Molten Lead

This morning I listened to a CD that my friend has lent to me. It is a beautiful recording of an organ recital, but I cannot 'hear' the music any more - I am deaf to its charms. My mistake was to read the sleeve-notes, and from them to find from them that the recording was made on the organ of the Frauenkirche, Dresden; in the December of 1944. Within a couple of months that sacred building and its organ would, to all intents and purposes, cease to exist. I have many recordings made by some of the finest artists which were recorded shortly before they died. Yet none of these cause me the same trouble with my conscience. I cannot 'hear' the music because I am ashamed; ashamed that I that I mourn a musical instrument and a building more than I do the tens-of-thousands of people that perished in the dreadful firestorm that was unleashed upon Dresden.

It's as if I'm blinded by the fact that people's lives are predestined to have a beginning, a middle and an end, though tragically some only get to experience their beginning and their end; they do not have the joy of the 'middle'. We describe so many treasures in this world as being 'irreplacable' - it is true that these inanimate objects are worthy of the finest care and preservation that can be afforded to them and that they be protected from the ravages of war, but shouldn't we really class their creators as irreplacable rather than their creations? In life we have to accept that a person's existence is transient, a mere flyspeck on a sand-grain which is itself part of a beach extending only as far as our imagination will allow. The Dresden building and its organ have now been recreated ('rebuilt' is an adjective which is neither strong enough nor accurate). Most people who died in Germany over those three days in February '45 will have had little to do with the Frauenkirche or its pipe organ, but if my inability now to 'hear' beauty in this music is a worthy memorial to them, then I am content.