If a tree fell.

It’s not our fault, yet it kind of is.

Marie Bortolotto [2022]

I am a mosaic of fragmented ideologies. One rational, one mythical. They’re logically opposed, yet bound to cooperate on account of their residence in my psyche. Two truths can exist. Coexist, perhaps, is optimistic in today’s environment, but they can advance in parallel, requiring a conscious dance between intellectualisations that refuse to consolidate one another. Jealousy is one hell of a thing, even more so when both inhabit the same corpus.

I almost thought I hated writing, but it turns out I just hate Substack. My friends often remind me that sweeping generalisations lead to sweeping conclusions, so I’ll specify that I hate writing when I’m expected to write. I despise my self-propelled, anxious motivation; seeking ways to satisfy some external, unnamed audience in the name of continuity. There’s something sinister about this kind of success. If I buy an alarm clock, I expect it to be the one-trick pony I paid it to be. I don’t need it to think or experience any sentiment. I just need it to do precisely what it is in my life to do. That framework of logic simply doesn’t hold up when you aim to put blood to paper. Even more so when all of your creative work now resides on a private equity venture that siphons revenue from love and hate alike. By the time you even cut through the scores of fascist sympathisers, self-proclaimed relationship coaches, and get-rich-quick schemes, you’re too mad, and that madness has generated enough revenue where you might as well just log off.

Digital architectures demand a near-sacrificial loyalty for algorithmic relevance. I feel like we’re no different than the distant savage others of the past we study and dissect in history class, reeling at the absurdity of human sacrifice. Throats slit to usher in the rains and eyes gouged to ashew the seasonal locusts. I’d go as far as to say maybe we’ve never really evolved beyond that framework; we’ve just been gifted methods of external blame that feel less violent and more collective in nature. Is human suffering really your fault when you’re just the observer? What if everyone’s the observer? It’s not your fault per se, but it’s worth questioning what merely “protecting your peace” means when it resides within an echo chamber built by Godless, Calvinist sects of Saturn-worshipping child abusers. I may seem like I’m over exaggerating, but I really do think this trap deserves the full scope of spite I have in me right now. Who do we think we are?

I’ve called this part of the world my home for nearly a decade, and it shows. If you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, imagine what it means for that equation to exist within the brackets of this zeitgeist. I know I’m generalising again, and I said I wouldn’t, but I hate this place, and I love being spiteful. The industry. The scene. Change makers changing the city. Redefining third spaces. Panel talk by a rooftop pool of an insiders club. Cult-like huddles of creatives whose entire personalities are defined by a central street name. Intersectionality with a buy-in. How can art, expression, or any form of intentional activism exist beyond the properties of an extractable resource if it can’t even leave the elitist bracket of nepotism it was born into? Can something be tone deaf if it’s silent? Logos killed mythos.

Marie Bortolotto [2022]

I’ve been back in my mother country for three days, and I think I’m realising why I sleep like a baby in this seemingly uncomfortable and volatile environment. Huddled on the lumpy living room couch, subject to starting my morning at the whim of whoever decides to wake up first. Navigating a day defined by what must be done, not what one pleases to do. Paradoxically, the two meet and exchange intimacy far more often than you may think. Maybe it’s a lie I choose to believe, simply because it makes me feel okay.

Home is a peculiar place as old as time itself; rife with tradition, magic, and suffering. The land rises and falls as it breathes with you; in tandem with every spirit that toiled its windswept plains and valleys, scaled its cliffs and peaks, and snaked through the mirage of its lake. The beading maroon nectar of the pomegranate. The haunting wail of the Balaban. Mugham practitioners shamelessly labeled as musicians when words fall short in defining the pain they so beautifully express. Every crease in the corner of your mother’s eye, every wrinkle chiseled into your father’s forehead. Everything tells a story of duty beyond the tangible self. A life of servitude so complete and impersonal, it’s hard not to feel guilty for how easy I have it. There is no rationale as to why a human being would be so willing to place their own life second, and yet, the global majority knows no other way. I think I know why. In the West, logos killed mythos.

Inspired by one of my favourite writers and ardent supporters of mysticism, Karen Armstrong clearly loves this concept. She dissects the shortcomings of a society that shunned magic in her book, The Case For God, and as a consequence, all that lay beyond the remits of rationality became indecipherable, inaccessible, and irrelevant. All that is logical is all that now matters, and paradoxically, that is the most illogical of outcomes.

Logos serves an important purpose in decoding the external reality we inhabit. With logic, we bent water to our will and terraformed land to bear crops, we conquered the wilderness and organised towering societies, we made knowledge instantaneous and cemented our existence in the cosmos. For all that it has done, logos is not without its limitations that today underpin a horrific human evolution. Our lives mean absolutely nothing beyond this immediate corporeal experience. That was the job of mythos, and the West lynched it without care, like it did many things.

Today, we stumble aimlessly through sterile, predetermined environments, blindfolded and cuffed by self-indulgent fantasies, sedated and apathetic with pleasure. We sip microplastic beverages on our way to generate income, which is then used to purchase microplastic beverages to sip on our way to generate income. Myth has fallen into complete disrepute, and some of us are even advocates of this loss. For what will we use to reconcile our grief? How can we be okay with death when we never lived in the first place?

Marie Bortolotto [2022]

It’s not our fault, but it also kind of is. That’s okay, we’ve got agency, and I think it’s high time we thought about what we aim to do with it. I’ve been thinking a lot, and I’m changing my ways with those closest to me as a guiding principle. Coming home to my completely irrational mythos led society, I’m accepting, even inviting suffering back into my life. With these newfound thoughts, I even recall an anecdote that occurred between my grandfather and me some five years ago, which I had completely forgotten.

My grandfather is a man of science; a highly revered figure back in the Soviet Union, to which many patents are attested. His son followed suit, and that man I call my father today. In a society led by mythos, the men in my family always interested me for the same paradox I experience today. How does one reconcile these two rationally opposed ideologies in the same corpus? Men of science and logic who, beyond the confines of their laboratories, have only made decisions irrationally led by their hearts for better or for worse.

With this notion in mind, it’s no surprise that procreation has always been a central tenet of contention between my family and me. Despite my desires, I’ve often found myself sheltering behind the same alibi I’ve heard all too often: how can I bring new life into a world this cruel? It was this same pretext with which I answered my grandfather as I sipped my tea at his dining room table. He didn’t look away from the television once, but he was listening.

He goes, “Akif, you’re allowed to believe in a better future”. That was interesting. Not that I should, not that I must, but I have permission to do so. It was a change from the rhetoric I often received in response to my deflections. I thought about it a lot. In fact, he’s right. I have permission to do a whole lot more than imagine a future in which I can explore the full spectrum of the human condition. I’m allowed to believe in God, and I’m permitted to see the magic in things. Whether it serves as a tool to negotiate the obscurities of the human psyche, or a vessel by which I handle things I don’t want to do, but know I must. You’re allowed to do the same. You’re permitted to.

I’ve never hated the idea of being limited by the periphery of a conceptual grasp more than I do today. I no longer care about mastering reality or intellectualising the unintelligible. Some things are better off simply not under the control of reason. Most things won’t ever succumb to my efforts anyway. I just want to feel, and I’m allowed to want that.

This place sucks, and so do we, but it’s not our fault, yet it kind of definitely is.