Sona Ertekin & Aynur Kulak
This interview is published originally in Turkish.
In her new novel Everything is Dancing, Sona Ertekin invites us to the universe she has created by taking fantastic steps in the real world. A completely different story with music, dance and colors awaits us in the world we are invited to.
After completing your studies in American Culture and Literature at Hacettepe University, you pursued a master's degree in Cinema and Television. Following these academic achievements, you embarked on a professional journey that has allowed you to maintain a broad perspective. How would you describe your life journey, with literature always remaining a central focus?
Perhaps this will sound funny, but my literary life began with my mother reading to me, while I was still in the womb. Jonathan Livingston The Seagull, which she read to me at night before I could read, still holds a fascinating place in my memory. A big, vast emptiness. The wind and the sound of wings... My parents had a huge library by their bedside. When I used to occupy their bed, I would look at the spines of books from where I was lying. Salah Birsel's Boğaziçi Şıngır Mıngır used to cheer me up. It had a fun spine with colourful patterns. Tagore's The Growing Moon, on the other hand, would strike a mysterious fear in my heart. For this reason alone, I knew the names of many authors and books by heart at a young age, even before I started reading literature. I have always experienced the richness of growing up in a family that loves to read.
What were the motivations and challenges that led you to write Everything is Dancing?
Another funny answer, but my mother had a neighbour in her house in a coastal village in Muğla. She was so fed up with her deadbeat husband that one day, while washing the courtyard with a hose, I heard her say, "I will never come to this world again!" It turns out that It is possible to make a person tired not only with their life, but with all their lives, even with reincarnation. In the opposite scenario, I imagined such a happy union that when these two people are reincarnated, they would immediately want to find each other again without wasting time with others. But the basic rule of reincarnation is that they can reincarnate in different bodies, maybe in different countries, at different ages, in different social strata, even in different eras.
So how are they going to find each other in this situation? I think that was the starting point. And then the question came, the fact that there is only one mountain in the middle doesn't change the fact that it can create completely different landscapes when viewed from different angles. So let's think of this mountain in the middle as the mountain of a relationship that has built up layer by layer over the years. Two people's memories of the past can create completely different landscapes. Even though we have a common story, what you remember and what I remember can be completely different. Therefore, beyond other themes, I would say that this book is fundamentally about memory. In fact, our perspective today changes the way we look at the past. A story we have constructed about the past until today can completely change with a break in our present. It's as if someone went back in time and changed everything... We can face the dark shadows of a past that we have constructed as rosy, or the fact that a past we have constructed as painful is full of love and compassion. Our approach to the present affects the past and the future.
From the 70s -and especially since the early 2000s- until today, there has been an incredible change in terms of technology, society, culture, perception of life and lifestyles. There is also a period of serious polarization. Can we say that Everything is Dancing is socially and individually realistic novel with all its elements such as change, transformation and polarization?
Our social history is already full of polarizations and ruptures. The year 1972, in which part of the book takes place, is remembered around the world for the spirit of freedom brought by the '68 generation, rock'n'roll and disco culture, but at the same time the Vietnam War was going on. That year, a total of 70 countries had signed a convention approving the use of biological weapons. In Turkey, we remember '72 with the Kızıldere massacre and the execution of the Deniz Gezmiş. Therefore, I believe there was a break in the youth of that period. While some were dancing in discotheques, others were being tortured in prisons. Those who had the means, sent their children abroad so they would not be 'political'. I don't approach this in a judgmental or accusatory way, everyone has their role in history, but I have always wondered how this contradiction was experienced. I tried to reflect on this rupture in the book. Periods in history when oppression is felt most strongly also nourish liberal movements and art movements. It gives birth to subcultures, which is also important.
What about the 2000s as a larger part of the book takes place in 2015?
Yes, it is no coincidence that the most recent part of the book coincides with 2015. Turkey's first pole dance studio WOW was opened in 2013 and Gezi happened in the same year. In 2015, in the 13th year of a conservative government, pole dance culture had already gained a strong foothold and new studios were opening. Both disco and pole dancing were subcultures at their starting point, and like all subcultures, they evolved and became mainstream over time. To position my story, I chose the years when pole culture was not yet so widespread, when it was still a subculture. But I think it was important that pole dancing gained such strength in the social climate Turkey was going through, at a time when women's rights were severely damaged and femicides were rampant. The pole studio was a refuge for women where they could feel strong and belong, where they could revive and celebrate feminine freedom which had been violently suppressed. In the book, we also have a character who is a free diver preparing for a Turkish record. In other words, he dives completely on his breath without using an oxygen tank. In 2015, freediving championships were just starting to take place in Turkey. Going back to our question, yes, there is always polarization, but I already believe that history progresses in spirals, it’s not linear. History reveals itself in a circular movement pattern, like a wheel. Therefore, each polarity will find itself in the opposite position at some point.
Everything is Dancing is a novel with many characters. Did this happen spontaneously? Did one character take the other by the hand and bring them along, for example, or is it not a coincidence that we are such a cosmopolitan society, so diverse in its class layers, that the cast is so large?
The fact that there are fantastic elements in the novel does not mean that it does not contain social or realistic elements. Therefore, first of all, thank you for this observation. When I write, I especially feed on fantasy literature and adventure elements because the fictional structure of these genres takes the reader on a journey and carries them to the finale with curiosity. I want to create a reading experience that will envelop the reader. I can say, "I'm trying to write the book I want to read". The books and authors that have influenced me in recent years are in this direction. For example, Up Jumps The Devil (Michael Poore), The Tail (Christopher Moore), Cowgirls Get Sad Too (Tom Robbins), Every Mourning Lasts Eighteen Months(Annie Hartnett), Nothing Happens (Kevin Wilson). These elements of adventure and fantasy give me more of a structural framework and creative freedom. This allows me to examine the era, the country and the people we live in in a more humorous and embracing way.
In doing so, you also use humour.
Yes, humour is important to me... The oppressed and the working class are prominent in our literature. The blue-collar workers, the white-collar workers are there too and of course they should all be there, we should all be in this whole. So there is no in-between, no outside or no edge. But there is such a thing as the edge of the system. Some people prefer to exist there. I don’t think that anyone I personally know is represented enough in our literature. Perhaps they are not the heroes of striking social tragedies, but they are also a part of this era, this country, this big picture and they deserve to be represented outside of certain clichés. As a lifelong lover of subcultures, I always want to include characters who are right under our noses but not reflected in our literature. These stories exist and they are ours. There is also the fact that when I was preparing the fiction of the book, a very close friend of mine said to me "This will make three books, this is not the way to do it, cut it down". Therefore, having different story axes inevitably increased the number of characters. When reincarnation came into play, different versions of a character in different periods came into play. But I can easily say that this book would have been a very boring book without our beloved pavilion worker Ebru from Ankara! I love her, she is a very strong, unyielding, unique woman and she inspires us all. When she takes the stage, firecrackers explode, fruit platters appear, everything comes alive with colour and I can't help but smile.
The presence of female characters also determines the direction of the story. Ayza, Özge, Ebru from Ankara. Even Suzan, whose presence moves through the story like a shadow. Different female characters from different walks of life are aware of everything. They advocate for a free world where nothing should be polarized, especially genders.
Suzan indeed wanders around the book like a dream, like a shadow, I liked (like) this metaphor. If we want to live in a world where genders are not polarized, we must first stop polarizing genders. The first step is to see the sexist perspectives within ourselves and transform them... Kerim, a character who lived in the 70s, is a person of a very different era and he experiences the masculine blindness and dilemmas of that era. When he comes to the present day, of course, he becomes a fish out of water in the face of certain situations and strong female characters, because the young women of our age do not fall for those tricks anymore, they do not fall prey to these manipulations, they do not let themselves be oppressed. On the other hand, it is a very crude and immature approach to be constantly angry at men and keep blaming them when we are seeking a common and egalitarian existence. Therefore, while seeking the good and the beautiful for everyone, we need to focus on seeing, understanding, making visible and transforming rather than blaming and labelling. The most important thing is to develop an inner perspective and self-worth outside the patriarchal dialectic. To discover new masculine and feminine ways of being.
