“Even if I Lose Everything”
“Even if I Lose Everything”, Arvo Pärt has written in his workbook. Fortunately for us, for a lot of years, Arvo Pärt has kept a diary. He calls the diary his workbooks. In the course of decades, along with work at musical texts, he has filled those workbooks with his contemplations, with his moments of grief and joy, with his finds, discoveries, worries and experience – with everything that might be called the inner life of an artist.
Trailer: Even if I Lose Everything
Through the years, hundreds of such workbooks have accumulated. They are ordinary music books, with the lines of life and death, the lines of love, creativity, reason, imprinted on the staves like the lines in his palm – altogether, a long path of life. As soon as he was born, Pärt was capable of “swimming” in the sea of music. And very early, the music book for sounds and words appeared, like a cloth for wiping the tears of joy and of sorrow – for a search for something that is nameless and has no end.
In our film, Arvo Pärt, together with Immo Mihkelson, deciphers his notes in those workbooks – a fascinating and interesting activity. At every page, something unexpected emerges, either joyful or sad. There are things that are incomprehensible, but there are also things that are edifying. Every record may evoke thoughts, recollections, discoveries. We can see a person who is looking for his way. And we can understand that the way is a narrow one.
The film contains a lot of so-called home videos. Arvo Pärt is a kind and hard-working, good-humoured and caring person, composer, husband, father, grandfather.
“Even if I Lose Everything” Arvo Pärt has written in one of his workbooks. What does he mean? What is he talking about?
Maybe he has found “a treasure hid in a field”?
How should we interpret this?
Does it mean that for him, “everything” has no value anymore?
Does it mean that there exists something quite different, a treasure that one may give up “everything” for?
What kind of treasure is that?
That is what our film is telling about.