The pre-teens phase

It seems that blabbering about previous forms of existences, even on a blog, has its costs. These costs I will pay right now by providing my views and some examples of Greek music.

Let’s start with the disclaimer.

My choice of songs is by no means representative of any music stream. Neither is it a selection based on quality. The only thing that these songs have in common is that they compose the soundtrack of my early adolescence. Nothing more, nothing less. It is quite likely that many people of my generation (yes, of those born too late and doomed to easy freedom) will recognize the songs, but I doubt that many of them will get watery eyes.

Using my dad’s old radio and a new portable tape-recorder after hours of careful waiting and excellent reflexes I managed to create few tapes of my favourite music. The secret was to recognize the song from the first few notes, then run to the recorder (where you already had an empty tape waiting) press “REC” and hope that your grandmother did not arrive that precise moment to ask you if you had eaten your eggs or if you wanted chocolate. (I have a very caring grandmother who knows nothing about music).

Moving on to my immature revolution (click the titles to go to the youtube video of each song)



I am collapsing.


This is the first song I will throw at you, my poor audience. You have to realize that the quality of music resonates the great moments of 1980s as they filtered through post-dictatorship Greece. This is essentially a love song, about a man who cannot understand his woman. She is a girl of her times doing all the things a 1980s girl does: turning feminist, wanting a free love relationship that includes experiences with all kinds of men, a communist, a Christian, a junkie.. The man implores her to decide what she wants. In the refrain he tells us he is collapsing, that he can’t keep on loving women and he asks Papandreou (Andreas, the prime minister of that time) to give him a ministerial position, to forget women.
The song is a happy jumpy one, perfect for a seven-year old who knows the names of all cabinet ministers (yes, that was me).



We are room-mates in madness

This was a poem that made it into a song. Like all poems it is hard to tell what it really is about. Adult me can try to decipher what eight-year old me left unquestioned. It discusses the role of rationality in political and social choices and the twisted use of the words victory and defeat. It makes references to historical events like: Burning of Troy, Hitler’s Nazism, Defeat of Hannibal, Oedipus and Salome. Very deep… but back then I used to listen to it and march around the coffee table with my mum’s wrap around me, pretending I was Hannibal even though I had no idea who he was until few years later.


The street


Don’t play this loud. The Police will come and get us! Thus spoke my little cousin and that was enough to keep this song in my heart for ever. Written to describe the ways people treat freedom this song presents the story of a street. First freedom represented a crazy idea, a dream that only kids dared to imagine. Then life brought entertainment, football and fights, moving finally to economic wonders and consumerism… forgetting ideology and freedom. It is a song easily learned by kids. Later I had to sing this at school at the anniversary of 17th November, thus, my illusions that it was illegal disappeared, but I still feel I am doing something great for freedom when I sing it.

To be continued…

The songs of my adolescence

There are very few things from one's adolescence that he can be proud of.
If I could burn all these pictures of me with long fluffy hair, sprayed to imitate my fashion idols of the early 1990s, the big red chicks and the tooth braces, I would. I would also erase the memories of my horrid clothes, reminding me that the 1980s culture arrived to Greece just half a decade too late, just to force me to look like Robocop with a pair of enormous shoulder pads.

The worst of all are the feelings of inadequacy and false revolutionism that come with this. Maybe it was just the bad timing of me growing up in the aftermath of democratization, but I truly wanted to be part of something big. Go to the streets and shout ala May 1968 or November 1973. Sadly, no tanks came against me, and no gendarmerie tried to stop me. Instead, an overprotective mother told me to be back by 9pm "because I say so". And so I did.

Obedience.

I kept though a small space of revolution in the form of a small radio. There I could listen to songs that my cousin secretly had told me that were illegal and I should not play them loudly, because the police could come and arrest us. He had overheard our parents' discussion about the times of the dictatorship and in his childish mind this created some great confusions. That stuck with me. The "illegal" songs were constantly on the radio, as an alternative to the ever-growing pop music industry. I refused to become fashionable and I listened day-in day-out to my imaginary-illegal songs.

The result? A hopeless romantic dreaming about a better society, heroic lovers and grand voyages.

Now, having adopted a cynical view of life, these songs remind me who I am and are there for any emotional moment of my life. Illegal only in the sense that they come from a different time... But nobody dares saying "Oh you still listen to that??". It seems I have many accomplices in this story. Many hopeless romantics neo-cynics that never forget the songs of their adolescence.

What do the numbers tell us

Today, I regained my full confidence to the Greek race. I had a good look at the election results and now I can tell you I am proud. In a totally crazy situation with a lot of sacrifice, a lot of fear and desperation the Greek voter gave a clear message to the political system as a whole.

No camp should be allowed to celebrate. The turnout was the lowest since the birth of the Greek democracy. People felt that their vote would not make any difference so they simply did not bother. And ten percent of those who did bother showed their discontent and disagreement with the political scene by voting blank or purposefully destroying their ballot paper. I truly honor these people, who go to queue, spend part of their day just to send this clear message.

And those who voted? The results showed the deep questioning that takes place in the heads, and the hearts if you want, of the voters. The old party candidates representing a much hated political establishment could not easily be defeated and the new ‘fresh’ voices supported but not generated by the same establishment (ok but different party) could not easily gain majority. The main fear was wether, having gained power, they would just join and re-enforce the establishment, throwing away their ‘alternative hat’. In the end positive thinking won but only by few hundreds of voter.

PASOK, the governing party, did not lose, but has no reason to celebrate. Their candidates won in the two major cities but only because they did not come from within traditional party lines. New Democracy, the major opposition party, did not manage to capitalize on public discontent against the horrid government measures. They have no reason to celebrate either. The largest losers of these elections were these ecclesiastical voices that attempted to manipulate the electoral result. Church should not be a political actor in any democratic state, and this result was a slap in the face of militant bishops. And there cannot be a better result than that.

Now, what remains is to see what the ‘fresh’ elected mayors will do with their power. Will they re-produce old habits and finally cause more political desperation leading voters to new dead-ends and finally increasing the percentage of blank votes, or will they actually engage in meaningful work? Time will show. In the meantime, I will be proud of the Greek voters and will secretly hope that eventually they will produce more engaged citizens.