Mozart's Misadventure

Two nights ago, after several years of probation, I reinstituted arts and crafts night. I have had no good reason for doing anything visually artistic since I was in about 9th grade, when I took Intro to Art. There I had attempted perspective, failed; attempted pottery, failed; and finally attempted splatter painting, and succeeded. But I was never big into splatter painting, so despite my teacher’s encouragement to pursue it as a career, I humbly bowed out.

I always regretted it.

But after 9 years of facing the truth (that I was not a world famous splatter painter), I have finally accepted it. Indeed, I have realized that my area of true talent lies in action figure accoutrement construction. How did I realize this, you ask? I shall explain.

My brother recently went to New York and brought me back a small gift that inspired me to rediscover my inner artist. It was…a Mozart action figure! I could hardly think of a better gift.

To go along with Mr. Mozart, you can go online to a particular website and print out a piano for Mozart to play. I was astonished by its beauty – its gilded soundboard, its mahogany body, its slender music stand. It was better than a Steinway.

After printing it, you must cut it out, complete with slots A, B, C, D, E, and F and corresponding tabs, fold it, and glue/tape/force the various pieces together into a piano. They say you need a hobby knife, thick paper, and about 20 minutes of time. I did not have the first two, but I figured an excess of time would easily make up for them.

After 2 hours of cutting, folding, groaning, gluing, shoving, smiting, retching, destroying, and howling at the moon, I succeeded in producing something that looked vaguely familiar to a piano. I’ve never been good at following directions, and apparently sometimes they matter. Part of the problem was that my printer’s margins weren’t quite right, so tabs B through E were conspicuously absent. But even had they been present, I would have accidentally chopped them all off, as I did tabs A and F (they were just so dang slender and fragile!). Normal scissors are not built for the niceties of piano construction.

By the time I had the body of the piano put together, I had used thirteen pieces of tape and a few staples, neither of which are called for in the directions. It looked more like a fire-bombed woodshed than a piano, so I figured that it was pointless to make the legs look nice. So instead of cutting them out as directed, I just rolled them into little tubes and taped them to the bottom of the flimsy instrument.

It only stood for 39 seconds. But in that time I managed to take a flattering picture of it, so no worries. It’s too bad Mozart didn’t have very long to tickle the ivories and do his magic.

Good.

Going.

Gone.

Today, Mozart is still sitting there, arms out (he must have incredible stamina), before a piano whose legs have collapsed. It reminds me of those movie scenes where, after years of labor and trials, the main character admits that his great dream, his magnum opus, will never be realized, and he sits in front of the ruins of his work, too grief-stricken to move, and weeps. It really is a perfect image – Mozart sitting there, arms extended, before a busted piano; it’s too bad action figures can’t cry plastic tears.

The fact is, I stink at building pianos. I feel bad that the first piano I tried to build was intended for the great Mozart. I probably should have started smaller and worked my way up, maybe beginning with Kalinnikov or some other obscure Russian composer. I’ve often wondered how it is that all kids are so good at arts and crafts but how so many adults are bad at them. When do kids start losing the ability to spread glitter appropriately and cut anything out perfectly with a mere pair of safety scissors? And why is it a pair of scissors anyway? I don’t think I would call a single blade a scissor. A single scissor is no scissor at all, just like there is no such thing as a single pant. Clearly we have a conspiracy on our hands.

After this unfortunate experience, I have decided to put myself on probation again, this time permanently. Mozart deserves better, so I will remove myself from the trade.

I bet Salieri is behind all this.