Before mobile phones and Android devices, there were letters, which took days or even weeks to reach their recipients…
Before the comfort of the car and the speed of the aeroplane, there were mules and horses, and journeys lasting days through harsh weather conditions…
Before friendships on social media, there were neighbourhoods, games in courtyards and open lots, conversations in which people looked into each other’s eyes rather than at a screen…
Before weddings with drones and fireworks, there were spontaneous celebrations with family and friends in homes and village squares, with the clarinet leading the dance…
Before the hurried and fleeting “love” that lasts a week or a month, there was LOVE itself, with the verses of Elytis becoming words of courtship and the promise “I will love you FOREVER” meaning exactly what it said…
Before bulky romantic novels with labyrinthine plots and elaborate literary flourishes, there was the simple language of everyday life, in which every word carried the weight of lead through the clarity of its meaning…
That is why I love Thodoris’s storytelling: because it awakens the olfactory memory, bringing back the scents of childhood…
When magic was not sorcery, and metaphysics was not a branch of philosophy, but the only way to make sense of the world. And that is what I miss in our times. (Vissarion Bousiopoulos)