I started the Second Grade in September, 2003, in a very good mood. My sister, Johanna, who was then 16 years old, took me to Tromso, Norway, where she was recording her debut album, Stille (Silent). It was a wonderful experience for me, as I had never been to a music studio and, of course, a great relief after what I had gone through. Johanna had always been a sensible and mature girl, so my parents let her, not only travel all by herself, but also take me with her. Whenever she hadn't been recording songs, we would go hiking, but she would keep an eye on me, of course, in case I slipped and fell. During evenings she would buy me an ice cream and then we were going back to our staying place. There we were playing the 'sister game', something that was quite often between us and we still do nowadays. We were both lying on our back in the bed, but our heads would meet, so we could look at each other backwards. Then we used to hold each other's hands and start telling our own personal moments, one after the other in turn. During one of those moments I told her I was bullied and that only a boy stood by me.
"Then marry him", Johanna replied in sarcasm.
"W-WHAT?", I screamed. What was she saying to a 7-year-old child?
She pinched my chin. "I'm pulling your leg, Mansikka (Johanna always calls me Mansikka, which means Strawberry in Finnish). Well, as long as they apologised, now you can be friends. Isn't it so?"
"Ehmmm, I suppose", I stuttered.
She sat in the bed and started stroking my hand.
"Hard to forgive them, eh?"
"They hurt me a lot".
"Don't worry, youngster. Someday you will be composing the best music in the world and all these guys will understand who they had to deal with and what your real worth is".
I hugged my sister full of affection. She always had this ability to comfort me and make me smile.
"Remember", Johanna added, while still holding me. "You should never give up, even if you believe you can't make it".
So, I decided to start with my school year as confident as ever. Soon, my classmates started to invite me at their parties. Then, I was trying to show them that I wasn't shitty, as they previously thought of me. However, I avoided showing off, concerning my musical abilities, out of fear that they might feel jealous of me again. On the other hand, I could understand how different I was from my Greek classmates. I was much shyer than them, though rather emotional. But I wasn't that fond of physical connection with any of them, nor was I a hands-on person, at the least not to the point that my female classmates were with each other, that they used to hug each other all the time. And I don't even consider that as a flaw. On the contrary, I never wanted to be so talkative and such an extrovert. But, when I was a child, I was extremely shy and I never defended myself against anything. Nowadays, of course, I can tell that I'm not really an extroverted person, but if you bother me, in some ways I can stand up for myself.
Time went by and I gradually adapted myself to school. In fact, I liked school and I loved to read as well. Like most young children, I used to read children and fantasy books, but my favourite books were Hans Christian Andersen tales, which was a Christmas present, as well as Tolkien's The Hobbit. I always considered Hans Chistian Andersen and Tolkien to be two of the most important literary figures of the past two centuries, because they were the cause of my own narrative dexterity and of my acquiring the ability to create imaginary worlds in my head. Furthermore, very often Johanna and I used to put Andersen's Tales on the piano and we jokingly pretended to play it as it were a musical sheet. Thus, we were trying to paint with music the whole book. I had read lots of books, which weren't exclusively related to fantasy, fiction or worldbuilding. My mum also used to buy me books of educational content.
Moreover, I used to spend a lot of time at the school library, borrowing books or reading them there. I had a dream of becoming an earthquake scientist, since I was informed about this huge tsunami in Indonesia and I knew I could do this later by studying geology. I was very interested in that field, as well as in stuff related to the natural world and because I had been on many journeys with my parents, I loved maps and geography. Indeed, my mum was the one who encouraged me to become alert regarding science, because she herself had wanted to become an evolutionary biologist, before she went on to become an actress.
My mum was also the one, whom I inherited my love for Progressive Rock from. Of course, when I was 7, I wasn't listening to all those bands that I liked during my teenage years. However, my favourite bands were Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull, until I was 9. Johanna was also inspired by Pink Floyd and very often along with my mum we would stay up until late at night, listening to their songs. One day, I woke up to go to school and at 7 o'clock in the morning, I started playing Money on the piano.I went to school and when I found myself alone in the classroom during the break, I sketched a huge spectrum on the blackboard and wrote below The Dark Side of the Moon. When the teacher entered the classroom, she saw it and smiled, without asking who did it.
Now it is very important for me to talk about my further education in music. I said before that I had started piano lessons with my mum's sister, aunt Kati, who was a piano teacher. However, she stayed back in Norway and my mum, even though she could also play the piano, was no teacher herself. So, I enrolled to a school academy close to the village, where I went on with piano, accordion and harp lessons. I would sometimes perform before an audience, where I was joined by other students too.
During this time, I also met my best friend, whom we're still best friends nowadays with. Of course, I'm talking about the violinist and singer, Ivanna Jiresova, who is six years older and just like me she was born in Norway, but in Karasjok (close to Alta), has a Russian origin and spent much of her childhood in Cefalonia. Ivanna is one of the very few people I do trust, because I believe that she understands the way I am thinking, and secondly both of us desire to take extreme risks concerning new adventures and also love to be crazy, though silent. It's very rare to find such people in our days. Ivanna was 13 when we met and she started her career six years later.
Ivanna and I met at the music academy, where we had frequent appearances together. On the beginning, I would play the piano and she would play the violin, but later we would combine together harp and violin as well. What really impressed me was that she never considered me to be a small child, even though we then had a great age difference. She always thought of me to be a rather mature girl with my own ambitions. And I have always believed that Ivanna has a child's heart.
This was my pace of life this year and the next one. But when I turned nine years old, some elements in me started to develop, elements which became traits of my own personality. And of course I refer to my own need to narrate, in any sense, or if you like, to tell stories.
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