a busy spring day

My day started with a visa appointment at 08.00 at the Netherlands consulate. Thankfully the consulate is at Beyoglu on a small cul-de-sac off Istiklal, which means, its walking distance from our house. Beyoglu is where the night life thrives so it is always very weird to walk through it early in the morning. Most of the shops on Istiklal had not opened yet and it was quite empty. We (Seda and me) breakfast at Lebon, which is an ‘old school’ patisserie where service is done by very polite old man who have been doing this for ages and make you feel welcome and relaxed and it has delicious pastries fresh from the oven in the morning.
Then we went through the ordeal of visa application. The point of the entire process is designed to make it so difficult and humiliating that you will think twice before you ever want to go to the country in question ever again. Even better it is designed to make you give up during the very process deeming it not worth it. But of course I have done this so many times, at so many consulates, that I can do it without getting bothered, though I am not sure this callous attitude is something to be proud of.
Then as is the case every Tuesday I went to Santral in a taxi with Gozde, Bulent and Iskender. Iskender and Bulent teach courses that start at 11.00, while mine starts at 12.00, and Gozde comes to listen in on my lectures. We arrive around 10.30 and have a coffee and a nice chat before we go our separate ways.
After Bulent and Iskender had gone I got a phone call from Efe who was my student last year and directed me in the cameo role of a vampire last week. He said they were about to screen the film and asked me if I would like to join. So off we went with Gozde to see the short mocumentary about contemporary vampire culture in Istanbul. The film was hilarious and I laughed heartily throughout. Very witty and perfectly acted, it even contained a critique of the ethics of documentary filmmaking, the way all mocumentaries should. Then came my own lecture, which lasted three hours. After the lecture I went to Otto with Gozde. Otto is a very hip Italian restaurant, which for some reason is located inside the campus. We had risotto (my favourite dish) and homemade pasta, while Gozde convinced me that we should go to Galerist. Galerist is a gallery located in one of the most beautiful buildings on Istiklal called Misir Apartmani (which literally translates as the Egypt Building). Gozde failed to remember the name and the artist of the exhibition that had started there but assured me that it was something I would like to go to. So go we did. We ended walking up the fabulous staircase, since the lift seemed to be stuck on the seventh floor.
It turns out it was a Juergen Teller exhibition called Nurnberg. The photographs were great but few in numbers and frankly I am not convinced that they should be printed as small as they had been. It was more of a ‘teaser’ to an exhibition than an exhibition proper. My favourite photo was “Kristen lifting skirt” and the accompanying “Mein Schloss”. I loved the entire “Liliy” series as well. But can’t say I enjoyed the humour behind the self-portraits.
Walking back to Cihangir where both me and Gozde live we went past “Mor”, which is a little jewellery shop that I frequent a lot. In fact I buy all my rings and necklaces from there. I had both a necklace last mount but a bead had fallen off and since we were passing by and I had the necklace on, we popped in. I left the necklace there to be repaired. It felt wierd to go in a shop and leave an accessory behind.
Quite exhausted, I spent the evening watching the third season of “Desperate Housewives” on DVD, with Seda (love of my life). Tomorrow I have two meetings I have to attend and at night I am going to the Kaki King concert. Gencay thinks it will be like a night at “The Planet”. For those of you who do not watch “The L Word”, “The Planet” is the lesbian café/bar/club in that TV series. Of course that’s just wishful thinking on his part. Just because the performer is a lesbian will not turn the event into a lesbian night. In fact it is a concert organised by the Turkish Rolling Stone. Yesim who works for the magazine, and who is a dear friend and a fellow film critic, has left my name at the door so I don’t have to worry about getting tickets. I hope I will find time to tell you about the concert tomorrow.

After snow craze

Yesterday was a hectic day. Spring term started so I went all the way to Alibeykoy (the end of the Golden Horn) to the university, to first meet with my course contact person (otherwise known as the CCP) who is also an ex-student, Pinar, then to lecture for 3 hours. I was hoping secretly that most students wouldn’t turn up because they tend to do that on the first day of term and especially when the weather conditions promise traffic jams. Alas they were all present so lecture I did. It is difficult to go back into the rhythm of it after a two - month break.

Then I met with Alisa (my film scholar friend who lives at London and whom I mentioned in a pervious entry concerning her stance against blogging) who is at Istanbul for a week and wanted to go to the hairdresser who cuts my hair as well as Seda’s and he is good. After years and years of long hair I finally got it cut short. The decision came after I sat through four seasons of “The L Word” watching brilliant haircuts. Of course Seda had already gone to the hairdresser in question and everyone including me had adored her hair. So now Alisa wanted to go as well. The hairdresser is on the same street as we live so we met there and asked if he was available he told us to come back in half an hour so we went back to my house and had a chat.

One of the topics was blogging. Alisa once again told me she couldn’t understand the urge. I asked if she understand the urge to keep a dairy. She said: “yes but you keep your dairy under your pillow, you don’t show it don’t to anybody”. I answered: “yes but that’s dangerously close to repressing I don’t want to get overly theoretical but the more your inner thoughts become a part of the symbolic system the better for you”. You see I am very much into psychoanalysis whereas Alisa isn’t so all I have done is giving an explanation that she won’t really understand!

However what I found really interesting was her explanation that she stopped reading a friends blog because she realised “I would like him better if I did not read it”. I found the declaration extremely striking when she first said it and since then I have realised why. If you like someone on the condition that you turn a blind eye to what he himself wants you to know, then you end up likening someone who is most definitely not that person but an imaginary construct of your own. I for one would never feel so desperate to be liked that I am willing to be someone else (or taken to be someone else) for the privilege. Both parties are better off without any liking on any body’s part. This seems to me very close to saying “I will like him better if I don’t know him better” which very much reminds me of precisely the urge to ‘pass’. To pass as straight while you are gay to pas as “white Turk’ while you are in fact Kurd etc. To deny yourself believing you will be ‘liked’ by more people if you do so. More to the point it reminds me of those condescending people who are gracious enough to be my friend if and only if I don’t point out to them that I am a lesbian. So I always knew there was a connection between blogging and coming out that is why the name of the blog is “out and about” but the more I think of it the more related they become.

Anyhow I couldn’t wait until Alisa’s hair was done because I had to rush to a board of directors meeting of SIYAD, (The Turkish Film Critics Association of Turkey). I am the deputy chair of this association. We talked about the election that is to be held on Thursday and the award ceremony on the 3rd of March as well as the events to be held during the upcoming Istanbul Film Festival, I promised to moderate a panel at the festival called “Turkish Cinema Inside Out”, which consists of foreign and Turkish film critics talking about contemporary Turkish cinema. I also promised to go to a studio this Saturday where they will shoot me talking about the nominees for the best director category, which will be shown during the award ceremony.

I wonder how Alisa’s hair turned out.

This morning I had a bit of slow time to counter the dashing about yesterday and went back to “Tipping The velvet”. It turns out the novel is even better than I thought, not just a lesbian romance but a lot of queer sex as well. Nan the protagonist is now earning her living as a male prostitute just like Shane from “The L Word”, we are told once did. And now that I have mentioned it I have to go back to reading it.