Some of the most commonly used clichés, often refer to life, which always manages to find a way to prove the reason for their existence.
After all, life is a journey, full of crossroads, circles, and choices.
Each of these crossroads consists of many paths. Some look-alike, others are more complicated, circular.
“In a circle, every point is both a beginning and an end,” as Heraclitus writes, for Seneca to add that “every new beginning comes from the end of another beginning.”
But each of these paths, whether complex or not, lead us to our choices. Choices that the human mind will come to with or without thinking about them.
None of us knows, at least apparently, where each choice will take us, but it is not uncommon for the most important ones to lead us to our dreams.
As the French philosopher, writer, and actor Albert Camus characteristically put it, “Life is the sum of our choices.”
Art, and especially music, is full of choices and certainly circular. Some call it karma, others just call it life …
Life makes it so that our past becomes the present! Somehow this happened to Tolis guitarist of NIMATA.
A song and some choices brought him back to the beginning… where he left something unfulfilled.
However, the god of Rock N ‘Roll does not forget and always comes to remind the musicians that they must complete the circle of their melody…
The story of Tolis
“Sometime in 1997, I was the guitarist in a band called Aurora’s Cancer based in Lamia. A quiet life.”
The crossroads of life make its appearance and the first choice is made by Tolis.
“The other members decided that in order for something more to be done, we should be in Athens.
I avoided it since I had my job laid out there.
The year 2017 arrives where I haven’t touched a guitar again in all these years and I get the idea to get involved again, now living in the city of Athens“.
And here appears the god of Rock…
“I ask a friend of mine if he knows anyone in Athens who does guitar lessons so that I can take it from the beginning and more correctly.
Of course, he tells me, you will go to Stefanos. I ask him, is it the same Stefanos that I remember from Lamia? Yes him, he replies.
I get in touch, he remembered me and we started. I always admired this man for his calmness and how elaborately and smoothly he played“.
The end becomes the beginning… The circle.
“A year later, I happen to meet Panos on the street, the at-the-time founder of Aurora’s Cancer, and we arrange for a beer at a bar where he played music.
We reminisced about our teenage years and the conversation turned to the present. I would even make an album with you, he tells me. So let’s do it, I replied! ”
The unfulfilled … begins to move towards the dream.
“Here I want to mention that at the time when the guys were in Athens, from 1997 until now, they had set up the band Nipto Tas Heiras and they had started their discography with the at-the-time Legend.
So we would play songs from that time as well. I singled out the song “The Veteran” because it’s more close to my taste. Pure and honest Greek rock“.
And the dream begins its course…
“I spoke to my guitar teacher about this and he says, are you serious? Sit down and let me tell you.
He told me that he had composed and recorded on their album and especially the song “The Veteran” is one of those that he enjoyed playing back then.
I sat down and thought about this twenty-year cycle that I went through and ended up as if it was my destiny, out of nowhere, to be a student of the man who played guitar in my place 23 years ago and I had no idea.”
Every circle of life, as I mentioned above, is the end and the beginning of an unfulfilled dream that never ends.
“My most beautiful moment of this song was when I first played it live and my teacher told me, ‘You’ve made this song yours now.’
We continued under the name NIMATA with Panos and released an EP with three tracks in October, musically composed mostly by me, lyrics by Panos and other orchestrations of the band “.
Music is the road with the most difficult turns and is never easily accessible.
But life creates music that “frees us from the tyranny of conscious thoughts *” or choices I would add…