A sentence in this issue has stayed with me. In our Profile interview, Rita Rovelli Caltagirone says she believes knowledge is the greatest richness. She talks about the pleasure of listening to someone who knows something you don't; of discovering an artist, an idea or an entirely different world – and leaving a little different from when you arrived.

I like that idea. And lately, I have also been thinking about the people who, knowingly or not, shape what we become curious about. This issue of GstaadLife comes out on 14 August. It would have been my father's birthday. He died earlier this year, and the photograph on this page is of the two of us sometime in the 1970s. I think I was about three.

In the last weeks I spent with him, I discovered something about my father I hadn't fully realised before. He had a genuine interest in art and music. His education and career had nothing to do with either. He couldn't necessarily explain why he liked a particular painting, nor did he have the vocabulary of someone who had studied art. But he had a good eye. He knew what appealed to him and what didn't. The same was true of music. His interest was personal rather than academic, driven by instinct and curiosity.

Perhaps that is partly why Rita's words strike a chord with me. We can sometimes make culture seem as though it requires prior knowledge. That you need to understand classical music before attending a concert, know something about contemporary art before entering a gallery, or have read the right books before joining a conversation. Rita herself says that people can be afraid of culture because they think it will be serious, boring or simply “not for them”.

My father would probably have dismissed that theory. He didn't need to know why a piece of art was considered important to decide whether it interested him. And perhaps that is enough: curiosity first, knowledge later.

We are rather spoilt for opportunities to practise that in Gstaad. This summer alone, we can walk into galleries, listen to extraordinary musicians, hear people speak about subjects we know nothing about and encounter ideas we may never have sought out ourselves. We won't like all of it. We don't have to.

What I have realised rather late is that my own curiosity about art and music may have more to do with my father than I ever thought.

So, this Editor's Letter, published on what would have been his birthday, is for him – and for the things we sometimes discover about the people closest to us only when time is running out.

Happy birthday, Dad <3

Jeanette Wichmann
Editor-in-Chief