The truth is, I never imagined that the time would come to write a letter about your coming! You see all these years I stubbornly, almost fearfully avoided commitments because I believed they threatened my freedom which I tried with great effort and cost, believe me, to preserve…Until you decided to come, without asking anyone, and triumphantly overturned my whole worldview! But in the last months when the idea of fatherhood began to mature in me, I realized something that as a musician and improviser I already knew well: true freedom comes from responsibility and discipline, it is not unrestricted action, that is chaotic, wantonness. Real freedom is to expand your range of motion within the limits given to you. So time to apply it to real life!

All these years, in the backyard of my soul I was making a secret garden where only I could escape. It is a garden planted with images of travel, dreams and artwork.

You know, your father – like all people – is a multidimensional and sometimes contradictory person. He has been intelligent but also stupid (…after all, I wouldn’t be an artist if I wasn’t both), wise but also sometimes frivolous. He has lived a measured but also furious life, he has experienced glorious moments, rare experiences, he has felt invulnerable and perhaps he has been arrogant due to excessive self-confidence. But he has also suffered great defeats and humiliating failures, he too has gone through days of introversion, he has fallen in love and through love he has become a god, but also wasted himself thoughtlessly because of it!

But every time, both in successes and in failures, I made sure to plant a seed in my garden: A melody, a poem, a painting, a phrase, not only mine but also of my spiritual beacons: Hadjidaki, The Beatles, Odysseus Elytis, Bach, Thomas Mann and so many others! I watered them to bloom, to become beautiful flowers, to remind me that both successes and mistakes are proof of this gift called life, traces of my existence. I really like the garden I have made!

It is colorful, fragrant! I can’t wait for you to come play, I’m tired of enjoying him alone, there’s no point in beauty if you don’t share it! I will give you my most beautiful creations, the most wonderful flowers! And you will keep the ones you like and find useful, throw away the others!

You cry because you suddenly came into this world but don’t be afraid! The world has never been safe and fair! It’s just that the current world gives you privileges that would be unimaginable if you were born in other times. Even in this country with its thousands of problems, you have freedoms that in most parts of the planet are not self-evident! Besides me, you have your mother, our friends, our families! I don’t know if I will be a “perfect father”, I don’t believe in that term – whatever way one chooses to raise one’s child, obviously with the best intentions, will be “wrong” since each child has its own personality with his own needs that don’t fit into prescriptive recipes and no enclosed “parenting manual”. I know that every conscientious parent at the end of the day has terrible doubts and vacillations about whether he was right. So I want to believe that I will be the best father possible for you!

I would like you to be the meaning of my life, the center of my existence, along with many things that fill me and complete me. But I don’t want you to become an extension of my own life. I don’t care if you become an artist or an athlete, a scientist or a saleswoman in a clothing store. I don’t care if you become straight or gay, liberal or leftist, orthodox or atheist, I don’t care at all! You can become whatever you want, whatever makes you happy, as long as it is a product of your own critical thinking and conscience and not an ideology that will be worn by the fashions and passing currents of your time.

And it is enough to include the opposite pole of what you choose to be, but also all the nuances and gradations that escalate the difference between you. Your father always separated people into those who are good, noble people and those who are not. That’s why I’m glad you came, because you too will contribute to a more peaceful, open-hearted world. And I will love myself even more so that it will love this world that will also accommodate you!

You will face challenges of tomorrow’s society that today I cannot imagine, just as my father could never imagine the challenges of my own generation. So don’t take anything I teach you as certain. In fact, I’m looking forward to the moment when you question everything I’ve told you. Because this will mean that you now think and act with your own judgment!

Come, my little one, I’m waiting for you to learn to walk together and to get to know the world again with you!

PS: I promise I won’t talk to you as much as I will raise you. I am mainly interested in hearing what you have to say.

Apostolos Kaltsas