January 2013
1 post
8 tags
“Don’t worry, you are being set free”: A review of...
It was the faces of the people being suspended that got me. Not knowing a thing about suspension or that entire alternative community, I watched Kate Shenton’s documentary on human suspension, On Tender Hooks, and what drew me in were the faces of the suspended. It was that state of bliss, and a look of pure peace that made me want to see more. It’s a feeling we don’t experience as part of our...
October 2012
1 post
11 tags
I Fell in Love with a City
There’s nothing left for us here, Let’s face it. We’re losing sight of our dream Let’s chase it. Leave our mediocre lives behind. Living Each Day Blind I’m sick of struggling Just to get through it. The time for talking is over Let’s do it. Nothing you can say will change my mind. -The Darkness, “Living Each Day Blind”, Hot Cakes, 2012
I...
September 2012
1 post
1 tag
I moved to Dublin!
Heads up, my little handful of readers. I have left the Big Smoke to head to the Emerald Isles, where I will be residing for at least a year. Expect many awesome Irish things from now on!
August 2012
1 post
10 tags
Love, music, books and British boys Pt 2: Terry
In March 2011, I had been with my boyfriend for almost a year, and was about to move away from London and in with him to the middle of nowhere known as Leighton Buzzard. I was having a tough summer in general, and was looking for things to read that would help or distract me. Since he loves sci-fi and fantasy fiction as much as I do, and has every book written by Terry Pratchett, he lent me...
July 2012
2 posts
8 tags
Love, music, books and British boys Pt 1: Someone...
I remember what I did when I first got LCD Soundsystem’s latest album, This is Happening. I plugged my computer into the speakers, I turned off the lights, I plugged in some mood lighting, and I lay back in bed and stared at the ceiling. The first track, ‘Dance Yrself Clean’, began to play. It sounded very quiet, so I got back up and turned the volume way up. I lay back down...
9 tags
Love, music, books and British Boys: A Two Part...
When I was sixteen I had my very first boyfriend, and closely following that, my very first break-up. During that long and heartbroken summer, alone in Washington, D.C. with only books and my father for company, reading Ayn Rand and writing bad poetry, I wrote my definition of what True Love really is. Funnily enough, that definition has stuck with me till today.
“What is True Love? Is it...
May 2012
4 posts
11 tags
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and...”
– Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamot. Click here for a list of 9 Books on Reading and Writing, where I found this quotation.
7 tags
'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Erich Maria...
I have never really been able to come to terms with war. There has always been something that terrifies me about how a government can order a group of men and women to murder other men and women just like them, but from a different place or for a different cause. Now I have absolutely nothing against the soldiers themselves: I just feel very uncomfortable with the idea of human beings being used...
“At their core, artists and scientists are not so different from one another....”
– Bill O’Brien on art and science for The National Endowment of the Arts.
Einstein and Nietzsche would agree.
(↬ It’s Okay To Be Smart)
April 2012
3 posts
6 tags
A World Book Night article by Chris Cander →
I don’t usually reblog, but this article is a short, eloquent and beautiful story about a World Book Night Giver distributing free copies of Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River to Covenant House, “a shelter for homeless, throwaway and runaway teens.” I can’t stop re-reading it, and each time I am overwhelmed by a feeling of hope and love. I wrote a blog on World Book Day...
8 tags
7 tags
Terry Pratchett's 'Nightwatch', the London Riots,...
About fifteen minutes ago I turned the last page of Terry Pratchett’s Nightwatch. The book had more in store for me than I had expected. I expected another Guards novel, but nothing that would really shake me. I didn’t expect it to echo the sentiments that had been resonating in my head during the London Riots last year, but in such a concise, apt and elegant way. Mr Pratchett...
March 2012
4 posts
7 tags
Gender Across Borders published my blog post! →
Gender Across Borders, a wonderful website on gender justice, has published my blog post on gender-stereotyping and toys as part of their “How Are Gender Stereotypes Forced Onto Children” series. Very happy and proud to have my writing published for the first time!
8 tags
So mothers, teach your children well
Fact: Everyone has a mother.
You can’t argue against that, can you? Perhaps you don’t know your mother, or aren’t close to her, or haven’t been brought up with one, but somewhere along the line, everyone has had a mother. And everyone has a father too, of course, but today, on Mother’s Day, I’m going to talk specifically about mothers, which is something every...
“Books are a hardbound drug with no danger of overdose. I am the happy victim of...”
– Karl Lagerfeld (via thechopinist)
10 tags
In Honour of World Book Day 2012: On Books
A few months ago someone on Facebook posted a link to World Book Night’s 2012 Reading Resolutions. Now, I honestly don’t believe in new year resolutions. If it’s something that has a deadline it’s going to be done anyways, and if you haven’t been doing it all this time you’ll need more than a flimsy resolution to do it. What I do believe in, however, is the...
February 2012
1 post
6 tags
Food to Fuel the Quarterlife Crisis
Today, I bought a box of Frosties. This is the first time I have consciously decided to buy Frosties since I was about nine years old. Standing in the Tesco’s aisle, bogged down in a fog of Sunday-morning half-sleep and general grumpiness, my eyes wandered from the end of the aisle where cereals are decorated with smug wheatsheafs and claims of 0% fat, down past the neutral-not-so-unhealthy...
January 2012
2 posts
7 tags
Foody post: Earl Grey Cupcakes
So, since ‘Keyf Yapmak’ is all about things that make me happy, and I have a healthy obsession with food, I have decided to add foody things to this blog as well. However, I tell you the things that the recipes with magazine-perfect images of their perfect food don’t tell you, things like ‘cream together butter and sugar’ is not that easy. So basically, here is the...
7 tags
A Day at the V&A: Postmodernism (a.k.a. Teapots...
So I wrote this review during the opening week of the exhibition, and like a complete tool never clicked ‘publish’. Yes, I am a disgrace. I am aware of this. However since this is a good opportunity for anyone to see the exhibition before it closes in February, this is a good a time as any to publish it. Enjoy.
It’s comforting to know that after all those seminars at UCL where I...
December 2011
1 post
7 tags
Toy Story: You DO have a choice
I remember the first time I walked into Hamley’s as an adult. Ironically, it was to buy my mother some Harry Potter merchandise. I remember walking through a flurry of bubbles into the magical world of The Mega Toy Store, filled with screaming children and stressed parents. As I tried to figure out where the Harry Potter stuff was, I was genuinely surprised to see the floors clearly...
August 2011
6 posts
7 tags
Wotever Sex at the Royal Vauxhall Taverns
What do you usually do on a Tuesday night after work? Trudge home, inhale dinner, chill a bit, head to bed? Maybe a bit of thrilling laundry, or, *gasp* ironing? That is unfortunately what my Tuesdays are usually like. However two Tuesdays ago, I was invited into the world of Wotever Sex, and saw a lot of things I normally wouldn’t see on a weeknight before 10pm. Or even after 10pm. Or...
6 tags
6 tags
Nocturnes by John Connolly
A few months ago I was given John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things to read. After not being able to tear myself away from it, I was determined to read anything by him that dealt with the supernatural and dark fairy tales. I certainly got what I asked for, and far more.
The most concise way that I can describe Nocturnes is that it’s Roald Dahl’s short stories, but with actual...
“In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.”
– T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
3 tags
Nation by Terry Pratchett
I had certain expectations in mind when opening the first page of Nation. I have only read a few of Terry Pratchett’s books, all of which were part of the Discworld series, so I was expecting his signature tongue-in-cheek humour, ridiculous names and a clever tale that would make me laugh uncontrollably.
So I guess the first thing I should tell you is: throw your expectations out the...
Doing some Keyf
Keyf Yapmak is a Turkish verb, which means ‘to do ‘Keyf’. Keyf itself is a complicated word, and from what I gathered from a semi-translation from a friend, it means a mix of a personal happiness/contentedness/being happy or content in the moment. This is what I get from reading and looking at art, and so I have decided to name my blog after this amazing term, to begin a...
