Punch and Judy alla grec!

Last night I went to a Karagiozis show with my son. I watched him as he jumped up and own, happy, taking part, laughing... Shouting to Karagiozis to watch out, to beware the snake, laughing always, enjoying himself...

(For those who don't know Karagiozis, is a "Greek" traditional shadow puppet theater. As his name implies but also as you can see from the video above, he has Turkish roots, (Kara is black in turkish)

The place was the front yard of the National Gallery's Corfu department, but it did not take much to imagine we were in the "plateia" of some village, many years ago...

I confess that in the past I was a little prejudiced against Karagiozi shows, during my childhood I saw it as something "old" and how could it compare to my television and video games, and Star wars and Marvel comics... It probably was that I also had seen a pretty crappy show of it once, so small and I was too far away to make out what was happening...so I didn't care much for it....

Yet, and I guess maturity has a liittle to do with it, it CAN stand up against the giants of my youth's fun... because it is clever and nowadays it is also making an effort to catch up in its thematology.

It set me to thinking...

In the troubled times we were going through (this was written in 2013) Karagiozis seemed to me like a very interesting and lovely point of reference, a symbol.

Before the show we were told a few things about it by one of the players...what stuck most in my mind was that Karagiozis is considered a symbol of the fight against the opressor, against authority

Karagiozis is fighting against the Cursed Snake (sounds like an old school Greek Harry Potter...) he is fighting in any way he can, using even the Super Fart, (this went down REALLY well with the kids,,,)

Karagiozis is crafty, but also a little stupid, he hits his chidren (now how politically incorrect is that!? but bear in mind he is from another era...) But he is essentially good, and a go getter, yet he has shortcomings...Which human doesn't?

Karagiozis is Greek, but he is more Turkish. And he might be a little Chinese too as historically shadow puppets come from the Far East via the Middle or Near East... But as in most things in life, it is not the beggining or the end of a journey that matter. as much as the journey itself.. Karagiozis arrives to us having collected knowledge from various civilisations, but also from life itself...

The life which is that exactly that we have in common between us. all that keeps us apart is truly secondary, but some people are extremely reluctant to accept this.

Aren't we all a little Karagiozis's? (and certainly Greeks and Turks are Karagiozis's, we have much in common...including ridiculously corrupt governments)


Karagiozis is a father.

Karagiozis is human..

Karagiozis is you and me.

I am a Karagiozis. .

And I'm proud od it.




Check out the comments under the video in Youtube, I found it accidentally..

Death of a ladies man (My tribute to Leonard Cohen)

We are reaching the traffic lights, we are a little late for school as usual, had to take some antibiotics, and cope with the kid's renewed interest in dental hygiene...we are reaching the traffic lights, the radio is on, Take this waltz, take this waltz, ay yay yay...the song fades and in comes the presenter with eulogies for the artist, and I'm wondering what's going on, because morning radio shows don't do eulogies, don't even comment on the songs they play...unless... unless... something has happened.

And she ends up on...what can I say, I didn't want to hear, we didn't want to hear?  82 years old, on tour at the beginning of the year, 82 years old, a full life, 82 years old, a new album recently, 82 years old, two years older than my mother, 82 years old, this voice will never die.

Fuck. I'm crying.

I'm crying for a man I never knew, yet he was with me at every diffiult moment...

I remember the first song of his I heard. I must have been 13 or 14 and there was a series of compilation albums called "80s Rock Volume" or something like that and it was this one

One guitar, one voice, a voice at war. I don't think I understood so much about what he was talking about, being in the throes of my puberty at the time, but the music, the feeling, spoke straight to my soul... even the French I could not understand...

But we Greeks have a history of listening to songs we maybe don't understand so well... hahaha...but yet they touch us and we love them...

So this is how my relationship with the voice of Leonard Cohen begun.

A couple of years later, someone gave me a bunch of LPs they did not want anymore. Amongst them where two albums of his. I immediately picked this one out...

"Avalanche" touched and reverberated on every one of my inner strings... In my troubled and lonely teenage years, this music electrified and amplified my feelings... and became the first of a series of dark songs that would follow me through life.

"the crumbs of love that you offer me,
are the crumbs I've left behind,
your pain is no credential here,
it's just the shadow of my wound..."

And in this way I fell in love with darkness, and the sometimes dark people who passed through my life...

A year later, he brought out another album, and I thus found out that the "songsmith" was still "songsmithing" away... with songs like this one.



Then came "I'm your Man" ... Cohen never stopped talking to our inner selves, with songs that may have been a little more "pop"? although who can judge?  Here from a recent live show...



I could sit here all day and put one song after another, all the songs we loved....

But I will say "good evening" and sign off with a cover of Cohen's "Hallelujah", by an artist who left us all too soon...



Here is a little "esoterica" on the song... It has been covered by very many artists. Once John Cale was preparing to do it, and he called Leonard to ask for the lyrics. He got back a 15 page fax. He called him back to say "what the hell?" And Leonard said, "that's the whole poem...just pick out the ones you want..."

People depart, the songs remains. Who can say that their souls do not live on through the songs?
Leonard Cohen and all the Greats like him live on inside us, and will continue to live inside every person who is touched by their music in the future.

May they be sweetly remembered for making our lives more beautiful....for being there when they were needed...


Note form today 7th Nov 2019

This article was first written and published by me in Greek on the 11th of November 2016, 4 days after Leonard died. Today 3 years later we remeber him and I thought I would translate it and add a little more... so here is one of his poems. for he was a great poet...