SENA KAYASÜ (ARCH/IV)
sena.kayasu@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Life does not tolerate big plans, I think. No matter what designs you make for your future or how many steps you take to realize them, there is a good chance that the universe will find a way to surprise you. As I get closer to my imminent graduation, I’ve come to embrace this. I made my plans and prepared myself to see them through, and then I let go. I have no idea where I’ll be in six months, so I’m just going to wait and see what life has in store for me. There’s no point mapping out my future when I know that I can only do so much. So much about the things that [will] happen to me depends on other people. I refuse to stress about what I have so little control over—though I have not hesitated to use what power I have. This revelation came to me during a bout of senioritis (a critical and tragic condition that strikes most seniors prior to their graduation). To some, it never comes at all.
Take Beethoven. The man was changing music. He was playing with its rules and traditions so much that people could recognize nothing of other contemporary artists or their predecessors in his music. Now, you can hear “Für Elise” when you ring someone’s doorbell. A lot of people’s, actually. It is one of the first pieces any piano student learns. Believe it or not, back in the day when I was taking piano lessons and wanted to play it, my instructor’s face fell visibly: everyone wanted to play “Für Elise,” and she was sick of it. Don’t worry, I played it—it was fine.
Artists set out to change the world. They want to inspire revolutions of every kind. They are charged with the task of thinking completely out of bounds and bringing something new into this world. The irony is that if they are successful, their innovations become banal. This is the case with “modern” architecture, for example. Around the turn of the last century, architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright found a new way to think about buildings: they wanted to make them simple and orthogonal. They wished to be rid of classical ornamentation, heavy structures and spaces cluttered with embellished furniture. Taking advantage of post-World War II technologies and materials developed during the space race, they seized the opportunity to make simple, light buildings. Although groundbreaking for its time, this thinking resulted in the common apartment blocks and residential skyscrapers that everyone now abhors. The tragedy of genius.
Still, we can appreciate the genius behind the common—especially in the case of a beloved artist like Van Gogh. He painted what he felt, not what he saw. He is easy to love because what he felt was beautiful. While there are those who have no patience for classical music or no interest in architecture, anyone can look at a Van Gogh postcard and feel good. Yet he only sold one painting in his lifetime, to the sister of a friend. How surprised would he be to discover that he is now on calendars, keychains and mugs—that everybody wants a piece of him? For a romanticized answer, I refer you to the 10th episode of the fifth season of “Doctor Who”: “Vincent and the Doctor.”
Perhaps we do not know how he would feel. Unfortunately, though, it’s pretty well established that he was miserable in his lifetime due to not being recognized. Faced with outrage and controversy in rural France, he thought his work was worthless. No one would buy his paintings; no one even wanted to look at them. Now, those who can’t buy the originals (basically, everyone) can find a reproduction. They can even make reproductions, via paint-by-numbers kits and digital applications. Art need no longer be unique—not when it can be mass distributed. The man who would not conform his ideals to the popular taste now has his work printed on a kitchen apron my grandmother wears. By rejecting the mainstream, Beethoven, Wright and Van Gogh became it—albeit in the latter’s case, success came too late. The tragedy of genius, according to Ralph Waldo Emerson, is that it always finds itself a century too early.
I have no grand designs, no ambitions of changing the world. I hope I can help a little bit, but everything that has been happening around me this last year—from graduate school applications to various illnesses of my family and friends—has been pointing in one direction. I can work toward my future, I can invest and hope, but what ultimately happens will be as much about luck as about my actions. Luck, after all, is what takes place when preparation meets opportunity.