I thought about writing the chronicle of the adventure of "Tetarto," which for me lasted from the beginning of the summer of 1984 until the end of the summer of 1985, not because the magazine marked the intellectual landscape of the country, like others that wrote history. Or like the Third Program of Hatzidakis in the 1970s, which wrote its own history.

I thought about writing it because this adventure was marked by two figures, emblematic of two completely different perceptions of the place, Manos Hatzidakis and Giorgos Koskotas. It also marked the period during which the symptoms of the Greek mutation, the one that led us to our current defeat, began to emerge.

It was a mutation related to politics; however, politics alone is certainly not enough to describe it, let alone interpret it. It is a matter of human materials and quality, that quality which has today been decimated.

A while ago, I wrote a chronicle in the newspaper Nea, where I argued that among the great losers of 2012 is also Manos Hatzidakis. Not because his music is no longer appreciated. On the contrary, today it is appreciated much more than when most people knew him for his major hits.

But because his mentality has been defeated. The courage of an individuality that draws its momentum not from the arbitrariness of any opinions, but from the capital of sensitivity deposited in the creative work. This mentality is currently in disrepute in Greece.

Legitimacy is defined by the democratically shared lack of talent of mediocrity, which suffers from an incontinence of opinions and is supported, of course, by bottomless audacity. What we then regarded as an exception has become the norm.