"I couldn't be a good artist. Never. Am I sorry about that? Yes I'm... But I've never been mad at my students who can't paint well. Because I couldn't be a good painter myself. And I guess that's why I didn't want them to be a disappointed, ever.  I just said to them; It's not the end of the world. Just feel the colors... Just be happy. That's what I said. It's not the end of the world!"  

 

But according to my fiction, in the play that İ wrote, the world is approaching the end. And that character was saying those words at home, in the corner, sitting in his usual seat, watching the comet at the sky, that was getting closer and closer.

       

      I wrote this play in 1993. I wanted to spend the rest of my life acting and writing plays. That's what happened. I always acted until last year.   When I wasn't playing, I wrote plays.

     

The main reason that drove me to write plays was the desire to produce them alone. No one should have sealed the world I built. The characters, the environment they live in, the dialogues, the fiction, everything had to belong to me. It's like painting.

     

At that time, I was also painting, as long as I could, to linger... And I destroyed most of them later, to avoid the possibility of being ridiculed by those who understood. I didn't dare take a palette and brush in my hand in a serious and disciplined way. I thought every profession has its own way of life, rightly so. First of all, I was a theater actor. My life, my view, my perceptions, my relationships, my daily life, my habits were always determined by my profession. As long as I didn't live like a painter, I didn't look at life like that, what was my place to paint. And even though it was makeshift, I didn't have a studio, I went through it, I didn't even have a picture room. I didn't even want to think that I would explore the world of painting that had scared me all my life, but would make me happy the most, at the age of sixty, and I would boldly go to it.  Until the summer of 2014. 

     

I was sixty years old that summer. And I couldn't predict when that comet would hit me. İt shouldn't have been far away.

 

I want to continue my words with a quote from myself to better describe my feelings in this process. I scribbled what was inside me that summer, days before my sixtieth birthday, from time to time my eyes filled; 

 

The summer of 2014 will be an important summer for me. This summer, I will celebrate the anniversaries of my way of life, in my own way, by giving tolerant greetings to the old summers, my not-present, my blind dreams... I'll look through the hole of that uncertain door and try to see the ten-year period in front of me, as I do every ten years, nervous again, even more insecure, but hoping for good things. 

I'm on the verge of my 60s this summer.

   

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

"Life is a whole." 

 

That's what he said in one of the play I wrote, that self-deprecating role person; 

 

“No matter how much you change or alienate the person at the beginning of the road, it is still you”

 

40 years ago, Yilmaz Güney gave me the first acting experience of my life and the honor of appearing in the same frames as him.

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It was the summer of 1974. On the one hand, I was preparing for an acting exam in front of the two-dimensional concrete curtain of the Summer Cinema; half-assed Sophocles tirades on my tongue, overturned phrases of the future that I wanted to reach in my mind.  Tanks were crossing  towards the border.  High-heeled sabos, baggy pants, Ecevit blue shirts at Selimpasa market,  by the sea side...

     

 I was on the verge of my 20s. 

 

And this summer, if the path is enough, my step into acting is 40. I can say that I understand the year. It's an important summer for me..

 

And 20 years ago, I started writing my first play...

     

It was the summer of 1994.

At the last moment, I was one of the victims of an undignified epidemic transmitted by cries of "cheers", and with a final flutter I managed to get rid of it and cling to the railings of life, and I was in a period of recovery.

 

 

First came to mind when I think about it;

 

In the outer realm, Madimak's ashes had not yet cooled. In the realm of friends, the blue-haired girl had not yet become an angel and flown to heaven, but God did not seem very intent on keeping her on this rough planet. Hope and despair were on the horse's head. The game I wrote had a very reliable name with an internal and external atmosphere;

 

“During Doomsday”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hadn't started driving in my 40s yet. 

 

And this summer, if the road is enough, is the 20th anniversary of my playwriting adventure. I can say that I understand the year. It's an important summer for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most precious years of my life have been spent competing with the top10 list candidates of”those who can't hold on." I'm not proud of this, I'm sure. But I don't regret it. According to the universal rules of physics, it was just what it had to be. I am personally happy with the result. I am happy to have lived in the infinite cascade of time, the time it was presented to me, the way it was presented, and every moment of it. 

The process I was involved in in the past, with all its events and people, now belongs to me. No one can change it. No one can take it away from me. I wave to everyone along the way that my path coincides. Especially my friends Erkan and Reco... and Cüneyt, the Conqueror, and Jonah... and all my friends who have landed or are still on the train. And I want to think about the countless moments that made sense with them this summer. If the road is enough. And countless pages hidden in every sentence... but without trying to exonerate him or anything like that... without questioning... as is. It's like he's humming a tune I love so much. "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"

 

My unmourned deaths 

Swings in the wind of the clock pendulum

Time is  five to future every time

And my total life is as much as I remember

(2014, first summer)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the years have passed. Now I have a lot of paintings, most of them hanging on the walls of my house. How did I find time to paint all of them? When did I finished? How could I not stop thinking about the picture I had to leave halfway home, even when I was acting in front of the camera? Running home, even without changing the costume for weeks. And how indescribably happy I was with all this... I think it takes too long to tell.

Yeah, I'm very fond of painting. But if my friends didn't like the pictures I shared in fear and encourage me, they would have been destroyed for reasons such as incompetence and incompetence, just like the ones before.  

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Note: Although I don't want to enter polemic with him anymore; the young man in the play I wrote but I want to say the last thing to that philosopher  smartas:

 

Life is not a whole.

Life is the sum of our different parts.

 

     

In the future, when I look back on the last ten years, if the road is enough, maybe I will see spots, lines, spots, colors, much more than backstage, camera, or my writing desk. Making pictures that will be my reason to live, as much as I can, as much as I can. And that will make me very happy.

I'm at my writing machine right now, but I'm right in front of my pictures. I feel like I'm going beyond the moments when I'm looking at them. I see what I have experienced, my woe, what I have played, what I love, what I have lost and missed, my inability to face time, my inexperience, my grief-stricken deaths, my childish and hurry moments, in short, my entire life and inner life.

 

And the final word;

Well, I see it like this.