‘I woke up this morning and I was 30.' The man runs like crazy to the playground. Yes she is still there. ‘We were playing here' he says breathless, ‘and I was in love with you. This morning I woke up as the editor of a magazine with someone speaks in far ancient tongue!' ‘Had I been actually returning to the same point while moving on?' ‘Am I so lost in mortgage deals, credit cards, same game on a bunch of assumptions in limited relationships, new age friendships, subjected to some pre-conditions, Then how will I find my way home?' he said. Just after.. That song came up again.. After many years.. Sezen Aksu's ‘Years I couldn't live” It is the lament of a woman to her youth that she could not live and the yearning for her childhood love. ‘It had really been quite some time.' I thought. When the song was released in 70's, many of those in their middle ages looked back to their youth with yearning. ‘It was so nice floating by!' Turkey would really be longing for those years. The passionate lyrics have gone. The new technology music creak within nonsense rhymes. What happened to the pure ‘love plead' in Frankie Goes to Hollywood's ‘Power of Love'? ‘I'II protect you from the hooded claw; keep the vampires from your door!' The final scene of ‘Slumdog Millionaire', slapped us the absence of anyone today worth to pursue or fight for. Lack of communication was always the theme in literature. In his novel ‘1984',George Orwell told us about a system that destroys not only the world and the environment but love among people. Lately, Sofia Copolla's ‘Lost in Translation' touched us. The American actor in Japan was not lost because of being in a foreign country. He was already alone. I think the train has left the station at the end of 80”s. Love songs also have gone on the same train. Or, maybe “Love” has got exhausted in the modern times. Is there anybody in chat rooms, fast food conversations? We constantly build walls around us of pre-conditional relationship bricks because of the fears we hold on. Fear of commitment, fear of being hurt or fear of change. When did we forget ‘floating by'? Where did we add numbers, machines and calculations into our relationships? ‘But if my spirit is lost within online words and text messages. Then now how will I find what is near?' One night, that woman came along. We were watching TV in Turkey. I was just back from the playground. You were there at the balcony. Aksu's lament was being played everywhere. It was the ‘One channel TV period. A couple of private channels had just begun due to the ‘Modernizing Turkey ‘or in today's words “Capitalizing Turkey' policies brought by our mysterious Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, with his indefinites where he came from and where he was taking Turkey to? It was an automobile commercial. The woman supposedly is naked, throws her bathrobe down on the floor and she says to the approaching bright leather men shoes, 'Macit! Buy me an automobile!' At that moment, we should have understood! That moment was the wind of change in Turkey. The woman with the bathrobe spelled Turkey and suddenly the country turned into a consuming one. The production stopped. We began to import things while a high potential and agriculture lay over. Our Prime Minster who had come in power with his orations on the ‘Middle Class', first got rid of it. The gap between social classes was expanding. While farmers lived on the limit of starvation, some were talking about buying not a property but an Island. I think Kemalism also was transformed in the same era. Kemalism in the new age was “racism'. ‘But if my spirit is strong. Somehow I'll find my way home.' The country was filled with mistresses' throwing their bathrobes in order to convince “Macits”, or with “Macits” corrupting the country rapidly in order to buy that automobile. We all would miss the purity of oldies. I'll protect you from the hooded claw; keep the vampires from your door! BM
