Fido the Yak

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan explains to Geoff Andrew the distance between the characters of Yusuf and Mahmut in his film Distant:

I think it's mostly because the photographer [Mahmut] is leading an intellectual life, along with his friends, and the values of intellectuals are different; their habits change a lot. Most people in Istanbul are not like this; they're more normal, they've come from the country. But intellectuals' habits are more problematic – especially when they earn money, they don't need other people. So you don't want anything from other people, and in return you don't give anything to people. It's as if you've earned the right not to help others, by having become economically strong enough not to need the help of others.

Is solitude enjoyable? Is it numbing? Does it make you feel lonely to contemplate the conditions of possibility of your solitude, or is this feeling too just an aspect of the intellectual habitus, another condition to be examined dispassionately? Is solitude about the desire to have a deeper core than the way you live, a kind of forgetting?

We often seek out what's visited upon us, as if nothing could stop us from seeking. Should we cherish this unstoppable yearning, or estrange ourseleves from it? Can we live paradoxically?

Labels: Ceylan, intellectuals, solitude

posted by Fido the Yak at 9:30 PM.