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
