Shereen Abdul-Baki

Turkish Music Videos

On a recent trip to Turkey I went crazy for the music video scene. It is so elaborate, I really didn’t realize that there was such a huge industry. There is a lot of arm raising by men, hands up to the sky, which i find really funny, it feels kind of 80’s. But the production value of the top 20 pop songs is superb, and some of them are really avant garde and creative. Anyway, i spent too many afternoons watching them. My favorite is this one by Ekrem Düzgünoğlu. The drama is fantastic, and i especially appreciate him splashing through the puddles in his boots. Perhaps i sound as if i am being sarcastic, but i really was totally entraced by the Turkish pop music scene. And when it was super cheesey (in the case of Ekrem i’m afraid), i just lapped it up! Of coarse YouTube has the video so you can see why i was so pleased to be able to watch it all again after i returned home! (ok, it Had the video, but no longer.)

Other lives

Every couple of years, I come back to a question that I once read in The Artist’s Way that I think is so much fun:

If you had five other lives to live, what would you be doing in all of them?

You have to answer without thinking too much, essentially the first five things that pop into your mind. Mine are: Skydiver, Cook, Dancer, Flame Thrower and Poet.

Skydiver and Cook are always there, and in that order. The other three usually change, but dancer is in there somewhere, just ordered differently. I have no idea where the Flame Thrower comes from! I think once i even had Rodeo Hand or something like that. I like this exercise because it shows you all the different sides of yourself. I bet it could change week to week, perhaps not all of them but I assume you’d get some variation. What would your other lives be?