Three Men by a Lectern
A week or so ago I threw down a bundle of words on the topic of ‘The Writer’s Face’. Amongst these words lurked a few questions: Do we care what a writer looks like? How does knowing what a writer looks like affect his or her text? Has the success of Edmund Ek got anything to do with the beauty of his nose?
Today I intend to continue ignoring these questions whilst tossing another bundle of words onto the same fire of thought. It is not the face of a writer, however, on which I mean to dwell on this occasion, but that of a composer.
Sometime in the late 1990s I attended a lecture at which the Italian composer Paulo Zilotti was due to speak. As is so often the case, I arrived early, taking a seat near the back of the auditorium, one chair away from the left aisle. I had with me a book – a collection of poems by Ludomir Birovnik, I believe – through which I flicked, restlessly, as the minutes passed. The poetry was poorly served by my state of mind, for I was, to put it simply, locked into a condition of nervous excitement. Why exactly I cannot say. After all, I am hardly Zilotti’s greatest fan. I doubt I am even in the top eight hundred. Nevertheless, I rarely fail to feel an anticipatory tremor or two on these occasions. It is merely in my nature. Nevertheless, if I were asked to pinpoint one thing that might be stimulating my restive mind, this is the thing on which I would surely settle:
I do not know whether you have ever experienced this yourself, but there to me is a certain thrill in attending a lecture, or reading, or conference, in which one is to come face to face with someone whose work you know well, but whose face you have never seen, nor know anything about. Such was the case here. Zilotti is hardly a recluse: quite the opposite, in fact. Nonetheless, I had managed to get through life thus far without ever seeing his features pictured in a newspaper or a journal, let alone up close. I had not even heard them described – or if I had, I had forgotten. Basically, I had no idea what he looked like. I knew he was roughly five years older than myself – and that he was Italian. That was all.
About four minutes before the lecture was to begin, three men sidled up to the lectern at the front of the stage. One of these men, I surmised, must be the great Zilotti. But which one? Was it the short bald one, the plump one with the black curly hair, or the gaunt man with the beard? The curly-headed fellow looked too young – though he was also, I thought, the most Italian of the three. The bearded chap seemed the right age, but lacked the kind of energy I had always associated with Zilotti. As for the first man… no, it couldn’t be, could it? He looked like a pastry chef, not a composer. Ah, but what was that supposed to mean? What was it I thought a composer should look like? On which sad stereotypes was I leaning? Shame on me! There was no good reason why Paulo Zilotti shouldn’t be five foot two and hairless. No reason at all.
No, wait, but there was a fourth figure approaching. Yes! A bullish sort of creature, with a pockmarked face and deep blue eyes. Around his neck he wore a blood red scarf, though it was still early September – and warm as any summer’s day. Could this be the composer?
No. In fact, none of the four men was Paulo Zilotti. The last man, as it transpired, was the events organiser, stepping up to the lectern to inform his eager audience that the main speaker, Mr Paulo Zilotti, would not be showing up after all. He was, he claimed, ’stuck in traffic’. How mundane! How disappointing! How absurd! Still, I would seem to have learned a lesson – even if it was a lesson I have forgotten, on occasion, in recent times
I have, of course, met the Italian composer several times since then. And what, you ask, does he look like?
What, I ask in return, does it matter?
