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Being the Archaeologist of Oneself

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Yiğitcan Erdoğan


Yiğitcan Erdoğan started working professionally as a writer at the age of 16 for a video game magazine. After working in hobby journalism for more than a decade, he debuted his first fictional work; the audio drama Zamanaltı, in 2019. Outside of literature, he’s also known for his panel shows both online and on stage.

Recently, I was talking with my dear friend Kubi Öztürk about HAFTW’s album “Unknown Territories,” whose story we will encounter again on these Dolmusch pages. To describe what he felt at that moment about making this album, Kubi used this metaphor: being the archaeologist of oneself.

At this point, I stopped, excitedly hit my friend’s arm, and shouted my enthusiasm for this statement at a decibel I sadly admit Berlin’s streets generally regard with concern — because I was feeling something very similar about what I was working on at the time. I’m talking here about Büyük Tufan (The Great Flood).

Büyük Tufan began its life as an idea in late 2020. My first radio play, Zamanaltı, which I wrote and produced, was nearing its end, and I was at the time staying at the home of my dear friend İlkin Taşdelen in Çayyolu, Ankara. Their apartment on the fifth floor had a beautiful city view overlooking the lined-up apartment buildings of this Ankaran suburb. Suddenly, it started raining. I remember holding a drink in my hand, though I can’t say for sure whether I’ve added that detail to this memory later. The one thing I am certain of is this: as the rain started and I gazed out at the view, I found myself thinking: What if this rain never stops?

Büyük Tufan grew from this simple thought and first collided with the spirit of the times. In the heart of the pandemic, I had been thinking for a while that post-apocalyptic literature needed an update. The genre, seen in different media through works like Mad Max, The Walking Dead, The Road, and The Last of Us, often carries a distinctive pattern hidden in its very name: post-apocalypse.

In these types of stories, the main narrative begins after the apocalypse itself has occurred. Often, the story opens with a brief glimpse of life before the disaster, then jumps forward in time to show the audience a society radically transformed by the catastrophe — a stark contrast is drawn. Yet very few stories actually depict the time that is skipped over — the apocalypse itself.

The pandemic, however, showed us that apocalypses are not singular, clearly defined events that separate “before” and “after” like milestones. Apocalypses are long, drawn-out processes — and as the pandemic taught us, those processes themselves are often fascinating and worth telling.

The idea of never-ending rain, combined with the inspiration I felt while looking out from a window in Central Anatolia, naturally led me to humanity’s most enduring apocalyptic motif. Every civilization that ever lived in and around Anatolia has had some version of a Great Flood story — many historians today believe these stories refer to the breaching of the Mediterranean into the Black Sea. And of course, given the global climate crisis the world is currently facing, the possibility of living through another Great Flood on a massive scale no longer seems far-fetched.

The theme settled on this foundation. If another Great Flood were to happen, there would be two options: either humanity would stay on this world or leave it behind to start anew on another planet. The story began to take shape through two main characters who make these opposing choices, building a thematic dialectic around the ideas of departure and staying. This, in turn, allowed me to connect to the story on a deeply personal level — because I, too, had to confront my own decision to leave Turkey and my tendency to leave places only when it suited me. Büyük Tufan gave me the space to explore these inner conflicts, and as the story found its own rhythm, it also encountered new allegories.

The first script for Büyük Tufan was written in January 2021, the first episode was recorded in December 2021, and it met its audience at the start of 2022. In the summer of 2024, its final episode, The Day After Tomorrow, aired, bringing its 61-episode run to an end. And now, it is being rewritten and reread as a serialized novel, published week by week.

This process makes me feel, in Kubi’s words, like the archaeologist of myself.

I don’t feel any particular excitement about Büyük Tufan at this point. I long ago found the answers to the questions I asked myself between its lines, and I’ve already tried most of the things I wanted to experiment with artistically. Setting aside my childish belief that one must write a novel to truly call themselves a writer, I don’t even feel an emotional reason to keep digging into this story. Excavating the temple I built a thousand years ago and which was subsequently buried under the earth doesn’t excite me — because I still remember that buried temple all too clearly.

But I do it because the work demands it.

I could list other reasons: I’m creating a slow but steady income stream through this serialized novel; I feel a sense of duty to the readers who buy and follow it weekly; I hope that one day it will be published in print… But at the end of the day, they all lead to the same conclusion. When Büyük Tufan ended as a radio play, I knew I would turn it into a novel — because the work clearly demanded it even then. And at this point in the process, the diminishing excitement no longer matters. Because every artist around the world knows that starting art is not the hard part.

The real difficulty lies in finishing it.

Yiğitcan Erdoğan
@beggarandchooser

Published Works (in Turkish)

Büyük Tufan Visual Design: İlkin Taşdelen

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The Story of “Psychoanalysis Conversations” – A Conversation on Art, Desire, and Psychoanalysis

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Oğuzhan Nacak


He is a founding member and president of the Psychoanalysis Research Association (Psikanaliz Araştırmaları Derneği) affiliated with IF-EPFCL, an international organization active in Lacanian psychoanalysis. He teaches courses on psychoanalytic theory and practice in the Clinical Psychology graduate program at Bahçeşehir University. He introduced Luis Izcovich’s book “Love, Desire, and Jouissance in Perversion” (Sapkınlıkta Aşk, Arzu ve Jouissance) into Turkish. His writings have been published on various platforms, such as Psikanaliz Defterleri and Birikim. He is the host of the Psychoanalysis Conversations (Psikanaliz Sohbetleri) Podcast Series, which examines psychoanalytic concepts in detail. Currently, he continues his psychoanalysis and supervision practice from his own office in Nişantaşı, İstanbul.

How did you start the “Psychoanalysis Conversations (Psikanaliz Sohbetleri)” podcast series, and what motivated you to undertake this project? How have the listeners’ responses affected you since the podcast began airing?

Firstly, let me thank you and DolmusXpress for this interview opportunity. I deeply appreciate the intellectual bridge you’re aiming to build between Turkey and Germany. Having known you since our years at METU, I suspect we share similar motivations! Let me elaborate:

Psychoanalysis is a discipline frequently discussed but often misunderstood. It is sometimes reduced to oversimplified labels (seen as outdated, heteronormative, supportive of power structures, normalizing, etc.). At other times, people avoid engaging with it because of its perceived theoretical complexity, or they overly idealize it. Due to this complexity, as in any intellectual field, I’ve observed the emergence of internal power structures and struggles firsthand. The intricate nature of psychoanalytic theory and the experiential demands of clinical practice encourage certain individuals to monopolize knowledge and position themselves as ultimate authorities.

One of my primary motivations for creating this podcast was to make psychoanalytic theory accessible, initially for clinical professionals, but subsequently for anyone interested. My goal was to simplify complex psychoanalytic concepts, thus democratizing knowledge. Additionally, it aimed to address accessibility issues in the psychoanalytic community and offer a starting point for those interested in deepening their understanding.

Another significant motivation was to introduce the teachings of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whom I consider distinct from all post-Freudian analysts and who is subject to various prejudices among Turkish clinicians—sometimes justified, often not. By demystifying Lacan’s challenging speech and writing style, my intention was to convey his theoretical tools for clinical practice and understanding the world. I wanted to highlight how Lacan moved psychoanalysis beyond being a “bourgeois dream,” confronting post-Freudian psychoanalytic trends that advocated identifying with various norms and ideals. Lacan strongly emphasized that psychoanalysis’s goal was to mobilize the subject toward their own desire.

Honestly, although these motivations were always present, I initially expected the podcast to appeal to a limited, niche audience and to remain a specialized project with its own direction. But that was not the case— it attracted significant attention, sometimes ranking among Spotify’s top podcasts. It now has around 50,000 followers, despite my recent irregular publishing schedule. Over time, the podcast also became a collaborative space for my colleagues. What delighted me most was seeing various prejudices toward Lacanian psychoanalysis—stemming from Lacan’s sensational persona or from certain Turkish Lacanian groups—soften considerably.

How did you conceptualize the relationship between art, literature, and desire in your podcast series?

Actually, the connection between psychoanalysis and art remains one of the least-explored areas in my podcast. Although I’ve occasionally referenced literature and cinema, I only directly addressed psychoanalysis’s relationship with literature in one dedicated series, which led me into challenging debates on the limits of language in terms of death, mourning, or unease. I paused this series after the devastating February 6 earthquake in Maraş, and I haven’t yet returned to it.

Answering this question requires some theoretical context: Lacan gives extraordinary importance to language, suggesting human subjectivity emerges as a linguistic effect. Simply put, our biological existence passes through language, which is the carrier of culture and law, and this encounter’s outcomes are unpredictable, differing for each individual. Lacan’s concept of “subject” is that of the unconscious, not a consciously acting entity. For instance, it can push one toward identifying as a woman, induce anxiety in certain situations, or repeatedly confront a person with various internal conflicts.

The language introduces a fundamental lack into our existence. The moment we encounter language, we move beyond a state of merely fulfilling biological needs and enter a realm where we attempt to articulate our needs through language. We become beings who try to express our needs, but this articulation itself introduces a gap between what we need and what we are able to express. Indeed, need and demand never fully overlap. A demand can be met, but something is always missing. It is precisely in this gap that desire is born. Desire, for Lacan, is not something that can be completely satisfied; rather, it is a persistent force that propels the subject forward, an engine of movement that sustains human subjectivity.

Within the theme of art and desire, how do you interpret the relationship between Lacanian psychoanalysis and art?

While the language simultaneously creates desire and subjectivity, it also encounters limitations. Language is incapable of fully capturing all human experiences; there is always an aspect of subjectivity inaccessible to language. Lacan calls this unreachable dimension the “Real” and positions it beyond the Symbolic order, which is bound to the language. One of the clearest ways to recognize these linguistic limitations is the difficulty humans experience when trying to express deeply challenging experiences such as death, loss, mourning, and anxiety. When we reach the limits of something, words abandon us, and our ability to make sense of or convey these experiences almost entirely disappears. This is precisely where art steps in: Art attempts to approach what is unnameable and inexpressible, to grapple with the Real as Lacan defines it. Similarly, desire—because it is inherently unsatisfiable and always connected to a sense of lack—is also never fully expressible in language. Therefore, each work of art can be viewed as an expression of desire. For instance, Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” portrays a protagonist constantly chasing his desire yet repeatedly encountering loss and lack.

An important conclusion here is that, for Lacan, pursuing desire does not equate to a pursuit of hedonism. Desire, according to Lacan, is inherently bound to remain unfulfilled, and a subject truly pursues desire only to the extent that they accept their relationship with this lack, cease trying to reclaim it, and instead willingly embrace the possibilities it offers.

Lacan’s concept of “desire” plays a prominent role in his theories. How does this concept influence your creative processes? Based on your experiences, how would you describe the contributions of the theme of art and desire to creativity?

This question reminds me of Freud’s concept of the three impossible professions: governing, educating, and psychoanalyzing. Undoubtedly, this podcast has an educational dimension. Therefore, I could say that this project is driven by a desire to spread and convey psychoanalytic ideas—a desire intimately connected to a powerful impossibility. At the same time, it’s a desire I know will never reach a final, definitive goal. Although I’m uncertain about when exactly I’ll end the podcast, the only certainty I have is that it will conclude without fully expressing everything I initially had in mind.

How do you perceive the current state of psychoanalysis in Turkey, and what is the level of interest specifically towards the Lacanian approach?

Psychoanalysis in Turkey, particularly in its post-Freudian forms, boasts a strong tradition and solid institutional foundations. This is something I greatly appreciate, and I hope Lacanian psychoanalysis will also reach a similar status in time, though perhaps in distinct and varied forms.

The Lacanian approach, however, remains relatively new in Turkey. Its entry into Turkey has primarily occurred through fields such as philosophy, cultural studies, and cinema rather than through clinical practice. This pattern isn’t unique to Turkey; it is quite typical across the entire Anglophone world. Conversely, in Francophone, Spanish-speaking, and Italian-speaking regions, Lacan’s ideas enjoy significantly stronger influence and acceptance.

In Turkey, the visibility and impact of the Lacanian approach are gradually increasing, although it has been accompanied by internal conflicts and divisions from the beginning. Referring back to my motivations in creating this podcast, one major aim has been to shift attention away from these internal tensions toward the richness of Lacanian theory itself and its practical applications. To what extent I’ve been successful, only time will tell, even though statistics provide encouraging indications.

How widely known and influential are Lacan’s theories in Turkey? Based on your personal observations, how would you characterize the trajectory of discussions and developments related to the Lacanian approach in Turkey?

As previously noted, theoretical engagement with Lacan’s ideas in Turkey remains relatively nascent. Nevertheless, I have personally observed considerable enthusiasm from prominent international Lacanian institutions toward Turkey. Many psychoanalysts have explicitly highlighted to me that younger generations in Turkey demonstrate a more vibrant and active interest in psychoanalysis than their European counterparts. From this perspective, Turkey holds notable promise and significant potential.

I am especially encouraged by the presence and recent initiatives of internationally recognized Lacanian institutions such as EPFCL (École de Psychanalyse des Forums du Champ Lacanien), ECF (École de la Cause Freudienne), and ALI (Association Lacanienne Internationale) within Turkey. My hope is that these engagements will foster increased collaboration, helping to establish a more robust and well-grounded Lacanian psychoanalytic community in Turkey.

Do you have plans to develop future projects around the themes of art, desire, and psychoanalysis?

Certainly! Perhaps this interview will inspire me to revisit my unfinished work on psychoanalysis and literature. I might even expand its scope a bit further and delve deeper into the relationship between psychoanalysis and art. Why not?

Interviewee: Oğuzhan Nacak
@psikanalizsohbetleri

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Imageries of Sadaf Bazaar and Others

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The hearth suffices for existence, words fall silent in absence.

A mysterious realm, Sadaf Bazaar, one that both provides, and denies itself. Affirming the duality of life and the music within it; it reminds that any element of life, inherently carries its very structure.

The album begins with the gentle and delicate lifting of a heavy curtain—while a thousand syllables pause, Bin Gece awakens.

                                               A deep breath.

Notes unravel into fibers, merging with the human voice, with slips of the tongue. Another breath. Perhaps there is only one color in Bin Gece (A Thousand Nights), yet its many shades await us. The silent beginning surrenders to a void, to dissolution—to the discovery of sound, to music transforming into an object of sleep, to a reality tinged with dreams, to an Anatolian spring. It leads itself into another, familiar yet utterly different plane, into an ancient manuscript. Here, colors stir, multiply, blend into one another. Brown, yellow, beige—at times, blue and green—a papyrus welcomes us.

I am old, and new

I am the past, and the future

my yellow turns to Brown

my brown turns to black

my black turns to pink

what can I find besides myself, and speak of it?

I am a fish in this sea of emotions, tracing the strings back to the hidden inlets of my birth.
A path of turning back emerges.

Where are we turning to?

All these, within me churns and foams, like the shaking of a jar between two hands.

Where are the hands, that are shaking me?

We are turning to the manuscrips. There, the meadows stretch far, all the way to a distant horizon of green grass and shifting shadows. The sky is mint green, blue—there must be pink, too. A wooden house, a single room. Inside, an oak table. On the table rests a manuscript. We step inside. As we approach, the papyrus begins to ignite, to smolder, to consume itself. Perhaps it would be most merciful to stand back and watch, but our movements unfold of their own accord, without consulting conscience, and perhaps some essence, some possibility of continuation, draws the self, closer to the table.

The papyrus burns within, burns outward, inside and out; animals cry, the seas rage, mountains tremble, and earthquakes shake its sky. There is a life within, but flames obscure our vision. Lonely fire. The papyrus burns and extinguishes itself. Only its ashes remain on the table—then they also dissolve into the void.

.

Humans are mortal, perhaps it is death that makes us human, that makes life, life. Everything bends, shifts, and disappears. Time is merciless to our bodies—we fall ill, our joints weaken, our physical endurance fades. But what else does the body say? Dreams—the root cell where reality is embroidered—what do they say beyond our decaying flesh? Death is a farewell, a final breath for the body, but what is that beholds the body, in the space?

A fire embraces us once more, this time slower, burning only from within.
This fire is not devoid of love—on the contrary, it overflows with it.

                                                            how?

The fire embraces and exalts our mortality with love. What do human and the day, brightening with continuity, tell us? Between them stretches an unbreakable, interdependent rope; meaning is not a choice among the fragments of dreams in the day’s colors.

Dreams give themselves to nightmares, nightmares surrender to a great glass of water, and water yields itself to sleep once again. From one hill to another, from a delicate rose to a barren desert gifted signs guide our way. In this case, we follow the sound along the desert paths. The desert—an endless example of the journey, powerful and silent enough to break and erase human conscience.

                                                                                                                         This is a desert poem.


blood; deprived of water turns to honey; under the sun, it crystallizes.
with the longing and the memory of
a shadow,
a moment of rest,
passes minutes, hours, days, months, years.

The shadow is in the blood.
Rest is in the blood.
Honey; is in the blood.

Honey is a fruit of labor.

A silent game is played;

Something within you calls to my depths in an unknown tongue,
A voice unheard, a sweetness untasted.

There is no longer time or space to breathe where we stand. From afar, a voice describes the deep red hue of a finished notebook. The color raises a question.

A tremor shakes the joints;
the vibration gives rise to a sound.


sound is familiar;
place is foreign.
being is familiar;
body is foreign.

A secret is being revealed—
Mai.

Trusting in fire, in ice, in sound, and in the searing depths of the self, it lays itself bare. Then, a dream begins—one that heralds the textures of the future, its walls adorned with symbols, made of stone. An unintelligible yet inherently known truth lights the path ahead. We move through the depths of the labyrinth—this must be a dream.

perhaps this is a dream.
is this a dream?
I think this is a dream.
yes. this is a dream.

The labyrinth imposes a rhythm upon our steps, and through this rhythm, a melody is heard from behind the great door:

You were welcomed to the dream!

Before we even have time to wonder what lies behind the door, it opens. Time no longer holds sway over the mind. A vast, blazing light meets movement. With its tremor, shoulders ignited by clasped arms collapse.

Yellow, white—an illuminated room of pure light. The light burns the eyes with a blinding force.

Everything is forgiven and forgotten. The herald of a new beginning, of a new dream; this blaze, this fire, this death must be.

.

We open our eyes in meadows, on shores, in mountains, in the great cities of South America, in forests. This time, green and its imagery welcome us—a memory of the labyrinth lingers in the depths of the mind. In the evening breeze, we walk through streets, along beaches, through forests, filled with an ordinary love and a familiar sense of safety. The leaves speak of one, the water speaks of one, the stones speak of one, the insects speak of one, the sky speaks of one, the body speaks of one, the forehead speaks of one—only one, and nothing else.

A response is being heard:

find me, without searching.

Nehir Akfırat

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A Rebellion – Vaa

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Vaa, a music project, aims to blend atmospheric elements and poetry in sound, drawing inspiration from the style of plastic arts. In his tracks, where influences of hip-hop/rap, post-punk, and pop-punk can be heard, the lyrics portray the absurdity of the century we live in, making it a central theme in his music.

///

the most beautiful day of our lives

take my hand, through this hell walk beside me

let the sky turn upside down in defiance

let everything fall exactly where it must

a return ticket to my mother’s womb—let all things push me back to the heavens

paradise lies beneath the clouds

let the fire of desire consume the city

let the shepherds lead the wolves to graze

someone take the blame

let the water in your glass spill over

let the ocean rise

let the streets overflow with truth

let the clouds break into rain

let the calendar tell its tale

let history repeat itself 

///

///

I can spot a madman on the street in a second
catch his scent from a kilometer away

sins I’ve confessed to no one
keep your mouth shut and steal every image in sight

cling to the thing that throws you into battle
just like you hug every tree you pass

be astonished by everything in this world
curse it anew every single day
then

dive straight into the love

dreams where I jump from the sky
only reason I survive
they’ll find me, no place to hide

I laid out my lines one by one
I speak what I see
there’s a rifle in my eyes

no box could ever fit my shape
to all their words, my ears escape

the flowers whose scent I breathed
their killer me, with memories intact

on a chair I sit, watching the minutes pass
everything in its place, rushing by fast


nothing belongs to me
if I weren’t free as a bird
my own hands would set my body on

fire

///

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Unknown Territories: The Makings of a Longplay

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HAFTW


HAFTW is a Berlin-based post-indie and Neue Türkische Welle band formed in 2021 by members from Turkey and Germany, whose music fuses the chaotic energy of Neukölln with the soulful melancholy of Turkish poetry. Their sound—equally cathartic and conflicting—is showcased in their single “One by One” from the upcoming album “Unknown Territories,” and they have earned recognition with releases on influential indie labels like Detriti, Cold Transmission, and Oraculo Records. Acclaimed for their dynamic live performances across Europe and featured in film and television projects, HAFTW continues to push musical boundaries while inviting audiences on a transformative cultural journey.


So to start with, why did you call the LP ‘Unknown Territories’

HAFTW: From the very beginning of our musical journey, we were placed within genres like post-punk and goth. We happened to make music in that style, worked with certain labels, and found ourselves in the goth scene, but it was never a conscious decision on our part to fit into a specific category. We have no problem with any scene or genre, but honestly, not many things about our musical journey have been planned or deliberate.

We wanted to explore, take the road less traveled, and embrace getting lost in the process. Maybe we got a bit too lost. It took us two years, after all! Haha.

Jokes aside, the moment that really shaped our perspective was when we came across a quote by David Bowie. He said something like:

“If you feel safe in the area you are working in, you are not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you do not feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you are just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

That gave us the courage to step into the unknown completely, to break free from any perceived boundaries, and to see where the music could take us.
 

What made you decide to start working on a LP instead of another EP or a single?

HAFTW: We felt an LP would give us the canvas to accommodate full-on discovery. A single would not allow for full-scale exploration. An EP was something we had done before, and we were expected to do another one, but that did not really suit the nature of the unknown discovery process.

It somehow also gave the possibility to build a whole map of the spheres we discovered. It felt more round if this makes sense. 

For emerging artists, it is highly recommended to release singles to build a following and gain attention. Even for that reason, it felt liberating to break free and choose an LP, allowing us to create in the way that felt right to us.

What did you find to be most different about working on an LP?

HAFTW: The number of songs makes an LP a larger-scale project. The discovery-based approach of the LP also makes it difficult at times to have a clear reference point for individual songs. The purpose was to break free and get lost in the process, but that also made it harder to interpret the results of our discoveries. Overall, it took longer than expected. It could have been an ongoing process for even longer, honestly, but we needed to set a finish line somewhere to allow for new discoveries. We have more songs that will remain unreleased than the number of songs on the LP. We might release them at some point in the future.

Last but not least, collaborating with other artists, sound engineers, and technicians was a different process for this LP compared to before. It was also a unique opportunity to observe their approach to music and our songs.

How’s your relationship with LPs changed over the years? What was it like buying them back then, what is it like for you to listen to them now?

HAFTW: We always enjoyed buying LPs. It is like buying an immersive experience. You put it on more consciously and travel to this different place the artist created. Also, getting an LP gifted is great, I feel. Your friends invite you to share an experience which touched them. It is a concept from beginning to end. Everything is as it is for a reason and even though it might bring you to different destinations in itself, it is a whole. And every time you listen to it, it adds a layer of your own experience during those times. It’s a purely magical collection of different memories and emotions of different people. 

For our own LP, we feel like we are archaeologists of ourselves. This is actually applicable to any artist. When the magical process of creation ends and the artist revisits their work, it can be haunting or challenging. As someone who was deeply involved in the process, your perception of the work changes. At times, it matures, develops, and grows. Other times, you might find yourself in an ongoing struggle with the piece.

We have love and compassion for our past selves. Listening to these songs and walking with them through the countless streets of Berlin over the past two years is, in a way, like embracing your past selves, revisiting memories, and watching yourselves grow. It goes beyond any categorical adjectives. It is truly a new experience.

And finally, is the LP a generational relic? Do you think it will live on with younger artists?

HAFTW: Younger generations are discovering that too. You can see that with younger artists. Maybe the medium changed so much, so the decision to listen to an LP is less conscious. It is of course more ritual to put on a vinyl and sit there to listen than to press a button for digital consumption. But this doesn’t break the idea of a concept in general. 

Interviewee: HAFTW
@haftw.music
Interviewer: Yiğitcan Erdoğan

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Dual Identities, One Voice: The Rise of Kanye Ost and Karel Ott

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Kanye Ost aka Karel Ott aka KO


Kanye Ost aka Karel Ott aka KO is born in East-Berlin (German Democratic Republic) in 1986. Rapper for Ostberlin Androgyn and singer and songwriter for Bistro Palme.

Looking at your musical journey, we see a striking transformation—from a “guitar guy” performing at reading circles to a rising rap star. What sparked this radical shift? Can you take us through the key moments that shaped your evolution as an artist?

As a small child, I loved singing, especially the “Biene Maja” title melody by Karel Gott in front of my family. I probably received too much positive feedback from my parents and my Schlager-music-loving grandmother for that – so even as a small child, I started to dream about being a singer. When I was 12, I bought my first guitar and started writing my first songs. Since I was 16, I have played in different rock bands, usually writing lyrics, singing, and playing guitar.  

In 2010, my friends Sarah Bosetti, Daniel Hoth, Karsten Lampe, and I started the reading stage “Couchpoetos,” where my friends performed their newest poetry-slam texts, and I regularly performed my newest songs as the “guitar guy” once or twice a month.  

In 2016, Daniel and I were chilling and smoking a lot, and we came up with the idea of performing two rap songs as “Ostberlin Androgyn” on our Couchpoetos stage. At first, it was just an easy-going idea for fun, but the audience’s reaction showed us clearly that the idea of an Ostberlin Androgyn rap crew was special and unique and that we could perform different parts of our artistic identities in a more radical way than before. The audience celebrated us and taught us to take ourselves seriously as Ostberlin Androgyn.  

So, we decided to make it a real project and started recording our first EP. We released the EP in 2017, and by 2018, we already had a gig at Fusion Festival, everything happened very quickly back then.

Credit: Sebastian Hermann

You’ve described rap as a liberating force, a genre where you truly felt the flow and freedom. What was it about rap that resonated with you so deeply? How did things take off so quickly once you embraced it? And how did Ostberlin Androgyn come together as a project? Can you share the story behind the group’s vision and your role as Kanye Ost?

I’ve been listening to rap since I was 16, even though my main musical interests at the time were punk and rock. The German rap I listened to was pretty raw and intense—Westberlin Maskulin with Kool Savas and Taktloss, Aggro Berlin with Sido, B-Tight, Bushido and Fler, as well as MOR, Prinz Porno, and later KIZ. I was mainly into underground rap from West Berlin. I liked its roughness and direct messaging. The lyrical quality of late ‘90s West Berlin battle rap was much sharper and more intelligent than the more popular fun or conscious hip-hop coming out of Hamburg and Stuttgart at the time.  

The only problem was the content. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing this music with my Antifa friends because of the often violent, sexist, and homophobic lyrics in West Berlin underground rap. Even though these artists aimed to provoke and used harsh street language as part of the battle aesthetic, sometimes ironically, it still reinforced problematic ideas. But despite that, I preferred this style of rap because of its street credibility, Berlin-style harshness, and underground appeal compared to other, more boring German rap.  

We came up with the name Ostberlin Androgyn as a direct play on Westberlin Maskulin. Both Daniel and I grew up in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, a Plattenbau neighborhood from the GDR era, so “Ostberlin” was an important part of our identity. Since we were both men, we couldn’t just flip “Maskulin” into “Feminin,” so we chose “Androgyn” instead, representing a softer and more fluid idea of masculinity.  

Once we had Ostberlin Androgyn as our crew name, we started looking for fitting rapper alter egos. My name, Kanye Ost, came to me almost instantly—I liked Kanye West’s unique production and rap style, and the name followed the same reversal principle as our crew’s name (…and let’s not talk about today’s Kanye West, hehe). Daniel’s alter ego, Gregor Easy, was actually the result of a Freudian slip—a family member meant to mention DIE LINKE politician Gregor Gysi but accidentally left out a “G,” and Gregor Easy was born!  

Even before writing our first rap lyrics, we had already chosen our crew name and alter egos. Content-wise, we focused on a post-historical perspective on our GDR identities. Gregor Easy’s father was a member of the GDR’s military, the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), and drank himself to death after the fall of the Berlin Wall and West Germany’s takeover of the former GDR. My parents saw themselves as socialist pioneers when they moved to East Berlin. I was born in 1986 and grew up with a father who worked for the GDR secret service, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Stasi), and a mother who studied Marxism-Leninism and Russian to become a teacher.

Many people from the former GDR had major difficulties finding orientation in a capitalist world they had to adapt to since 1990. These issues, along with some ironic and nostalgic views on our own history, are central points of our lyrics.  

Another important aspect of our content is that we always wanted to be direct and “hard” without being toxic men – so we don’t use sexist or homophobic language and prefer to diss jerks, rich kids, and other annoying people instead of, for example, women or gay people.  

Gregor Easy’s funny way of dissing assholes and my honest lyrics about my history of drug use gave us some street credibility, so that people could take us seriously as an underground rap crew.  

When we released our first EP on vinyl in 2017, we produced a music video for our track “Takeover 2017,” and we asked our friend, the producer Spoke, to make it. During the shooting, we felt a strong connection and good vibes. Spoke was already producing beats back then, and afterward, Spoke joined our crew as a member and producer from 2018 to 2021.  

Spoke organized a gig for us at Freilauf Festival in 2017, and there we met our future booker, Donna from eq:booking agency, who fell in love with our music and organized many gigs for us.  

In the following years, we released some tapes and vinyl records (the last one, “Im Osten nichts Neues,” was released on Audiolith, a record label from Hamburg), and we went on tour, playing lots of gigs. Then the Corona pandemic came and devastated underground music and club culture in Germany (including us). These days, we are working on a new album again and hope to release it by the end of 2025.

Your other project, Bistro Palme, explores a completely different genre. What draws you to exist in two musical worlds? Do you feel a different creative energy in each, or do they feed into each other in unexpected ways?

As a listener, I have always been open to all styles of music, and as an artist, I have usually been involved in two or three different projects at the same time. So, for me, there isn’t really a division between separate musical worlds, there is just one big musical space where you can express different emotions through different styles.  

As a person, you don’t wake up every day feeling the same way or listening to the same song over and over. People experience a range of emotions, go through different phases in life. Some days, you might feel like listening to death metal; other days, you might be in the mood for hyperpop. That doesn’t change who you are. As an artist, it’s the same for me: I have different emotions, and I can express myself through different musical styles, all as one and the same artist. 

To be honest, this approach feels completely natural to me, so I don’t really struggle with the idea of being both a rapper in an underground crew and a singer in a playful rock big band at the same time.  

When I started rapping at the age of 30, I was shocked by how free I felt on stage; without a guitar and without that typical “sad white guy with a guitar” image. At first, I really wanted to focus on Ostberlin Androgyn and was happy that I didn’t have to play the guitar. But composing songs on the guitar never really stopped for me, and Bistro Palme became the project where I could channel those songs. I started it with friends at almost the same time as Ostberlin Androgyn. However, since Bistro Palme consists of eight musicians (playing double bass, cello, violin, guitar, saxophone, flutes, drums, and keyboards), the production and release process takes much longer and requires more energy. As a result, Bistro Palme has had less output compared to Ostberlin Androgyn, but it has always existed. Just a little more “hidden” in the background. These days, my focus has shifted back towards Bistro Palme. We released our first album, Es geht vorab!, on vinyl in November 2024, and we’re playing live quite frequently.  

In Ostberlin Androgyn, I am “Kanye Ost,” and in Bistro Palme, I am “Karel Ott”, so in both projects, I am still “KO.” There is a strong connection between these two personas, but of course, they are different on stage. Kanye Ost is a little more wild, chaotic, humorous, and self-destructive, while Karel Ott is a little more mature, reflective, and philosophical.  

So, in the end, it’s not about different creative energies. It‘s all one and the same creative force that I put into both projects. The difference is more about the “mode” I am in at a given time or the particular focus I choose.  

Another element that connects Ostberlin Androgyn and Bistro Palme is the use of radically honest lyrics. In pop music, there is often a tendency to sugarcoat life and the world we live in—there’s a lot of romanticizing and feel-good content. I like the idea of filling that kind of music with real-life struggles and true stories. For example, making a sweet, melodic song about depression and how even a crying face can have beauty, or writing a rap track about people who died at the Berlin Wall. Breaking taboos, addressing both personal and societal trauma, and talking about struggles that most people experience but rarely discuss, that’s what interests me as an artist… and as someone with some good therapy experience! 😀

Credit: Sebastian Hermann

East Berlin’s influence is unmistakable in your work—it’s woven into your artistic identity. How did growing up in East Berlin shape your music, your lyrics, and your creative vision?

First of all, there was always a huge gap between my personal childhood memories (as well as the mostly positive way my parents talk and think about socialism and life in the GDR) on the one hand, and what we had to read in school during my later (capitalist) childhood about the GDR and Stasi on the other hand. The GDR was presented as a totalitarian system similar to National Socialism. In movies and media, people who worked at the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit were usually portrayed as cold and inherently bad figures. Some members of my family worked for the Stasi, and I knew from my own experience that they were not the monsters that capitalist victory narratives described them as.  

At the same time, from school, media, and contemporary witnesses, I learned that the overly positive view my family had of the GDR was also not super close to reality. I felt that the truth must be somewhere in between, and I have been searching for it my whole life. That search for truth has definitely shaped my artistic views – I have always felt that writing songs brings me closer to it than studying ever could.  

I feel like my generation has a unique perspective on upheaval and the clash of different systems. We were born in East Berlin, spent our early childhood in the socialist German Democratic Republic, and then experienced “Die Wende” in 1990, which brought capitalism crashing into our society and radically changed everyone’s life. People lost their jobs and parts of their identities; many took their own lives because they could no longer understand the world around them. The generation before mine was fully shaped by a socialist mindset in a socialist world. The generation after mine grew up entirely in a capitalist world. But my generation experienced both, and we learned that a system can collapse, yet life still goes on. That knowledge—of resilience and survival—probably plays a central role in my art. For us, catastrophe and breakdown were normal, which may explain my tendency to explore uneasy topics.  

After reunification, companies and individuals from West Germany easily took advantage of East Germans economically. Most people from the GDR had no real understanding of how the harsh “free” market worked—getting some Deutsche Marks always seemed like a good deal. Today, nearly all houses, businesses, and industrial structures in the former GDR are owned by Western companies or private individuals. Even in 2025, people in East Germany still earn around 15% less for the same work compared to those in the West. Being East German is still often associated with a sense of injustice and being positioned as the loser. Having less power and money than others, yet still trying to make my voice heard and reclaim space, is probably a major motivation for my art as well.  

When I started school in 1993 in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, my friends and I collected Coca-Cola cans with special Bundesliga logos and proudly displayed that capitalist trash on top of our bedroom wardrobes. In the GDR, we didn’t have much material wealth, so even Coca-Cola cans seemed valuable to us. Many things were scarce in the GDR, so if you had to repair your car, you had to improvise. That spirit of improvisation—of trial and error until you hopefully find a solution—is exactly how I make music. This is probably also why I produce different styles of music—there is no single way to find answers or solutions, so I try different approaches at the same time.  

Migrant rappers, especially Turkish-German artists, have played a crucial role in shaping German rap as we know it today. Do you think German rap has always been intercultural, or was there a time when Turkish-German artists were on the fringes of the scene? Do you see a divide between the mainstream German rap scene and Turkish-German rap, or have those boundaries blurred over time?

As I mentioned before, when I first started listening to German rap, I was mainly drawn to battle rap from West Berlin, which was dominated by migrant rappers, including German-Turkish artist Kool Savas. Ironically, in my view, it was actually white German artists who were on the fringes of the scene and had to carve out their own place within the German battle rap bubble. In my eyes, German rap was primarily created and shaped by migrant artists.  

The first German rap track I ever listened to was Fremd im eigenen Land (“Foreign in My Own Country”) by the Heidelberg-based crew Advanced Chemistry, released in 1992. In the song, Torch and Toni-L rap about their migrant backgrounds, highlighting how simply holding a German passport didn’t make them feel German, as they still faced discrimination for being migrants in Germany.

From a historical perspective, I believe German rap has always been driven by artists with migrant backgrounds. Over the years, the genre has evolved and diversified significantly to the point where today, anyone can become a rapper. In terms of success, having a migrant background no longer plays as decisive a role as it once did.  

Many of the most successful German rap artists in recent years come from migrant backgrounds. Haftbefehl is Kurdish, Shirin David has Lithuanian and Iranian roots, Eko Fresh is of Turkish descent, Capital Bra is Ukrainian, and Bushido is German-Tunisian—the list goes on.  

Hip-hop is probably the only music scene in Germany that authentically represents migrant perspectives and experiences, both in quality and quantity, in a way that truly reflects the realities of German society.

Interviewee: Kanye Ost aka Karel Ott aka KO
Instagram: @kanye.ost @bistropalme @ostberlin.androgyn
Interviewer: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

Buy Me A Coffee

Doğu Topaçlıoğlu // Appropriation

Listen, Read, See, ,

Doğu Topaçlıoğlu’s exhibition ‘’Appropriation’’ will be held in Ka between 15-22 February. The exhibition consists of sonic arrangements and aims to present an alternative perception of plasticity. The artist works on the sound’s ability to make objective and situational changes in ontological state of the object; while creating relations between psycho-acoustic possibilities, sculpture and drawing.

Doğu was born in 1989 to an avid reader mother and a painter father. Until 7 years old, he spent considerable time together with his grandmother. During this time, he used to collect dirt from the street to bring home and hid under the carpet. He collected rain drops in his mouth. He moved the paintings on his grandmother’s walls and scratched the wall behind them. Later he would describe this naive journey as a natural occurrence of automated behavior, a type of behavior one would develop when trying to perceive life as it is. It appears that the elements of the house he was born in, the dirt under the carpet, together with the scent of paint and thinner steered him towards his journey, although did not pick the direction. Graduating from Ankara Anatolian High School Of Fine Arts and entering Hacettepe University Department Of Sculpture were only two stops on this long journey; separated by time, united in direction. Doğu is chasing after a feeling, a thrill; which he doesn’t and doesn’t want to put an end to it. This is why he doesn’t seem to separate his life from his art. The way he is searching for himself, and the way he can’t seem to catch the speed of his own mind; reminds me of a saying I heard in an African narrative:

“We are going fast, and our souls are staying behind.” 


Doğu likes to share the excitement of the process of not knowing what his next piece or material will be. To understand his works, one should consider the concepts of timelessness and sense of anachronism. Just like how he tried to understand what does inside, outside and their borders mean at an early age; he is now observing the objects, events, sounds, notion and intersections with the same excitement and curiosity. He is finding his own mutual reflexes under these environments and conditions; resulting in his own language. As if Doğu had designed a machine and any input that goes in, goes out translated in his language. As if one might put a musical note into that machine and Doğu would listen it enough so that the note would start to come out, harboring all other notes. His interaction with music often transitions into the environment. Doğu doesn’t see much of a border in between. When he is composing; he often drifts from the original idea and discovers countless new patterns, only to be turned back to the original idea. He sees this journey as a must to go back to the point of origin. 

This biography came out as a transformative idea to accompany his evolving journey. Instead of listing the events of his life linearly, I offered to capture a few pieces from the time that brought him here. I wanted to leave the reader a space to play with, so they can be a part of this writing. This writing is avoiding the concrete, it is unsure, and it is still on a journey searching for itself. It will be written once more together in separate times with every reader and will never be complete. 

Written by Berkay Kahvecioğlu

Darker, harder, deeper: KOR

Listen, , , ,

There is a cliché we hear all the time: Berlin’s music is techno. We have heard it in various forms. As a techno veteran, producer, and DJ, do you think techno music somehow captures the social reality in Berlin and the emotions it provokes? Moreover, what do you think about the relationship between the city and techno?

I don’t think it’s possible to imagine Berlin without techno music at this time, as we come to the end of 2022. This style of music, which took its place here in the past, has changed with the city over many years and has now become an important part of the city and its culture. You can see this not only in nightclubs in the city but everywhere you go, in most people you meet. Of course, there is also a touristic dimension to the fact that techno music is so popular and loved here. In fact, we know that the basis of Berlin nightlife is techno music, and this is why there are so many tourists from all over the world who come here only for nightclub tourism, which is actually an important reason why this music is still so popular and sustainable.

On the other hand, if I interpret the social reality in Berlin according to my own impressions, this city actually directs people to individuality as much as possible. Pros or cons aside, I think it’s a good match with the spirit of techno music. For me, techno can mean both feeling alone and not feeling lonely while dancing with dozens of people on the dance floor. Most of the time, this city can give me exactly that.

You are also in Berlin as a migrant, and you try somehow to exist with this identity in this city. How does the experience of immigration, with its disadvantages and advantages, reflect on your music? How does it reflect on you? What has it taught you and your music? What did it take away?

I have been in Berlin for about three years, and two and a half years of that was spent studying sound engineering. I think the biggest advantage of being a Turkish immigrant in this city might be that the largest Turkish immigrant community in the world is here. Certainly, being an immigrant in Berlin or Germany is not easy but having so many Turkish friends makes me feel much less alone. Coming to the effect of this on my music, having a circle of friends around me, who support and understand me, motivates me much more, and frankly, I think I am very lucky in this regard. Again, as I said, the main reason for this situation is that the friendships I made in Berlin were of incredibly high quality.

You have considerably higher education in sound. On the other hand, as a DJ, we see you from time to time in Berlin nightlife. As for techno production, we are aware that you spend a lot of effort and long working hours in your studio. What do you hope for the future? Where will KOR go? What steps are you currently taking toward them?

I am much more hopeful for the future than I used to be, there is more than one reason for this. First of all, I know that I still have a lot to learn, but at the same time, I can feel that my music is starting to get where I want it to be, musically and technically. We are planning to start a boutique techno label project with a close friend in 2023 and I am very excited about it. At the same time, I aim to bring my mixing and mastering services to more people. As an artist, I want to perform more and share my passion with people. I have a time & action plan for each of these and I want to reach my goals accordingly.

KOR

@kor.berlin

Interview: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan
Translation from Turkish: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

ZAMANALTI: a podcast theatre

Listen, ,

I can’t write dialogue without hearing it first. I’ll cop to that right here and now. 

But to be fair, I can’t make dialogue without hearing it first either.

I don’t know what it means to write. I’ve started identifying myself as a writer way before I understood what writing means. Many sharp and clever people wrote many sharp and clever pieces of great writings on writing but failed to answer the biggest question of our techno-modern age: In an era where everybody writes something to someone or on somewhere every day, what makes a writer a writer and not like everybody else?

It’s perhaps difficult to answer without first understanding what exactly it is that writers write. Writers write. That’s the golden rule. Writers, or poets too for that matter; write down sentences like “This world will grow cold one day”. And they will remind you that it won’t even be like a lump of ice or a cloud of gas, it will roll away like an empty walnut in the endless pitch black. 

“Not even like a lump of ice or a cloud of gas; like an empty walnut it will roll away in the endless pitch black.”

I don’t remember when I first read this sentence. The great Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet wrote it down in 1948 while imprisoned. It served as the last verse of his three year long poem called On Living. Living, said Hikmet, is no joking matter. It needs to be lived with utmost sincerity. Like a squirrel, Hikmet said. 

He actually said: “like a squirrel”. Imagine a thing like that.

I think about this sentence, that is to say; the “This world will grow cold one day” line, at least once a month. Once a month, out of nowhere, this sentence will pop up in my head fully formed and ready to go. This world will grow cold one day. Now that I’ve relayed it, it will pop up in your head as well. Because it’s true. This world will grow cold one day and it won’t even be like a lump of ice or a cloud of gas; it will roll away like an empty walnut in the endless pitch black. 

I’m willing to bet anything I own on the fact that the first person to hear that line was Hikmet himself.

Because writers write and writers write what they know. No writer, alive or dead; has ever put to paper something that never existed. You can try it, God knows Shakespeare certainly did; but all you’ll ever come close to achieving is giving an abstract concept a solid name. You can’t make up an emotion. You can’t conceive movements that haven’t been taken. You can’t have your character say something you haven’t heard before. So by using this logic, we can come to the simple conclusion staring at us in the face: Writers write, yes; but before any of all that, they sit down and observe.

They observe the heartbreak and the pain, the pangs of feeling unwanted and the scorns of being hunted; the simplicity of seeing something beautiful for the first time and the hollowness of realizing you’ll never reach it. Writers take a look, a real look at all these things that pile up beneath the eyeball and then they just try to match these to words they already know, words that have been taught, passed down from generation to generation. None of these little phrases are original and because language is a social art; and none of them can ever be fully original as they need to be understood. So writers then try to trick the reader into thinking they’re reading something new by combining the original observation with thoroughly unoriginal phrases and tropes, lengthening out a single strand of life into an alternate reality that looks a lot like ours but is not ours and will never be fully ours. Then somebody else comes along, takes the derivative originality presented by the author and having been convinced by the author themselves that this is new, they take and make it into something not-new, until the not-new is drowning in the not-old so much that it starts looking like new once again.

If this is confusing, just know that I’m trying to explain what I understood when I first read If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino in a couple of paragraphs. It was a book about writing, and reading, and books, and readers. It was a book that contained books and non-books about the act of reading, writing and even owning a book. It was a book that understood there are no original books and by understanding that, became dangerously close to becoming an original book until you read and you realize that it wasn’t the author that was making it original; it was you, the named main character of the book, as “You”, as the reader is always just “you” and nothing more.

I’m trying to say that writers write what they know and what they know is other books, so writers write the same thing over and over again. Until, that is, they hit dialogue.

Dialogue is something else. There are two types of dialogue any writer will ever hope to write. One is the fake one. The fugazi, the airball. It’s just the dialogue that needs to happen for the plot to move forward. These types of dialogues are called “exposition” sometimes by people in the know about the terms of things and they do what they advertise they are going to: They expose the railings. The plot can’t veer too much to the left or too much to the right, because then it could fall down and implode. That would be very tragic, so there are railings. The author masks these railings but sometimes the author themselves need to hang on to them because it’s not just the reader that can lose the plot; the author does that a lot too.

Then there’s the second type of dialogue a writer encounters in their lifetime: The organic one. The ones we write and perform everyday without giving it a second thought. The one that is defined by the only real thing in this world other than a state of play. The one that is musical.

Imagine a conversation in your head. Make up a location, put two characters in it and have them take the action of conversing. What’s the first thing one of the characters will say? Hello, perhaps? Does the other one feel like they’d say Hi? Maybe the first one will sit down after that, prompting the other one to do that as well. Maybe it’s taking place in the second one’s office, so they’re behind a desk; they make a small gesture towards the chair in front of the desk before sitting down. 

Hold on. This is getting confusing now. Let’s call the one that says “Hello” Despina and the one that says “Hi” Kamil. Start from the top.

Despina enters the room, which is decorated in an official yet subdued fashion, looks at Kamil and says “Hello”. Despina stands up, says “Hi”, gestures towards the chair in front of the desk and they both sit down.

Then they exchange pleasantries. How’s the family, how’s the kids; the usual stuff. Maybe they talk about the weather, maybe not. Depends on how familiar they are to each other. Let’s say they’re meeting for the first time. They’re now taking a measure of one another through silent routines. They ask and observe, respond and consolidate. Then somebody, doesn’t matter which body, starts the real conversation. 

Kamil says, “So what do you do?”

“Oh I’m studying” says Despina, “I’m doing my masters right now.”

“Oh? What about?”

“Art. Art in the city, to be specific. Do you see this blood splatter on the ground?”

Despina then points her finger to the ground. They’re at a bus station. It’s the middle of the night, there’s no one around. The bus station has a weak light hitting the pavement below and Despina is pointing to a pool of blood.

“I began a project chronicling the splatters of blood you see in city floors, because they each tell a story. I take pictures of it and try to come up with a story to match the surroundings.”

“That sounds wonderful.” says Kamil.

“Does it?” asks Despina. Kamil nods, then she continues: “So what do you do?”

“Oh this and that” says Kamil, “I read and I write, that’s about all I can do.”

“What do you write?” asks Despina, looking genuinely interested.

“I don’t know. That’s a tough question to answer. I’m trying to learn how to live before I figure out what I want to write.”

“And what did you come up with so far?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Balance.”

“Why?”

“Because I seek balance by nature and I fear that I won’t have anything to write if I achieve it.”

“Why would that be?”

“What do you mean?”

“Balance isn’t zero. If you’re looking for zero, you’re looking for balance wrong. Balance is one minus one.”

“So you go to one extreme…”

“…and then take the other.”

“As simple as that?”

“As simple as that.”

“Good.” says Kamil, in case you’re finding it hard to follow who’s saying what.

“I’m glad.” says Despina, looking back into the void.

“You don’t sound glad.” responds Kamil.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m afraid too.”

“What scares you?”

“Walls.”

“Explain.”

“I want to go into academics, because I love learning and I love telling others what I know. But all the academics I know spend their whole lives behind walls and I’m afraid I’ll lose touch of real things.” 

“Like the pools of blood that collect on city pavements?”

“Or another thing like that, yeah.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you go into academics anyway? It’s the digital age, right? Everyone’s everything and nothing’s nothing; so whatever you do will end up being something. Study what you want to study, without anyone’s permission and validation; then share what you want to know with whoever you’d like to share it with.”

An expression of understanding flashed across Despina’s face. Kamil smiled. She smiled back. Without knowing or realizing, they gave each other mantras that will last their lifetimes. Then a bus comes; takes Despina, leaves Kamil behind. Kamil gets mugged. Muggers leave. Kamil’s bus finally comes and it’s suddenly the end of the story.

What happened here, what really happened here was that one night in a bus station I met a girl and we had a conversation. In this conversation she reminded me of a different way of approaching balance and I reminded her a different way of approaching academia. This conversation happened differently than the version I’ve transcribed before but the cadence of it remained the same. I could have kept that story in that official looking office or maybe made it so that one of the characters was a French revolutionary in the year 1848 and the other one is a royalist fighting to preserve the monarchy. The topics might have changed in that instance as computers weren’t invented yet; so perhaps one character could be afraid of the liberal world and the other could be afraid of taking orders from someone less divine. Doesn’t matter. As long as you get the cadence right, you can change the dressing however you like.

Because all humans make music when they talk and music is always running in the background.

Somebody says something and the other one responds within seconds, without thinking it and without thinking about it. Think about it. The syllables in each sentence are the work of millenia, whittling down the unnecessary sounds until a perfect self-explanatory lump is left. You say the word, and you say it in a way the other person can understand it on a molecular level and then thus will respond to it on a molecular level; which is to say, understand and respond to it as if it was real; as if it was pure music, because it is pure music. Because we all know how to respond to pure music. It’s ingrained in our DNA, our brain. Our sense of rhythm is what allows us to walk after all and in the end, it’s also the thing that allows us to talk.

Somebody says something and the other one responds within seconds. The writer has to think about it without thinking about it. The characters need to be finishing each other’s sentences not just with meaning, but with an overwhelming sense of unified melody and image. And as human beings, we like our music predictable and familiar with only a small alteration. Real and almost real. Not-new and new. Original and the rest.

So yes, I can’t write dialogue without hearing it first. I hear them in my head, just like you. I hear it when somebody says “Hello” to me and I almost feel obligated to say “Hi.”. Not “Sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken” . Hi. Because that’s what I heard that day and that’s what felt like the next step in this gigantic composition we’re all living in making.

Just make sure to remember. More days equal more words. Everything else is just the same.

I can’t write dialogue without hearing it first. I’ll cop to that right here and now. 

But to be fair, I can’t make dialogue without hearing it first either.

I don’t know what it means to write. I’ve started identifying myself as a writer way before I understood what writing means. Many sharp and clever people wrote many sharp and clever pieces of great writings on writing but failed to answer the biggest question of our techno-modern age: In an era where everybody writes something to someone or on somewhere every day, what makes a writer a writer and not like everybody else?

It’s perhaps difficult to answer without first understanding what exactly it is that writers write. Writers write. That’s the golden rule. Writers, or poets too for that matter; write down sentences like “This world will grow cold one day”. And they will remind you that it won’t even be like a lump of ice or a cloud of gas, it will roll away like an empty walnut in the endless pitch black. 

“Not even like a lump of ice or a cloud of gas; like an empty walnut it will roll away in the endless pitch black.”

I don’t remember when I first read this sentence. The great Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet wrote it down in 1948 while imprisoned. It served as the last verse of his three year long poem called On Living. Living, said Hikmet, is no joking matter. It needs to be lived with utmost sincerity. Like a squirrel, Hikmet said. 

He actually said: “like a squirrel”. Imagine a thing like that.

I think about this sentence, that is to say; the “This world will grow cold one day” line, at least once a month. Once a month, out of nowhere, this sentence will pop up in my head fully formed and ready to go. This world will grow cold one day. Now that I’ve relayed it, it will pop up in your head as well. Because it’s true. This world will grow cold one day and it won’t even be like a lump of ice or a cloud of gas; it will roll away like an empty walnut in the endless pitch black. 

I’m willing to bet anything I own on the fact that the first person to hear that line was Hikmet himself.

Because writers write and writers write what they know. No writer, alive or dead; has ever put to paper something that never existed. You can try it, God knows Shakespeare certainly did; but all you’ll ever come close to achieving is giving an abstract concept a solid name. You can’t make up an emotion. You can’t conceive movements that haven’t been taken. You can’t have your character say something you haven’t heard before. So by using this logic, we can come to the simple conclusion staring at us in the face: Writers write, yes; but before any of all that, they sit down and observe.

They observe the heartbreak and the pain, the pangs of feeling unwanted and the scorns of being hunted; the simplicity of seeing something beautiful for the first time and the hollowness of realizing you’ll never reach it. Writers take a look, a real look at all these things that pile up beneath the eyeball and then they just try to match these to words they already know, words that have been taught, passed down from generation to generation. None of these little phrases are original and because language is a social art; and none of them can ever be fully original as they need to be understood. So writers then try to trick the reader into thinking they’re reading something new by combining the original observation with thoroughly unoriginal phrases and tropes, lengthening out a single strand of life into an alternate reality that looks a lot like ours but is not ours and will never be fully ours. Then somebody else comes along, takes the derivative originality presented by the author and having been convinced by the author themselves that this is new, they take and make it into something not-new, until the not-new is drowning in the not-old so much that it starts looking like new once again.

If this is confusing, just know that I’m trying to explain what I understood when I first read If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino in a couple of paragraphs. It was a book about writing, and reading, and books, and readers. It was a book that contained books and non-books about the act of reading, writing and even owning a book. It was a book that understood there are no original books and by understanding that, became dangerously close to becoming an original book until you read and you realize that it wasn’t the author that was making it original; it was you, the named main character of the book, as “You”, as the reader is always just “you” and nothing more.

I’m trying to say that writers write what they know and what they know is other books, so writers write the same thing over and over again. Until, that is, they hit dialogue.

Dialogue is something else. There are two types of dialogue any writer will ever hope to write. One is the fake one. The fugazi, the airball. It’s just the dialogue that needs to happen for the plot to move forward. These types of dialogues are called “exposition” sometimes by people in the know about the terms of things and they do what they advertise they are going to: They expose the railings. The plot can’t veer too much to the left or too much to the right, because then it could fall down and implode. That would be very tragic, so there are railings. The author masks these railings but sometimes the author themselves need to hang on to them because it’s not just the reader that can lose the plot; the author does that a lot too.

Then there’s the second type of dialogue a writer encounters in their lifetime: The organic one. The ones we write and perform everyday without giving it a second thought. The one that is defined by the only real thing in this world other than a state of play. The one that is musical.

Imagine a conversation in your head. Make up a location, put two characters in it and have them take the action of conversing. What’s the first thing one of the characters will say? Hello, perhaps? Does the other one feel like they’d say Hi? Maybe the first one will sit down after that, prompting the other one to do that as well. Maybe it’s taking place in the second one’s office, so they’re behind a desk; they make a small gesture towards the chair in front of the desk before sitting down. 

Hold on. This is getting confusing now. Let’s call the one that says “Hello” Despina and the one that says “Hi” Kamil. Start from the top.

Despina enters the room, which is decorated in an official yet subdued fashion, looks at Kamil and says “Hello”. Despina stands up, says “Hi”, gestures towards the chair in front of the desk and they both sit down.

Then they exchange pleasantries. How’s the family, how’s the kids; the usual stuff. Maybe they talk about the weather, maybe not. Depends on how familiar they are to each other. Let’s say they’re meeting for the first time. They’re now taking a measure of one another through silent routines. They ask and observe, respond and consolidate. Then somebody, doesn’t matter which body, starts the real conversation. 

Kamil says, “So what do you do?”

“Oh I’m studying” says Despina, “I’m doing my masters right now.”

“Oh? What about?”

“Art. Art in the city, to be specific. Do you see this blood splatter on the ground?”

Despina then points her finger to the ground. They’re at a bus station. It’s the middle of the night, there’s no one around. The bus station has a weak light hitting the pavement below and Despina is pointing to a pool of blood.

“I began a project chronicling the splatters of blood you see in city floors, because they each tell a story. I take pictures of it and try to come up with a story to match the surroundings.”

“That sounds wonderful.” says Kamil.

“Does it?” asks Despina. Kamil nods, then she continues: “So what do you do?”

“Oh this and that” says Kamil, “I read and I write, that’s about all I can do.”

“What do you write?” asks Despina, looking genuinely interested.

“I don’t know. That’s a tough question to answer. I’m trying to learn how to live before I figure out what I want to write.”

“And what did you come up with so far?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Balance.”

“Why?”

“Because I seek balance by nature and I fear that I won’t have anything to write if I achieve it.”

“Why would that be?”

“What do you mean?”

“Balance isn’t zero. If you’re looking for zero, you’re looking for balance wrong. Balance is one minus one.”

“So you go to one extreme…”

“…and then take the other.”

“As simple as that?”

“As simple as that.”

“Good.” says Kamil, in case you’re finding it hard to follow who’s saying what.

“I’m glad.” says Despina, looking back into the void.

“You don’t sound glad.” responds Kamil.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m afraid too.”

“What scares you?”

“Walls.”

“Explain.”

“I want to go into academics, because I love learning and I love telling others what I know. But all the academics I know spend their whole lives behind walls and I’m afraid I’ll lose touch of real things.” 

“Like the pools of blood that collect on city pavements?”

“Or another thing like that, yeah.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you go into academics anyway? It’s the digital age, right? Everyone’s everything and nothing’s nothing; so whatever you do will end up being something. Study what you want to study, without anyone’s permission and validation; then share what you want to know with whoever you’d like to share it with.”

An expression of understanding flashed across Despina’s face. Kamil smiled. She smiled back. Without knowing or realizing, they gave each other mantras that will last their lifetimes. Then a bus comes; takes Despina, leaves Kamil behind. Kamil gets mugged. Muggers leave. Kamil’s bus finally comes and it’s suddenly the end of the story.

What happened here, what really happened here was that one night in a bus station I met a girl and we had a conversation. In this conversation she reminded me of a different way of approaching balance and I reminded her a different way of approaching academia. This conversation happened differently than the version I’ve transcribed before but the cadence of it remained the same. I could have kept that story in that official looking office or maybe made it so that one of the characters was a French revolutionary in the year 1848 and the other one is a royalist fighting to preserve the monarchy. The topics might have changed in that instance as computers weren’t invented yet; so perhaps one character could be afraid of the liberal world and the other could be afraid of taking orders from someone less divine. Doesn’t matter. As long as you get the cadence right, you can change the dressing however you like.

Because all humans make music when they talk and music is always running in the background.

Somebody says something and the other one responds within seconds, without thinking it and without thinking about it. Think about it. The syllables in each sentence are the work of millenia, whittling down the unnecessary sounds until a perfect self-explanatory lump is left. You say the word, and you say it in a way the other person can understand it on a molecular level and then thus will respond to it on a molecular level; which is to say, understand and respond to it as if it was real; as if it was pure music, because it is pure music. Because we all know how to respond to pure music. It’s ingrained in our DNA, our brain. Our sense of rhythm is what allows us to walk after all and in the end, it’s also the thing that allows us to talk.

Somebody says something and the other one responds within seconds. The writer has to think about it without thinking about it. The characters need to be finishing each other’s sentences not just with meaning, but with an overwhelming sense of unified melody and image. And as human beings, we like our music predictable and familiar with only a small alteration. Real and almost real. Not-new and new. Original and the rest.

So yes, I can’t write dialogue without hearing it first. I hear them in my head, just like you. I hear it when somebody says “Hello” to me and I almost feel obligated to say “Hi.”. Not “Sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken” . Hi. Because that’s what I heard that day and that’s what felt like the next step in this gigantic composition we’re all living in making.

Just make sure to remember. More days equal more words. Everything else is just the same.

a Single Soft as Clouds “KÖR”

Listen,