TIME MACHINE POST

I wrote this in February.

Of all the street performers I wish you could see, the best one is the Marseillais Mozart.

In Vienna Mozart street performers are everywhere, and that's fantastic. Mozart was from Vienna. Mozart was NOT from Marseille, but that doesn't bother the Marseillais Mozart. He just dresses up as Mozart, with a sign that says he is not a lunatic, but a father and an artist. He doesn't have music or look like a statue or walk on his hands or do any of the other things I've seen street performers do.

I see him almost every day. One day when I went to Aix-en-Provence he boarded the bus with me, rode to Aix, and stood outside the theatre of the movie I went to. With his sign. Without music. I mentioned before that there was no music but it seemed worth mentioning again. He was the strangest thing.

Until today. When he added cat-juggling to his routine.

Read it again.

I really wish I had brought my camera or a PETA representative, but you're just going to have to take my word for it - it was wild. The picture would be of exactly what you're imagining right now - a man, dressed as Mozart, juggling three cats.

"Isn't that the craziest thing you've ever seen?" a man in a tweed hat asked me.

I told him it was.

But honestly, I think it makes more sense with cats than without.