LALE: How about your feelings about your mother and father?
LYDIA: Well, they’re dead. I’m very happy for that. I’ve always felt like an orphant.
LALE: I’m happy for my dad who died as well. But i still feel sorry for him.
LYDIA: Why? What is this torturing dead? He is dead! What is to feel sorry for?
LALE: I believe in after life.
LYDIA: So then he is tortured! Poor bastard!
LALE: No, they were right a bit as well. You see, i wrote poetry all the time. And i couldn’t work because people were jealous. At the beginning, i tried to work. I understood that it won’t work after quite a short while. So, afterwards i looked at my parents for being financed. And i am really sorry i can’t prove it to them. My mother’s got Alzheimer. My father is dead. So i can’t get to tell them how sorry i am to use their money.
LYDIA: I will never feel sorry for using someone’s money.
LALE: You will never feel sorry?
LYDIA: Noo... If someone has money, and especially an artist should be given some help.
LALE: There is no help in Turkey.
LYDIA: Yeah, of course. So then, you should not feel bad taking it from your parents.
LALE: Why?
LYDIA: What are they gonna do with it? They’re dead! Because if they use it when they’re alive you should get it freely or you wait for them to die to take it then. I don’t understand. But maybe i have a different opinion because my parents were very poor. So i was fearing to get their death, not their benefits. So i think that if parents have money they should give it to the children.
LALE: I thought so, too. But i don’t think so anymore after they’re dead.
LYDIA: Well, I don’t have any children so they are not getting my money. I don’t have any to give them. So, it is ok.
LALE: I don’t have three billions, so i feel sorry that i had to ask money from them.
LYDIA: Well, guilt is something i don’t understand.
LALE: How come?
LYDIA: I don’t know. I don’t understand it. It is not that i am perfect but i don’t understand guilt.
LALE: What about guilty people?
LYDIA: That’s their problem. Of course, i understand when someone is guilty but i don’t understand the feeling of having guilt.
LALE: I have it.
LYDIA: I don’t. You need to get rid of it. Get rid of the guilt. It’s gotta go. It must go. Out! Guilt be gone! Guilt be gone!!! It’s got to go.
LALE: But there is my brother who works as a director in the European Community, he is always sort of not looking good at it. What do you think i should do?
LYDIA: Get some money from him too. Why isn’t he supporting the Arts? It is amazing! I should meet your brother. I will take some money from him. Don’t worry about it. He won’t know what happened. First, i’ll take his wallet then i’ll go through his bank account. It will be wiped out at no time. And it will be given only to poets. No problem.
LALE: Poetry is dead now in Turkey as well.
LYDIA: Yeah, then we call it something else.
LALE: What do you think when poetry is dead? What arrives?
LYDIA: I don’t know. I don’t call what i do is poetry. I mean, i know what i write is poetic but i consider what i do is Spoken-word because it has more conversational tone. So it’s different. I am not writing in the poetry format. Even my song lyrics are not necessarily written in a standard format. I mean, i think that poetry... Some people are very precious about this term. I am not at all because i think there is poetry in music, some rappers are doing incredible poetry. It’s where you find it really. So maybe the format as in a traditional way is not alive right now. I don’t think that it means that the poetry is dead. Maybe just the format....
LALE: But there are no more poets left! Come on Lydia.
LYDIA: Yeah, i guess not.
LALE: Throughout the world, i say.
LYDIA: But maybe it is manifesting another format. I mean, when people complain to me that oh music sucks, there is no music..
LALE: Yeah i think Nick Cave said that. There is no more music he said.
LYDIA: Maybe you should look to architecture then, or maybe you look to painting. I mean everything is cyclical. So, if there is no more poetry now there is poetics in architecture or photography. It is where your interest lies. To me, i see incredible poetry in architecture all the time. And i don’t mean necessarily modern, i mean ancient architecture. If i don’t hear music from this year or the past twenty years that influence or affects me deeply, music from 40 years ago does or 100 years ago does. So i think people want everything of their generation, of now or new. When there is so much poetry that's already existed you will never be in between at all. So i don’t take this complaint lightly. If you can’t find it now then you must look backwards. That is why it is beautiful that there are documents such as books, such as photographs, such as records. I don’t need something to be of my time. As a matter of fact most things that affect me most are not of my time. But this is the complaint of many young people. Ohh, music sucks, ohh bla bla... Well, then make it yourself. Do you suck? No! All right! Then, shut up!
LALE: You write poetry then?
LYDIA: I don’t call it that.
LALE: What do you call it?
LYDIA: I call it Spoken-word. What i do is spoken-word but when i am writing it’s... I really think of myself more as a journalist of my own hysteria and of the world's hysteria. So what’s poetic is a byproduct of the fact. Of course it must have poetry. But i consider myself really more of a journalist.
LALE: Are you doing journalism?
LYDIA: Also i have done straight journalism, yeah.
LALE: I have done as well. For five years. Then they kick me out because they didn’t like what i was saying.
LYDIA: I've had a few things cancelled myself. It is very hard to get any money as a journalist any place. I mean it is impossible. But i think what i do is just a journal so i am a journalist of my time, of what is affecting me, of my hysteria, of the world’s hysteria.
So tonight for instance my show, it goes from, the topics are hangovers... You know what a hangover is?
LALE: I do
LYDIA: Hangovers... A hangover from life, a hangover from sex, isolation, the desert, dead man, suicide, and then of course it's been about the war. It encompasses most of life.
LALE: What about the war then?
LYDIA: Which one? The one that never ends? The last, the great war? The war that’s been going since the caves?
LALE: No, i am asking about Iraq.
LYDIA: It is a travesty but it is only one war of dozens that are raging on this fucking planet.
LALE: I know but what do you....
LYDIA: It is ridicilous.
LALE: Of course
LYDIA: It is another American constitute, another American arrogance showing its stupidity. Ruining the place to rebuild it, then not rebuild it! So ruining and luding the place, massacring the people, causing enemies around the world; all for business interests which art even pending out yet. But the interesting thing about war or the co-operations is that it's hard for people like us to understand because we are not thinking in a 25 or 50 year project. We are thinking about tomorrow, about next month maybe and maybe the beginning of the year. We are not thinking much further, we can’t. These insane genocidal maniacs that run the cooperations and the killing machines, they have a very long term view. So they say: "Ok, 5 years of destruction; then 5 years of rebuilding of which we are bankrupting again the people by making them pay for what we have destroyed to be rebuilt. Ok? Then in 15 years we put other American interests there and in 20 years we are making a lot of money on this country."
So the war machine has a very long ranging view of what goes on. And this is something i think we have to understand if we really wanna know what is going on in the world. Because this is the empire’s goal, the empire never changes. America has been the dominating empire for the past 50 years. And unless really the dollar continues to sink there is some assassinations which are necessary and the whole climate changes. This is what we continue until the entire world is forced into, as we are, Slavery. Iraq, it’s one part of the war. There are ten countries in Africa warring all because of the American interest in mining. There is unrest all over the world. And part of it is because of God, whoever that is supposed to be. He will be fortunately left out of most of my insults tonight only because i don’t want to get shot. But you know God the father, God the fucker, the father of the country, all these fuckers... I mean they are encodes to make the world as it is a fucking ghetto. The world is a ghetto.
LALE: So the problem is with people.
LYDIA: The problem is the people haven't find a way thoroughly to make a revolution to rise up because we cannot burn every building of the financial institudes and because everyone is codependant as part of this machinery.
THE END
