A Reminder from Call Me By Your Name

Right now you may not want to feel anything. Maybe you never wanted to feel anything. And maybe it’s not to me you want to be speak about these things, but feel something you obviously did.

Look, you had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you.

In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their sons land on their feet. But I am not such a parent.

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new.

But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything — what a waste.

Have I spoken out of turn? Then I’ll say one more thing. It'll clear the air.
I may have come close, but I never had what you two have. Something always held me back or stood in the way.

How you live your life is your business. Just remember our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once and before you know it your heart's worn out and as for your body there comes a point when no one looks at it much less wants to come near it.

Right now there's sorrow. Pain. Don't kill it and with it the joy you felt.

Anais Nin on Connection

The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters, meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us.

Paradox: Michael Chabon on Brokenness

Last year, I was working on a project at VSCO in partnership with Fox Searchlight to celebrate the premiere of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. As my team researched and learned more about Anderson, we stumbled on this excerpt about brokenness by novelist and short story writer Michael Chabon.

Is it ironic that the project felt pretty broken in and of itself? I love how that happens. We hit the excerpt jackpot for our research, but maybe we needed this message even more for the work and for ourselves.

Echoing lessons I learned from Liz Gilbert about the paradox of life and creativity, Chabon’s words release me of the need to create order while simultaneously granting me permission to make my own story from the scattered pieces I find.

On Brokenness and Beauty, Control and Chaos

The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises, that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research “childhood.”

There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises “adolescence.” The feeling haunts people all their lives.

Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouins tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again.

Two difficulties with this latter scheme at once present themselves. First of all, we have only ever glimpsed, as if through half-closed lids, the picture on the lid of the jigsaw puzzle box. Second, no matter how diligent we have been about picking up pieces along the way, we will never have anywhere near enough of them to finish the job. The most we can hope to accomplish with our handful of salvaged bits—the bittersweet harvest of observation and experience—is to build a little world of our own. A scale model of that mysterious original, unbroken, half-remembered. Of course the worlds we build out of our store of fragments can be only approximations, partial and inaccurate. As representations of the vanished whole that haunts us, they must be accounted failures. And yet in that very failure, in their gaps and inaccuracies, they may yet be faithful maps, accurate scale models, of this beautiful and broken world.

Paradox: Liz Gilbert on Creativity

Like with friendship and with dating and with love, I’m amazed by the way books and poems and movies and music enter stage right when I need them most. For most of my life, I’ve navigated the world under a deep-seeded pretense that worthiness is measured in perfection and organization. A pretense about life and relationships and creative work being rooted in beauty and purpose and order, all of which could only be truly attained by swimming the depths of brooding darkness.

In her book Big Magic and in several interviews afterwards, Liz Gilbert managed to make a mess of my pretense and launch me into a soulful, confusing, creative, painful healing process. Here are some of her beliefs, many of which continue to liberate me of concrete definitions, rights, and wrongs.

On Creativity and Paradox

Creativity is sacred and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything. 

Stop expecting the paradoxes to resolve themselves. Stop demanding that it all be tidy, because it isn’t going to be.

In a moment of deep contemplation recently, I did have the question come to me, “How comfortable are you having a few deep, open wounds?” And the question itself made me relax. Just hearing that. “Oh I see, that’s the assignment. I thought the assignment was to heal everything” And weirdly, paradoxically, when you start being comfortable having open wounds, the wounds heal.

On Creativity Born From Darkness

I blame the German romantics. There came to be a vogue — and we’ve never really lost that vogue — of very, very pretentious young men in black clothing talking about how hard it was to make things and then taking laudanum and writing dark poetry about it. And it established a kind of a chic that has never really gone away. Like two hundred years later, everyone’s still holding that up as the model of what an artist is and it’s not my personal belief that that’s what art has looked like for most of human history.

On Fearlessness vs. Courage

I have no interest in becoming fearless. I have met a few people in my life who I would describe as fearless and they were sociopaths. You look in their eyes and there’s something missing. There’s a reptilian horror movie going on behind. They are dangerous to themselves and to others and to you and you should cross the street when you see them coming.

I think we live in a culture that really celebrates fearlessness. All language around fear is this very Navy Seal kinda “Kick fear in the ass” and “Punch it in the face.” It’s so violent. And I also know that anything in my life I have ever fought has fought me back.

So the difference between fearlessness and courage is fearlessness is I feel nothing and courage is I feel everything and I’m doing this anyway.

Paradox: Anne Lammott On Wasting Time

“I’ve had to stop living unconsciously. Like I have all the time in the world.

The love and the good and the wild and the peace and the creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it’s harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode.

One day I stopped. I began to consciously break the rules I learned in childhood. I wasted more time as a radical act. I stared into space more. Into middle distance like a cat.

This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights.”

First Day in Istanbul

While waiting in line to board the plane at Vulknov airport, I heard “Amannnn, cok yavas yaaaaa” and knew I was headed to familiar territory.

I arrive in Istanbul on Turkish Airlines flight 414 from Moscow.

When I land at Ataturk airport, I immediately turn on my phone. Having an AT&T Passport Plan has been useful. It’s like I’m in the US. The downside is that I’ve been more attached to my phone than not lately. Again. It’s like I’m in the US.

The moment I toggle Airplane mode off, I get a text from Papa Turkey. It says Engin will be there honey. Engin is my dad’s business partner’s driver. This is weird.

I find Engin. He greets me with a warm merhaba, and we’re off into Istanbul traffic. He calls my dad. Merhaba Moshe bey. Cok traffique var… They have a quick back and forth, and then Engin hangs up. 

Hearing Engin call my dad Moshe bey, aka Sir Moshe, deepens my curiosity about the new life my dad lives in a city he called home over 20 years ago. We get off the highway, and Engin turns down winding streets that overlook the Bosphorus. I recognize everything. Simit Sarayi. Boğaziçi University. We’re in Bebek.

I think of my mom, who grew up in this neighborhood. What Westport, Connecticut is to me, these foreign yet familiar cobblestone streets are to my parents. I wish I could go back in time and have a look into their lives as teenagers here. The emotion is overwhelming.

Finally, Engin pulls up in front of Ceremony, the floral and event company my dad works for. His office is in the heart of Bebek, near the hip cafe, Lucca, and across the street from Bebek Kahvesi. I’ve eaten at both places with Turkish friends from college. Everything is connected.

I step into the flower shop wearing my travel clothes. Not as chic as most women in Bebek. I see my dad and his face lights up. It’s so good to see him. It’s crazy how he blends in. His business partner, Irem, gets up and gives me a big hug. Everyone in the shop remarks at how much I resemble Moshe.

I sit next to my dad at a long table as he finishes up a few to-dos with Irem and one of their event architects. He’s dominant as usual, but in a calm way. It seems like his coworkers harbor a lot of the anxiety he used to carry with him. I wonder if he’s actually doing alright. A part of me worried that moving to Istanbul would undo a lot of the mental, emotional, spiritual work he’s done over the years. He seems peaceful. I hope it’s real.

Irem sees my dad put his hand on my leg and says Git, kizin burda! She looks stressed, but it’s a genuine and thoughtful gesture towards the important Turkish value of family over all else. My dad organizes a few papers and we get my luggage from Engin, who calls us a taxi.

We’re a few blocks from Ceremony when my dad says he’ll invite Grandma Koko, his mom, for dinner. He reaches for his phone from his stylish leather backpack but can’t find it. The Moshe scramble. I call his phone and Irem picks up. Telefon burda! He asks the taxi if he can turn around. The driver has no problem with it, and tells my father to stop apologizing.

We pick up the phone and we’re back on our way from Bebek to Pera, where my dad lives now. The older I get, the more I appreciate this city. It’s narrow streets and hills. It’s views of the Bosphorus. It’s bakals and men sitting on the street playing backgammon. Women in headdresses and women wearing mini skirts. The poetic language. The affection. The no rules. I’m constantly overcome with a feeling of belonging. A nostalgia for a place I never lived in.

My dad’s new apartment is incredible and completely him. It’s small, but has everything he would need, removed from the expectations of Bebek or other parts of Istanbul. I feel like I’m in Europe. His street could be in Paris. The charm is contagious.

I won’t say much more for now, but Grandma Koko came for dinner and cried in my arms when I met her at the bottom of the staircase. I probably speak to her 1-2 times a year, which is a strange thing for someone who cares so much about family. I know how important my immediate family is to me, but how about extended family? How can I let this woman and others know that no matter how complicated or difficult, I’m beyond grateful to be born into this cast of Turkish Jewish characters.

I’m beyond grateful to be here.