I Just Have to Save the World

 

Dear friends of piano music,

you may also know this: Whenever I am at a loss for words, when I am speechless, so to speak, I resort to quotations. And very often it's pop songs for me, because I grew up with this kind of music and I like it. The title of the song "I Just Have to Save the World" by Tim Benzko has been floating around in my head lately, a title that has always made me feel a certain kind of unease. I think most of us would love to do that, save the world, but the combination with the words "only" and "quickly" again creates the kind of speechlessness in me, of helplessness, against which the pop song quote actually was supposed to help. That's probably why it fits so well. Because where should you start? And who is helping? There isn't even a consensus that the world really needs to be saved, and that it needs to be saved as soon as possible, preferably yesterday, as the casual saying goes. There are also people in my personal environment who deny climate change, there are so many worldwide who consider their personal material wealth and the position they have achieved to be more important than concerted action to preserve creation. One gets the impression that these are people who are simply good at repressing - denying it actually offends their own intelligence - and secretly hoping that they will already be dead when everything blows up around our ears in the near future. And if you could save the world "just" and "quickly", en passant and without having to make an effort or limit yourself, then maybe they would even do it between two meetings....

I admire modern city planners who try to make urban living space more livable, healthier and more ecological. Plants as air fresheners and brightly colored little beacons of hope, green roofs with goats on them......small, humble steps in the right direction. What I would also like would be swings, hammocks, trampolines - for children as well as for adults. That would be a good thing to make everyone a little happier and light-hearted. And apple trees, lots of apple trees, wildflowers on the green verges... so that people can flourish again, are no longer as gray as their houses and their clothes. Oh, that would be nice, wouldn't it?

Kerstin