YOU Killing YOUR Half

http://www.innerlocusart.com/comfort.html

You set out for a walk in the forest with your dwarfs. You find a little lake in between the trees. You lean to water surface with a narcissistic desire to see your image in the middle of leafs' vivid green reflecting.

Your reflection is looking at you with a childishly curious expression. You look back at it with a cold expression in your long face. Your eyes are bubbling with indifference - an indifference which could
quieten any sound.

You want it to be dead. Your reflection - you want it to be dead. Your other part - you want it to be dead. You are taken by the illusion that if you do so, you'll feel a wild pleasure which should be exclusive to sophisticated vandals; barbars of great taste. You feel like if you kill it, you'll become a piece of puzzle that will fit in perfectly.

You wait leaning to water. You look at your reflection. You wonder how long more it will take until your image in water finally drowns. You feel that a masochistic pleasure is starting to grow in you - almost something sexual. You keep looking at it. You keep looking until you once again realize you'll never be free of it. You say "fuck it" and turn away. So does it.

Haydarpaşa In Colors

Haydarpaşa, with all its all magnificence, is one of the most dominant buildings in Istanbul's soul. If Istanbul is a meeting point between east and west, then Haydarpaşa, being the main train station on the Asian side, is the very point where  these two symbolic poles touch each other perhaps in the most elegant manner. It's like an eagle head proudly standing at the edge of the Asian continent looking at the European shores of Istanbul with a confidence that it seems to take from the vast continent behind.

It was always depicted in the old Turkish movies as the first and rather shocking contact point between peasant Anatolian families and the "challenging" Istanbul with all its - to any foreign eye - intimidating skyline that can be observed right when stepping out the main hall. Perhaps it's this effect or surprise that it makes it "so Istanbul". 

In those movies, you would mostly observe these families observing this skyline - which seemingly is so much more different to what they have in their villages - with thoughtful eyes and maybe also hear the hero utter a word or two showing that he accepts the challenge he is being offered. That that challenge is still the major one going on in Turkey's politics today.

This show I came across by accident. Like many of the Cultural Capital - 2010 things, I didn't hear about this when it happened. Anyway, better than nothing, I'm putting it here.Nice one, indeed, done by these guys.

‘YEKPARE’ (monolithic) from nerdworking on Vimeo.

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Yet Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

...

Oscar Wilde


Thanks to the Flying Dutchman from Turkey.

David and Goliath

Here is the result of our new project with ArtActors. This time we worked on Caravaggio's David and Goliath. 

I'm starting a new category - ArtActors - under which I'll be collecting our work.

Blurry Picture of The Beautiful Day

The moment you realize you are facing with beauty is the moment where you feel like a new born into a different reality. Like a baby with instincts to breathe or reach out for mother, we open up ourselves to a momentary grasp of eternity.

It is like to have a slight and curious look into a train rapidly passing by - seeing inside but not having the means to understand what it's really like inside. The beauty is a window opening to eternity remaining open for just a tantalizing moment. But even that little dose of eternity you capture through it, makes you a little richer.

Pain - in this sense - can be beautiful, because the true beauty of a thing lies in the way it is capable to wound our souls. Like titches on faces or scars on hands, a soul with its new wounds obtains new meanings or depths. Every wound uncovers a new unknown to discover. The beauty of a thing lies in its capacity to make us feel lost but at home - at the same time.

A beautiful thing infects our beings and that infection never leaves us again. It circulates - in words we utter, in thoughts we create; traces of that infection will be evident.

When living the beautiful day, there is a point you realize you're being infected. You look around with a humble awe. There is no yearning, there is no missing; you are one with who are missing.

From behind the camera, the beautiful day is something to be documented sometimes at the expense of not experiencing it. Its rarity inflicts an unsuppressable inspiration to capture it. The desire is to imprison the feeling on a piece of paper in such a way that it radiates a feeling of completeness, to make the eye the witness of a state of unity. Unity through the empathy with the one who experienced it but also in the sense it makes the viewer feel the unity with life.

It is like taking the picture of that tantalizing short moment where window into eternity stays open and perhaps because of this very ambition, the photographer is doomed to fail when it comes to share it with others.

But sometimes the picture of the beautiful day becomes a personal beauty for the one who is taking it; a personal description that is inspired by the tension between the beauty and his alienated machine is born.


The beautiful thing is a like star in otherwise dark skies. So no matter how you look for it, the question maybe is this:

How bright will our skies be when we watch it in our last breath?

"...A true philosopher, Spinoza believed, would cultivate what he called intuitive knowledge, a flash of insight that fused all the information he had acquired discursively and which was an experience of what Spinoza believed to be God. He called this experience "beatitude"..."

from "The Battle for God" / Karen Armstrong

The Worst Man Speech

As mentioned in my previous post, I was in Italy for Idil and Axel's wedding. Nothing in the wedding was organized according to traditions - whatsoever.

So not surprisingly, there wasn't a Best Man for Axel; but I took the honour to be his Worst Man.

Here is my Worst Man speech upon his consent:

"About 18 Months ago, in the offices of the very same client I was providing my services to, a rather crazy looking guy started to appear. A foreigner; someone who wouldn't talk much but when he did, he did so loudly.

Soon through common friends we started to have occasional smoke breaks together. We would talk about stuff, discuss about intellectually enriching experiences such as women of South Africa or night life in Kazakhstan.

As much as he was open in the way he told about his experiences, he had a certain attitude of reservedness - something I at first attributed to his flaw of Scandinavian nature. But later on, I started to trace a familiar quality in his reservedness. And that feeling of familiarity might have led to a series of terrible consequences including our very existence here on this beautiful day.

The way I felt was that his reservedness was the kind that could only stem from a good and essentially innocent heart in an effort to protect itself from the evil world outside. In my humble observation though, at intelligent human beings, this kind of reservedness tends to usually couple with a strong and bitter sense of sarcasm which Axel interestingly doesn't have.

But as anyone else spending more than 10 minutes with him, you could realize why Axel didn't need to include any traces of sarcasm in his behaviour. Because his very existence in the universe is a sarcastic joke. He is sarcasm itself. Not bending concepts, phrases, meanings with irony but bending LIFE itself instead.

Luckily for our lives to bend, Axel likes' influence isn't necessary. In life's genes we have enough irony to feed countless life changing moments. At such a moment, I have decided to bring these two people together and still, even today, I'm surprised by this very decision, let alone its consequences.

OK - let's share some gossips:

At first, I mentioned about Axel to Idil. Upon her consent, I mentioned to Axel about this chick I have been knowing for such a long time. I showed him pictures of hers on Facebook and he said: "YEAH, IT WORKS FOR ME"

Axel, of course, didn't have a clue who he was talking about. I told him that her looks was just the start. Yes, she was very smart but what made her special was her misleadingly incurious, cheerful yet serious attitude towards life. I told him about the many cases at weddings where people were curious who that girl in her all the way cool dress dancing with all the grace was. Well - here we are at her wedding.

Anyway şekerler, they came together at Osman's birthday party for the first time in a dark little bar. I was with Idil when she first saw him from the distance. Axel was buying a drink probably knowing that he was being observed. Then those words spilled out of Idil's mouth: "HE LOOKS LIKE A BANDIT!".

Yes - Axel has tough face. Especially with his new titches on his forehead which he wants us to believe to be gained in heroic action where he saved a poor woman from some savage man - which - of course - we don't buy. Because it would be much more Axelish for him to get drunk in some shitty little bar in France to hit his head at the doorstep when leaving; right after to lose his laptop, wallet and not to mention his one shoe of course.

But yes, even without those titches that time, we agreed with Idil that he looked bit like Klaus Kinkski.

And all this talk gave me a chill for a moment. Because I was introducing a guy - a bandit like looking buy - to one of my best friends in this world, on the sole basis of my belief he had a good heart? I kept silent.

Today - after more than a year - I don't anymore believe that Axel has a good heart. Because I had the privilege to experience the means to know how warm, loving and welcoming he is.

A good friend of mine once said that she believed that everyone deserves a pair. Yes, I believe that too. But I further believe that everyone deserves a home.

So, what is home? Is it just an apartment? Is it a city? Is it a culture? Is it the perfect drag of smoke you have in bright sunlight on a cool day? Or is it a feeling of warmth fed by love we give to and receive from our families and friends that we carry everywhere?

I'd like to toast to these two beautiful people now. For literally creating a home for themselves, but also for making my home and each and every one of your homes and OUR HOME bigger, warmer and more colorful with their love.

Axel - welcome home, baby. And I know - by definition - I'm always welcome too. Because I'm your worst man.

I love you, guys."