We are at the premiere of the movie 4N1K, based on the book with the same name by the young writer Büşra Yılmaz. It is impossible to describe the energy of the environment.
There are hundreds of young girls around us. The average age is 13-14… One of them is my daughter, who has the most distinctive gap between growing up and being a child. Occasionally screams arise amid an ongoing hum. I look hard to understand why, but I can’t tell whom they are shouting for. It turns out that I left that world long ago; from the world of those who lived the first days of young girlhood… I don’t (didn’t) know their celebrities.
We are at the premiere of the movie 4N1K, based on the book with the same name by young writer Büşra Yılmaz. It is impossible to describe the energy of the environment. Chirpy, fresh, yet standing on the edge of all love experiences and believing that they will experience the most beautiful and special love, these girls were fluttering butterflies fascinated by the magic of getting the signatures of famous actors and taking a photo with them for their pure joy rather than showing off to others …
I think about how those who love the “youngsters of the time” literature, which I guess has not changed for centuries, would be disappointed if they saw this scene. Maybe they would belittle the author and the story, maybe they would criticize the actors’ performance, and most of all, they would underline that the girls had their heads in the clouds.
I check myself for what I feel …
I’m a little shy because they are so caught up in their excitement that they can even step over you.
I am a bit sad because life does not always bring love stories. After all, we do not love ourselves enough to be the subject of stories, and moreover, we are made to believe that happiness can only come from outside with such love.
I’m watching because I watch myself while watching my daughter. A memory inside me is struggling to surface, but it just can’t. When was I like this for the first time? When was I so excited, when did I want to have a huge love, as if I had been ready for this for centuries?
At the end of a rock concert in Bodrum, we took even band members’ earrings (Can it be a Critical Mass?) backstage. They didn’t say “no”. We were very excited, but no, we weren’t too young. There was something else but what was it?
The movie started. Girls’ screams and sighs in romantic scenes…
Then that memory surfaced …
La Boum! A French film translated into Turkish with a title that does not suit the film, such as “If I Explode, You Burn”. The dance scene of the movie in which Sophie Marceau portrays a 13-year-old girl with her first love …
After that day, it is like my life has never been the same again.
I also wrote this on Facebook the other day. I received comments. The movie has touched so many people in our age group. Those who strived to go beyond the existing technology to record it, those who span and watched it a thousand times on beta tapes, those who play around with the radio to hear the soundtrack of the movie ‘Reality’ …
We do not forget some events in our lives because there are intense emotions in them. Sometimes we think we forget, but the feeling of the memory is always there because we lock that feeling in our body at that moment.
That is why I do not forget that day because, at the end of the film, I felt a very intense resentment, burning, pain that I could not describe. It was like half of me was missing and I needed to be completed. Who would complete me? A 14–15-year-old boy? Was it enough to dance with him with romantic music in a disco to calm the heart?
Almost 30 years later today …
I know that the completion I am looking for will not be with another person, many of the young girls who live in imaginary relationships with screen lovers will live in this illusion for many years, and if they are lucky, one day they will realize that they do not need another person to be complete and in fact, there is no one other than themselves.
We will not be able to explain this to them today. There is no need anyway … They will also go into the cycles we have experienced as if the movie will start over, but on the other hand, every scene they live in will be completely different. They will live their own experiences. They will write down their diaries, “There is a place I want to go. I don’t know where, but I really want to be there”. “God please, I want to have a lover too”. They will want to believe the romantic legend that God got so angry and cut people in half and everyone was looking for their other part.
And one day they will find themselves and much more in all those experiences. A lover is the best way for a person to take care of herself and find the truth, and she is lucky to have a lover… The paradise these girls want to go to is right here … Finding everything, in other words finding beyond this dimension will start with loving a person …
That they will fall in love first, then be love itself …
I wish all the best for these beautiful hearts!
what do you think?