Views From the Summer of a Migratory Bird

Rachel Zhu

“On a planet close by,

All of the issues I’ve forgotten of

Every like separate recollections

Are calling me again from their locations”

— Universe Reconstruction, Büyük Ev Ablukada

This was the tune that got here up on shuffle as I used to be returning to my house metropolis, Istanbul, this previous June, and for the primary time in my life, I felt like a tune can specific you higher than you may ever specific your self. I knew that it wasn’t solely going again house for me as a result of as Heraclitus as soon as stated, “You can not step into the identical river twice, for different waters are frequently flowing on,” because the solely fixed is change. But it surely simply at all times appears like I’m going to completely different worlds culturally, socially, language-wise and naturally bodily, all throughout the North Atlantic Ocean. I knew I used to be going to be bombarded with questions from household and mates like “How is life in America?” (which I by no means know methods to reply), just like ones I obtain about Turkey at Yale. I received’t lie, it usually feels fairly empowering, kind of adopting the function of the wing-sandaled messenger god Hermes, however it’s at all times complicated to search out a solution to what to do with an id on flux that’s within me. Again house, I’m an overseas child speaking in a Turco-English hybrid language. Right here at Yale, I’m a world fighting English and making an attempt to adapt to American tradition. For the time being when “Universe Reconstruction” got here on shuffle, with a sudden sparkle of inspiration, I made a decision to remain in Turkey for all the summer time (the whole lot was distant in any case) and embark on a musical odyssey and see the place my reminiscence would take me: to resolve what to maintain with me and what to go away behind. 

Out of behavior, I continued with the songs that I used to hearken to in America. As a result of I knew that my dad would already know artists like Sufjan Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel and Elliott Smith (as a result of I nonetheless preserve my childhood perception that he secretly is aware of the whole lot), I made a decision to save lots of those we at all times listened to collectively for him and opened them for my mother as an alternative on our automotive journeys. By the top of the summer time, although she doesn’t perceive what they are saying, she turned to me in the future and stated: “I’ve discovered these songs now, I’ll hearken to them when you find yourself gone and bear in mind these moments.” At that instantaneous, I knew that going ahead I might solely hearken to these songs together with her or alone. When Herman Dune’s “My House is Nowhere With out You” began to play, I turned to her and stated that this needs to be our tune then. Her smile was much more lovely to easily be a dream because the sunshine illuminated our faces. This was one of many moments I knew I’d carry with me without end. 

Once I went to the third home that my dad had moved into in two years, I discovered a really fairly sea view ready for me on the balcony. I secretly wished he would nonetheless be in that home after I got here again once more. The home was completely different, however our routine was the identical: I stole a number of issues from my dad’s Tolstoy, Kundera and Yalom collections, we cooked some vegan pastries, we traveled to my favourite district, Kadıköy (which can also be the place he spent his total childhood), we went into some indie retailers that had decorations from all internationally and we had beer and fries in our favourite communist cafe. I once more inquired issues about his previous and love life to make him uncomfortable and see the shy smile he at all times tries to cover. Although, what made these moments acquainted slightly than a distant reminiscence or a novel expertise was after all the music on the background: our bipolar temper within the automotive, which swings between both Malmsteen, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Weapons N’ Roses or Max Richter, Mozart, Schubert, Armand Amar, Karunesh and different kinds of meditation sounds. Satirically, as we handed by the attractive forests of the turquoise Aegean coast that will quickly perish within the Mediterranean wildfires, we had been listening to Ludovico Einaudi’s “Burning” from his “In a Time Lapse” album. 

Once I went again to my mother’s once more, I couldn’t wait to see which shade of purple, pink or blue my ethereal childhood good friend’s hair was, as they modify it each month. Out of a coincidence, we bumped into one another through the loopy quarantine interval of early 2020 and linked again at that instantaneous. I used to be as soon as once more drawn into their world that consisted of self-taught Chinese language to check in China, the habit of watching outdated, dusty or indie pageant movies and garments with varied alphabet letters and anime-characters. As they couldn’t return to their college as a consequence of China’s journey restrictions, their obsession with neo-Turkish psychedelic rock elevated, which echoes the voice of being trapped in a rustic the place human rights and life high quality lower daily. We listened to the voice of loneliness as we regarded on the Tarot playing cards below a smoky purple gentle to “create the bonding environment” inside our good friend group: 

“Stunning issues

Rapidly die, go away and decay

Expectations

Pull you to their very own swamp

I hope not even a mud of me stays on this place

I hope that nobody remembers me on this place”

(Mud, Jakuzi)

At that second, I puzzled if it was starting to pay attention to those songs again within the day that made me such an individualistic particular person. How does music affect an individual and a era’s character? Later, I handed by the outdated report shops, second-hand booksellers, thrift retailers, chaotic Center Japanese bazaars, pungent bars that serve drinks to underage youngsters, the longing voices coming from the taverns, 1000-year-old historic silhouettes from the Byzantine and Ottoman previous and hopped on a ferry to observe the free seagulls that flew throughout the gray-blue sea within the tangerine sundown. Cem Karaca’s adenoidal voice from the Seventies accompanied me as I remembered my childhood thrill and hope for the longer term when Gezi Park protests, a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest to contest the event plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park, erupted again in 2013 on my solution to the world. Karaca was deploring the conventionality of the category divide inside society. Whereas artists like Karaca grew to become the voice of protest, rise up and hope as they depicted the idiosyncratic views of on a regular basis folks and the lifetime of a collective society, it felt like Jakuzi and others mirrored the inside world and dichotomies of an individualistic generation-Z persona of the twenty first century:

The boss got here, slapped my again, and stated “overlook the novels”

“You’re a employee, keep as a employee,” he stated, “put on your overalls”

(Mechanic Apprentice, Cem Karaca)

It was humorous to have low-cost ’90s-00s Turkish pop together with trippy electro and home collectively because the background music on the spotlight of my vacation, since when one travels to the Mediterranean coast with mates in the summertime, this incompatible mixture is doomed to occur. The sound of music blended with that of the salty waves and plied between the bonfires of the seashore golf equipment and our dances in trance below the starry evening sky. It was merely paradise, but, unexpectedly, I discovered my eyes trying to find my highschool good friend whom I don’t communicate to anymore. I remembered our vacation in these actual locations and, for the primary time, confessed to myself how I nonetheless miss him. I’ve stuffed my fingers with new reminiscence rings, surrounded myself with completely different faces, acquired a brand new tattoo on my stomach, acquired the archetypal lady haircut that marks the transition from childhood to adolescence and it has been two years now. Perhaps my tendency of dashing to maneuver on grew to become a man-made suppression mechanism that I didn’t have a management over anymore. Perhaps that was additionally the explanation why, even when I went to the opposite nook of the world, America, how our fragmented friendship was going to stay someplace inside me for a very long time.

Once I hopped on the aircraft on my manner again to Yale, I started to hearken to my “Final Moments” playlist as soon as once more as I watched the cotton-candy clouds resting on essentially the most hopeful shade of blue. Because the moments of reminiscence and contemplation hit me , I made a decision to play “Universe Reconstruction” to let it information me as soon as once more. It’s at all times mesmerizing to see which a part of one thing we take note of when our notion adjustments, which perhaps explains why one way or the other solely these strains stayed with me this time:

“I’ve to start out from someplace

Footage, faces, riddles

whose birthday was it right now

The guitar I forgot within the taxi, the important thing to the home

They consistently hang-out my goals

Bread crumbs within the forest

The noise of the day, the comfort of affection

whose downside is that this

who will not be at house

Are all of the illusions that I think about mine

I’ll discover all of them

One after the other

I’ll put them again to their locations

One after the other”

Gamze Kazakoglu | [email protected]