Interpretation of “Tolls” by Fotini Velesiotou and Eleonora Zouganeli

2025-02-11

For this entry in the series, I have selected a song that I only discovered recently: Tolls. There are multiple versions of it, including the original performed by Fotini Velesiotou and Stavros Siolas, though the one I prefer is sung by Fotini Velesiotou and Eleonora Zouganeli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCzUX8grbLI.

Before I proceed to translate the lyrics of Tolls and then elaborate on its deeper meaning, I must note that my plans this noon was to write an article about one of the songs performed by Eleonora Zouganeli. My first choice was The Gardener, which is the work of Pavlos Pavlides, another beloved artist of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrEIY277C_A. Though I later decided to leave that for another time and focus on Tolls for the time being. Let us, then, enjoy the music and think about one of the lessons we can learn from it.

Below are the original lyrics, my faithful translation of them, and further commentary.

Διόδια

Ερμηνεία:  Φωτεινή Βελεσιώτου & Ελεωνόρα Ζουγανέλη
Στίχοι:    Πόλυς Κυριάκου
Μουσική:   Σταύρος Σιόλας


Τώρα θα δεις τα χρώματα ν'αλλάζουνε
και τα βουνά να σμίγουν ένα-ένα
Άγγελοι σαν θνητοί θα σ'αγκαλιάζουνε
εχθροί θα σου μιλούν αγαπημένα

Τώρα θα πιω νερό απ'το ποτήρι σου
δικά σου θα'ναι πια όσα δεν έχω
Θα σπρώξω ουρανό στο παραθύρι σου
κι ό,τι δεν άντεχα θα το αντέχω

Τώρα θα πιάσω σπίτι στον παράδεισο
τσάμπα οικόπεδο σε παράλια
Του έρωτα θα βάλω το πουκάμισο
και θα νικήσω δίχως πανοπλία

Τώρα θα δεις μες στης ψυχής τα υπόγεια
τραπέζι με ψωμί, νερό, κι αλάτι
Τώρα που δεν υπάρχουνε διόδια
που πέφτει σαν ζεστή βροχή η αγάπη

Tolls

Singers:  Fotini Velesiotou & Eleonora Zouganeli
Lyrics:   Polys Kyriakou
Music:    Stavros Siolas


You will now see the colours changing
and the mountains merging one-by-one
Angels like mortals will be embracing you
enemies will be talking to you lovingly

Now I will drink water from your glass
yours shall be all I no longer have
I will push sky towards your window
and anything I could not endure shall endure

Now I will acquire a house in paradise
Gratis property by the seaside
I will wear love's shirt
and shall win without an armour

Now you will see the soul's basements
table with bread, water, and salt
Now that there are no tolls
that love falls like warm rain

To me, Tolls describes the outlook a person has when they no longer treat people transactionally. Others are not means towards individualistic ends. They are all equal, fellow travellers on the same journey of life, with whom one may share a table, no matter how frugal it is.

The worth of a person is not measured by how opulent their dining hall is. Indeed, excesses are often a sign of vanity and misplaced priorities. A serving of the essentials is enough when done with kindness. It is all about one’s intent and their willingness to recognise in everyone some inherent, inalienable value.

This hearkens back to the ancient Greek ideal of hospitality, epitomised by the concept of Xenial Zeus (ξένιος Ζευς or ξένιος Δίας): “xenial” means “of the foreigners”. One must welcome strangers and treat them with care, while they must, in turn, respect the integrity of the household. There is mutual respect involved, whose deepening manifests as love.

Love is not one-sided. A person can only feel loved when they are prepared to give love. This is because of the precondition of trust. One must open up their true self, to be recognised for who they are, to be confident that they are valued for their true self and not some persona thereof, and, in turn, to discover in others a genuine person that hides beneath the hardened carapace of quotidian transactionality.

When you are loved for something you are not, such as some carefully curated character you maintain on social media, you distract yourself from the deep-seated contempt you harbour for yourself by chasing vanity points online. The dopamine boost takes your attention away from the hard-yet-rewarding work you need to do to (i) accept yourself and (ii) to then put your faith in others.

One-sided love is a self-centred experience rooted in fear. It involves the imagination of another, who cannot be an actual person as their facets of selfhood are not explored. Those are substituted by potentially beautified or likely inaccurate fantasies. Such a state of mind happens within the confines of one’s comfort zone: they have not opened up to make themselves vulnerable and, necessarily, have not dared to discover real people.

Love can hurt precisely because makes you vulnerable. To love is an act of courage, of overcoming one’s inhibitions, of looking past one’s ego, to find the others as they are, with all their imperfections.

The reason Zeus is the tutelary figure of hospitality is because one must exhibit the combination of vigour, magnanimity, and big-picture thinking that befits the god of the sky and form-making. Hospitality is not the mere ephemeral business affair with a tourist, but the readiness to share with others that which you have no surplus of. It is this very attitude that dismantles the barriers, which exist between us.