Dream Birds

When I couldn’t sleep because of the heat, I got up and started reading something. The weather was oppressive, like the country’s agenda. In his book “Illuminations,” Walter Benjamin described sleep as the peak of physical relaxation and boredom as the furthest point of mental relaxation. He even had a sentence like this: “Boredom is the dreaming bird that hatches the egg of experience.” As I read Benjamin’s book with my own dreaming bird, I was struck by his criticism of modernity. Boredom is dying out in cities and gradually diminishing in the country, he said. People’s minds are so busy and occupied that there is no room for gaps. However, if there is no boredom, there is no storytelling anymore. The tales and folk tales that convey the experiences of previous generations and the listeners who will listen to them and repeat them to pass them on to future generations are no longer there.

Today, thousands of people may be listening to the same voice on the radio, but each one is listening in his own solitude; the narrator is not speaking to the crowd, but to thousands of single people. Even the novels popularized by the printing press are an isolated form of narrative. Reading or listening to a story does not necessarily turn it into an experience. How can one digest what is experienced within the illusion of speed? How can one convey a life experience with 15-second videos? As Benjamin said, even though we receive news from all over the world every morning, we no longer have stories worthy of attention.

POWER CUT

When I was a child, the power went out frequently. I loved those moments. We would listen to my father's stories under the light of a candle or a gas lamp. The sound of the cold wind blowing outside, the dim light moving the shadows, would make us get more involved in the story. The power would come on suddenly at the most crucial point of the story; the shadows would disappear with the lights on, the television would continue blaring from where it left off, and everyone would return to their own inner selves and their agendas. The power goes out less often now. But no one listens to anyone else, at most they pretend to listen.

IT WILL BREAK AWAY

In this age of increasing attacks on reality, how can people hear each other? How can we cope with global warming, wars, fascism and totalitarianism without listening to each other and creating stories that will transform what we experience into experiences? How else can the polarization of "us and them" that fragments reality be overcome? It is no coincidence that there is more interest in prophetic narratives that predict doomsday. In most videos on YouTube, economists or political commentators gather viewers with phrases like "The Apocalypse Will Come". This interest in apocalyptic narratives is actually a response to the helplessness of lonely, fragile and anxious individuals. The Armageddon fantasy serves as a kind of consolation. Fantasies about powerful leaders who are seen as messiahs or messiahs help create a false sense of security. During the plague epidemic in Europe, governments were applying sadistic cruelty to certain communities they found suitable, in order to protect their own power by taking advantage of the good-evil dichotomy. Now this oppression is applied to the opposing political camp, to immigrants and disadvantaged groups. All evils are projected onto the others.

EXPERIENCE SHOPPING

It can be thought that all these negativities are related to the decrease in dream birds, that is, as Walter Benjamin said, the loss of the ability to exchange experiences. For this, we need face-to-face communication, not interfaces like screens, and the reestablishment of social ties. Technological developments benefit more information, not storytelling. We know a lot of things, but this information is useless unless it turns into experience.

Experience is the passing of time and emotion together. It is not just living, but realizing that you are living. This realization requires encountering someone else, listening to them, and creating a narrative with them. Dream birds are born from these encounters. A face, not a screen; a voice, not data; a connection, not a bond are required. Despite thousands of novels, films, and history books, wars continue because information about wars does not turn into experience. As long as what we experience does not turn into experience, we repeat the same mistakes, the same pain, the same ruptures. Forever.