THAT WEEKEND WITH BULENT

BULENT ORTACGIL - "BENIMEE OYNAR MESIN"




A beautiful, tender, Turkish psych-folk debut from 1974 with a wistful Nick Drake air to it. You've been going out with Bulent for about six months, whom you met in college. He takes you to Ankara to visit his mother and you spend the weekend there, drinking tea, reading Jorge Luis Borges, going on playful autumn walks, and generally being Turkish. In the night you go together to an old elementary school friend's house where there's a friendly jam session with your boyfriend on guitar and a few friends on horns and hand-drums, you drink wine and some local home-brewed stuff you don't recognize, and the boys play some traditional Turkish numbers, a messy, lively version of the Rolling Stones "Ruby Tuesday" with some made-up lyrics, and three or four songs by Bulent, including one that you think is probably about you but you don't want to be presumptious. Bulent song's are soft and melodically inventive and so peaceful to hear at the end of the day that you tear up a little bit. At the end everybody's sauced in a warm-spirited way and the two of you make it back to mom's house arm in arm, and before you go snuggle up with Bulent's beard you notice his younger sister, still in school, perched at the windowsill, looking out into the night in a moment of idle sleeplessness, thinking of something she will never say to anyone.


Here's Bulent with the boys. He's the second from the left. The guys have a collective kind of 70s sci-fi B-Movie style to them. For real though, they look like they're about to storm the Enterprise.