Keyf Yapmak

Dancing in the Street: Comparing Amy Conroy's 'Eternal Rising of the Sun' and Jean Butler's 'Hurry'

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:26:00 -0400

It’s been a few weeks since I saw Eternal Rising of the Sun at Axis Ballymun, written and performed by Amy Conroy and directed by Veronica Coburn. Ever since then the performance has been going around in my head. I knew I wanted to write about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on what aspect of it. Class-integration using performance? Confidence and self-fulfilling prophecies? How an audience relates to a lone, sad, everyday character? Every topic seemed overdone and empty, and I was afraid that the fantastic performance I had witnessed would go unanalysed and undocumented.

Amy Conroy as Gina Devine in Eternal Rising of the Sun

That is, until I saw Jean Butler’s Hurry at Project Arts Centre, choreographed under the direction of John Kinzel. Immersed in the piercing and abrasive soundtrack while Jean Butler (of Riverdance fame) danced the life of a city on a bare stage, I saw the two performances snap together, acting as each other’s secret foils. The character of awkward sassy/trashy trackie-wearing Gina Devine at first couldn’t seem further apart from the formidable grace and internationally-recognised talent of Jean Butler, but as Butler began the performance, stretching and pointing her body in an invisible angular cage, all I could hear in my head was the character of Gina Devine tensely exhaling ‘G…I…N…A….’. Both of these performances tell the story of a city, at street level, in seemingly opposite ways that come full circle to meet again, with talent and elegance crunching into the gravel of an urban scene.

In Hurry, Butler becomes the city. She is the swaggering teenager, aggressively crossing your path; she is the sinuous lady in red you spot in a crowd, winding her way further away from you; she is a mass of barely-awake commuters on the Luas. She is exhaustion, sleeplessness, reluctance and caffeine-fueled energy, wrapped up in a quickly unravelling blanket of everyday routine. She sets the scene for Gina Devine: she is the city that envelops a coarse, exquisite rough diamond of a personality. While Butler conveys anonymity, flickering effortlessly between an urban landscape and representations of individual city-goers, Gina represents a fiercely individual personality that refuses to be part of that routine.

Jean Butler in Hurry, Photo Credit: Ruby Washington

And then dance brings them together. Though Gina is awkward, showing flashes of passionate elegance through her ungainliness while Butler is clear-cut, technically sharp and always held in perfect balance, both allow the city to travel through tense muscles out onto the audience. Butler’s stage becomes every means of public transport, every pavement, every restless weeknight bedroom; Gina’s becomes every lonely moment in a pulsating nightclub, every minimum-wage job, and a room that exists in an uncomfortable state of a perpetual, claustrophobic weekend.

Both these solo performances represent the soul of a city, and stories that live in wads of gum on the pavement, stubbed out cigarettes and fast-paced bodies grasping take-away coffees. After seeing both of these performances, I realise that their titles tie them together perfectly in representing the life of a city denizen: everyday we hurry to to meet the eternal rising of the sun.

Hurry was performed at Project Arts Centre as part of the Dublin Dance Festival.
Eternal Rising of the Sun was performed at Axis Ballymun, and is finishing it’s current HotForTheatre’s tour at Draioght Arts Centre on 24th May. It will return as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in September.

“Don’t worry, you are being set free”: A review of "On Tender Hooks"

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 09:35:40 -0500

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 everyday lives, and seeing such a multitude of them in the space of an hour made something twinge inside me. Perhaps it was a small amount of jealousy, a slight envy of that cathartic experience, because most of us inherently crave that nirvana, that peace. Being able to watch so many people experience that in one film was overwhelming.

And what enabled people to reach that state was the access to human suspension, and the very warm and supportive community that it is made of. Shenton’s focus on community is an important aspect of the film, as it then goes far beyond a superficial freak-show kind of documentary that it could easily have been. It starts out as being very fly on the wall, but soon I realised that it goes much deeper. Her use of footage of herself being filmed, such as when a roomful of people cheer her on as she gets branded, and the documenting of her own suspension pulls the viewer in as they follow her path deeper into another world, a microcosm many of us don’t even know exists.

What I found the most interesting is the way in which Shenton does not use captions. Though she covers events in the UK, Croatia and Norway, she allows the dialogue and the natural background of the film convey a sense of location, and this strategy allows the boundaries to be blurred between the events. Each event is populated by a variety of nationalities, and the combination of fluid filming between countries and interaction with an international community emphasises the idea that suspension creates a world and community of its own that obviously transcends borders. Hearing about the difficulty that many experienced when looking for suspension opportunities, and the prejudice that many experience, highlights this connection between people of different nationalities.

There are many powerful moments in this film, many of which take you through similar motions: pain, refusal, pain, tears and then sudden, open happiness. Watching the film-maker herself go through this in the film was a vital keystone which would make it much more appealing to people who are not part of an alternative community. As she stands there, scared and vulnerable in a flowery dress and saying “I don’t have any piercings…well I got my ears pieced when I was eleven”, we can relate to someone who isn’t used to physical pain that many experience with body modification. She acts as a perfect bridge between the two worlds, which proves that there is no reason why the two shouldn’t overlap.

For the uninitiated like myself, my stomach was flipping over from the beginning, and I have heard that some seeing this film couldn’t stomach it at all. However I found that it very quickly focused on the individuals and the community they have created, and once I was desensitised to the imagery I was very easily lost in the story and emotions of the characters rather than fixated on the skin and blood. And even though for my own reasons I will not be suspended, the film forced me to think of what I do to create my own similar happiness. And even though for the people in the film it’s having flying around a room suspended by hooks through their skin, and for me it’s reading a good book in bed with a cup of tea, what I took from the film is that humans strive to find their moments of peace, and On Tender Hooks was a fascinating way to show how it can be done.

All images are screenshots from the film.

On Tender Hooks was recently screened for the first time this month at the London Short Film Festival. For more information on the film, see the Facebook page and Kate Shenton’s website.

I Fell in Love with a City

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:06:00 -0400

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 remember when I first read the email. It was the email that said that, due to a change in visa rules, I couldn’t stay in London anymore. After a few days of panic, it was final: England was done with me. Even worse, London was done with me. London was washing its hands off of me. London had packed up all my stuff while I was out, and when I got home, my bags were already at the door. I had just been dumped, not by a person, but by a country. And more importantly and heartbreakingly, I had been dumped by London.

I had been in a steady, stable relationship for two and a half years, and honestly had forgotten what heartbreak felt like. Suddenly, it all came flooding back. My boyfriend at the time found me in my bathrobe on the sofa, tears streaming down my face, wailing and viciously adding songs to my new playlist ‘England I love you but you’re bringing me down’. Yes, it was more about England and UK Border Control, but it didn’t feel that way.

It had taken me about six months to originally fall in love with London in 2009. Unlike York or Dublin, where I just felt a natural, warm love for the city, London made me work for it. I was terrified and out of my comfort zone at first - unfamiliar with the sheer vastness of the place. But after I moved to Zone 1, my love blossomed. But it was never a city that made me happy - my relationship with London was fairly abusive. London’s the kind of city that kicks you down the stairs, but you still will crawl back up them every day just to kiss its feet. During those three years, stress and anxiety ran through my veins. I was on edge all day, every day, worrying about jobs and sponsorships. And of course, it was even worse as a non-EU immigrant. No matter how much I gave to the city, it didn’t want me. In my last year in London, I noticed it becoming definitely more racist. Maybe it was always like that, or maybe I just noticed it more, but I was constantly being reminded that I simply Did Not Belong, and it was Time to Go Home…which doesn’t really work when you don’t have a home to go to. London was my home. It was my lover. It was the handsomely gaunt rock star boyfriend in skinny jeans that looked at you in pitying disdain when he realised that you have feelings for him. London was the high-maintenance pouty thrift-shop supermodel that had simply gotten bored of you. London was everything to me, and it broke my heart.

So why have I suddenly thought of all of this, a month and a half after I have moved my life to Dublin? I was happy the second I stepped off of the plane when I got here, and I have been happy ever since. Leaving London felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off of me. The constant sense of paranoia and anxiety had simply disappeared. I have heard police sirens maybe once a week here, occasionally more. There is no voice on public transport telling you to report suspicious baggage or incidents. People walk slower here. The accent is different, making the entire aural landscape slightly more languid and undulating. There isn’t that crushing sense of urgency that surrounds everything you do. I feel really, genuinely happy. So why did I wake up this morning feeling like I had a giant hole in my chest, with the sudden realisation that a month and a half ago I lost an entire life?

It’s complicated having a relationship with a city. It’s not just a single human being (or even several) where you can put your finger down on specific events, points, flaws or issues. It’s a city. It envelopes you, swallows you, drowns you. You could never have such an all-emcompassing, totally immersive relationship with a human being. So how the hell do you break up with a city? And how do you get over it? And when that city is London, how can you ever really get over it when the pollution from the London underground still coats the inside of your lungs, and your shoes still have the dusty streets of London kissing their soles?

But it’s always like this, isn’t it? The relationships where you get treated the worst are the ones you never really recover from. I love Dublin. Dublin has allowed me to do the things I have always wanted to do, to start being the person I’ve always wanted to be. It’s welcoming, and I feel wanted. I have dived headfirst into the literary and cultural event scene, and I feel at home there. I used a real microphone for the first time and made a room of 150 people laugh as I poured my heart out to them. I write weekly for a publication I have pretty much worshipped for years. My degree course is nurturing and better than my other two degrees (in the academic sense). I’ve made great friends, and I’m having the time of my life. And until this morning, I’ve never looked back after leaving London. But now and then, when some little thing triggers it, I’ll remember that I used to love a city with a ferocity that can never be replicated; a city that never really loved me back.

Photo of London from my 9th-floor flat on Old Kent Road in 2011

I moved to Dublin!

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:59:36 -0400

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!

Love, music, books and British boys Pt 2: Terry

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 13:48:00 -0400

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 “The Colour of Magic”.

14 months later I have read all 30 books in the Discworld series, Nation, as well as the four-part Tiffany Aching series and two books co-written by him. That’s 37 Terry Pratchett books in 14 months. That’s 2.6 books per month, in addition to other books that I was reading at the time. I don’t think I have ever read as prolifically as I have done this year, and it has pretty much changed my life. Reading Nation inspired me to start this blog in the first place, and was my first review.

So…why the Discworld? Why Terry? And why is it more than just a good read? Why is it love?

I think it all boils down to the characters. Pratchett has a way of nailing humanity down, in all its imperfections. He somehow understands the way we think, and the way we work. He gets the mob, and he gets the individual. And he makes us laugh at - and with - all of them. He makes us laugh at ourselves, and I think that in a strange way he makes us understand ourselves. And he also forces us to see what we might want to be, and what we never want to become.

Some characters have had more of an effect on me than others. When Captain Carrot of the Nightwatch said “personal is not the same as important”, his character became real. I felt that if he could make himself believe that, so could I. It’s a strong, gut-wrenching message. The daily plights and adventures of Tiffany Aching couldn’t have been read at a more appropriate time, as I was spending nights with my mother in hospital. Tiffany had so much more on her plate than I did, and she was 13! I could handle my life, if she could deal with hers. Yes, she is fictional. But when Pratchett puts her on paper, she is real, and I could genuinely relate to her. For some reason, she gave me more strength than any other non-fictional character has been able to. Reading Night Watch inspired me to write yet another blog post about his insightful dissection of a riot, and it made me understand my world more, and perhaps gave me a little glimpse behind why things like the London riots happen, and why good people do bad things.

Those are only a few tiny examples of how his characters and narratives have crossed over into my reality. And the truth is, his reality is my reality. The Discworld is really just you, me, our families, our friends, our cities, and our problems and our prejudices. I can’t even describe it as a parallel world; it’s more than that. It’s like a layer on top of our world, a fine filter with a sprinkling of magic in it that acts like a lens, zooming in to our everyday lives.

Oh yes, the magic. In the magic I find the escapism, but at the same time in it I find myself. In the magic of the witches I understand more about strength, choices and selflessness. In the magic of the wizards I understand fear, and the academic desire to learn more (a desire displayed mainly by Ponder Stibbons, that is). In the dungeon dimensions I find the monsters under the bed. And in Vimes’ head, I find the darker magic that constantly temps the soul, and tries to release the beast that lives inside all of us.

And so, a year later, I have come to the end of the Discworld and the end of a relationship. My boyfriend gave me not only the gift of Terry Pratchett, but similar books in the same genre which I have fallen in love with as well. He gave me books that have lived in my handbag all year, that made me feel happier just knowing they were within reach. He gave me those moment of pure joy, reading in a park during a lunchbreak. He helped me tolerate those half-hour train rides to and from Leighton Buzzard. He gave me some of the most precious things a friend can give to another friend: his love, and his books.

He gave me Terry.

This is what happiness looks like.

Love, music, books and British boys Pt 1: Someone Great

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:11:00 -0400

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 again.

Walking up to me expecting, walking up to me expecting words, happens all the time,
Present company accepted, present company except the worst, it happens every night…

Then 3:06 happened.

It felt like the walls of my room had imploded. The beat dropped and my speakers could barely handle it. My eyes flew open. I felt like I had been dunked into ice-water. James Murphy started to really wail. And I knew I had found a soulmate in that song.

About three years earlier, I was first introduced to LCD Soundsystem by my first British boyfriend. We had gotten together in Fresher’s Week and stayed together for the whole of my first year. His music knowledge was so enormous is was intimidating, and I felt myself scrabbling to keep up with him. I didn’t know much about current music, I have always lived in a 70’s household, then I lived in Sweden where it was all about the hip hop, then Turkey where I was taken back to the 70’s and was introduced to some serious 80’s music. But in England, the world of contemporary music opened up to me. I found electro. I found indie. Or rather, they found me. Things were current, and new, and exciting. And in the middle of it all was James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem and DFA records, making magic.

I loved their self-titled album - he gave it to me as a present. I loved it so much that I had to go see them live. We went to see them at the Cockpit in Leeds. There was James Murphy, looking like a drunk builder. He was unshaven, a bit chubby and he looked a mess. In the middle of the show he unbuckled his belt and just left it half-hanging from his jeans. But then this hobo-like man grabbed the microphone with both hands, closed his eyes, and gave us all he had.

Photo from the gig in Leeds, March 2007

So, why DO I love them so much?

The word that keeps coming back to me is ‘resonates’. Their music resonates with me. Their songs apply to every moment in my life. I can be in a perfectly good mood on the bus to work listening to LCD Soundsystem and suddenly burst into tears listening to ‘Home’. I can be feeling awful about something stupid I’ve done, but then I listen to ‘One Touch’ and realise hell, to err is human, and at least I have a good soundtrack to err to. I think of my own funeral, where I would like ‘The Great Release’ to be played, because of its simple, elongated beauty and lyrics like “It feels like I’m coming home…and it feels like it’s full of love…something dying will be a great release”. ‘Losing my Edge’ is the song of the quarter-life crisis, the mid-life crisis, and generally feeling past it. No breakup is complete without listening to ‘Someone Great’ (which I have aptly named this post after). ‘All My Friends’ is what I have titled my going-away party, because it says everything about youth, and friendship, and moving on, and looking back, and there is never a moment in your life where you can hear the lyrics “if I could see all my friends tonight” and not feel something deep inside. And then of course, there’s LCD Soundsystem’s classic show-closer, ‘New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down’ (which I mentally replace with ‘London I Love you’) which reminds me that I have fallen in love with a city, and that city is changing and so am I. Their lyrics are funny, meaningful, real, clever and can make you laugh, dance and cry. Their music is electro disco punk rock synthy magic, with just the right amount of cowbell. It’s perfect.

I saw them play live two more times with that same boyfriend who started it all: at O2 Wireless Festival in Leeds in 2007, a few acts before Daft Punk, and on their very last tour last year, at Alexandra Palace in London. Knowing that they were breaking up, and there wasn’t going to be anymore LCD Soundsystem, was a shock. I saw them together for the last time, and never again. But then the wonderful thing about music is that it lives on, and it’s us fans that will forever keep it alive.

It seems that it’s not only me who want to keep talking about them. This blog post happens to be quite timely, a week before SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS starts showing in cinemas in the US, a documentary about LCD Soundsystem before and after their very last show. I watched a clip of it today, and I see that I share this experience with many, many people. I’m hoping it comes to London or Dublin soon, so that I can sit in a room filled with people who love them like I do.

And I know who will be sitting right next to me.

Last song, last tour, for the last time. Taken during “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” by LCD Soundsystem at Alexandra Palace, 10th November 2011

At the moment SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS is only touring in American cities, and will be released globally later this summer. Follow them at @LCD_SUAPTH, and to demand a showing where you are, click here.

Love, music, books and British Boys: A Two Part Series

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 07:00:00 -0400

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 the heatless warmth that spreads through me when looking at a truly great painting; when watching a true drummer play with all their heart; when writing a truly great story or poem; when the bass at a concert shudders through me and fills completely with a silent joy, and unconsciously pulls up the ends of my mouth. It is true, pure and uncomplicated, pulling those close into its vortex with me.”
-Me, 30 June 2004

I realized back then that yes, I will go through life being in love with people, but my true loves will always be art, writing and music. They are the gifts that keep on giving, that have given me positive experiences that will remain with me forever.

Eight years later, I am having a conversation with my boyfriend about what good things people take away from relationships, and I am reminded of my teenage theory. In just over a month I will be permanently leaving the UK, where I have lived, loved, and grown into a Real Person during the last six years. Thinking about this conversation, I realise what my boyfriend has given me: he has introduced me to the writing of Terry Pratchett, who is now my favourite author.

A week later, I spent an evening with my good friend and first British boyfriend watching 3-hour-long footage of my favourite band’s final concert, a band he introduced me to in my first few weeks in the UK. I think of the same question and realise that he has given me the music of that band, LCD Soundsystem. From these two romantic loves have sprouted two True Loves, an author and a musician that has changed my life. Terry Pratchett and LCD Soundsystem may not be the best writer and band that ever lived - some would say far from it - but they have created things that have truly resonated with me, and I love them with all my heart.

In the coming weeks I will post a two-part series dedicated to these two wonderful people who symbolize the beginning and the end of my six years in the UK and the gifts they have given me, two True Loves that will remain with me for the rest of my life.

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and Terry Pratchett

In the summer of 2008, I did a museology module for my BA at the...

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:58:00 -0400

In the summer of 2008, I did a museology module for my BA at the University of York, and and had to write a 5000-word exhibition review. Since I spent my summers with my father in Washington, D.C. I immediately walked around the Mall looking for inspiration. Inspiration came to me in the form of Jim Henson’s Fantastic World touring at the International Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution. The exhibition showed me what I would learn to look for in all exhibitions in the future: a sense of warmth and fun, with educational value. I visited the exhibition several more times, just to sit and watch the Muppet videos, and hear all the adults laughing out loud at all of Ms Piggy’s sassy punchlines. The children were so excited to see the actual puppets on display, and their parents loved the Dark Crystal models and sketches. The rooms were full of laughter and music, and people were really getting into the exhibition. They were being educated, they were having a great time, and most of all they were part of the experience themselves.

Ever since writing that essay, I have been drawn to those exhibitions. That’s why I love the Wellcome Collection so much, and it’s why I seriously believe that there cannot be enough exhibitions that create that kind of open, fun environment. Now, four years later, the week of Jim Henson’s 22nd Death Anniversary, I am applying for PhDs in Curating, with the aim of investigating the benefits of exhibitions just like Jim Henson’s Fantastic World. Jim Henson, and the wonderful people behind the Jim Henson Legacy have taught me, and they have taught the world, that learning should be creative, musical, colourful, and most of all, fun.

Jim Henson Legacy

"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 03:46:53 -0400

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”

- 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.

'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Erich Maria Remarque

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:26:00 -0400

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 as pawns in the great game of chess that is politics.

Reading Erich Maria Remarque’s ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ both reaffirmed my feelings, but also made me understand wartime on a much deeper level. His writing is lyrical but concise, starkly outlining friendships and feuds in both an emotional and indifferent way. This writing style is extremely effective as it exactly mirrors the mental state of our narrator, nineteen-year-old Paul Baumer. Your thoughts become his thoughts, and his eyes are yours. Reading this book, I feel that this is the closest to war I will hopefully ever get, but I truly felt in it. His thoughts and reflections give the reader a true insight into the mind of a soldier during WW1, with all the hopelessness, companionship, and questions that they don’t want to ask themselves.

I have never truly understood how a schoolkid or a postman or an accountant can become a killing machine, but Remarque explains it with such basic purity that I begin to comprehend it.

We have lost all feelings for others, we barely recognize each other…We are dead men with no feelings, who are able by some trick, some dangerous magic, so keep on running and keep on killing.

(Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, p80)

Baumer often refers to the soldiers, during an attack, as ‘animals’. Their instincts melt down to kill or be killed, and he often mentions that they are no longer ‘human’ many times.

There is only one time in the book when the soldiers actually discuss the cause of the war, and the question ‘why?’ does not hang in the air, but is asked, justified, and put aside. “Were out here defending our homeland” says Kropp, another solder. “And yet the French are out there defending their homeland as well. Which of us is right?”. The conversation continues:

“…we are almost all ordinary workers, aren’t we? And in France the majority are workers too….why on earth should a French locksmith or a French shoemaker attack us? No it’s just the governments.”

“So why is there a war at all?” asks Tjaden.

Kat shrugs. “There must be some people who find the war worthwhile.”

“And I bet there are other people behind it all who are making a profit out of the war,” grumbles Detering.

“I think it’s more a kind of fever,” says Albert. ‘Nobody really wants it, but all of a sudden, there it is. We didn’t want to war, they say the same thing on the other side – and in spite of that half the world is at it hammer and tongs.”

…”It’s better not to talk about the whole damn thing.”

“Doesn’t change anything, anyway,” agrees Kat.

(Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, p141-42)

The other side of wartime that is described is the process of taking leave and going home, and attempting to assimilate back into life before being a soldier. Thinking of the many wars that are occurring in the world at the moment, I wonder if those soldiers are going through the same process. How does one ease back into the banality of life, a life without death at your side? How do you begin to tolerate other people, full of the wonderful triviality of everyday life, when you have seen your friends without heads, limbs, guts, faces? How do you turn the killing switch off forever?

We are no longer young men. We’ve lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We’ve been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don’t believe in those things anymore; we believe in the war.

(Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, p61)

There are not many deductions I have gained from this book; rather, I have gained an insight, a brief window of understanding into a world that is not mine, and world that surrounds us on a daily basis that we can push into the category of Over There, a world that defines our history, created by schoolkids, postmen and accountants, who have been taught how to kill. The book does not judge, complain, glorify or demonize: it simply states what the soldiers do, say and think. Through this book I have also learnt not to blindly judge those who go to war. The young men in this book were encouraged to enlist by a schoolteacher who glorified the war. Later in the book, they boys, now men, take their revenge on the teacher for because of one man, many of them died before their time. I am afraid that there must be many young people who join the army not knowing the full horror of what lies ahead, who are full of patriotism, good intentions, and the myth of ‘liberation’. I would encourage those people to read All Quiet on the Western Front, not to discourage them, but for them to at least be prepared for war, and to understand it like I feel I can understand it now. As young Albert says, “the war has ruined us for everything”, and it is important to know that if you go to war, you may not ever really return.

Note: I would like to thank World Book Night for giving out copies of this book in 2011. I have never been drawn to reading ‘war books’, but when I received a copy of this I decided to give it a go. It is a powerful story that will never leave me, and I owe this experience to you.

"At their core, artists and scientists are not so different from one another. Both endeavor to solve..."

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:39:53 -0400

“At their core, artists and scientists are not so different from one another. Both endeavor to solve our greatest mysteries through the power of imagination.”

- 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)

A World Book Night article by Chris Cander

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:07:00 -0400

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 about how resurrecting my reading habit has fueled more creativity and optimism in my everyday life, and has made me, overall, a much happier person than I was a year ago. I really do believe that reading books, and also being able to own a book, can make an enormous difference on a person’s life, and I am very happy that Chris Cander has shared this experience with others.

“The Place Where I Grew Up” by Seeing Red Last year...

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:39:00 -0400

“The Place Where I Grew Up” by Seeing Red

Last year I blogged about Seeing Red’s performance at the Royal Vauxhall Taverns. In addition to their performance art, they are more well known for their photography, which focuses on the incorporation of menstrual blood into their images. I have been following them for a while, but this second this image turned up on my newsfeed I felt that their work had hit another level.

“The Place Where I Grew Up” just has so much to say. The canvas (Johanna Samuelson) has been inscribed with images and diagrams evocative of maps in select shades of black, dull green, brown, and bright ultramarine. The thick black lines dissect her body perfectly, creating divisions and boundaries that could be linked to memories as well as diagrams on a road map. These divisions act both as ways to draw the eye around the body, as well as in a way replacing clothing (the diagrams on the leg are similar to lines on a stocking garter).

And then there is the inclusion of their signature medium, menstrual blood. Usually in their work, this is the focal point of an image, and the story revolves around it. However, I much prefer the way that it has been so elegantly integrated in “The Place Where I Grew Up”, as the blood ties in so well with the entire theme. This theme, named in the title, truly pulls together all the aspects of the piece. The map conflates a literal and emotional roadmap, bridging a specific location as well as the emotional relationship to it. This map is portrayed on a body, not a conventional canvas, and the body is of course literally the place where we grow up. This is where the menstrual blood creates that link, as menstruation is the first real sign of a woman ‘growing up’, and growing into their own body.

The ‘map’ aspect, the forms that Seeing Red have chosen to represent the map and even the colour palette are also reminiscent of South African artist Vivienne Koorland’s work, who maps out her own memories intertwined with Jewish history on rough-hewn canvases. In a similar way, Seeing Red takes the idea of location and memory and lays it across a different kind of canvas, which alters the understanding of the term ‘location’. In this piece, the body is a location, a point in history, a diary, and of course, a woman.

Terry Pratchett's 'Nightwatch', the London Riots, and The People

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 05:21:00 -0400

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 somehow knows how to delve deep into the human psyche and pull out the fundamental strings of humanity with surgical precision, and somehow puts the truths we know and have never known how to verbalize in words on a page.

It was these three paragraphs that hit me:

There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who’d had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots…with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called ‘the people’. Vimes has spent his life on the streets, and had met decent people and fools and people who’d steal a penny from a blind beggar and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he’s never met The People.

People on the side of The People aways ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn’t be a revolution or a riot. It’d be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when the machinery of city life faltered, the wheels stopped turning and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn’t try to bite the sheep next to them.

Terry Pratchett, Nightwatch, p194-195

Reading that paragraph suddenly brought me back to one of the nights during the riots. I was standing on my balcony with my flatmate, my boyfriend and my best friend along with some neighbours, on the ninth floor in a big block of ex-council flats. We had a perfect view of the London skyline. I remember the constant sound of sirens, and I remember watching the intricate dance of people looting the Curry’s, the Argos and the Sports Direct in front of my house. The question of the time had been ‘Why?’ and everyone had a different answer. Some only blamed the government, some blamed the recession, some blamed consumer culture, some blamed gangs. I remember very clearly not knowing who to blame, and if it was even right to direct blame. Coming across those paragraphs in Nightwatch suddenly gave me the words I was trying to find to describe those few days in 2011. You couldn’t just point a finger and find the source of the chaos: it was that complex combination of people and things that would start to roll downhill, collecting speed and mass until it became An Event and suddenly the avalanche was all around you, in a flood of Nike shoes and broken windows.

Gender Across Borders published my blog post!

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:22:00 -0400

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!

So mothers, teach your children well

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:51:42 -0400

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 human being on earth can relate to, one way or another.

So think of this: imagine a world where mothers treat their sons and daughters equally. And I mean every mother, from every culture. Imagine if mothers taught both their children to cook and clean equally. Imagine that it was equally important to send sons and daughters to school. And even on a smaller scale, imagine that the boy of the family didn’t get that little bit more spoilt than the girl, and got doted on just that little bit more. Do you think it might be more likely that the boy will grow up not to expect women to cook and clean for him? Do you think he might be more likely to have equal respect for men and women? And do you think the girl will grow up feeling that she deserved the same respect as men, and feel that she has a say in her future?

Writing this a week after International Women’s Day and on Mother’s day, I have come to this conclusion: Mothers are a vital way to promote gender equality for the next generation. Mothers who choose fathers that believe in gender equality, mothers who don’t spoil their baby boys, mothers who encourage the dreams of their children, regardless of their gender. And the sons these mothers produce will hopefully be respectful husbands or partners as well, and the daughters will hopefully be more confident about their career or family choices.

An interesting study by the University of Iowa in 2006 about educated and successful mothers/mothers-in-law and their influence on their sons showed that “successful men in their 20s and 30s today are the sons of a pioneering generation of high-achieving career women. Their mothers serve as role models for how a woman can be nurturing and successful at the same time.” In this case the mothers demonstrated gender equality through their own lives and careers, and positively influenced their sons. There have been many studies similar to these such as Sons of Feminists, in addition to a flood of others that have investigated the influence of the ‘empowered’ mothers on education and success in girls and views of gender equality in men. The results follow the predictable pattern that a mother as a role model and promoter of gender equality is definitely a step forward, and has a large variety of advantages.

More recently though, my mother attended the Sister Republic’s conference in Bern, Switzerland, where she told me that this very issue was discussed. She, in fact, first suggested this idea to me when I was a teenager, and has faced some opposition as well as some agreement when she has discussed it professionally with other women. I would say that she has some evidence of this parenting method succeeding: she has me.

Now, I am not a mother. When I write about parenting, I tend to worry that my view isn’t justified because I obviously have not experienced parenthood. But I am coming at life from the other side: as the result of parenthood. I can see how I have turned out, and my mother played an enormous role in that. I can write about how my parents have affected me, and how my life choices have been affected by my upbringing. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, I have never, not once, been pressurized to change my lifestyle or career choice because of my gender. My grandmother taught her two daughters to be strong, empowered and educated and in turn my mother has taught me the same. The result is that we all have our own dreams and careers that we have followed, and have done pretty well for ourselves. This has also led me to choosing a supportive partner who has no insecurities about smart and successful women and who thinks it perfectly normal to cook and share housework, because this is what I have been brought up to expect in a partner. I would like to mention that he was brought up to treat men and women as equals, and that certainly shows.

From case studies to anecdotal evidence, it’s obvious that bringing up your children as equals can only have a positive effect on the next generation. Sure, we might not magically create a generation of strong feminist sons and confident successful women, but it’s the first step. So, here are my final words, and they are directed to my mother: In addition to the amazing work you have done in your life, as a mother you have also changed the world. You have changed the world, because you have changed mine.

"Books are a hardbound drug with no danger of overdose. I am the happy victim of books."

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:32:52 -0500

“Books are a hardbound drug with no danger of overdose. I am the happy victim of books.”

- Karl Lagerfeld (via thechopinist)

In Honour of World Book Day 2012: On Books

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 03:52:00 -0500

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 importance of reading. The World Book Night’s resolution page got me thinking about how reading has affected me over the years, and after realizing what a massive impact it has on my well being as well as my life in general, I felt compelled, on World Book Day 2012, to write about it.

Before I started university in 2006, I was a complete bookworm and have been since childhood. My grandfather even told me I read too much, and my English prize at my high school graduation was a ‘Reading is Sexy’ tshirt from my awesome English teacher Mrs Westgate. Even though that tshirt didn’t make it past Turkish customs, the thought still counted. Reading was a necessesity and constant pleasure.

During university my reading habit altered drastically as reading for pleasure was replaced by seminar reading lists, and the time spent alone reading was replaced by constant socialising. Though the books I read as part of my degree were incredible works of literature, my habit had faded and I didn’t miss it for some time.

A few years later, my degrees had come to an end and I faced the big bad world of jobhunting. With constant visa worries, rejections flooding my inbox and a general feeling of worthlessness on top of an already existing anxiety disorder, I spent an alarming amount of the time feeling upset, angry, sad and frustrated and most of the time all at once, which then got in the way of my performance when I actually did manage to get internships. During my lowest point, I decided to get myself out and somehow make myself happy again.

The strategy I settled on was finding a constructive form of escapism and release. Books would be my escapism, and writing would be my release. Funnily enough this was something I had always known but had forgotten along the way. Looking back through my childhood, I saw that I had often read books to get me through difficult situations. During my grandfather’s death, Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy helped me through all those hours in the hospital corridor. During long, lonely and friendless summers with my father in Washington, D.C., long series such as Madeleine L’Engle’s Kairos and Chronos series, Frank Herbert’s Dune saga and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy kept me sane. Obviously reading had saved me many times before, so why not now?

Since Spring 2011 I have barely gone a day without a book in my bag. My internship lunchbreaks were filled with dragons and magic instead of Facebook. Sitting on the 453 to Deptford became one of the highlights if my day because it was 45 minutes of solid reading (albeit with earphones to drown out crying babies). After moving in with my boyfriend and his huge library of Sci-fi and Fantasy novels, my daily commute into London was filled with adventures from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series instead of the miserable, bored and exhausted faces of commuters. I’ve even joined a local library, a totally logical decision which prevents spending money on books which had never really occured to me until now. And of course all that reading eventually lead to me starting this blog, because I felt that if I was going to read a lot I might as well write about it.

The result is that yes, I am a lot happier than I used to be. Books aren’t a magical emotional-repair kit, but they can give you characters to relate to and a constant sense of adventure instead of the dull routine of daily life. And of course they have the ability to inspire creativity, which is a great way of reminding youself that actually, you can be pretty talented and not totally useless. By owning them you feel a true sense of being connected with a book, and by sharing them you create connection with other people.

This leads me full circle back to what inspired this blog post, World Book Day and World Book Night. On the World Book Day website you can find promotions, reading inspiration and an events page so you can keep an eye on all the World Book Day events in your area. Then it’s only a month until World Book Night, which I attended last year, and it was one of the loveliest, most enjoyable events I have ever attended. Even though it’s next month (April 2012), they have a great blog, and until then you can start putting aside books to be given new homes or sign up to volunteer at the event. Or you can release them into the wild with Book Crossing, where you register you book and leave it anywhere you want for someone else to pick up, or go hunting around your city to find one yourself.

Or, of course, you can dust off a book that you haven’t thought about in a while, curl up on your sofa with a big cup of tea and just have a good read.

Food to Fuel the Quarterlife Crisis

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:12:16 -0500

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 section….and slid right down to the brightly-coloured sugar-induced coma section. I picked up a box of Honey Loops, attempting to get a grip on myself through compromise. But even as I lowered the box into the basket, my eyes did not leave the enticing gaze of Tony the Tiger. I couldn’t help thinking, did they still have that solid crunchy coating of unidentified sugary substance on each flake? I started to imagine how they would taste, how my semi-skimmed milk could be corrupted and become a sugary milky paste. Finally, I glanced up at the calorie count.

Perhaps this is when I cracked.

Realizing that I was even bothered about the calorie count of a box of Frostie’s enraged me, and in that ‘screw it all’ moment, I firmly replaced the Honey Loops box back into its shelf, and clasping the bright blue box of happiness to my breast like a long-lost child, I left the cereal aisle. I did not look back.

Sitting at my laptop after finishing this mediocre bowl of cereal, I am starting to wonder what the hell came over me. What caused this sudden irrational regression into my carefree childhood diet? What made me narrow my eyes at every child in Tesco’s today, cursing their youth, energy and laughter?

I blame my quarterlife crisis.

A few weeks ago I came across an old Guardian article titled “The quarterlife crisis: young, insecure and depressed”. The article describes a study where twenty and thirty-somethings have begun to show the symptoms of the typical mid-life crisis experienced by the middle-aged. At first, this may seem a bit silly. But reading this the week before my 24th birthday, I found it anything but funny. It was terrifying. And it was terrifying because I suspected that it was true.

Reading this article, my mind flashed back to an English class in high school, where we were studying Frankenstein, written by a 16-year-old Mary Shelley. The first reaction of me and my friends was an immediate inferiority complex. There we were, seventeen years old, and in our eyes and probably everyone else’s we were bloody useless. Damn you Mary Shelley, we cursed, why did you go and raise the bar so damn high? How can we compete? Seven years later, and I am on the train reading an article about Jonathan Ross’s fabulous wife, who was a young journalist at sixteen and has written the screenplays for films such as Stardust and X-Men: First Class. The same despairing sense of inadequacy washes over me, that same feeling I experienced when interning at Christie’s, surrounded by ambitious and sharply-dressed people my age who were steadily climbing up the rungs of the company. The same feeling I felt when I read articles about people my age who are well on their way to changing the world. Innovative, entrepreneurial young people who I admire and respect enormously. The only thing I hate about them is that I am not one of them.

So should I blame myself for my lack of a mid-twenties success story? Am I filled with too much ambition and not enough initiative? And how am I supposed to fulfill my own enormous expectations with countless visa restrictions hanging over my head and no home other than a country that doesn’t actually want me here?

OR, should I partly blame the quarterlife crisis? The pressure is definitely on to ‘make it’ in the world straight out of uni. And even though the likelihood of getting a great job during this recession is impossibly low if you have an arts and humanities degree like I do, the pressure hasn’t eased up at all. If anything, seeing people succeed so greatly in times of hardship make me wonder why I can’t do the same.

However, there is still hope out there for us floundering twentysomethings if the quarterlife crisis study goes to plan. The four phases of the quarterlife crisis are 1) A sense of being trapped or ‘locked’ into a job/relationship/life, 2) A growing sense that change is possible, 3) A period of rebuilding a new life and finally 4) cementing the new fresh commitments that reflect the new life. So, if this really is a ‘quarterlife crisis’, my anger and frustration should drive me to make an actual change. So yes, there may be hope!

Finally, by the end of writing this article, I have come to the conclusion that it is probably neither my fault not the fault of the quarterlife crisis. It’s a recession. I’ve done what I can. I haven’t slacked or been lazy, it’s just how things are at the moment. In the meantime, I will try not to buy a sports car or relive my university years (or childhood). I think I will, for now, settle for eating some Frosties and having a bit of a moan.

Though next week I am definitely buying Honey Loops, because these Frosties taste absolutely awful.

Foody post: Earl Grey Cupcakes

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 07:51:51 -0500

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 idiot’s version of cooking, with mistakes and brutal honestly included.

To kick things off, here is how to make ridiculously tasty Earl Grey Cupcakes.

Instagram makes all food look good. Hell yes tilt-shift! Blur that background up!

I used the recipe found on Katie Cake’s blog, which has loads of amazing baking recipes. I however tweaked it a bit, both in good and bad ways, but they turned out awesome and that’s all that matters.

INGREDIENTS

125 ml milk
4 Earl Grey tea bags (I used 4 tsp of Yumchaa’s ‘Midnight Grey’ loose tea leaves which was lush)
110g unsalted butter
225g granulated sugar
2 large eggs (I thought it tasted really eggy, so I would use 1 egg instead)
¼ tsp almond essence (nah, didn’t have any)
125g self-rising flour
120g plain flour

Frosting:

60 ml semi skimmed milk
115g unsalted butter at room temperature
1 tsp good quality vanilla extract
500g icing sugar
Few drops of lilac food colouring (I sprayed mine with silver decorating spray instead)

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180c/ gas mark 4. Line a 12 hole muffin tray with cupcake cases.

SO, my mum thought it was super useful to get me a mini-bundt cake pan. It’s awesome, BUT, what I don’t have is a muffin tray. I have a mini bundt cake tin. This is not relevant to cupcakes. So to prevent the cupcakes from collapsing in their foldy paper bits, I squished them together in a small cake pan. Hilarious results follow.

Heat milk in a saucepan over a medium heat until it begins to boil. Remove from the heat and add teabags. Cover with a lid for about 30 minutes.
I decided to throw in loose tea instead because a) I’m cool and b) I didn’t have Earl Grey teabags, so when it came to adding the milk into the mixture I strained the milk through the smallest most inconveniently-sized tea strainer, which somehow worked fine. Try not to be dumb like me, but if you must, please do it right.

Cream butter with sugar in a bowl until the mixture is pale and smooth. Add almond extract and eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.
OH MY GOD CREAMING TOGETHER BUTTER AND SUGAR IS SO ANNOYING. I found an easy and probably very wrong solutions for this. I was trying to soften the butter for a second in the microwave and forgot about it for a while, so it completely melted. Oops. But then i mixed it with the sugar, and you know what? It turned out fine. Also, didn’t have almond extract. Didn’t care. Also only use one egg to prevent eggy overload.

Combine the flours in a separate bowl. Add a third of the flour to the butter and sugar mixture and beat well. Pour in a third of the milk/tea mixture and beat. Repeat until all the flour and milk has been added.
Separate bowl?! As if I’m going to wash up another bowl. I them together ON the weighing scale. Like a boss. Then I followed the actual instructions.

Carefully spoon mixture into cupcake cases, filling each one two-thirds full. Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes. Test to see if they are cooked. Leave in tins for 10 minutes, then place on wire rack to cool.
Uuuh…so lack of muffin pan lead to this. It’s cool, they’re interactive cupcakes, you can make them into a puzzle! Then eat them.

To make butter cream, beat butter, milk, vanilla and half the icing sugar until smooth.

Gradually add the rest of icing sugar to produce a creamy and smooth consistency. Add a drop of colouring and beat thoroughly. When cool, ice the cupcakes with a generous swirl and sprinkle with a little extra granulated sugar.

SO, I didn’t think I could melt the butter for this one because I thought it might mess with the consistency. I don’t have a fancy mixer for this, so I tried to use a handwhisk, the one with a handle but it’s not electric. Don’t know what it’s called. Anyways I almost broke it. So no way around this one, make sure the butter is soft and then get your boyfriend to use a normal plain old whisk and do it for you.

This amount makes the right amount of icing if you’re going to do big swirls of the stuff like I did (I used a piping bag). If you just want a simple layer of icing, I would say halve the recipe.

SO. There you have it, super tasty Earl Grey cupcakes. Katie’s Cakes, the blog where I got the recipe from, said that you can put in whatever tea you want, so I think I will give that a go at some point. I hope you enjoyed my first foody post!