photo © Kostas Mpekas
George Papadopoulos: The Philosopher of the mountains
BPP: Identity:
Who you are? And who you really are?
George Papadopoulos: Papadopoulos George, son of
Vassiliki and Panagiotis, born in Athens May 13, 1959 . I studied business management and marketing (Petra College
photo © George Papadopoulos
BPP: If
you could say something important you've learned all these years of your life,
to the other people and they were able to listen to you, what would you like to
tell them?
George
Papadopoulos: To be always yourself! True and bare in front of other
people’s criticism. Maintain and improve your uniqueness as your fingerprint
which is a special nature’s gift for every human. Share your art, your talent,
your inquiries and your dreams with as many people as you can, and learn from
others’ “truths”. Each one of us has a talent, a special charisma and the ability
to offer something to our civilization. They just need to find it in themselves
and develop it without wasting time in everyday surviving ways.
photo © George Papadopoulos
BPP: What
is your real dream, the one that keeps you awake at nights and if one day it
will come true, you will feel your heart calm and peaceful?
George Papadopoulos: To find and create something special that will become a mime and the
beginning of new quests in art and in people’s everyday life. My dream is also
to go back, some day, to Kalahari desert (Botswana
photo © Kostas Mpekas
BPP: How
is life for the people in your country today? What do you wish to happen to
them and to the people of this planet at large?
George Papadopoulos: A continuing struggle for survival chasing the
fallacious “America Dream”, created in the last 30 years; stress, deception,
depression and aggression. I hope they find the true values of life and the way
to live better without the over consumption of their free time, their soul and
the objects. For all people on this planet, I wish they would surpass
harmonically their bestial existence, understand it and pass through an upper
existential sphere, while training and being trained, something that will help
the planet and the colonization in other worlds. We should learn to “listen” to
the planet, the other people, and the “outside”. We should share art,
techniques, ideas, work and distinguish between weakling and human. Hard decree
in our genes that were made to evolve and find ways to adjust themselves.
photo © Kostas Mpekas
BPP: If
you had the chance to be a child again, will you choose to do the same life you
do?
George Papadopoulos: No! I would listen less to the lectures about “common”
sense, life line, must do and must be...the values are inside us almost since
our very young age. The soul always distinguishes good from evil. I would
travel more, I would ask to learn as much as I could from every person, I would
speak and feel freely theirs. Some things I might do again, my gene, but
perhaps in some other time and with other people. I would give more “space” for
others to know me and I would fight for my own existential space to grow into
whatever my existence would motivate me to. I would live more intensely trying
to change myself first! I would share, communicate and copy whatever completed
my queries!
photo © George Papadopoulos
BPP: Which
exactly was the moment you understood what you want to do in your life? How
did you feel at this very moment?
George Papadopoulos: One afternoon in the northern suburbs, in 1998! ...I had gone to work
from 7 in the morning...I was running like a bee for other people’s charges...I
stopped for lunch for 10 minutes and was immediately “bombarded” with more
duties-appointments...”black-out, I pulled the cables, I left everything and
took the road to a simple sunset, closing all connections with other people’s
wills”. I felt free but also scared for the new way I had to take...I wanted to
create strange and beautiful things for people to buy because they would do
“something” to them...and they would stop wasting my time anymore, and my soul
through their vain need for technical advice and company. I wanted to be able
to have time for me, for search, for ideas, for work, for something that I
would create with my own hands and my soul! To make something that would be
left behind...for others to find...to change...to take it to another level...
photo © Kostas Mpekas
BPP: Something
yours: Do you want to tell us something we didn't ask you until now?
George Papadopoulos: I
lived as a rich boy and an urbanite in Athens since I was a kid...I took all
the bullshit and the wrong habits of my time, my environment and the people
that raised me...all that until 1992! I was enslaved in a common life, with
common interests, behaviors and soul. One more unit in a “value” system that I
never left...suddenly I found myself in South Africa Kalahari desert from the Bushmen tribe!!! I
lost the money due to wrong choices and moves...I came back jobless and I lost
my brother and father...but the wealth of soul that I collected from the wise
and modest people there, will always follow me! It gave me strength to make a
family, art, a workshop and dreams...I am not afraid of life like I did when I
was living in Glyfada...no matter how many times I fall, I know that I will
always fight for life, sharing and better days! “When you drink water with the
gazelles in the muddy water pit of the Kalahari desert and you escape the lioness,
then you can do almost anything!” I now live and make in my (one man show)
workshop things I really like, (on the ancestral hills), with my family that is
everything I really managed until now and for which I am very proud!
Giorgos Papadopoulos'drawing for BPProject.
If you want to learn more about George Papadopoulos:
Photos © by Kostas Mpekas, Giorgos Papadopoulos. All rights reserved.
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