Hearing from one of our spies in the auction loop about Bob Dylan spouting a page or two of his musical idiom and signature for two- three hundred thousand $ brings to mind the Viennese “strudel” when Ludwig von Beethoven turned to his nephew....
II
“Give me my pen, Scooter.....we must scratch the Emperor’s name from the Eroica ...delete him!”.
“But why uncle? He’s your hero.”
“He was, Scooter. We have nothing in common A pimp for Josephine. ..out for himself An imposter. He turned his back on mankind. ....his own glorified ego trip, A whoremonger, ”.”said the Bonn born human, sprawled out at his piano bar, his bedraggled persona disguising measures in staff and keys, his biological clock in synch with the metronome swinging on the mantle.
A swish of the pen Ludwig changed the course of the revolutionary’s quantum leap to Elba, Beethoven resuming his aggression into uncharted turf, transcending the territory Haydn and Mozart traveled.. approaching papa Bach’s biological consciousness God is watching over me and my 22 namesakes
“Gimme five Scooter. Is the black coffee ready? I may be losing my hearing but not my taste buds.”
“His Orchestral Suite number one , Scooter. To emulate him...ah that is the unspeakable my nephew.” he said, breathing his pounding Eroica on his scratched out seven letters Emperor extinct as Ally Oop’s dinosaur.
III
Scooter into his functionary role, punched the Weimar data base for the private number for the Duke’s alter ego.... Wolfgang Goethe. “
“ Sir, we have uncle Ludwig on your data base. The information highway.”
“Scoopy do, Ludwig...I’m with you, scratching out Bonaparte’s name from what I hear on the grapevine. A tyrant wearing the Emperor’s clothes. You’ll long be remembered by posterity for stripping him down.. Balls naked. you hear me?”
Beethoven fondled his hearing aid, dilly dallying the gadget into his ear drum . “He was a small cheese. A pasgoodnik,” said the composer.
“Hmmmm,” said Goethe thinking out loud.... “You on an acid trip?, Ludwig. You sound like your other worldly self.. He’s a con artist pretending he’s Robin Hood....playing out his inner needs, compensating for his lack of body mass .
The fifth grade kids teasing him. “Shorty Shorty” dissimulating the gulls like the Bard said in the “Merchant of Venice” Another Shylock not knowing when to say .“ Mercy! Save my soul.”
IV
“If it wasn’t for my fraulein Vulpius metamorphosing as my frau . Only a mistress can understand my psyche .. She earned it. Sister girl friend frau mother granny she plays all the roles. Keeps me true to my nature, eluding those Faustian demons. Pops hustling marks as a barrister in Frankfurt Ludwig .isn’t it all a fantasy?”
“My father was a “30 lashes with a wet noodle” drunken sadist. How I dreaded the
cat of nine tails,” said the composer, retrieving its wallop from his memory bank.
“Heaven is on the way to it.” both immortals grasping the moment,.kindred to each others soul.
The former German Austria Empire , December 1, 2010.
