One of my greatest joys when I was a little girl, eight or nine, was to receive in the mail the collection of writings published by the school. This was my grandmother’s village where I stayed during summer vacation, a very small town in the West of France, Brittany. The “gazette” came in the mail as a pile of duplicated papers bound together with staples. It smelled of solvent and the contributors’ handwriting had turned pink and purple. I would sit at my grandmother’s kitchen table and read the local school students and teachers’ prose, poems, letters, memoirs, drawings. It was so charming it moved me deeply. I realized I knew these people and felt closer to them than if I had met them in person.

In the Memoir section I put up Piano files. This is no Stephen King suspense and certainly not a page-turner. What I am serving here is not a story, just the life of a woman through the prism of piano. I could have seen it through other angles, such as writing, or food which I actually did (coming soon).

In Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, the two angels Damiel and Cassiel roam around Berlin, listening to the living, while invisible to them. This is what you would hear if you bent over my shoulder to hear my story. I would like to be one of those angels and listen to what people have to say as well.