December 2004.
The idea of getting involved with a magazine, of setting it up from scratch, began to arouse me from my prolonged inertia, an inertia that had become part and parcel of me... When an idea suddenly appears from nowhere, when you are least expecting it, coupled with the conviction that you can implement something which almost everyone says is "great but utopian", then a series of events will lead you to where you have to be if you were right.
None of this would have happened if hurdles had not appeared along the way (just about when I say to myself 'ok these are some great hurdles, some great slap downs!').
I now release that barriers had been raised in my path to redirect me towards higher ideals: to the need to create a ray of light in the greyness and confusion that surrounds us...
A friend took me to "Ash in Art" and Penelope was there; she was heading up the painting workshop. They were using watercolours, paper and brushes and that day tried out an interesting technique on glass.
Once all the necessary introductions had been made, I assumed my place.I began to put a little blue, a little red and some other colours I found in front of me on the glass with a spatula, I mixed them slightly and pressed down very carefully on a piece of rough paper to capture my artistic creation.
The result was dreamlike, the colours had bled together and resembled clouds that form strange shapes as they drift across the sky... I was impressed! I said to myself... not bad for someone completely new to this game.
The next day I bought paints, paper and all the things needed and decided to sit down and get hard at it. I had to make something beautiful, something I’d be pleased to see on the wall, something dominating and imposing. I had some friends who were painters who had promised a painting from time to time but I'm still waiting! I said to myself, 'if that's the way you are .. I’ll just do it myself... for my own satisfaction!
It is true that man with his hands (as manual labourer), his thoughts (as philosopher) and his heart (as lover) can do much: cultivate, create from scratch, touch, travel, love, and even destroy the things he loves.
I remember being six, smelling gran's sweet-scented geraniums, listening to the door creak, the wood expand in the heat, the scent of aromatic cake mix, my first explorations into the new, unknown world.
I decided in the end to work on a large face with large eyes. I don’t know why exactly. I must have had some enormous African totems in mind which always attracted by interest with their sheer size and clarity of style.
Some point later (almost two weeks down the line) I found myself face to face with two giant eyes (just eyes no face) looking across at me in the half-light of a living room.
At the start I drew a rough outline with a pencil to know where to spread the paint I would use and started to mix up the colours without knowing exactly where I wanted to reach. I was guided a bit by luck, partly by instinct, adding another colour each time, erasing smudges with white. For the background, I drew in some cross lines to fill in the empty space because I hated it just being blank white.
I finished my work –it was imperfect but I didn’t care. It is dominated by the eyes which make reference to navigational instruments for the soul. Behind are blobs and clouds. In front there is only this magazine -the other half- that I made with my hand, with hard work, long nights over the keyboard and a little help from my friends, those few, enduring good friends who lost not their courage, who could envisage the final format from zero beginnings, a magazine like the one you are reading now... I wish them the very best from the bottom of my heart...
Will we manage to remain totally frank to the end I ask myself?
Knifes hidden in socks
My stay in the underworld drew to close just when it should have.
When time came full circle, I bade farewell to Kassiani, smoked a last well-rolled cigarette with the pimp Sotiris and knotted a braid in Natassa’s freshly prepared hair tying the ends with a purple hair-band, a colour she loved.
I kissed them all on the cheeks and departed, my soul now calm.
I knew now that the black sheep raise their eyes to heaven, that flowers blossom in their hair and their knife hangs always in front of their belt, clear to the view and gleaming!
With a jump I found myself in the upper world again. The clarity of mind one feel’s in the morning and early afternoon were there. Intellectual was in its place and the poets too. I found myself with the majority again who accept the rules of the games, the formalities... a game for survival of the fittest.
The result: knives hidden in the socks and one’s speech ever mellow. No disagreement, no refusal among so many positive affirmations. The worst were the ones who walked around with a broad grin painted on their faces. Afterwards they bent down purportedly to tie their laces while you departed, grabbed the hidden knife within the socks and flung it coldly into the centre of your spine!
My sweet Natassa... not everything is what it seems... Kiss the kids for me? Are they really shedding hairs so much still?
Fotis Papadopoulos
