Household resolution

 

Dear friends of piano music,

"Household resolution" is a very sober and technical term, but behind it there is something very sad. Someone does not move his belongings to another place in order to continue his life there, but everything that he needed to live, that has accumulated in the course of his life and was of importance to him, with personal memories, is destroyed. There is no one who would want it to be remembered, to perhaps use it further. Of course, it is also necessary to sort out and dispose of it from time to time, simply for lack of space - even if life goes on. I recently realized how difficult this can be when I had to look through books, clothes, diaries, letters and other things that were still in my parents' house and for which I actually no longer have room. It is the material witnesses of my past that evoke buried memories and feelings, even if it only concerned childhood and adolescence, not a whole life. I always have to imagine what it must be like to have to leave all these belongings behind. My grandmother owned a cooking book and a photo album from her "old" life, from her homeland that had been abandoned and lost through flight, that was all. I've always envied families in the past who had an attic where everything accumulated that the family had left there over the decades - memories materialized. Yes, I know they are just items and they are often worthless. It was much more sad that my grandma was never allowed to see her father again after she managed to escape from the GDR. And when, decades later, at least she wanted to visit his grave, it had already disappeared, it had had to give way for something else, and so this last materialized possibility of remembrance of a loved one was also taken away from her. These are my personal memories today, on the day of German unity, on which the reunification of the country that was once divided by a wall is commemorated, but I think that a lot of people look back on similar, perhaps even more terrible experiences. What makes me sad is that flight, displacement, the resulting loss of loved ones, of home, of "belongings" seem to be a basic human constant - fortunately our wall is history, but new walls of all kinds are being built every day. It is great happiness when you can connect your memory, your emotional affiliation with music - you can take music with you everywhere, you have it in your head, in your heart, and walls cannot stop it.

Kerstin