The circle of life

And a great gift from my father!

One of my latest instrument designs...maybe one day I will see it in flesh!

Looking back on my second post Tuesday May 11th 2010 as I was waiting for the completion of my first bouzouki custom order created by the talented hands of Giannis Tsoulogiannis,  I was making funny assumptions of how the number 5, was the lucky number of my life.
I had written:

"Born on the 5th day of a month, 5 has been always my "Lucky number".
Hmm...wondering how many "fives" included in my life's journey...
Lucky?..well not always, on a 5th date I lost one of the most important people in my life...

But let me go with the flow of my first assumption:
My daughter born on the 5th month of the year.Immigrated to US on 95,met my wife on 05, I am driving my 5th car...
This will be the 5th bouzouki ,in searching for the sound of 50s.

Don't you get it?A little voice screams inside my head!

And I can find of course trillion-zillion other times, where "lucky 5" was absence , did not play any important role, in any other important event of my life!"

A lot of things have changed in my life from that 11th May 2010 post.

I got divorced and remarried, now days I am driving my 7th car, I am waiting for the arrival of my 8th bouzouki instrument, and I never won the lotto by playing the lucky number 5!...well I never won the lotto, period!

Three and a half years in memories making, was a beautiful journey full of excitement, and inspiration.
Through this life journey,  I met a lot of bouzouki enthusiast and made a lot of good and sincere friends.

Everything started at the age of 12 when my father  gave me as a gift my first bouzouki instrument from a local music store of my town, after an exhausted battle of crying and begging which lasted for weeks.

Back in Greece, at my family's house, we had two musical instruments:
A violin and a classical guitar. My father used to be a classical violin player, when he was very young.
It was never an option, getting a folk instrument, especially a bouzouki!

Whenever I was asking him to buy me  a bouzouki  he was pointing at the classical guitar, which was standing at the corner of our living room area....finally at the end,  he gave up!

How life moves in circle, 31 years later?
This last 8th bouzouki (A/I Stathopoulos) which I am expecting, it is a gift from my father.
...The first and the last bouzouki, this little voice screams inside my head once again. And has its reasons!

On this 15th day of November,(this 5 follows me everywhere..I am telling you) the journey of the "Memories" changes its route for the last time.
A decision which I wanted to take for a log time, but I was always postponing it, due to so much love and support,  I have received by fellow bouzouki enthusiasts all these years.
"The memories of the innocent  age" will stop  to be only one-way monologue  of a passionate, "crazy" dreamer full with memories of his childhood.

Converts to an  interactive event which will hopefully last for many many more years to come.
Fellow friends close to my heart, and passionate luthiers (amatuer and professionals) have received all the Art-work from "The memories of the innocent  age" and the permission to use, elements, and complete designs on their instrument creations.

As successors  of this journey, these luthiers through their work on musical instrument creations, they will carry-on a small part of this blog, every time they will use a design from "The Art Book"

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And every-time another passionate bouzouki enthusiast will get inspired by it, he will inadvertently carry it also, and hopefully spread the bug of traditional lutherie to others.

As for me, I will continue visiting blogs and forums which I love, "scratch" my bouzouki instrument every night coming back from an exhausted day at work, and who knows? creating one day a new blog which may has to do with travel, or food, or how to get divorced and married X times, lol :)

It was a real pleasure 

My last post will be written after receiving and evaluating my A/I Stathopoulos.

I will see you all around!