Well, this is a goodbye...

[papajohnny]

I feel sad that this day has come, but now that it is here...

I'm not sure how long I have been on this website. Like most people who transferred here from the old official forum, I did so in December 2012. As for my real registration date...I'm not sure. A year prior to it? Two years?
Not that it matters...

This has always been a little forum that I've had in my heart, back from the beginning. I was 15 when I registered, I think, maybe 16. A kid, a dumb kid, really, looking back at it, who loved the best band in the world.
Amorphis meant so much to me, it's hard to describe it. I'll just say that were it not for that one time I heard my favorite Amorphis song (and one of my all-time favorite songs in general), my life would have turned out a lot different. Luckily for me, I fell in love with Amorphis at just the right time.
And, well, here I am now.

I still love Amorphis to this day, but as it turns out, things change a bit every season and every year. Amorphis will always have a place in my heart, but over the years I've grown a bit apart from it.
That, along with the fact that this forum isn't what it used to be, have prompted me to make this decision of leaving it permanently. It is hardly an event of huge importance in anyone's life but mine, but I feel that with leaving this forum I am closing a chapter of my life, or at least, turning a very important page.

Even though this forum has, sadly, been slowly dying for a while now, I still wanted to write a goodbye to...well, whoever may read it. There are a few of you here yet, whether guys from the old forum like the ever-awesome and super-nice @tuonelan, or newer members whom I've, regretfully, never gotten to fully appreciate. Nonetheless, I wish you all the best in life.

A special farewell and thanks goes to my two favorite ladies here - @xptrinity and @Eurynome. Without Trin I would have never been able to see Amorphis in Sofia for the first time in my life, back in 2011 - which is, to this day, probably my favorite concert I've ever attended. Truly a magical experience. I feel bad about never getting to bring her that bottle of rakija I promised...
Eury was also there, and it was thanks to her that I got my first vinyls of Amorphis - the limited repressing of their first two albums. Those two items are some of my most cherished possessions.
I'm not sure if they will ever read this, and I don't know how they fare in their life, but I hope everything is well, and everything shall be well.

Well...that's about it, I guess.

Thank you all for the wonderful experience I've had sharing this place with you over the course of years.
I wish you all the best in life and have a merry last day of summer... May the autumn, and all coming seasons, bring joy to you.

Goodbye.

 

[tuonelan]

Fair sailing, friend.

 

[Eurynome]

I don`t know if you'll come back one more time to read this but I want to thank you from all my heart for your kind words which found me at a dark time. The other day we buried my father, who was the closest person to me in all of my beloved family and will be my hero for as long as I live. Yesterday my mom and I spent hours reading all those heartwarming condolence cards and letters, some 150 in all and many of them quite long and intense, and I remember saying to my mom that if there`s one thing I'd like to achieve in my life, it is to touch the people around me in a similarly kind and uplifting way as my dad always did. I don't know if I'll ever quite achieve this goal but when shortly afterwards I read your post (thanks Tuonelan for pointing me to it!), it was with a tear in my eye and the feeling in my heart that perhaps, so far, I haven't utterly failed...

As for the more general circumstances, my situation is so similar to yours that I allow myself to copypaste your quote - Amorphis will always have a place in my heart, but over the years I've grown a bit apart from it. I love their new album and am listening to it as I write, but they're simply no longer the focal point of my life and centre of my musical universe. In a way this is sad but then again it also has opened new doors for me and given me the mental space I needed to discover new bands that otherwise would perhaps forever have flown under my radar. But Amorphis was not only the band that introduced this old hippie to metal but - together with this forum, or rather its original version which for thousands of days was my first morning and last evening stop on the data superhighway - the instance through which I found, directly or indirectly, pretty much my entire present-day circle of friends after living in social isolation for almost a decade around the turn of the century.

In the unlikely event you'll ever join Facebook, you'll find me there under my real name, but I`d likewise be glad to hear from you per e-mail some day (see info section on eurynomes-photos.com). And wherever you go from here, may love and friendship and music forever follow you. <3

 

[Brell]

Sorry to see you go Papajohnny. I haven't been very active here in quite a while, mainly due to work/family commitments, but also I'm just spending more time on Amorphis facebook groups. I do agree that this site has been slowly dying too. The owner of the site never even officially transferred the moderator duties to me. Even if he contacted me now about that, I would probably just decline.