Story Time: Get a load of what happened to me at Starbucks today.
There’s a running joke among people who know me personally that I unwittingly go out in public with a sign on my forehead stating “I Am Non-Threatening. Come Talk To Me.” Because if there’s a chance a bizarre conversation with a total stranger is going to happen, I’m typically the person it happens to.
Some context: I have been pretty darn sick this week. (It’s not Coronavirus, don’t worry.) Since the work in my queue for my day job is comprised entirely of audio narration right now, and I currently sound like a waterlogged Demi Moore, I haven’t been able to work these last couple of days. As a result, I’ve been using my down time to knock out as much of Manu’s redesign as possible. Today, to ensure I didn’t spend the day languishing in sinus misery, I medicated the crap out of myself and took Manu to the Starbucks down the block from my son’s day care.
I hit the bathroom, then picked an empty table, but as soon as I sat down with my venti Comfort Tea and started tweaking the inks on my iPad, I felt the eyes of the man next to me looking over my shoulder.
When I looked up, he had his phone out. “I’m sorry,” he said (in a thick accent I couldn’t place geographically), “I don’t want to disturb. I notice you art. You are artist!”
I tried to smile. “Yes, I’m... Well, I’m trying to be,” I croaked.
He leaned in, like he was sharing a secret.
“I am artist, too.”
He stuck out his hand.
I gently took it, grateful for the bathroom trip I just took in which I washed the scourge off of my fingers.
“Can I?” he asked, holding his phone up.
“Take a picture? Uh... sure,” I said. It’s not like he would be able to steal Manu out from under me or anything, I figured. The panel I was tweaking was magnified out to Guam.
“I am artist. Architect and Designer,” he clarified while he steadied his phone over my iPad. “I am Ilker. What is your name?”
“I’m Venessa” I said, trying to be polite. This, I thought warily, is precisely how I get myself into trouble. I’m too damn nice.
“You know, I come to America twenty years ago from Turkey...”
I put down my stylus. This was going to be a while.
“I like Turkey,” he explained. “I like the country and I like the people. But I am artist. I am not... religious man.”
I nodded.
“I told my wife I was going to go to America and she said, “what are you going to do? You don’t have job! You don’t have money! No Visa!” And I said, “I am artist and architect. I will paint and sell my paintings.
“So I come to America alone. To New York City. I sit outside, and I paint. And people, they liked my paintings. They bought them. This one for $30, that one for $50.
“One day, a man comes over to me and he say, “I like your painting. I see you are also architect.” And he gives me his number and asks me to go to meeting at his office. Because he wants to offer me a job. He starts to talk about a building contract.
“I tell him I don’t know anything about contracts. I have no Visa. I am not American citizen. But he says, “That’s okay. I will take care of everything. You will have nothing to worry about.” And this man, he gave me a job. $173,000 a year. And my wife, he gave her a job too. She was project assistant. I bring her and my two daughters over from Turkey.”
“Wow,” I said, not fully believing the veracity of what sounded like a full-on immigration fairy tale.
“Here,” said Ilker, unlocking his phone and opening up his Facebook app. “I show you my work.” He paused and looked up at me. “I am interrupting. You don’t mind?”
At this point, I was invested. I had to see. Because whatever he was about to show me would either prove or disprove this yarn he was spinning. “Please,” I said, gesturing for him to go ahead.
He opened his photos and my jaw dropped. His work... was UNREAL.
“This is building I designed on Madison Ave.... And this one in Chelsea...”
Holy crap. I had just been to Chelsea with my sister last month on a trip to see a broadway show. I had crossed the intersection of the building he was, at this moment, telling me he designed.
He flipped through more buildings. These, he’d designed in Washington, DC. In Bethesda. In Arlington. All beautiful, streamlined, modern structures I had visited and parked my car in front of. He told me he did much of his concept work freehand. That he worked exclusively in natural media. His preferred media was pen, ink, watercolors, and chalks.
Between photos of his wife and daughters, he went on to show me photos from the RUSSIAN EXHIBITION OF HIS ARCHITECTURE ARTWORK.
Y’all, I was stunned. I couldn’t believe the talent I was sitting next to. Scattered among these gloriously rendered images of some of the most beautiful building concepts I’d ever seen were paintings of scenes in Central Park, the National Mall, and nudes from a life-drawing session he attends from time to time.
When he was done flipping through his phone, he looked at me and smiled. “I hope you don’t mind that I interrupt you. I show you all this because what you are doing is very good. And you should be encouraged. To draw is to make beauty.”
I nodded, a lump in my throat. “Thank you,” I managed. “Your work is astonishing. I don’t even know what to say. What is your name again?”
He held out his hand once more. “Ilker Kocahan,” he said. “I am getting more coffee. Can I get you one?”
I looked at my still-full venti cup. “No thank you. But here, please take my card.”
He held my dinky business card like I’d handed him a treasure and thanked me.
Then Ilker got his coffee, and left the coffee shop.
At some point in his ramblings he talked about America as a place of dreams. How he credits this country with helping him rise to the top of his field where he is now able to sell his paintings for $800-$1000 a piece now that he’s retired. My heart ached to hear him talk about that, knowing how our leadership’s positions on immigrants have taken such a dark and horrifying turn.
Imagine the buildings and museums and public places that would never have been if a business man in the park hadn’t lifted up a Turkish painter who spoke little English.
And now that painter was paying it forward on me.
I still feel pretty darn sick. I’ve still got body aches and a nose that has taken the rest of my face hostage.
But today was a really good day. And I just wanted to share it with you in case you are looking for reasons to keep drawing/painting/dancing/writing. It all counts and it is all good.
If you would like to see Ilker Kocohan’s work, please click here.
Ilker Kocahan holds a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design with a minor in architecture from the University of Marmara, Faculty of Fine A
UPDATE TO THIS STORY! I would have posted this sooner, but quarantine has had the unexpected effect of zapping all my alone-time...
As luck would have it, I saw Ilker one last time before my area received the mandate to start social distancing. I came into the Starbucks to work on the “Simon Is On the Ground” comic while waiting to pick up my kid from day care, and there he was, happily chatting with the Starbucks manager, who gifted him with a Starbucks hat while I ordered my tea.
A week had passed since our first meeting, so I wasn’t sure he’d recognize me. Lo and behold, as I turned the corner, I caught his eye, and he waved at me. This time, I asked if I might sit with him, and he warmly offered the seat beside him.
While I settled in, he told me that his project was being delayed and that he was going to leave the area and fly home before COVID-19 could make it impossible to travel. The hat was for his wife, whose only understanding of Starbucks was that Ilker really liked the coffee.
As one might expect, we immediately fell into another conversation about art, except this time, I eagerly abandoned my work to hear him talk.
And friends, did I ever get a master class.
He pulled up a painting on his phone which he’d sold for $800. It was a life drawing in ink and watercolor of a woman in a demure gesture, barely detailed and colored in but for her rose-tinted lips and the shadow cast across her neck. He said he felt sad that he’d sold it because he really loved how it came out.
“This is no detailed like yours,” he said, comparing his painting to my panel of Simon and Baz. “Mine is simple. But in a few strokes, I can capture the life of the lady.”
He took his napkin, turned it over, and pulled a pen out of his chest pocket. “Look there,” he said, pointing to a man sitting a few tables away. He began to scribble away on the napkin, lines and lines and more lines. “You see,” he murmured as he ran his pen over the napkin, “I can, with speed, capture the man. I don’t have hours to ask him to sit. I must let go of the planning.”
In seconds, the man across the room took shape on the napkin in a series of confident if also messy lines. It was incredible to watch.
I could instantly see what he meant. He had not produced a photorealistic version of this person on the napkin. But he had captured the man’s essence. The aura of a real person sitting contemplatively with his coffee while reading the Washington Post. I could feel the life of the drawing radiate from the paper.
(When he was done, to my horror, he crumpled up the napkin.)
I shyly mentioned that I’ve been working hard on my own gesture drawing, but had a long way to go, so he asked to see my sketchbook.
I mean... is there even a word in the English language to describe the combination of dread and embarrassment that precedes showing an art master your crap-ass sketchbook that no one sees but you? I didn’t know what to do with myself as he sat there and flipped through the pages.
Eventually, he nodded approvingly and said, “Okay! Is good. But this is sketchbook like every other.” He gestured at the page. “Where are you?”
I was lost for how to respond, but lucky for me, he’s a talkative guy seemingly incapable of awkward silences.
“The world needs to see you in the lines,” he explained. “Someone can look at my work and know, ‘that painting is from Ilker Kocahan.’ You need to draw more and more so that when people look at your drawings, they will know: this work is Venessa’s work.” Then he shrugged and said, “And who knows. I will maybe see you in two years at this Starbucks, and by then, your drawings will be truly yours.”
I’ve shared this story with some close friends who took mild offense on my behalf at his observations, but I really think it took sitting there watching him draw to understand exactly what he was talking about.
Ilker Kocahan has no imposter syndrome. He is supremely confident in every possible way where his art is concerned. The lines that flowed from his pen were fueled by his soul, not his brain. I didn’t think artists like him existed anymore until I was sitting there looking over his shoulder while he scribbled a man into existence, like it was nothing. When I asked if he plots out the perspective on his building sketches in advance, he shook his head no and doodled this on my cake pop wrapper while he rambled on about the components he likes to include in his architecture concepts:
(Don’t worry. I kept it.)
So when he talked about “finding me” in my sketches, I really think he could sense—by the light scratch of the pencil, the trace evidence on the paper of my erasing and failed attempts—my own lack of confidence, my second guessing and self-doubt. My desire to be as good as other artists instead of my desire to express myself.
And in that sense, everything he was saying about my sketchbook was correct. He urged me to get off the iPad as often as possible. To sketch with ink, which is riskier because you can’t erase it, and in that way, give myself no choice but to commit to the lines.
The conversation turned to lighter things after that. He’s apparently an extremely talented basketball player who loves hanging out with his wife and kids. His daughters are both designers. He thinks quirky viral videos are the best thing about the internet. (I agreed.) He’s weak for New York pizza.
Eventually, he bought me a refill for my tea and asked if I would meet him again in a couple of days so he could talk to me about my artwork and help me with my sketching. He even added me as a Facebook friend. When I left the Starbucks to pick up Colin, I was so excited and overwhelmed and grateful to the universe for bringing me into his acquaintance, I texted everyone in my family about it.
But as fate would have it, that night, the local government released its mandate regarding social distancing. He’s likely in Belarus right now with his wife.
I won’t lie and say I’m not devastated that I lost the chance to be his student for an afternoon. But the impression these coffee shop chats left on me was profound. I think about it all the time. For one who struggles with feeling like the artist version of Pinocchio waiting around for permission to be a real boy, it makes all the difference in the world to linger in the huge, unstoppable energy of someone who lives without an inner critic.
I hope I get to see him again after the quarantine is over. I’d love to see if I can fulfill Ilker’s prophecy and meet back at that Starbucks in two years with a different sketchbook in tow. One that I can hand over knowing without doubt or trepidation that anyone looking for me in the work need look no further than the bold stroke of my hand.
[UPDATE:] I am absolutely gobsmacked and grateful at the way this post has resonated with so many folks on Tumblr, artists and otherwise. Some have asked whether Ilker and I have kept in touch, and yes, we have! He occasionally messages pictures of building designs he’s working on or happy family photos (which I assume he’s sending en masse to his friends list) and I basically gush in return. I’ll also occasionally drop a line to check in; he knows I’m still working on my inking and sketch work. He remains so very encouraging and kind. He wishes me “happy art days.”
That said, you can imagine how my heart sank when last night he sent a message out to his Facebook friends letting us know he contracted Coronavirus and has been hospitalized. He’s been ill for two weeks now.
I asked for his consent to share this with friends in case it could inspire some good vibes, and he agreed. If you felt moved by his wisdom and kindness in the above posts and feel inclined to send a healing thought his way today, I would be grateful. While I believe his constitution is strong thanks to his being so active, this virus doesn’t discriminate, and the world needs humans like Ilker Kocahan right now. (Or at least, I do.)
Thanks, and I promise to report back with any news. ❤️
As promised, I have an update on Ilker’s condition!
I am happy to report that he is back home from the hospital as of this week and reportedly feeling better. He said he feels extremely lucky and credited his healthy/happy lifestyle for his resilience via text message. I quote:
“No smoking No Drunk Basketball Good food Family life enjoying And happy character”
While he was in the hospital he generously texted me photos of little notes he’d scrawled on paper napkins of his vitals (temperature, blood pressure, blood O2 levels) since I had asked him to keep me posted. Of all the notes he sent, this one was the most interesting, as it shows they’ve been making patients sleep in a prone position with some kind of ventilation over the face, presumably to leverage gravity in opening up the lungs?
Anyway, I’m so grateful to everyone who sent well wishes and look forward to passing along those kind messages to him after this. Thank you, thank you for those good vibes. ❤️
I hope that if and when I ever come down with something scary like COVID, I can handle it with as much grace as this guy right here:
That’s Emma O'Sullivan! She’s a famous tap dancer (all-Ireland champion) and you can see her often if you walk the streets of Galway, dancing in the street!
I’d just like to add (for non Irish people especially) that she isn’t actually a tap dancer but a sean nós dancer. Sean nós is a traditional Irish dance (sean nós means “the old way”) but it isn’t the same as the mainstream Irish dance which people would be familiar with. In mainstream Irish dance the dancers have carefully choreographed routines that need to be learned and replicated and keep a rigid upright position at all times. They either wear soft shoes which make no sound or hard shoes which make a tap sound which are worn for different types of dances. People can also usually recognise Irish dance pretty easily at a glance due to the extravagant colourful costumes, white “poodle” socks, white undershorts and heavy wigs and make up that the dancers wear at competitions.
Sean nós is a totally different type of dance separate to this mainstream “Irish dance”. It is a much more loose and free type of dance where the dancers always wear hard shoes since the sound of the feet is very important. There are a few basic moves (the “shuffle, shuffle stamp”, the “heel and toe” and the “slide and shuffle” being the basic foundation steps) but once you have the basics you can combine steps, free style and even make your own steps. You can move your hands and arms to the music unlike in mainstream Irish dance too. Sean nós is often seen as the sexier Irish dance as the dancers are allowed much greater hip and general body movement and can laugh and interact with the audience as they move. There are no particular costume rules for sean nós competitons. Unlike Irish dance, people can really wear whatever but the norm is comfortable and simple dresses or skirts or trouser/top combinations made up from whatever the dancer chooses from their own wardrobes, a huge contrast to the heavy Irish dance costumes and the expense and pageantry associated with them. Part of the appeal of sean nós is that it has not been commercialised and commodified to the degree that Irish dance has and has a much more casual and fun feel to it in contrast to the strict routines and costume norms of Irish dance.
The most skilled sean nós dancers are able to dance a “barrel dance” where they dance at high speed on top of a barrel without knocking it over. It usually takes years to get to this level of skill so people normally start on the ground and then work their way up from a quarter barrel to a half barrel until they can dance on the top of a full one. This is Emma again doing a barrel dance on a half barrel:
Another sean nós dance is Damhsa na Scuibanna “The Brush Dance” where dancers pass a brush between their legs at speed. The still images don’t really do it justice so here’s a clip of three members of the Cunningham family dancers performing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX3Z8qG7AKo
It’s important that people call it by its correct name of sean nós or damhsa ar an sean nós rather than just “tap dance” as it’s an important part of our cultural heritage and a type of dance that is barely known about outside of Ireland. Sean nós had almost fallen into total obscurity outside of small pockets of rural Ireland until dancers like Emma O Sullivan and the Cunningham family dancers repopularised it in the early 2010s through their acclaimed performances and TV appearances as well as their classes for children to keep the tradition going into the next generation. Sean nós is still threatened with falling back into obscurity, if you search online most of the popular videos and photos of it are from about nine years ago during this revival and it’s still largely a rural, West of Ireland phenomenon which even people from within Ireland don’t really know about. Calling it by it’s correct name helps to keep it alive and allows new people to find out about it.
so rufus clearly cares a lot about his appearance. no one picks up an outfit with that many belts on a whim. or chooses to wear white. but he also clearly wants to have a casual/grungy/'i don't care how i look' vibe bc he doesn't bother to button up his jacket properly. what is going on in your head mr. electric power company?
[ Lyner, it's alright, don't be scared...
I am here. And I am the administrator of the tower.
Lyner, do you like this world? ]
[ ...yes ]
[ I'm glad to hear that.
You've travelled to world and met many different people. Your spirit was strengthened by your experiences and it will fuel a brand new world. I'm confident that you will nurture this land and raise a beautiful world ]
[ Lady Shurelia... ]
[ You grew up to be a great man.
I'll leave you with all my hopes for the future. ]
There’s something very nice about remembering fics you read years ago. Maybe you remember the plot perfectly, maybe the rest of the fic is only a blur aside from a handful of vivid scenes, but you remember the way it made you feel. And sometimes you dredge up the memory - the premise or a favourite scene or a few lines that stayed with you - and your heart aches a little bit, the way it does when you think about books you enjoyed as a child.
To all the fanfiction writers out there: your work is beautiful and meaningful and it leaves an impact. I promise.
I still remember fics I read over a decade ago. Fics I read an embarrassingly long time ago. And a decade from now, I’ll probably remember ones I read today, even if it’s just bits and pieces of them.
the squad gets captured and interrogated separately, and they’re all telling equally terrible, completely contradictory lies
people completely missing the completely unsubtle, very visible dangerous thing in the room with them
alternatively, people absolutely seeing the completely unsubtle, very visible dangerous thing in the room with them and just not giving a shit
bonus points if it’s a beleaguered minimum wage employee who just goes about their business like “yep same shit as always”
someone pretending they don’t know another character is eavesdropping, only to casually reveal at the end of the scene that they know (*leaving* “tell tom that he can come out now” *tom drops from the ceiling in spy gear, irritated*)
choosing to deal with the villain by just leaving them alone in a room with another character
the “hands go down” trope
example: “any questions?” *everyone’s hands go up* “…that AREN’T sarcastic?” *everyone’s hands go down*
These are all great but let’s not forget two characters giving extremely biased flashbacks to the same event that each paint the other as an incompetent loon
i would like to respectfully add: scenes where a character walks into a room, sees something scary, and turns around and walks out with no reaction or change of expression
Character realizes they’re about to experience something really, REALLY terrible and the eyebrows just POP and you can see the lightbulb of sudden realization going off at that moment in their shocked eyes
So you’re telling me Lelouch did not recognize that Knightmare’s spinning move which Suzaku just showed him like literally a few hours before????
16 episodes later, they showed Lelouch became so good observing this Knightmare’s fighting pattern that he was able to predict the pilot’s moves BUT LELOUCH FAILED TO RECOGNIZE THAT INTRODUCTORY SPINNING MOVE FROM DAY ONE AND REALIZE THAT IT WAS SPINZAKU ALL ALONG?????
authors love to talk about ‘LGBT’ this that or the other and just completely disregard anything to do with trans people. can u imagine how lgb cis people would behave if we started talking about ‘LGBT’ shit that ONLY focused on trans issues. y’all would lose your fucking minds. If I made an article recommending LGBT books and only recommended books about straight trans people, cis lgb’s would crucify me lmao
THIS POST IS ABOUT TRANSPHOBIA. DO NOT DERAIL IT. MAKE YOUR OWN POST.
This is really important, and absolutely needs to be said and adressed. As a cis queer, I personally can't relate to trans issues. LGBT media which contains queer sexualities appeals to me because it refelct my own experience, while LGBT media contining queer gender ideas has to appeal to me on other merits. This changes their relative value to me personally, but not objectively, and I think a lot of people fail to differentiate that. Thanks OP for addressing it because it's made me realise some internalised transphobia I have with this kind of thing, so I'll hopefully be able regonise and change my thought pattern on it.
germansingergirl
stormborns
kianamaiart
2087
pixelskylines
areudirty
