july 28, 2009.

[ This is the third and final part of the transcript of a 60 minute spoken letter/diary, that a Greek girl in her early twenties (I will call her Eloise) recorded on her walkman. (The 1st part is here). She did that at home in Athens, in the end of september 1994, addressing her Dutch boyfriend (I will call him Abelard). Eloise had just returned to Athens, where she passed the final exams for her studies, and begins a working life. She is involved in media kind of work (television, journalism). She fell in love with Abelard in Holland, where together they spent a 1994's 'Summer of Love' in Amsterdam. Abelard is a student of anthropology. He is also an amateur of gamelan, and he's playing in a band.

Probably needless to say, but I have not the slightest idea who are Eloise and Abelard (pushing 40 by now), what became of them ( * ), where they might be now and what they are doing. I do not know their real names, as these are never mentioned on the tape. In the transcript I have removed all names of friends, family and colleagues, that are mentioned by Eloise. I also removed names of companies and magazines, and have tried to avoid referring in too easily recognizable a manner to the 'media' that in 1994 Eloise was working for.

A 60 minute tape transcript is pretty long. There are about 8000 words to it, that posted in three consecutive, daily, parts: on july 26th, july 27th and this final one, on july 28th. I suggest you save them, for example to your iPhone's "Read it later", and take this text along for your holidays.

Read it on the beach, preferably a Greek one :-) ... ]

---

"You, a bed, the sea ..."
[ 3. Athens, sept. 30th & oct. 1st 1994 ]

Friday

"Hello love. It's friday, about 2 o'clock. I woke up around 11.30. I didn't sleep good, yesterday. Because I had some visions. I mean ... strange, I was thinking that the music was following me, everywhere ...

There were some great DJs yesterday. And I think both of them were Greek. I'm not sure. I'm gonna check this out.
Have to go to work in a couple of hours.
Okay. Kisses, kisses.
Call you. Later.

Friday (cont.)

It is friday night, about 3 o'clock Greek time.
I have been trying to call you from 2.30!
But the line is busy.

I'm watching Partyzone on MTV, and I'm thinking of guests for [X]. Today I came back from work at 2.30. I could also leave earlier, much earlier, but ... it was fun. I went to [X] about 3.30 in the afternoon. It is at the other side of Athens, so a strange place that I never really go often. I went there, waiting for the skaters that I arranged to come and do show stuff. And they came, and we had fun. They were, you know, kids, from 17 till 21 years old and they were real skaters. They were funny, talking with me like I was the serious one.
And then the didderidoo guy came.
He was great, and he fascinated everybody. My sister tried to play some didderidoo for the show, but it was impossible. Everybody was jealous of him, the technicians, the cameramen ... There's a guy from the team that we've been working. He's about my age. He's nice. We work together and, you know, he has almost the same mind with me, and eh ... but don't you worry ... don't worry ... He's in love, for 3 years, with a girl ... He seems to like me, and we have fun with each other and we hahaha, we laugh during the show and we gossip about everybody and, eh, he was telling me like: 'O my god, what kind of life am I doing, for a year now I've been working from one night until the other night ... But what I really want to do is leave everything and play the didderidoo, like this guys does!' ...
The others were saying the same thing, exactly ...

What else?

The guests arrived and it was all okay. But we had to do the trailer, for the beginning of the show. So we went outside to Athens with the van and with cameras and stuff. My sister was wearing a black dress with a red nylon ... thing ... on her. And she was playing the saxophone ... Or, of course she was not playing it, but she was trying to play it. She didn't even know where to put her hands, her fingers, you know. It looked so unreal and so unnatural, but it was good, because the director is funny. He's gay, about 34 years old. Quite funny, and quite intelligent as well ...

O, Simone!
Wait, wait ...
... Fuck!
... Wait ...

Live from New York, from a club of New York, with Simone of the Partyzone, something on the MTV and I just want to see the VJ talking, saying 'O, there's nothing really happening in New York now' and stuff, and 'People and the parties are not as interactive as I had expected' and 'I hope there are more happenings' and stuff ...

Haha!
Probably the guy is bored and coked to death and he just ...

... well ... Maybe India is a good solution for both of us, isn't it? ...
I think the batteries are turning really ... down ...
I can't see the red light ... on ...

I'm gonna try call you again.
Tomorrow ...
O yeah, I did not complete you the whole story...

So we went with the van and went outside to Athens, and we went to the fish market and we went to Λυκαβηττός (Lycabettus), the highest mountain, hill actually, in Athens. There is a concert place there, open air, and there was a Greek group, very, eh ... known in Greece. They performed there, and so there were a lot of people.
I went backstage to talk to them, because I wanted to take them for the show.
But they were all so busy and njèa-njèa-njèa-njèa ...
And I was like, 'man, who do you think you are, the Rolling Stones?' ...
But anyway, I talked to them and eh ...
They are not from Athens, they're from Salonica, and they really have a complex of that. They don't, they don't ... we call the guys that live in Salonica: ... Bulgarians ... so ... and there is always a hate between Salonica, which is the capital of the north, and Athens, which is, the main, of course, capital, the capital of Greece.
Anyway.
We went all together to my sister's house because it's very high and it has a nice veranda and you can see the whole of Athens: the Acropolis, Hilton Hotel, my house ... my father's house.
Anything.
The sea as well.
We did some shootings there. And then I walked from her house to my house. With my walkman on. Looking the night and feeling quite happy and eh satisfied, although I know that it's just an illusion because all this, I mean ... I'm just filling my time with new things, with experiences, just because I don't have you here to fill me up.

Have to do things, because otherwise ... yeah .. well ... I just think of you.

I'll try to call you again now ...

...

I'm drinking my camomile ...

...

You put the phone off the hook!

...

It's not possible to be busy on the phone for an hour and a half!

Whatever.

I'm tired, and I'm going to sleep now.

Tomorrow I'm going with my father and his ex-girlfriend to the sea. Again. Or at last. Anyway. I'm really tired. Kisses. I'm going to hug my pillow and think that it's you. I have your picture next to my bed, so I can watch you before I go to bed.

...

Goodnight, honey.

...

Saturday

Good morning my love!
It's saturday, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
I'm very angry, although very refreshed as well, because about 10-ish my father called me and he told me that I can sleep as long as I want to because [P], dad's ex-girlfriend, couldn't make it to the sea. And we were supposed to go together, the 3 of us, with her car. But then we didn't because she had to work for once again...

That's the main problem of their relation, because she always ... ah well, half an hour before they do something, she always postpones it, because she has to work more ...
She's 40 years old.
42, I think.
And my father is 62 ...
64! ...
So they have about 22 years of difference, but eh, they were together until my father got retired. When he got his retirement, he was not working so hard, so he wanted someone that didn't work so hard as well. But she was still on the edge of being chief-editor to [Y] and to [Z] and to other magazines, and she was working ... Now she works at [X] as well. So she had a meeting, or whatever. I don't know.
Stupid.
Stupid.
But that at least gave me the chance to sleep until 1.30.
And eh ... I feel a bit more ... yeah... good about it.
Kisses!
I'm going to drink my coffee and smoke my cigarette now.
And hope to go to the toilet.

...

You just called me and I feel awful bad about the phone call because I think I was quite like ... not cruel, but I was like a self of my that I don't like. Like trying to give guidance and try to, to do your life better and stuff ... I was like ... aggressive, a little bit, with you. But I didn't mean that, I just ...
I don't like people that are sitting and crying over their boring lives when they can probably do something about it.
Is this kind of life exciting?
Of course not!
It's fun, and probably it's more fun than working 9 to 5 into an office, or public service, especially, but eh, I mean, it is so natural for me, so I don't have to try for that, or, you know, fight for it. Well, I want to travel away, I want to go to Argentina, I want to go to India, or Thai or whatever, and I want to see there if I can make it, if I can do something for living ...
I mean the world is so small, and we think it's so big. But, no, on the contrary, it's really small, and we can travel around.
I don't know.

Am I a dreamer, or something?

People want to do that. Everybody. But they don't have the guts to do it. Do I have the guts?
I don't know.
It's here ... living here is so easy.
I'm not, you know, rich or something.
And I'm not like ... glamorous or something, you know.
I am not going to Greek islands with sailing boats every weekend, or flying to Monte Carlo, whatever. I'm not in the jetset, and I'm never going to be inside of it because I don't think that I like it. I don't think I like the people, you know.
But on the other hand, what am I doing?
I'm not a loser, of course!
I mean, what is a loser?
A loser is someone who is drugged from daytime till nighttime and does nothing but having strong emotions, and not having a real life. But ... maybe I'm just in a bad mood, you know.
Maybe I'm saying all of this because I'm in a bad mood, really ...
But ...
I don't know ...

Saturday (cont.)

It's almost 4 o'clock now, Greek time, in the morning. I just returned from a clubbing night. Well, actually, first of all I went with my dad to a very chic and high restaurant which is on the other eh ... on the other side of my house. It's very classy, and all actors and rich people go there, and ... but ... you know. And we paid 200, we paid something like eh ... 200 guilders ... no ... no ... wait ... we paid something like ... eh ... 18 ... no ... 180 guilders for nothing, for food that I didn't ate actually, because it was awful. Only the dessert was good. And we drank some wine, and I told me dad how sad I am about you not being here and about my life and I told him that I hate media and I don't want to work there, and that I also want to become an anthropologist and go to strange places and do my fieldwork there.

But my dad heard all this before, and he thinks that it's just crazy ideas I do have. And that's true. I mean, I never ... well ... Sometimes I was thinking about being an anthropologist, but it was mostly a dream for me ... because ... eh ... it doesn't give a lot of money, because you never going to be famous and stuff ... But now that I don't really care about the money and I don't really care about eh ... the famous and the vanity of the star system, which is really stupid.
The Greek star system is just a big huge shit, you know ...
On the other hand I'm so negative to everything, you know, and ... It's because I miss you, because I miss my life in Holland and because, well, it's boring here.
Well, it's not actually boring, okay, I mean, you can do stuff, you can do plenty of stuff. Like today for example, after the dinner, my sister and her friend came over, and we smoked a joint, and they were ...

They are ... old ...
My sister is 32, and [V] is 27, I think...
They are old, I believe.
They are just stuck to their lives.

Not bad lives, you know, quite glam, and quite ...
I don't know, they probably have a good time.
At least, that's what they think.
And they don't really want to get away from all this.

Like I do.

...

They are joking about me and about my stupid feelings of love.

..."

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notes __ ::
(*) As once sighed my daughter when the lights went up in the movies: "Ca c'est le film, mais il y a encore toute la vie après ..." [ ^ ]

tags: Found tapes, Athens, Amsterdam, 1994

# .324.

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