in which creativity can have nothing to do with. Even with what it in itself purports to be, which is a collaboration with something greater than yourself. It can ultimately be about going deeper into narcissism, as you're suggesting, even as it may be a work of. A work that shows some kind of deep insight, maybe about other people. Like a play. If you're writing a play. And I mean, this is just an example I could think of. And you're like putting in all these characters that are fully realized and really demonstrate a kind of deep understanding of other people. And one would think that this was a work of self forgetfulness. You can still be working on it to such an extent that it's like a narcissistic. The process of creating it is really narcissistic or something. Is that kind of what you're teasing out from Jung there? Or am I mischaracterizing it? 33:31 Wes: Yeah, I mean, speaking of. Right. You had brought up the relationship between the spiritual. Having your spiritual house in order and being able to be creative. Mozart doesn't seem to think about God at all. But Salieri is obsessed with him and also thinks that Mozart is the voice of God in a sense. So he says after looking at a score of Mozart's, he says on the page it looked like nothing. Beginning, simple, almost comic, just a pulse. Bassoons, basset horns like a rusty squeeze box. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note hanging there, unh, unwavering. Until clarinet took it over. Sweetened into a phrase of such delight. This was no composition by a performing monkey. This was music I had never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me I was hearing the voice of God. So it's the voice of God, but in an obscene child. I guess that's the vehicle for the voice of God. How can you be as engaged with the sublime as Mozart is and just not even be thinking about God? How can you be the voice of God if God is not even on your radar? 34:51 Erin: Yeah, I really love that quote because I think it reveals so clearly the soul of Mozart's talent. But how it expresses itself in this way, which is at first seems simple, is childlike. And then it becomes plaintive and about longing and about beauty and I think that's kind of what Mozart is about. That understanding of music, as we've already said, seems to me to be the implicit understanding of God or relationship with God, such as it is in him, or such as he can understand that or that he cares about that or appreciates that. 35:30 Wes: That's very interesting. Yeah. Because Salieri will say later, all I ever wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing and then made me mute. If he didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire like a lust in my body and then deny me the talent? Salieri's longing is to sing to God. But in for Mozart, the longing finds its way into the. The longing is in the music itself, which there's an implied relationship to the divine in that. So unfulfillable longing is necessarily relationship to the divine. 36:03 Erin: Yeah, that's great. That's great. I love that too, that Salieri mentions at one point that he's written 40 operas alone. It's like mute. I don't know, maybe. Maybe you weren't mute enough, but. Yeah, but that relationship to the childlike too is something I wanted to, I wanted to address because I do think that there are Christ like elements. Obviously, if Salieri is this, this priest or this monk of music and Mozart is its fullest incarnation or embodiment, then Mozart is already a sort of implied Christ figure. But I also thought of the holy fool element to his behavior. And I think that that is revealed a bit in even just in that description of Salieri's the squeeze box and the childlike quality, the simplicity that then reveals this hidden depth or that starts to gather to itself some sort of profound implication as it rolls along. The Requiem scenes too are a little reminiscent to me. Maybe this is a stretch, but it occurred to me this time a little reminiscent to me of the agony in the garden, for instance, Salieri saying he won't leave him, you know, Christ sweating blood, you know, in those moments before he's arrested, before the Passion. It's a little reminiscent of that. And of course he's working on the Mass, so one can't not think of that, that Christ like parallel anyway, Salieri kind of, kind of tending to him like one of the apostles and then eventually falling asleep, though Mozart too falls asleep. So it's obviously not a perfect parallel, but there's something of that, you know, staying up, keeping watch during the suffering and the. And in that instance, the Requiem, which is of course it's a Mass, so it's already a prayer and also the working on it for Mozart, also in that metaphor, would become a kind of prayer because Christ is in the garden praying all night. Maybe next time we can focus more on Salieri, on Salieri's relationship to his father and of the inciting miracle of his own, the miracle that allowed his musical training to begin. He calls it this. It's a big joke in the movie. It's a great sight gag. He says a miracle happened. We see his father choking and dying. Talk about some dad issues there. But anyway, so maybe in part two, we can talk a little bit more about Salieri and then also just the court and the dynamics at court and maybe some of the really interesting political arguments that are happening as well. 38:39 Wes: Okay. 38:39 Erin: All right. Thank you. 38:41 Wes: Thank you.