Takes place at Dogzstar on the 6th of December, 2007
LYDIA: What’s said to me in the death of a great American writer like Hubert Selby Jr who wrote Last Exit To Brooklyn and Requiem For A Dream, The Room, The Willow Tree is... This is one of America’s finest writers of literature. And he died 2 years ago.
LALE: Who is he?
LYDIA: Hubert Selby. Last Exit To Brooklyn was his most famous book. And he is in the same category in the senses Henry Miller. Not so well known because he never moved to France to live or wrote so pornographically but wrote really about human emotion and desperation, loneliness. I always thought he was one of my heros. He was one of the first persons i read very young and decided of course i can write about the truth, i can write about experience and reality. And even in his death, he has no more attention. Usually death brings you some recognition.
LALE: Yeah
LYDIA: But i mean now even death does not assure you your place in history. So you really have to step and kick it out now. I mean this is my theory at least.
LALE: This is correct. I agree with you.
LYDIA: You have to make your history now and make it heard. And that is one reason why i continue is i can’t count on my own death. I can no longer count on my own death since i still refuse to die at this age.
LALE: I would like to ask you one thing. I think i asked you again but i am jet-lagged, i just arrived from the US, so what i would like to ask is... whether... you’re American again... you live in Spain but...
LYDIA: What if i changed my nationality in the last ten minutes. No, i am from America and i feel very American in some ways but i don’t consider myself a citizen of any place. I move all the time from city to city. Every two and four years i move usually. I lived in many cities and i will continue to move. Sometimes i feel... i feel like the spy from America. The one that can tell a lot of filthy secrets of what it is. But i don’t feel tied to any city, any country. I don’t even feel tied to this fucking planet. I don’t. So...
LALE: I don’t either... One poet friend with whom i took plane together to the US said; when i said i like America, it is better than Turkey at least and he said you’ve been cooking over our heads so long, it is better you move in to the US... Cooking?!...
LYDIA: Interesting, interesting.. Look, i think that America will have a rebirth. But i think it is the cooperate-ocracy that runs the entire planet now so i mean we are all been dominated by the cooperate boundens, doesn’t matter what country at this point.
Woaw! It is really boring maybe it will wash them all away, i doubt it though. Maybe it will flout the banks, i don’t think so... The problem is the cooperations and most of the cooperations are from America and this is ... last night for instance i took a ride going to the Babazula studio which was quite away, being outside of the city. And i was like what are these immense George Orwellian buildings and they were the finance centers. To me, they were this horrifying monoliths of doom and disaster that looked over ahead.
LALE: But i have the same feeling over Wall Streeet
LYDIA: Of course...
LALE: It is scaring as a place.
LYDIA: Of course. Yes. I mean these are where the real mysteries of the modern world lie. Because we will forever be locked outside of what goes on there. And i am not sure i want to know. I see the damage that’s been done and it is global. That is it!
LALE: So let’s talk about a bit more sweet things, hıh? What are sweet things for you?
LYDIA: I guess the sweetest thing for me is maintaining my sanity while the rest of the world goes insane and finding, certainly not a utopia because i don’t dream that big, but in a way my own peace. I mean i have to hope that i have some effect on other individuals by maintaining a stable base, by not falling apart, collapsing and destroying myself for anyone else and by thriving and surviving to continue to create. I mean, to me that is all i can do and that is very selfish in some senses.
LALE: It is the same for me because i had brain damage. And i came to life again in a mysterious way. I had forgotten Turkish. I could speak only French and English. By miracle, really i should say, miracle the doctors said i came back to life normal and i learnt Turkish in one week.
LYDIA: Now i fear brain emerging because i had many many migraines and headaches and my father died of a brain aneurysm. But i also had.. i also died...i would say died on the operating table and came back to life but i didn’t lose my faculty. I was above my body as i was being operated upon. And this was truly hell, this was hell. Now there is much more attention to this, because many people are coming awake under anesthetic. This is a good lesson in life for you when you think you’ve died. It is fantastic.
LALE: I was really happy to die, i was so unhappy that i came back to life.
LYDIA: Well, i always say there is really a long time to be dead and only so many years to live so for now i am fine. I don’t know. I wil be dead forever maybe if things happen as i hope. But you know reincarnation, it is so tricky. To me, reincarnation and this is what i was singing about last night is.. To me my murder is reincarnation which means this: Which means being over sensitive to geography, over sensitive to every ghost that haunts every stone and every step and every stair and of course the city, like most ancient cities are very haunted. Reincarnation to me is a molecular memory. So, if in our polluted blood lines lies all of these atrocities.... this is my struggle. And this is where my poetry comes from.
LALE: It is very beautiful what you say.
LYDIA: And i long for the black velvet caress of nothingness. I saw a fantastic special on the origins of the universe. The Big Bang. And they said the one trillionth of a second before the Big Bang , before the Big Bang happened, there was nothing and i said: Why do they have to ruin it!!! Why do they have to ruin it!!! Eveything was perfect. There was nothing. And then... phew!!! Christ! Who thought of this?! I was embracing that time. The one trillionth of a second before the Big Bang they said there was nothing and then one trillionth of a second later, here we go.
LALE: I also heard that you had a new lover who is gonna come here.
LYDIA:Well, he is coming here. He will be here when he wakes up. Not so new, i’ve known him for 23 years. If i’ve known him for 23 seconds, it is a new lover. A new and temporary lover, by the way.
LALE:You’re right.
LYDIA:I don’t have time for new lovers any more. They take too much energy. It is exhausting. I am just going with a man who is securing himself which is a unique position for any man to be in. So it is great. Great. And who is creatively as schizophrenic as i am. That is also unusual. So all is good.
LALE: What do you think about Turkish women?
LYDIA:I don’t know enough of them to tell you.
LALE:Just from looking...
LYDIA:I can’t. This is judging a book by its cover even worse it is judging a human being by its cover.
LALE:But it is not so bad, the covers
LYDIA:Yeah, the covers are gorgeous. I am hoping to come for residency at the university here, maybe next year, to try to encourage more women to find their voices. This will be something great for you to also be a part of. Because i taught workshops before San Francisco Art Institute in Performance. Since i am only dealing with through life experience and reality, i am not writing fiction even if it’s poetic, to teach women find their voices, speak about the real experience whether it is through painting or photography or DJing, poetry and music. So i hope to come here and inspire and get to know more Turkish women. I mean, i only meet the great ones but then the great ones come to me so that is all i know. I am lucky.
LALE: Turkish women rule... Attention... Turkish women rule. Don’t forget that.
LYDIA:They should be ruling. They rule, not enough.
LALE: Men are a bit stupid than women, aren’t they? But they got the culture, the women haven’t got the culture through out the years because they had to look after kids. And because they don’t have the culture...
LYDIA:Because many of the women’s ideas are stollen or co-opted. So if they are the inspiration...
LALE: I heard this thing about, you know, Rodin and his girlfriend.
LYDIA: Yeah?
LALE: I prefer Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes.
LYDIA: Yes, of course.
LALE: And then, Ingeborg Bachmann, Anna Ahmatova
LYDIA: Yes, yes,yes. And do you know this one, at the end of the Surrealist Moment, this one writer Unica Zürn. She is not well known but i recommend to you. She wrote a beautiful book called Der Mann im Jasmine. She, in the end, became very schizophrenic and again killed herself. She is a lover of Hans Bellmer, of a fantastic artist, a surrealist artist who made photographs with all these doll parts posed and Unica Zürn, when she was institutionalised at one point, invented her own alphabet and made drawings. She is not very well known but she is very important i think.
(Lale looks for her notebook to note the name down)
LALE: Look at my notebook, it is from Europe of course.
LYDIA: Oh beautiful. It is for... when you are wandering your poems. It is collapsing from abuse.
LALE: No, because it is always in my bag. I don’t write much any more. Before i filled hundreds like this. I don’t write much anymore because i feel that it is a second birth for me and i am trying to enjoy myself. But i can’t do that as well so i am sort of forcing myself to write again.
LYDIA: Well, i think the writing has to come when it wants to. It is its own stubbornness. I mean, i don’t think writing is something that is to be forced. I think it comes when it must be said. It is the silent song that must be sung so it comes and irritates you until you write it. I am never writing one sentence i don’t need. I am just not. To me the poetry and the words is the by product of the experience. So first it takes a long time to cumulate the experience and then the words are condensed into... i mean something that affected you for months and years is condensed into a poem that lasts two minutes. This is magic.
