“Man, I Miss Them”
“Don’t delay the happy.”
My first photo book! Photos from a journey home, after 11 years.
“Growing old is a privilege.”
Stillness Of The Mind - Abel Korzeniowski
This beautifully composed song is from the wonderful soundtrack of A Single Man. This strikes the right mood with me. It’s moving, emotional, and epic. Reminds me of Clint Mansell’s compositions especially from The Fountain, the beautiful violin which evokes a plethora of emotions. Sadness, love, fear, passion, calm. This song calms my mind, as the title suggest, it puts my mind at a standstill, where I can stop take a breather and look at the world around me with open eyes. The stillness of the mind is the state we are in most of the time, our minds stay constant with us our entire lives, the world and the mind are on two different planes of existence. Yes, the mind and the world, interact with each other, but ultimately our world is a hectic place with so many things going on at once it’s sometimes difficult to realize the complexities of the world around us. Everybody’s mind is a different world, each individual sees the world with different eyes, with different perceptions, with different opinions. Abel Korzeniowski is seriously becoming one of my new favorite composers, his ability to make his music so deep is mesmerizing. I can’t wait to hear more music by him in future films.
“A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.” -A Single Man
Sweet M-ashup!
“To let go is to fear less and to trust more.”
Goosepimples arise when listening to this oldie (…) I told you, forever, I love you, forever, I told you, I love you, I love you, forever, I told you, forever, You never, you never, You told me forever (…) I saw the light fading out…
Madonna’s touching tribute to MJ
I’m so glad to be a child of the 80’s!…
“Michael Jackson was born in August, 1958. so was I. Michael Jackson grew up in the suburbs of the Midwest. So did I. Michael Jackson had eight brothers and sisters. So do I. When Michael Jackson was 6 he became a superstar and was perhaps the world‘s most beloved child. When I was 6 my mother died. I think he got the shorter end of the stick.
“I never had a mother, but he never had a childhood. And when you never get to have something, you become obsessed by it. I spent my childhood searching for my mother figures; sometimes I was successful. But how do you recreate your childhood when you are under the magnifying glass of the world for your entire life?
“There is no question that Michael Jackson was one of the greatest talents the world has ever known. … That when he sang a song at the ripe old age of 8, he could make you feel like an experienced adult was squeezing your heart with his words. … That the way he moved had the elegance of Fred Astaire and packed the punch of Muhammad Ali. … That his music had an extra layer of inexplicable magic that didn‘t just make you want to dance but actually made you believe that you could fly, dare to dream, be anything that you wanted to be. Because that is what heroes do. And Michael Jackson was a hero.
“He performed in soccer stadiums around the world, he sold hundreds of millions of records, he dined with prime ministers and presidents. Girls fell in love with him, boys fell in love with him, everyone wanted to dance like him, he seemed otherworldly, but he was also a human being. Like most performers, he was shy and plagued with insecurities.
“I can’t say we were great friends, but in 1991 I decided I wanted to get to know him better. I asked him out to dinner: I said, ‘My treat, I’ll drive, just you and me.’ He agreed and showed up to my house without any bodyguards. We drove to the restaurant in my car. It was dark out, but he was still wearing sunglasses. I said, ‘Michael, I feel like I‘m talking to a limousine, do you think you could take off those glasses so I could see your eyes?’ He paused for a moment, then he tossed the glasses out the window, looked at me with a wink and a smile and said, ‘Can you see me now, is that better?’
“In that moment, I could see both his vulnerability and his charm. The rest of the dinner, I was hell-bent on getting him to each French fries, drink wine, have dessert and say bad words, things he never seemed to allow himself to do. Later, we went back to my house to watch a movie and we sat on the couch like two kids, and somewhere in the middle of the film, his hand snuck over and held mine. It felt like he was looking for a friend more than a romance and I was happy to oblige him. And in that moment he didn‘t feel like a superstar, he felt like a human being. We went out a few more times together and then for one reason or another we fell out of touch. Then, the witch hunt began and it seemed like one negative story after the other was coming out about Michael. I felt his pain. I know what it’s like to walk down the street and feel like the whole world has turned against you. I know what it‘s like to feel helpless and unable to defend yourself because the roar of the lynch mob is so loud that you are convinced your voice can never be heard.
“But I had a childhood, and I was allowed to make mistakes and find my own way in the world without the glare of the spotlight. When I first heard that Michael had died I was in London, days away from the opening of my tour. Michael was going to perform in the same venue as me a week later. All I could think about in that moment was that I had abandoned him. That we had abandoned him. That we had allowed this magnificent creature that once set the world on fire to somehow slip through the cracks. While he was trying to build a family and rebuild his career, we were all busy passing judgment. Most of us had turned our backs on him.
“In a desperate attempt to hold onto his memory, I went on the Internet to watch old clips of him dancing and singing on TV and on stage and I thought, ‘My God, he was so unique, so original, so rare. And there will never be anyone like him again.’ He was a king. But he was also a human being and alas, we are all human beings and sometimes we have to lose things before we can truly appreciate them. I want to end this on a positive note and say that my sons, age 9 and 4, are obsessed with Michael Jackson. There’s a whole lot of crotch-grabbing and moonwalking going on in my house, and it seems like a whole new generation of kids has discovered his genius and are bringing him to life again. I hope that wherever Michael is now, he is smiling about this.
“Yes, yes Michael Jackson was a human being, but dammit, he was a king. Long live the king.”
- Madonna, at the VMA’s. (Long live the queen!)
My name, Engin means "vast, boundless" in 
