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Me, Tuomas

Tuomas Holopainen escapes the overwhelming emotions into music, into symphonic metal.
The soul of Nightwish is searching for a paradise lost, flawless beauty, perfect balance and the truest love there is.

The child is kind, too kind, says the family of the boy. The boy keeps to himself in his own dreamworld his whole childhood.
He learns to read at age of 2, plays with plastic alphabet and reads Donald Duck, tales from the Moominvalley and The Lord of the Rings.
He spends his time roaming the fantasy worlds in the woods and meadows of his childhood home.

Tuomas Holopainen had a happy childhood.
"The thing just is: life is full of drama. Friends come and go. Girlfriends come and go. People you trust betray you.
Family is the only thing that is certain. It's terribly comforting to know that such unconditional love exists."

At the age of seven the boy starts to play the piano and clarinet. Even in his early teens he still doesn't really listen to music.

"I took lessons and liked to play but music wasn't a vital condition to me like it is now.
Only at 15 when I found Metallica I started my metal phase. At 18 I dared for the first time to try and make some songs of my own.
I listened to a couple of bands with a female vocalist. I felt like it was really my thing: metal with atmospheric female vocals."

The boy doesn't end up chasing his childhood dream to become a marine biologist who travels the oceans and watches walruses mating in Greenland. Not even though he does study biology in university for nearly a year.
He finds a new world in making music. Composing becomes a reason to live and a place to escape.

"What people don't necessarily realize is that this really wasn't my calling or anything like that. I was never one of those people who as a kid dreamed to become a musician, bandmember or a rock star."

The Cinderella story of Nightwish

"There are many people who say that being a musician is like a service occupation and that you make music for the fans.
I have to honestly say that I don't make music for the fans or feel like I'm in a service occupation.
This is where my selfishness shows: I want to make music above all for myself because that is how it stays honest which is something the fans can approve."

Tuomas sees the 11-year long history of Nightwish as a Cinderella tale of sorts because only six months after the band was founded on the Christmas of 1996 it had a recording contract and within a year from that their first album was out.

"Year after year, album after album we have went upwards in terms of popularity and music, so far at least.
In my opinion our band's greatest resource is our honesty and sincerity."

On the 22nd of October, 2005 the band gave a farewell letter to the vocalist Tarja Turunen: "You have said yourself that you are merely a 'guest musician' in Nightwish. Now that visit ends and we will continue Nightwish with a new female vocalist."
The band could no longer connive at the dealings and attitude of Turunen and her husband Marcelo Cabuli.

The identity of the new female vocalist was published on the May 24th.
Tuomas notes that the last 1,5 years have been a hard school. It's difficult to imagine that the media hassle would be over.
The future doesn't scare him and the past is -well- past, even though the series of events has been one of the toughest ones in his life, if not the toughest.

"During the last 1,5 years the boys of the band have grown more close. I could never in my life do this job all alone.
We're typical Finns in the sense of not talking very much. Nevertheless we have this silent understanding of each other."

Has the success changed you?

"I have become more cynical, which is not a good thing. I have seen the nasty side of the world: I do not trust people innocently.
I'm much more wary than I used to be and choose carefully people I'll let close. Like there's now this extra veil between me and the world."

Seeker of Balance

Sometimes Tuomas feels like the Creator is playing some weird game of chess in his head.
The Creator gives a little and then takes it back right away:

"It's like He's playing games with me, keeping the emotions in that side so I can make those songs."

The guys of the band say they wish Tuomas will never feel really well and balanced because that would mean the end of the band.
Tuomas doesn't want to sound ungrateful.

"I do have a great life. I can do whatever I want however I want. I have an awesome family and lots of good friends.
Extrnally everything seems to be fine but I still haven't found the balance inside my head."

You are hard on yourself?

"Yes, yes I am. I can dwell it on days if I don't succeed in something. Why do I do that? Why?
I have tons of perfectionism towards myself even though I'm completely fine with other people only doing their best.
In my mind everything shoud be perfect. It makes me anxious. Why it isn't? That's when that little kid shows up, the kid in the obstinate age.
I withdraw and clam up, ponder and twiddle things until I almost lose my mind."

"I'd like to learn to accept the negative aspects of life as well as my own flaws better.
I can dwell on a flaw I've noticed in myself for weeks, lose my sleep and punish myself unreasonably."

"I still don't want life to be boring and dull. I wish I could deal with things inside my head more reasonably. More humor to life!
I'm a bit of a stick, a sober-sides. I should learn to laugh more at everything that is happening in the world."

The mother has given a wise advice to her son: before you make decisions or drown in self-pity, sleep three nights.
After that things look different.

"Sometimes there are situations in life when something troubles you and life feels completely bleak.
It's amazing how different perspective you can have after a couple of slept nights."

An Escapist

"I see myself as a quite selfish person because I fight hard for what I want. I want things to go my way and if they don't, I get pissed off.
I also don't have much patience but I do have willpower and I never want to give up. Some people may of course think that I'm a quitter because I sometimes escape conflicts into my own world. If that is quitting, so be it."

Tuomas says he's an escapist who shuns the everyday hardships of life but whom music makes much more bearable person.

"I've always had troubles in facing the negative aspects of everyday life, especially conflicts. I'd rather withdraw.
I'm a romantic who would like everyone just to love each other and have fun. I would love it if we could live in a kind of world you see in the covers of those magazines of Jehovah's Witnesses."

What makes the reality so escapable?

"It's not like I think the world is a completely shitty place I have to get away from. I'm not that cynical.
I like life very much and everything that happens here. Life overwhelms me every day: Overwhelming feeling of falling in love, overwhelming beauty, or the feeling you get when you look at the nature or the sea. All that shatters me inside in both good and bad."

"I'm an emotional person. I feel all the good and all the suffocating evil in life very strongly. The only way I can deal with it is music."

On the album that is out due Septemeber the zest for life, visions of true goodness and beauty of life are more clear than ever before.
For example, the protagonist of the first single Eva is a little girl bullied in school who represents the extreme goodness that knows nothing of the cruel world.

"Symbolically speaking Eva represents all those souls I've damaged in my lifetime whether I've meant it or not."

The Future

"I'm very bad at speaking my mind. My mother always likes to tell me that whenever I'd misbehaved when I was little, she wanted to talk it through but I always rather endured a physical punishment than talked about it."

"In my opinion people talk too much, babble nonsense. They have this incomprehensible illusion about solving all the problems in the world with talking.
It's very true that discussing things does help, but when you look at the state of this planet today you can see that despite all the talking things are heading to bad direction."

Instead of talking people should quiet down, think about things in solitude and trust their own opinion and conscience.
Tuomas says that during the last couple of years he has faced more and more often situations where he's been completely alone.

"I've faced such decisions that I've had to be sure of what I'm doing with no help whatsoever from the band, friends, family, mother or any sort of professionals."

Is it possible that the growing amount of the importance of your conscience in your decisions means you're growing up?

"Could it be? Yikes, what a horrible term."

He elaborates that people should grow up but never become adults.
An adult is often seen as the opposite of a child and that is a view that Tuomas shuns because people should always preserve their inner child.
A sign of growing up is also moving into his own, freshly completed house from the upstairs of his parents' house.

"It was about time, though I have mostly lived in hotels and buses the last ten years."

How is your inner child feeling?

"He is feeling very well. He's found his way back home, or at least he's on that path already."

What is that path like?

"It is a long and beautiful path. Fir trees similar to those in the backwoods of my home are bending above it.
It's a starlit, wintry night and the trees are covered with snow. The moonlight illuminates the path as I'm walking towards home."

Tuomas quotes an idea in the Kevin Costner movie Dragonfly: there necessarily isn't a higher power.
Mankind makes things real with their faith. If you believe in something strongly enough, it can take you anywhere.

It feels like you have had faith.

"I have. And I still have it."