I participated in a very weird event last night. Let me try to explain what it was. Now there is this writer, songwriter, singer, scholar person called Bulent Somay who happens to be my ex-boyfriend (yes, yes once upon a time I had boyfriends as well as girlfriends. Now I am over it, so shall we move on already?) The event consisted of six different people reading excerpts from his books and Bulent singing songs that he has also written about in between the readings. Now I am aware that there is a type of event where a writer reads from his own books. At least, I know there is in other parts of the world, we don’t have that kind of tradition in Turkey. I also happen to know of events organised in memory of a dead author where various people read parts of his omnibus. I have never heard of this being done to a writer while he is alive and kicking and actually present in the same place at the same time. At least, I had never heard of it until a few months ago when one such event was organised for my friend Fatih. I didn’t go to that one and frankly had I not been invited to actually participate by reading; I doubt I would have attended this one either. I am not sure who actually attends these events: Is it just friends or do anonymous readers actually come to spend their Saturday night at an event like this. I really don’t know. What I do know is that the place was full last night, mostly with Bulent’s friends and students.
The event took place in Garaj Istnabul a multi purpose performance venue where there is a different event, performance, play, and concert every night that opened a year ago. I have been meaning to go there from day one but never found the opportunity until last night. So that was certainly one of the pluses of getting involved with this. The way to reach the venue is very entertaining: you enter a garage (literally) and go down among cars that are being washed repaired or just parked to reach a back door made of metal and when you open that you reach a back street and turn left to enter the venue. Of course you can also reach the same spot through the twisting back streets of Beyoglu but interestingly enough this route is easier to explain to those who don’t live at Beyoglu plus it is an experience, “a happening” all on its own. Although there are signs, encouraging you to move on, it is difficult to believe that you are really meant to go underground in a garage to get to the kind of event you are aiming for and there is a ‘magical’ feel to emerging on the other side to a cobblestone little street.
So who were the “readers” apart from me? First was Mehmet Ali Alabora who is an actor in television series and from what I gather quite famous although I don’t know him because I haven’t watched television for over ten years now. I do, however, know that he was one of the presenters (or are they called hosts?) at the Istanbul Film Festival opening night that I related in a previous blog entry. I am also told by Seda (love of my life) that he is related to a actor friend of ours, Ali, who is also an ex-student of mine. Anyway I guess he was the only real celebrity among us and thus he did his reading on stage. Then there was Ayse who is a very accomplished jazz pianist and one of the most intelligent people of my acquaintance. She is also one of Bulent’s ex-girlfriends. (If you already think there is way too many ex-girl friends in this just you wait as the plot thickens) Ayse was in one of her ‘fun’ moods, and when she is, she makes me laugh continuously which she proceeded to do the moment I went backstage to join her and Timucin who is another “reader” for the night. Timucin plays the percussions, though this is not his only occupation in life. He is also the husband of another one of Bulent’s ex-girlfriends, Meltem. Wait a second Meltem is in fact not an ex-girlfriend but rather an ex-wife. And to thicken the plot beyond comprehension let me tell you that Timucin is also the ex-boyfriend of Muge, who is the owner of the publishing house, which publishes Bulent’s books. (I will comment on all this in a moment but there is still more complications to come so bear with me) Another “reader” was Iskender who is Ayse’s ex-boyfriend and my ex-therapist and last but not least there was Ferda who is a famous philosophy scholar and the Foucault expert in Turkey and who to the best of my knowledge is not an ex of anyone!
If all this sounds extremely incestuous let me tell you that I do too. The only comment I have on this is that in Turkey “intellectuals” are a very rare bread and there is so few of them that when some one reaches 50 smtg like Bulent has done you end up having accumulated a lot of ‘ex’s that tend to be a panorama of the entire intellectual scene. The same is true for the gay scene, which in fact partially overlaps with the intellectual scene. This does not mean that the whole situation isn’t a field trip for a psychoanalyst. All the same, since there are those who claim to be psychoanalysts among this mess, it isn’t up to me to make the analysiss.
Bulent had chosen our excerpts with some sort of connection between the reader and the text and I read a piece on perversion and lesbianism! Despite the fact that everything about the event was weird, I have to admit that all the readers had perfect pronunciation and intonation and where nice to listen to. The best by far was Ayse who sort of performed the pieces rather than reading them and had the slightest bit of mockery in her voice throughout like she didn’t quite buy what she was reading, which I know is the case. (Back stage she asked Bulent if she could caught when she reached an argument she did not agree with and I said if that was a possibility I would have a coughing fit throughout) Since her excerpts were from articles Bulent had written about songs, whenever she came to a quotation of the lyrics, she sang rather than read and of course there is no way anyone can beat that kind of performance.
Mehmet Ali, Timucin and Ayse did their reading from the stage. Me, Iskender and Ferda sat among the audience and read from where we sat with our headset microphones and the ‘robot lights’ finding us the moment we started to speak. The whole thing was certainly an experience.
When the performance part was over I had to go away immediately to a catch the end tail of a friends birthday dinner party at Zubeyir Ocakbasi (“Ocakbasi” is a traditional meat restaurant where you go to eat, “much meat” as my friend Alisa used to say, and drink much raki, the traditional spirit, that goes to your head immediately) and this meant going from one end of Beyoglu to the other at 11.30 pm, which is always quite an experience on a Saturday night since there is a traffic jam of pedestrians!!!
The things that happened once I reached my destination, is a horse of a different colour and another blog entry altogether.
Posts Tagged ‘books
birthday party 38-2: presents
It is now a proven fact that to write, “to be continued” is a jinx, and I can never continue if I was foolish enough to say it. I put the birthday photos on facebook and they created quite a stir and many comments so instead of writing things about it on my blog I ended up reading and writing on facebook. As they say an image is worth how many words was it?
In order to break the jinx I will be very vain and list all the presents I was given on my birthday, rather than go in detail about who came and what happened.
Banu, who was once a postgraduate student of mine (a “mature student” as the incredibly stupid phrase goes, which is meant to ‘oh so very delicately’ convey the fact that the person in question is older than you might expect for a student. In Banu’s case it meant she had spent her life earning shit loads of money and was now determined to spend it on things that gave her pleasure: writing an MA thesis on film being one and travelling around the world being the other, which she is now in the process of doing) gave me a rainbow maker, which when adjusted to your window, is supposed to cast rainbows in to your room. I have yet to check it out, but it seems quite an ingenious little device with a solar panel and a crystal and all that.
Ceren who is another old student (and no one would ever accuse her of being mature:) gave me what she referred to as “the hypertext par excellence” though I would rather call it “the coffee-table book par excellence”. The title of the book is “Pick Me Up” and its cover is made up of extremely bright colours, with a 3-d effect that scream “pick me up” all over again. The subtitle: ‘stuff you need to know’, sort of tells you all you need to know about the book and as you might have guessed already none of the stuff inside has anything to do with knowledge of the necessary kind. To give an indication, there are pages entitled “Who on Earth was Columbus? We Cornered His Ghost to Find Out” and “Why is the Roman Empire Like McDonald’s?” the answer to this being: “Both are (or were) set on world domination (of sorts)” I am sure you get the picture. It is fun and stupid and a perfect gift!
But as far as books go Harun’s present has a special significance: a beautifully illustrated 1916 edition of Longfellow’s Evangeline would have been significant on its own right but it came attached with this unbelievable story: Harun, it turns out, bought the book five years ago for my birthday but it coincided with the time when he was quitting his job at the university and in all the hassle this entailed he could not give it to me. Then he forgot all about it until two nights ago when he was talking to a friend at home about what he should buy me as a present while the friend in question was roaming through his library. The friend promptly took out the Evangeline Harun had brought for me five years ago and thus the book finally ended up in my hands.
I had yet another book as a present from Selim a fellow film scholar, although it was sent by Esen, a designer friend of mine who could not make it to the party, and sent a book she designed instead. The book is actually a work of art by the artist Leyla Gediz and is called K-141 Kursk, after the Russian submarine that sunk in 2000. The one that became famous because the authorities just left the soldiers to die in it refusing to launch a rescue mission. Leyla Gediz looked at a photo of one of these soldiers, then made a drawing of him, from memory. Then for 118 days (the number of soldiers in the submarine), every day, she drew him again from memory. The result is recorded in the book and apart from anything else it is a very interesting case on memory distortion.
So these were the presents dedicated to my intellectual persona. There were also presents to satisfy the crazy in me. Gencay once again outdid everyone in this respect and gave me a t-shirt that writes ‘eat pussy’ underneath what is the universal traffic sign indicating a restaurant, with fork and knife and plate with the addition of a little cat on the plate. There is no way I could describe it and do it justice you simply have to see it and laugh. More importantly he hand painted it! There is a story behind this one as well: On facebook I saw a friend’s photo with the exact same t-shirt and commented on it indicating how much I adore the t-shirt and asking where I could find it. The answer was that the photo was taken five years ago and she had brought it from Holland. Being on facebook the entire exchange was of course public and did not escape Gencay who proceeded to replicate the t-shirt and got it ready for my birthday. How nice is that??? Of course I ended up putting it on and it is on me in most of the photos of that night.
Now that I have mentioned hand-made presents I have to take the time to salute Gozde who made an oil- on -canvas painting for me: a naked female butt, in front of a purple wall, holding a black whip. Actually she had claimed it was in exchange for me helping her out with her Phd thesis but since, my birthday was when she finally let me see it ,I believe it ended up being a birthday present. I am yet to bring the painting back home since it hasn’t dried! It is so nice to have friends that can make their presents rather than buy them!
Another piece of neat clothing I got was from Feride who happens to be the actress who has portrayed one of my favourite characters in the history of Turkish film: a very-angry-punk-butch in “Iki Genc Kiz” by Kutlug Ataman (who you might know more as a Turner prize winning contemporary artist rather than a Turkish film director and you won’t be wrong) However Feride doesn’t see herself as an actress and would not appreciate this description of her self. She is currently a film critic and if hse were ever to be involved in practical side of cinema I assume she would prefer to do that as a director not an actor. What she gave me was a bright purple tie with a sexy cartoon girl on it carrying a sign that says “school sucks” I put it on immediately (well actually I first gave it to Hakan, so he can tie it for me, since I have no idea how to go about doing that and although I have never once in my life seen Hakan with a tie I know the knowledge is ingrained into men at a very young age) I am yet to wear it to school but the idea of having it on during a lecture is very appealing.
As far as clothing as presents go Faith was, once again, over the top. Fatih is a film scholar and film critic and a short story writer. However, for me, before all that, he is the very best translator in Turkey and has translated people like Borges and Nabakov, as well as, books like American Psycho. He is also partly responsible for the jinx I mentioned since, although everyone knows him as a shameless exhibitionist, he told me not to write about some of the things that happened at the Rainbow Party. And this certainly contributed to my inability to continue relating what I had started! And this censorship plea comes from the man whose present to me was: two pairs of matching lace underwear. This also means that he is the only person who gave Seda (love of my life) a present on my birthday, which is kind of neat. Accompanying the underwear was a candle in the shape of a wine bottle. Kind of obvious what we are supposed to be doing with that one.
Hande, another ex-student who is nowadays working her ass off at a production company which happens to be situated at the building right across my house, so I can actually watch her sweating away, gave me a beautiful enamel brooch with a bear in a dress is dancing with a boy: a picture out of some fairy tale that still manages to look kinky.
In fact it was only with the addition of these presents that I finally completed my costume for the night. I had a pair of wonderful jeans on, a present by Seda (love of my life) and a frilly, lacy, very Goth looking black shirt I had brought from Camden Town. Once I wore the pink ‘eat pussy’ t-shirt under it, leaving the front of it open and pinned my brooche to it and wore the purple tie on top of it all I was looking really good. So much so that Milen, who came at the very end of the night since she had audaciously gone to another party first, told my costume was unbelievably good, and since she has an MA in fashion and not only designs, but also actually tailors very groovy clothes, is more than just a compliment.
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