The Left Hand

In one of his poems, the Turkish poet Orhan Veli said:

"I got drunk,

And I remembered you again;

My left hand,

My unpracticed hand,

My poor hand!"

Although this poem may seem to be written on a whim and not tell of much, it tells the truth.

Today, I tried playing the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. Towards the middle of this movement, the right and left hands change place; so instead of the usual left hand accompaniment and the right hand singing the melody, now the right hand  sets off with the sixteenth alberti bass accompaniment, and the left hand takes the lead!

Only, it wasn't that easy.

It is expected that people who play the piano and are right-handed to somehow have better use of their left hands compared to other people. Well, that is not entirely true. The piano is actually set for the weakness of the left hand and the strength of the other one (well, except some of Chopin's pieces, maybe). So the pianists actually need to put their left hand in the background, and whether that requires more muscle control or less, is up for discussion.

So we boast about being the "superior species", but we can't even use one of our hands when a cheetah has no preference over whether it should kill with its left or right claw.

I think the reason why Beethoven and Chopin have included the left hand dominantly in their pieces is, first of all, they are composers from the romantic era, so they could do almost anything and get away with it (I mean, the man put a choir into a symphony!), but most importantly, that they wanted to do something different. When you want to play a Chopin piece, a waltz, a mazurka, or a nocturne, you need to practice the left hand separately, get it set, and then add the beautiful right hand melody and embellishments.

Our left hand seems useless sometimes. We may regard it as a vulnerability against other animals or creatures, or we may simply see it as a weak limb, liability. However, when it comes to real life, we definitely  need it and we actually use it more than we think. If we took out the left hand from any piano piece, the melody and the chords would still be there, yes, but it just would not sound right. Our left hand is like the double bass in an orchestra or a bass guitar in a band; you don't notice it when it is there, but when it is gone, you miss it and the music feels empty.

That is, if you are right-handed. If you are a leftie, well, that's a whole other story.

Knock Knock

Avoid the black cat!

Salt over the left shoulder.

Knock on wood.

Rabbit's foot.

Wear the evil eye.

There, all set to go!

All of these actions are things we do every day in order to set our lives on track. When we see a black cat, we expect our day to go terribly wrong. When we pass under a ladder, we live through the day frightened of what may happen.

These superstitions are nothing more than stupid beliefs we cling on to in order to have an "external force" act on our lives, change its current projectile and destination. We think that wearing an evil eye will protect us from a car crash, so we drive more recklessly. And when we don't actually crash into the back of a truck, we think it is because of the "eye".

When we see an owl on the sedge of our balcony, we expect someone to die in the following 24 hours. At least that's the way things work in Turkey.

If we have a rabbit's foot around our necks, well, then, we will ace the physics test!

But actually all of this is caused by logical fallacies. We only notice that there was an owl on our balcony if someone dies that day and we assume a causality. We can always perform poorly at an exam, but that one single time you may not be wearing your evil eye, and, again, we do the best thing humans do, the thing we are all professionals at; we assume. So these traditions are born by your very own mind tricking you. Like every false, hollow, seemingly-useful-but-really-not-worth-a-dime thing on our planet today,superstitions, too, are created only by humans.  They are all things humanity sticks onto to be able to blame something else for what happens to them. Superstitions exist for the same reasons that religion exists for. All these false beliefs are built on the same, selfish, arrogant idea: something went wrong? blame it on someone else.

So, we do knock on wood when we see a very pretty baby, or when someone mentions something horrible happening to another person. I personally do not believe that me knocking on the aged furniture at our house, not even real wood, probably, would delay the Reaper and turn him the wrong way at the intersection just down the road from our home, but my grandma does, and she tells me to do so, insistingly.

Even the most skeptical person on the face of earth, the scientists at CERN or the astronauts in the space shuttle looking down on our blue marble, has an instance of doubt when a black cat walks across the road right in front of them, or when a mirror shatters into a thousand pieces in their apartments.

So when I take the IB exams next year, I won't depend on an evil eye to protect me or a knock on the table to get me a 7. But, just to be safe, I still will wear my blue necklace, be careful around mirrors for the couple of weeks before the exams, pull my hair if I see a black cat on the street while waiting for the bus, and knock on the wood if anyone mentions failing the test or getting a bad grade, because you never know. Someday, those guys at CERN or USC Research Team may just announce that knocking on wood increases your intelligence and awareness.

 

N/A

On the day of mothers last week, a day mothers all around the world are supposed to be showered with love and affection and kindness, two trucks loaded with explosives exploded in Reyhanlı, a province in Hatay, one of the 81 cities in Turkey.

It was initially announced that 45 people passed away.

Then the numbers started increasing, the day on our calenders was painted blood red; but also deep, dark black.

And then, the press was banned from reporting anything that happened or is happening in Reyhanlı. Censorship reared its ugly head.

While the whole country was waiting for the announcement of a national mourning, that very night, two of the countries best and most popular -and also arch rival- teams played a soccer game. And the game wasn't even that important because one of the teams had already declared their championship. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr were all engulfed by status updates supporting their teams. Only a couple cared about the increasing body count in Reyhanlı.

Three days later, university students protested what happened in Reyhanlı and the government's lack of interest in it. They were doused with tear gas, beaten by the police. They sat on the highway connecting two major parts of Ankara. They were wounded, first by the incidence, then by the ignorant and brutal cops. They were armed only by their hate towards terrorism and their love for their country. Nothing else. Yet they were attacked like they were the ones who killed those now-100 people in Reyhanlı; and the irony is that, the people really responsible for that were not being tried to be discovered, apparently, they weren't as dangerous as these university students.

And now, Turkey has forgotten. Like every event which happens, let it be something good or something bad, it is discussed in news programs, barber shops, market registers and streets one day, and in the next, it is forgotten. The government is desperately trying to change the agenda by trying to pass a law regarding the consumption of alcohol in restaurants in Turkey, and the media gladly took the bait.

But this time around, this procedure was catalyzed. We were forced to forget, or rather, we were not reminded. The newspapers, the evening, morning news broadcasts could not mention anything about this event. I don't think they would want to, anyway. Forgive and forget, right?

Tomorrow is the 19th of May which is the National Youth and Sports Day in Turkey. That day in 1919, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk set foot on land in the heart of Anatolia, and began the war for national independence, the resistance was afoot. Later, in 1938, Atatürk rewarded this special day to the youth of Turkey to whom he tied all of his hopes to. And suddenly, the government which did not bother to declare national mourning on the day of the event and sent its president to the USA to discuss some "critical" matters with Barack Obama while the president's country was soaked with the blood of innocent people, terror and fright, decided to cancel the celebrations of Youth and Sports Day because of the incidence in Reyhanlı. In the time we need to get together as a country and celebrate, unite, stand behind our country and democracy and everything that Atatürk trusted us, the youth of Turkey, with, we cannot. We are not allowed to.

I've blamed everything on the government of Turkey in my post here, but do not be mistaken, the people under the goverment, us, need to get half the blame. The day of the Boston bombings, most of my friends wrote condolence messages, RIP's on their precious Facebook Timelines, for three dead and 246 injured halfway across the world, but when that bloody Sunday rushed in, I saw nothing; nothing on my news feed, it wasn't talked about in Twitter, the same friends who "wished patience" to the injured ones in Boston posted "congratz" messages for their team for the soccer game that night. Of course what happened in Boston was horrible and it should not happen ever again and we are all sorry about it, but when an event of similar sort happens in your country with two hundred times the death toll, you should be able to be sorry about it as well, if not more. You should care about the dead people and the orphan children in Turkey as much as you did about the people in the US, if not more. You should, we should, because it is our country, our people.

Ignorance is being forced into our brains right now, and even though some people, like those university students or the people who organized this protest walk to the parliament building which will take place tomorrow are resisting against it, the media, the important people of the country, its celebrities, its athletes, are not. In fact, most people are not. And now, a week has passed, and still there are bodies being taken out from under the wreckage, the debris, at first by the people themselves because the government did not send any help, and everyone has already forgotten. Maybe not totally erased from their brains, maybe there is still a crumb of care and sorrow somewhere in their hearts when they are at their brunch on the side of the Bosporus with their friends and family.

All I can say is that, they cannot make everyone forget about it, about their mistakes, about their ignorance. Even if they ban the media and not allow congressman into the province, some of us will simply not forget. At least, we will try not to, and stay true to our nation and our values we fought so hard for only a hundred years ago. To every children who has lost their parents on that Sunday, to every mother who has lost her son, to every bride who lost her groom, to every sister who has lost her brother, I present my deepest condolences.

;

Names to Fit

On Friday, I did not wake up at 6:30 in the morning to get dressed up and go to school to "learn" and "have fun", really to be tested all the time. Instead, I woke up at 7:40, with butterflies fluttering in my stomach, my fingers waiting anxiously to embrace my piano for the final time before we got in a cab in the rainy, humid morning to take place in a piano contest.

Each grade was assigned a specific piece before hand, ours was a Kuhlau Sonata, and we got to pick another piece, which could be anything at all... as long as it did not exceed three minutes.

We got there a little early, and sat in the cafeteria of the relatively small school. While my mom and I were waiting for my name to be called, students would come and go, some there for the very same competition, with their sheet music in their hands, some with their fathers making them follow him around, some in haste, trying to get copies of the criteria before he/she got called in. And there were some who came with their teachers. This was the last day of the competition, so it was grades 10, 11 and 12 for piano and guitar, and most of these competitors had their valued tutors and "supporting" parents with them. Their tutors were giving them advice, speaking to them with such hurtful ambition and speed, speaking the way a boxing coach speaks to his athlete, telling him how to beat up his opponent so badly that he faints, just before the bell authorizing violence chimes among the halls of gambling, ambition, and money. The parents on the other hand, were a whole new kind. Some sat by, chatting with their children, as my own mother did, actually, she played a game on the iPad while I studied for my French test,  while some were worse than the tutors; parents instructing their children, and their children frantically practicing the hard passages of their pieces on the plastic coffee table they sat in.  One father was dressed up in a suit, his son also dressed up in a black shirt with black suit pants and black, shiny shoes, lead his son around the cafeteria. The boy didn't look up.

Finally, I was called up, along with fifteen other students, and they took us up a floor, where we continued to wait.

When I had four or five people remaining to go before me, we started talking to each other. I sat next to two very, very different people.

One of them could not afford to but a piano, so she had a keyboard at home on which she would practice the passages and parts of pieces, and then she would play her pieces on the piano at her school every day.

The other one's name was Idil, named after the famous Turkish pianist Idil Biret. Her parents bought her a piano when she was born. She played the piano since she was 4-5 years old; but she hated it. She told us that she did not enjoy it at all and that "she did not have anything to do with it." I had the opportunity to listen to both of my new friends. The first girl played quite well, but you could tell she could use a little bit more practice. The second one, Idil, could not play very well, it was as if she was sight reading the pre-determined repertoire right there, and, it was not that hard to sight read. The jury stopped her at the middle of her first piece, asking her to commence with her second piece which she chose. She came out of the room, happy that it was over, while I went in the room, excited to see the piano, the people, and to cross something off my bucket-list.

And today is mother's day. A day only for the most patient -well, most of the time- , most loving, most encouraging creatures on the face of earth. They are indeed special, all parents are, but when they try to change the course of their children's lives, when they try to make their lives into the life they've always wanted to have but couldn't, they become more ambitious, almost to a degree which could hurt their children... But sometimes, they do help them, some become great pianists, great doctors because of their parents' push, but some always look up to their parents, not in the good way, and to everyone around them, walk with their heads down, always trying to live up to their name, while they fail to realize for their whole lives that it is their names who should fit them, not the other way around.

Murphy's Law? Maybe.

Yesterday, I performed at a concert. And until the moment I got up on the stage (I was the last to go, by the way), I practically lived the statement "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

The concert was organized by my piano teacher and she wanted her students to give a concert. She asked me if I would play in it. I said, "Gladly!". She asked me if I had anything to do that Tuesday night, May 7th. I thought about it for a while, and the date rang the bell: math exam, Ding! Luckily, the test was on Tuesday, so I didn't have any studying to do that night. Anyway. She told me that the rehearsal would be at 18:00. I told her that I come from school around 17:00 and I could easily make it... Haha.

So Tuesday came rolling, I took the painfully hard calculus exam, and was excited the whole day for the concert that night. I got on the bus, and because of the people who took the bus that day, I  realized that I would be dropped off 3rd from the last.

But that was just the beginning.

The road we normally take was unusually and incredibly crowded and a jogging turtle could have passed us for a while there.

When it was finally my turn to get dropped off, the bus driver "forgot" I was in the bus and missed the turn which lead to my street. I had to ride along in the bus until he dropped off the remaining three people.

I finally got home, ate some stuff so fast I couldn't taste it, fixed myself an outfit, splashed on some makeup, and we were getting in a cab at 18:10.

Oh, what's that?

Some people tried to take charge and are running around yelling shallow slogans with banners in their hands, so the police closed off a street.

Some genius city planner decided to work on the asphalt in one of the main arteries at the place I was going to, so bye-bye free flowing traffic!

It took us 30 minutes to go somewhere we would've gone in 10 minutes any other day.

Now, I don't want to commit any logical fallacies or anything, but, if all of these weren't Murphy's Laws alive in flesh and blood, what were they?

Of course, I would not notice the jammed traffic every other day when I did not have a concert to get to.

I would not care so much if the bus driver had forgotten to drop me off any other day. So maybe, just because today I had somewhere and some event I had to get to, because I searched for misfortunes all along the way, I noticed these stuff.

Nonetheless, something, maybe a decision I made or maybe the fluttering of a butterfly's wings on the top of a skyscraper in Shanghai caused me to be late to that concert. I don't know what was at work that day, but that chaotic afternoon was far from normal... Murphy's Law? Maybe.

Drunk From the Wine of Power

When we say kings, queens and monarchy, we immediately think of sword fights, public executions, men in tights with music playing in the background with parallel fifths and fourths, a fat, arrogant man sitting on a throne surrounded by gold looted from conquered cities. We think that those days of kings and queens are in the past.

However, they have never been so close to us.

Once one of the most powerful nations now drowning in its own economic slump powered by unnecessary inflation, the U.K., in fact, has a queen as their leader.

Today was Queen's Day (actually to be King's Day from now on because the current queen has left the throne for his son), a special day in the Netherlands to celebrate the birthday of their queen and the previous queens.

So, opposing contrary belief and our conditioning, kings and queens do play an important role in our society.

And you could argue about what's wrong with that. The glitch in this system is that nobody wants to give up their supreme and unquestioned power; moreover, everyone wants to obtain that power. Because when you're the king or the queen of a nation, you are at the top, you don't take orders from anyone; only mere suggestions posed at "your grace", and, well, if you don't like their suggestions, Off with their heads! OK, maybe not necessarily decapitation in 2013, but you get the gist.

The honorable and right thing to do is to give up the throne when you've had enough time under the limelight and enough glory to carry on with you, to pass on the throne to your descendants to let them rule the country for a while, not to cling on to it until you can barely walk and until your son gets to the age you should have left the throne at.

But again, being drunk from the wine of power is irresistible, and the wine is just too, too sweet to give up.

Symphony of a Thousand

On Tuesday, we went to listen to Mahler's Eighth Symphony, more commonly known as the "Symphony of a Thousand."

The story is that Mahler originally wrote this symphony for a thousand people to perform it, but it was only done once with a thousand people on the night of its premiere in 1910, Munich.

The one we went to was "only" four hundred people on stage; one orchestra (which had two harps, so imagine the size) and three choirs, plus the soloists standing at the front and some part of the brass section in one of the aisles between the seats of the audience because they couldn't fit on the stage.

Still, it was no different than a quartet who's been together for twenty years playing their favorite piece; everything was right, and even in that chaos and in that heap of people, instruments and stands, nothing stood out and everyone managed to listen to each other.

Of course, the conductor played a big part in all of this "staying together" and synchronization.

But the most important thing to do when you're performing with an orchestra, especially with a 300-people one, is to listen to every single instrument and voice. Looking at the director, in my opinion, comes later.

The most amazing thing I observed at one point midst the screeching dissonances, chromatic notes and "themes" to be heard once and never again, was how the huge violin section could pull off such an awesome crescendo; it sounded like one person was playing the whole thing. Playing the right notes and the rhythms is something, but doing a perfect crescendo in unison is another.

The Symphony of a Thousand by Mahler, put together by the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra and three choirs, was surely an amazing experience, one that I would be terribly sorry to miss. Once again, I realized how actually listening to people make the music there and then, with little flukes and perfect nuances is much, much, much more different than downloading the piece from torrents.com and listening to it with cheap headphones.