Contemporary art is often criticized for being extravagant, farfetched or nonsensical. You might think of the paintings and movies of David Lynch, sculptures of Miquel Barceló or even the banana (Comedian) of Maurizio Cattelan. They are definitely strange and hard to interpret, and in Cattelan’s case, give the finger to Art as an institutional practice. I have no problems with this kind of art. I don’t think the artist owes me any meaning. Even if the artwork seems straightforward, it is still too easy to misinterpret. My sculpting tutor made a sculpture of an anorexic girl with a VERY visible vagina and still, people keep thinking it’s a male…

However, I do have a problem with contemporary artists’ lack of courage. I keep seeing (and hearing!) a lot of artworks that are not too abstract but too vague. As if the artists struggled to accumulate the necessary conviction to breathe something of themselves into the work. This obliqueness of art makes me so frustrated. It feels like the artist hides behind the foggy landscape of the present where meaning is either too atomic to be interpreted by anyone but the artist or too high-level for anyone to hold all its significance at once. It seems to me that oblique art is neither, but an epitaph of the artist’s cowardice.

Last week I went to a concert to listen to a violin concerto composed by a friend of mine. I’ve never had the chance to listen to any of his works. I had high expectations because of the praise I had heard about him and the overall aura of his very likable presence.

(He is not aware of this blog and I don’t think he’ll ever read this. E, if you are, I’m sorry.)

Then I heard the same obliqueness in his concerto.

Before the concert there was a pamphlet with a long exposition about the composition. I found it very odd because, of all art forms, music is the one that requires the least amount of exposition. Of course it’s not that easy to tell a story just with music, but it opens such a direct channel with the listener that the story does not need to be told for music to bloom into emotions.

Then it started. For a minute or two, the violin didn’t even make any sound. We waited awkwardly, watching the violinist sway and tremble while the contrabasses in the orchestra smirked at each other. After a time that felt like an eternity, we heard a few notes from the violin. It was a good melody! Alas, it didn’t last long. Then the orchestra started to hum a very ambient sound. Everything sounded like the white noise tracks I listen to while I read. This all lasted for almost 45 minutes; here and there, the orchestra abruptly made sharp noises which felt like jumpscares. At one moment, I opened my notes app and wrote “are we in a David Lynch movie?” to show my wife. The out-of-placeness of everything definitely felt like a David Lynch movie, but unfortunately not like watching one, but being trapped in one.

Sunday reflection on the passing week.

I charged my car battery! This might sound unimportant to you, but it was a big deal for me. My father was a handyman and I helped him a lot on different projects throughout my childhood. So in theory I have a good grasp of how to use tools. But it was not enough. One also needs to be willing to do this kind of stuff, which I was not. My experiences of doing projects at home with my father primarily taught me that a project never goes according to plan. There are always edge cases that lead you away from the happy path, and it’s always easier to hire someone else to be responsible for them. But more and more I feel like the immortal insight of Ozan Akyol, a Turkish comedian, is spot on: “You call an expert. They come and you immediately realize that they’re just another guy.”

Things didn’t go according to plan this time either. The charger I bought required the battery to be removed from the car. So I needed to find a socket tool for that. Then I needed to figure out how to use the damn tool. Then I needed to figure out how to actually charge the battery at home. Doing so was anxiety-inducing. Can it suddenly catch fire? Will there be acid fumes slowly destroying my lungs? My brain habitually overindexes on failure modes. I think this makes me a good engineer but at the same time prevents me from doing novel things.

Anyway, I did it. The car works now. I now know how to remove the battery, charge it, and put it back. I improved my practical knowledge by doing the damn thing with my hands. This is how you build phronesis, right? With this knowledge I’m better equipped for the future even if I decide to delegate the task to someone else¹.

I attribute some of this achievement to my practice of sculpting. Ten years of solely building in the digital realm didn’t help me grow confidence in working with my hands. But with sculpting I feel like I’m building this confidence. It feels nice.

Speaking of sculpting, my first real sculpture, Syzygy, is completed and due for molding and casting this week. I will exhibit it on May 16 at OtonomArt. I suspect (hope) at least one person is going to ask what syzygy means. The term has too many interpretations and usages—gnosticism, Jung, CCRU… I want to write a post here about it so I can be prepared to talk about it there.

If you’re reading this post and have means to be in Istanbul on May 16, consider yourself invited to the exhibition.

i decided to quit smoking on april 19 almost two months ago. i told my wife, my colleagues, my friends. the week before the 19th, i smoked all my cigarettes mindfully, knowing that i wouldn’t have this sensation soon.

on april 19th, i didn’t quit.

this post is now at a crossroads: i will either self-rationalize not quitting smoking by saying i have this or i have that, or self-flagellate complaining about my weak will or never-ending akrasia.

i’ve been smoking since i was fifteen. it was cool, relieving and connecting. it still is. smoking is always an excuse to get out of a crowded space and look at the sky for 5 minutes. it’s always a chance to talk with a stranger just by asking “do you have a lighter?”

so, why do i want to quit?

i’m worried about my health. i’m thirty years old now. not like i’m old, but i’m at the age where it makes sense to think about this stuff. 30 is an opportune age to quit smoking. but it looks like april 19 was not the opportune moment.

so, is this it? do i give up?

no. but i’ve learned enough about myself not to self-flagellate in these moments. i think i even enjoy self-flagellation. i will allow myself the time and space to stop. but there will be some changes.

first of all, i’m not going to smoke at home. at all. i was primarily smoking outside anyway, but i made it a habit to smoke in meetings. this stops today.

second, i’m not going to finish any cigarette that i’m not enjoying. sometimes i feel like i don’t enjoy 99% of the cigarettes i smoke in a day. if i’m not enjoying it, why should i smoke it?

we’ll see.

I was in Antalya, Turkey for the company offsite last week. This is a reflection on the past week. photo dump.

The worst type of leader is the one who needs to be the leader. The second worst type is the one who just can’t accept that they are the leader.

I’m a leader. Writing this fills me with dread because it sounds megalomaniacal to my ears. However, it’s true. I am a leader. I’ve been a leader for some time—I’ve been the technical lead of my team for the last three years. Although they had been calling me that for some time, I think I never really assumed it. I always treated it like a symbolic title that they needed to give me not because I deserved it but because conditions demanded it. Somebody had to fill the void, and no one else was going to.

Dunno what really changed but this year I started to feel I fit the position. It’s not like I had impostor syndrome and I finally got over it. I was confident with my technical abilities for quite some time.¹ I just started to feel comfortable with the idea of being the leader. This required a lot of convincing for my inner-anarchist who has zero trust for the symbolic capital of the title. My teammates have done most of that convincing by looking up to me and putting their trust in me. Another part was my peers, superiors, and customers, and this never-ending feeling of being the adult in the room.²

Last week was one of the most challenging weeks for my team. We needed to finish a pretty daunting release that required us to work long hours under great pressure. We were at the company offsite which required us to participate in a lot of meetings and discussions. At the same time, the team needed to finish the development and testing of big features for the release. We did it. I am grateful to have wonderful teammates who never hesitate to laugh under stress and never cease to support their fellows no matter how tired they are. And they shape me as well. It’s a dialectical process—just as leadership shapes the team, the team shapes the leader.

I’m writing this in haste before packing my laptop for travel. This will be a short one.

• The bust is finished! I’m calling it “Syzygy”.
• We finished A Knight of Seven Kingdoms. I loved it!
• We started watching the new season of The Boys.
• I talked about my recent inability to read in analysis. Unsurprisingly, I started reading again. I’ll probably finish the current read tomorrow on the plane.

if you find yourself wondering “what does ege listen to on repeat these days” i got you fam:

Random thoughts on the passing week.

• After 2 weeks of hiatus I was finally in the atelier again to work on my sculpture. I think the bust is coming to an end. I feel the resistance to continue working on it. One part of me says “I’m bored of this, I want to work on something new,” while another part says “this is 80% finished and I know the last 20% is the hardest part.” I honestly don’t know what to do. Anyway this is how it looks right now:

• We are watching the new Traitors Türkiye show with my wife. It’s definitely cringey, but thankfully I’ve exercised my cringe muscles enough to get hooked on the show. It’s so funny to watch a group of people slowly implode because of their failure to coordinate. They keep voting away the innocents because the group keeps selecting tall poppies as the Schelling point. I’ve never watched the US show so I don’t really know the format, but I wish we didn’t know the traitors so we could try to spot them alongside the participants. Nevertheless it’s a good show to watch while we eat instead of the always depressing Turkish news.

• I don’t know why but I haven’t been able to read the last few weeks and I’m starting to worry. I’ve been reading Rosalind Krauss’ Passages in Modern Sculpture since last month. It’s a good book and it’s a gift from my friends, so I don’t want to abandon it. I think I’m not able to read because life has been so busy the last few months. Work is busy, I needed to travel a lot, and my political duties plus my hobbies already take up too much space. The problem is authors keep writing books, so there’s this never-ending feeling of being behind. (GUYS CAN YOU PLEASE STOP PUBLISHING NEW BOOKS FOR LIKE THE NEXT 10 YEARS OR SO!?)

Continue reading → 79 words

group chat is silent. no one responds to your invitation. it’s okay. it’s been months since you walked aimlessly in the streets. didn’t you miss being a flaneur?

aren’t you entertained?

you bump into Spinoza. HELLO MR. SPINOZA! such a great philosopher. you take a selfie with him. suddenly, the anxiety of an imaginary scene where someone asks you “what’s the gist of spinoza?” clenches your stomach. you hope no one asks anything about him. fingers crossed.

let’s take a few puffs here.

two men are standing on the corner. you can’t hear what they are talking about. but somehow a cackle reaches your ears. isn’t it funny to recognize your kin, by the sound of a singular cackle? you smile at this thought. one needs to walk without a purpose to notice these thoughts. AIMLESS WALKING ROCKS!

until you realize you have to pee.

you need to find a toilet. is this a purpose? IS THIS AN AIM? are you still a flaneur?

calm down. strolling around in a city presents many struggles to the flaneur. non-existence of the goal must not imply the non-existence of intentionality. what do you have in your hands but this intention? who can say that it was not the spirit who filled your bladder by paving the way brick by brick which you happened to set foot on. wasn’t “freedom, the appreciation of necessity”? you raise your hands to the sky and shout a plea to the spirit: “please show me a public toilet!”

you see a small road construction near the canal. you suddenly realize that all construction sites have a portable toilet. you approach the fences. there really is a portable toilet. alas, fences are locked with a padlock. you see a bench nearby. you feel tired. you want to sit there and have a smoke. you want to sit on every bench in the city and have a smoke! amsterdam’s benches are amazing. how cool it is to be able to be outside without being a customer? everyone talks about walkable cities, not enough people talk about sitable cities though.

you still need to pee tho.

you decide to check google maps for public toilets. HAHA LOOK AT THIS google-map-checking-flaneur, my ass! SHUT UP! “junior knows rules, senior knows exceptions.” you are a senior. you know when to switch modes. you know how to balance the apollonian and the dionysian!

señor, you are just a guy who needs to pee.

maps show a toilet 100 meters away. thank goodness! who can say that it was not the spirit that manifested as your agency for deciding to check the map? NO ONE. no fucking one.

you reach the toilet. it smells a little more pleasant than a decaying corpse. the toilet looks like the one in trainspotting. it doesn’t matter. pee…

the warmth of emptying your bladder fills your body. isn’t it strange how removing warm liquid from your body makes you feel warmer?

you feel the buzz in your pocket. chat invites you to the beer temple. you need to get on a tram. no more flaneuring today.

are you entertained?

chat passes you a joint. you take a puff. the smoke itches your throat. ugh americans… yuck. you don’t understand how not mixing the grass with tobacco makes it easier to smoke.

you pass a coffee shop. “let me roll another one.” you watch him squeezing enough weed for three joints into a single fatboy. this is excessive. you are excessive.

you walk between the red lights. an asian in fishnets catches your eye. “we can share if you want buddy!” “you can just do stuff.” yeah, that implies you can just not do stuff.

“only by freeing ourselves from sad passions can we truly act,” said Spinoza.

is that a cock ring? no babe this is prince albert.

Two years ago I asked this blood-chilling question:

what if the text I see is not the same text you see in the same url?

This is now happening. Google patented a technology that rewrites webpages tailored to each individual user.