Let’s be honest. We don’t remember all the books we read. We forget some key characters and even the plot line, while we can remember a small random detail that may not have a major role in the story. Or sometimes we remember just one quote and a few characters that somehow influence us.
Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) by Sheila Callaghan is one of the plays that left a nice little quote to me:
Continue readingFor the last couple of years, whenever I gazed over the shelves of the bookcase, this book attracted my attention. Finally I had a chance to read it: True Stories by Maxim Gorky.
Some books are fun and easy to read, while some give a different kind of literary satisfaction. Gorky’s stories are not difficult to read, but they also have that sweet taste of literature. It has been a long time since I read such a literary work and it felt good.
I just finished the book and I wanted to write a post about it. Characters are described quite well, I felt like I already know these people who lived more than a century ago. Some of the stories tell folk stories, some have epic sounds, but all have realistic approach to character descriptions, and they all tell the search for freedom. Many parts have long philosophical parts about freedom, meaning of life, and change in life styles as people move towards cities.
In this image, two grass-heads accompany the book, True Stories by Maxim Gorky.
One of the parts that loved about this book is the beautiful imagery! Many of the stories have impressive descriptions of sea, wind and the appearance of the characters. Continue reading
Design is a good friend of technology. Computer brings them together and we see their collaboration in various forms, like web-design, architecture, fashion, visuals… However, design is in love with emotions; therefore, trends rise from the human effects like passion, love, envy, inadequacy and longing.
That is why there are two ends of development for design. As we move to a modern and space-like design trends with the help of technology, we also move towards the ethnic and rarest bits of culture that make us feel unique and safe, in a way. We want oriental elements with modern details.
These photos are from Elmaci Pazari in Gaziantep, Turkey. Since we were born in there, we always found the ethnic elements as the typical details of life. However, as we traveled outside this city for our education, first to Istanbul then to the US, we started to grasp the meaning of culture, and the depth of past. We realized that Continue reading
Today is the birthday of Özdemir Asaf, who passed away 36 years ago and still remembered dearly by Turkish literature fans.
We got quite interested in literature when we were in high school, and Özdemir Asaf was one of the poets who taught us how deep and sophisticated Turkish language can be. Even his shortest poems are enough to make us think.
We wanted to remember him on his birthday.
He has a lot of poems and it is hard to pick the favorite ones, but to give an idea we wanted to write the names of his poems that we love.
Bir sokakta habersiz müzik yapmak ve insanlarla o anki etkileşim; sanatın en güzel hallerinden…
Bu videoyu lisedeyken seyrederdim. O zamanlar Yann Tiersen hayranlığım hat safhadaydı (hayranlığım hala devam eder) ve bir şeyler yazarken dinlemek de ayrı güzeldi! Okurken de dinlerdim, hatta kendimce bazı kitaplara fon müziği yapardım.
Yann Tiersen’in hemen hemen her parçasını bilirim ve severim ama bu video bana ayrı bir zevk veriyor. Tam kararmamış sokağı aydınlatan sarı-turuncu ışık, huzur verici bir müzik ve mutlu insanlar.
Dünya hep böyle güzel olsun…
Sevgiler,
Övgü
Playing on a street and interacting with the people around; one of the most beautiful moments of art…
I used to watch this video when I was in high school. I was a big fan of Yann Tiersen back then (I still am a fan) and I enjoyed listening to his musical pieces as I wrote. I also listened to him while reading, sometimes as a soundtrack.
I know almost all of Tiersen’s pieces, but this video above is one of my favorites. Warm lights on a beautiful random street, before it is dark, peaceful music and happy people…
Let the world be this beautiful…
Love,
Ovgu
Hiç fıstıktan kahve olur mu?
Olur. Menengiç kahvesi yabani fıstıktan yapılıyormuş ve doğal olarak kafein içermiyor. Tadı pek kahveye benzemiyor. Adına aldanıp kahve diye içince garip bile gelebilir ama aslında kendine has yağlı ama güzel bir tadı var.
Gaziantep’te doğal olarak (fıstığın merkezi olduğundan) birçok yerde, lokantalarda kafelerde bulunuyor ama İstanbul’da karşılaştığımı hatırlamıyorum. Eğer karşınıza çıkarsa denemelisiniz. Özellikle sütlü ve şekerli harika oluyor.
Türk kahvesi gibi görünüyor ama aslında sütlü ve tadı farklı – Looks like Turkish Coffee but this tastes different and has milk in it. Photo from: http://yemek.com/elazig-yemekleri/#.WLM0Z3g-B-U
A few years ago, when I was an intern at Walt Disney Turkey I have read a book about the making of Lion King Musical. At the time I haven’t seen the musical, but I had heard a lot about the creative costumes and the design. The book introduced me to Julie Taymor, the director and the designer of the Lion King musical. Taymor’s acclaimed design and the puppet-costumes brought her many Tony Awards and also admiration of Broadway-lovers.
We saw the Lion King musical last spring as an Honors Forum trip at Skidmore College. It was amazing!
Half a year later, Continue reading
Media carries cultures across borders. Movies, TV shows, songs, and even cartoons teach cultures, values and assumptions more than we can imagine. Much of what we learned about America and American culture was rooted in an American cartoon called ‘Life with Louie’ that takes place in Wisconsin. We always watched it in Turkish, so when we saw the original version Continue reading
As an international student I have given so many opportunities to think about what I am doing here in the US. No, not in a negative light – and by the passive voice in the sentence before this, I try to tell that not only I think about the fact I am a foreigner, but also I am surrounded by factors that remind me that I am a foreigner.
Being a foreigner starts with (sometimes) traveling. A person learns about herself the most when she travels out of home to live in another country. I travelled out home for high school; it was a travel within the country, and then I travelled out of home for college in the US. Both transitions were interesting and sometimes difficult because of the cultural differences.
When I watched the Ted Talk “the Danger of a Single Story” I could Continue reading
