“Why is Haydn carrying a hot dog?”
The question caught me off-guard, and I turned my attention to the statue’s left hand. This is what we were looking at:
I started chuckling immediately. It didn’t take too much imagination at all to see the curled sheet music could indeed be mistaken for a hot dog.
“He’s probably going back the palace because he forgot to put ketchup on it,” I said jokingly.
“Maybe he forgot the mustard, too!” my son chimed in.
My son and I named the statue “Hot Dog Haydn” that day, and we stop before it every time we go to the gardens of Esterháza Palace. No matter how many times I see the statue, I cannot “unsee” my son’s original “hot dog” interpretation.
Though I know the object in Haydn’s right hand is sheet music, my eyes acknowledge only a hot dog, and my mind playfully conjures up an impossible scene from 1765 – one of the esteemed composer scurrying back toward the magnificent palace in order to put some ketchup on the hot dog he had been given.