Who is this Aernath?

Helö!

I'm Aernath, this is my nick.

I made it up myself. My old nick was Samael when I was a teenager, then I looked at the situation and decided it's not that wise to use this band name, so I said let's make up a unique nick.
I thought about a while and said Latin is good for it. For also referring to the Old Turkic Mythos, I said it should be about "sky". (* Old Shaman Turks believed in Kök Tengri, literally "Blue Sky", referred to the "Great Spirit of the Above".)
So I used the word:
Aer: Meaning "Sky, Air" (as well known)
Also, starting with Ae- nickname goes up in letter order with this beginning. Little advantage from there too!
Continued with
Natu: Meaning "-to come from, sourced from."
I combined the first part with this.
At the ending I changed last letter to "h" so it would be even more unique, also would look more cool.
In the end "Aernath" formed, without even forcing.
Basically, it means something like "The one who comes from sky, The one who was born in sky."
While pronouncing the word I personally just read it like it's written; similar with Turkish and it sounds like "a(h)-err-not". So, if one day you have to read it aloud, you can read it like that.

About the "choosing" (and making up) your own "name"... I've always loved the cultures where the name is not given but chosen. Because of that, I think nickname stuff is kind of an underrated thing. If people would be careful about this, they would realize they could choose a name that would tell more about themselves, than instead of lousy sloppy and "given" ones, we would see more original names.

...

"Alright OK, who's this Aernath? What's your deal? So you're writing here, why would I care?"

...You're saying, if you are, then what are you doing here? Besides, let's be logical, how can I be offended about that now? How can I know while I'm writing this? Right? Also, don't be mad at me, my friend pushed me by saying "Open a damn blog!", go be mad at him. So, yeah, since I was pushed into this, I said to myself, let's write some stuff at least, while I'm not lazy about it, since for a long time I was writing at a Turkish web site called Ekşi Sözlük (Sour Dictionary) anyways, but it has some certain (dictionary like) format and rules and of course a blog would be more free, so I found myself here and that's it, we should not question it in deep detail, be thankful that I'm not lazy enough to give up and instead I'm writing, so there's just another reason for you to be bickering about. Our duty is to serve! (if you buy that)

Anyways, the answer to that question... Really, who the hell am I?

Now, let's not approach the situation existantially and flatten the heads, also I can't take labels seriously either, but I think in it's simplest definiton I'm a "bum" (or an "eccentric", whatever you like): I'm just one of the many people who can't adapt to this system and thus can't be successful in it. Oh, am I unhappy about this? On the contrary, I'm totally fine with it. I'm not working 8 to 6, by completely luck I'm not hungry, as a matter of fact eventually I'm even more full than I should be most of the time and use it to grow my ass and belly. But I'm not going depressive because of this extra comfort either, I just stay thankful and keep on living normally.

Alright, was it always like this? Are you a completely blank person? Well actually, according to the "ignorance is bliss" theme, I sincerely would want to be blank, but alas I'm sadly not. That's why I also get caught in several weird thoughts and be busy about those. Reason for that, under it all there exists a past like this:

Let's go back to my childhood...

Ladies and Gents, I was born in the year 1978 at Ankara, the capitol city of Turkey, until the age of 11-12 and I lived there, as the only child of the family. I actually have one sibling, my one and only sister, she was born in 91 in Afyon, a central small city, and she also grew up like the only child of the family, because when she came to her senses, I moved out to Istanbul, the biggest city of Turkey and where I live now. Of course before the elementary school, because of my working mom, my life of education and my potential of being fed up about education was already going on, I was dropped off to daycare and then pre-school, was not that bad actually, from a certain point of view, apparently I could draw and paint, it was discovered there, I even attended some painting contests, I vaguely remember.

And here we come to our first topic title: Art!
The first reason that I'm a bum is this, and this is how I got this "disease".

Yeah, so we started drawing and painting, but, but, yeah, even though with all the good efforts of my family and teachers, I also discovered that, when someone says "Do this!" to me, I just can't, plus, I just lock up, turn my attention to other things in that second. Of course at that time, because of me being a kiddo I could neither understand what this was, nor I could tell people around me that I had a problem. Actually, I still can't apparently, but, nevermind that for now...

At the elementary school, I was going to a school which was little above the average, it was a small neighbourhood primary school but it had Beginner's English classes and all, so that's when I also begun to learn English and when elementary was over, I went thru midschool general exam and won a famous school called Ari College (Arı means Bee in Turkish, nothing racist :b), I think I wasn't on full scholarship and our budget wasn't good but somehow they've managed it with some sacrifice probably and got me in. Of course while I was just hitting teenage years and learning to socialize, at the end of that year for family reasons and as I could not affect it, some chain of bad decisions have been made and we moved to Afyon (remember? the small city where my sister's born? ) something like I've stopped riding a horse and got on a donkey (Turkish saying, translated exactly, don't dwell on it).
So, what happened? I was already quite bad at adapting kind of character, even with the big city opportunities and setting, so neither I could adapt myself to Afyon, nor Afyon would adapt to me...

Primary reason for this situation is, when I was at elementary school, at like 2nd or 3rd year I discovered some music magazines, at Antalya I had some distant relative like a big brother and when he saw I was interested he made some mix tapes for me (he was also working as an oldschool DJ), with those I got over the boring Turkish tunes and heard some new stuff. Actually, when I think with my 37 year old head, some were not bad at all, evet at that age I was addicted to Barış Manço (google him, was a cool guy!), but still other stuff besides pop and ordinary things. So, Ladies and Gents, that's when I met Michael Jacksons, Madonnas and later (and still a fan) A-Ha and all others.

Of course what happened? They were not enough, with that midschool duration, I was in "big league", some searching was started... While in the school shuttle, I noticed there was a loud noisy music was playing...

(Here I will refer to one of my older writings from that Turkish web site I told you earlier, called Ekşi Sözlük (Sour Dictionary), too bad I copy-pasted the original to the Turkish text, now I will adapt that story here)

Ladies and Gents, the year is 1989, your little brother Aernath is not even a teenager, elementary school is over and prep-year of middleschool is starting. As an Ankara baby he's struggling with his mini-suit like school uniform... In this situation he's riding the shuttle minibus to school and all.

In that very shuttle, somehow the big brothers have taken over, they're not minding the driver and metal-sabotaging the whole shuttle loudly from the casette player. Naturally, not once or twice, it's every school day like this, kiddo Aernath gets addicted to this loud crackling noise and back then he's not asocial yet, goes and asks to a big brother:
"Hey big bro, I really liked this metal thing! Which album should I buy?"

So the big brothers get into a heated argument, saying things like "He should buy Kill 'em All!", "No dude Megadeth!" and "Actually he should buy Creeping Death?" in a different language that I could not understand.
In the end "Kill 'em All" wins by majority, and I don't break the trust of big brothers and go buy it at first chance.

Of course my ears were already used to the noisy tunes from shuttle's casette player, I listen to it continuously. After all I get sicky addicted to "Jump in the Fire". It's that much, I scratch the tape case where the magnetic band lines the song's beginning and rewind it to listen it again and again.

Time goes by, we move to Afyon, for family reasons I get disconnected from the mentoring big brothers, but I don't from metal, like I learned from them, in godforsaken small city of Afyon, I take over the shuttle doing metal sabotage alone by my self, I poison young minds and earn new good friends my age...

It all started with that song.
Whenever the fire called me, I closed my eyes and jumped right in,
until back then, not much has changed.

(original story is here if you also know Turkish or if you're interested in reading gibberish: https://eksisozluk.com/entry/29856499)

And thus we come to our second topic title: Music!
The second of the things that made me a bum is music, not alone music itself, but my taste in music, the things I turned to, things I take pleasure in listening.

What are the factors directing these? Which I should now say, because it's our third topic title.
The third of the things that made me who I am: Literature and Philosophy.
All my music taste, things I tried to draw and paint (however few) and the perspective that's giving me the view I have about life has all the same origin dear readers, it's also what you are doing right now:
Reading.

If we go back to the beginning and to my childhood, again, starting the act of reading for me is linked and comes from the same things which also influenced my interest in art, and those linking things were none other than Comics.

My dad's and my cousin's various comics, Conans, Lucky Lukes and of course Asterixes, after looking at the pictures of these, I went crazy at like age 5 or 6 and tried so hard while pressuring my mom and dad to tell me how, I actually learned to read early and comics are the reason why and how. Since then, I guess I kept reading non-stop. Of course after the long times spent reading Comics, made it a bit hard at start to move into the "normal", pictureless, just "wall of text" books, but first with easy classics and after that, thanks to super fluent and action packed Lancelots I could get past that stage. After that I realized I can read "literally" anything I want and learn anything I can with this simple method, and of course things went out of control...

But between all these, there is one, as a novel, that influenced me and moved me out of the generic mainstream stuff: Stephen King's Pet Semetary. This, dear readers, for some "simple" horror novel actually became a gateway for me, into a dark world.

"Oh, come on!" I can almost hear you're saying, but actually that's what it was. But why? Because I've seen this book on the shelves of "Best Sellers" and decided to buy it to my book loving dad as a present, name was interesting too, also I've seen the author's name on my cousin's bookshelf too, so it could be a nice present. With these thoughts, around my 5th year at elementary school, with my head of year 1990, I've bought this as a gift for my dad and gave it to him. But thing I didn't know was, he was actually not very much interested in this genre, he mostly read Wilbur Smith kind with some exceptions like Isaac Asimov and stuff, but horror or fantasy stuff, nope, apparently he was not into those. Of course he accepted the gift without being rude to me or anything, but after a while he passed it without reading, then I started wondering about the book, both because of its name and with this situation, I asked "If you're not going to read it, can I?" to my dad, maybe he would finish what he was reading and gonna start this next, maybe just out of courtesy but I grabbed it, read it and then I took the first step into being like "this".

(Middle note, I have to add, actually this time I referred to my instagram, here's the original source, and inside of the book cover, this time with English text too!
https://instagram.com/p/4NHNtLzgeB/?taken-by=aernath)

So, how have I became like "this"? Ladies and Gents, this book has opened a door like this, first of all, some dreams and imagination; unlike it has been dictated to my blank head, did not need to be "nice" or "good", on the contrary it could be as dark and as terrifying as it could be and adding the imagination to the mix, now we had an endless uncharted territory on our hands. If we move on to the door opening person, Stephen King himself as the main pillar of this all mess:
Because of this prejudice of "simple horror book" about his work, I will refer to a long message I once sent to an old friend, to give you all an idea about how I see this author and as maybe a proper "first impression" about him, I'll now try to adap that message here:

As The Vice President of Protecting and Appreciating Stephen King Society(!), I will now do my duty, starting the propaganda!
- You start reading Stephen King with Pet Semetary. (As I have just told)
- To discover author's different layers, you read The Eyes of The Dragon, the fairy tale he wrote for his sister when she was small.
- Then in this tale, you become a fan of Randall Flagg and you start 7 Book series The Dark Tower and read it all!
- The Dark Tower books, throughout the whole series refer to almost all the previous King books, after you finish the 7 book series, you go read the books that are referred.
- The most apparent reference with the same name is the Randall Flagg at The Stand and the 2 book series Talisman and The Black House which he wrote with Peter Straub, you read these too.
- Meanwhile, as I said before The Dark Tower consists of 7 books and I guess after 4th book, King survives a very serious traffic accident, fearing he may not finish the series, he drops everything and writes the remaining Dark Tower books.
- He tells about this event in the book too, he himself also is in the book as a character with this. Makes you go "What if?" and say "Dude is this the same place?! hehe!"
He's a maniac like that.

Mid-note: The reply to all this wall of text was also examplary,
"For me to read Stephen King again, I have to lose my mind or get new problems. There was never a book that I've read with this much pain."
/facepalm
You, my dear readers, don't be like this, prejudice is a bad thing :b

(For this anectode, I got help from that Sour Dictionary again by the way, if you wonder and want to see more gibberish, original is here, just linking it as a source: https://eksisozluk.com/entry/39642350)

Beyond this opened door was not that dark all the time of course, first of all, with the affect of Conan too, I meddled with Tolkien and Fantasy Literature, starting with none other than Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and of course maybe the only book that can truly be "sacred": Silmarillion, then I moved on with the Dragonlance books, after those I met with R.A. Salvatore and Drizzt. After all these, I read many Fantasy and Science-Fiction books. After the start, the most influential series I think was The Deathgate Cycle, written by the authors of main Dragonlance books, Margeret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Mixed in with these I have to add The Dispossessed of Ursula K. LeGuin and the late met but thanks to the movie adaptations which made me a big fan: Philip K. Dick, with all his works I could find and read I've met with distopia ideas and I found myself stepping into the philosophical questioning from the corner . I think I've reached my own personal peak in this "reading" thing with Tolkien's Silmarillion, being able to read it from the original (because, as you all may have guessed English is not my native language, since I'm a Turk). Of course I also keep seperate the first books I could read without any hardship; Harry Potters, the language and fluid story telling is extremely good, I think. At first, when it was their time, also I've been in a stupid prejudice against them, but thanks to my sister, with her help I got over that and read all books and started over from original English versions and after the 3rd, I've been able to read right from the original.

Right at this moment, I also have to say, OK, music, books, all fine, but movies? TV series? Cartoons? And Animes? And... And... Games?! Really, games especially, as a topic, is whole another universe for me, for now I'm staying away from that, but yeah, if one does all these and doesn't play proper games, they're incomplete, after all what we call a "game" is an interactive intersection of all these topics, according to the genre, it can turn into an interactive novel, action movie or even a music exercise, you know. The specific part that should be told about me is, World of Warcraft, I also play lots of other games too but for a long time I've been a WoW addict.

If we return back to the general subject, yeah, I see all these sub-topics as literature's, music's and visual arts' intersection, the end product of them all combined and one of the most beautiful products of it all is Star Wars for me, which I have to address a bit more in detail it here, because, again, it's also a very nice intersection as one of the things which make me who I am.

Why?

Because as with both its literary story depth, creating philosophical questioning, its music, and the peak it has with all visual arts used, it's one of the most important cultural focuses. Again, dear reader "Oh come on! Don't exaggarate this much?!" you're asking? My, my, dear reader, but you're asking the same thing after everything I say! I mean I hope you don't? (I better end this with a wish hehe)

Because it's like this, if I go deep again, I'll probably bury you into more Sour Dictionary references (in gibberish) again, so I better get into detail in another blog post (if it happens in the future, I hope). Basically, if I summarize, under the "Teheh weird aliens" outer shell of Star Wars (as it's seen by most), the real thing that impressed me was this:

Emperor's perspective was totally different, Anakin's perspective was a whole different, Obi-Wan and even Yoda's perspectives were a completely different story and chain of events. See, I did not mention Luke, C3PO or R2D2 as perspective characters, because they are already the intended and seen main heroes; but Anakin, just like Palpatine I told him for seeing him as the whole 6 movie long complete story character, it was a bit messy but I hope I could tell it. If you don't know who these characters are, you don't know what I'm talking about, then go watch it, watching order is 4 5 6 1 2 3, accordingly!

Besides this, visual and design quality and the leap it has made in effects (Industrial Light & Magic), epic John Williams compositions that can completely give the atmosphere as literally works of art, and with being seemingly Science-Fiction but actually a deep Fantasy tale, really Star Wars is a product that combines all these topics that influenced and impressed me with absolute success.

Yeah, if you look at it generally it's not "perfect", some bad acting is going on, eventually some story gaps exist, with the concern of making it also appealing to kids too, there are some exaggarated creatures and races. But generally there's also a solid, strong base like I told before, at least it gave me that feeling and it still does. Personally I also am sure that George Lucas; however abit annoying he is, definately he's not a dumb man, thus I can say these all as a self assured observer.

Yes, I stuck that in between topics too, now we can slowly move to the last subjects:

I have to state this while starting, of course Philosophy and beginning to think in a questioning way did not start with all these things I told, on the contrary, being like this and getting interested in these topics is, because I am like "this". How? Like this; as far as I have known myself I've been like this, as you may have remember, I told right at the beginning of this, when someone told me to "Do this!" I got locked up and asked "Why?", that mechanism became a frequently used reflex reaction for me, it's also the main reason of my chronic laziness. Totally because of this "Why?" reflex, as a side effect I ended up meddling with Philosphy.

Now again, I won't go into detail with this matter either, after all this was supposed to be a
introductory text and I'm trying to give the main reasons why I meddled with what reason, why am I like this and why the hell I'm doing what I do and sources of it, so I can introduce myself properly.

Ladies and Gents, it's like this, basically of course the first time of meeting with Philosophy happened in school for me too, what is it, why you do that, what's the definition, logic and alike, but of course under a memorization system, it just gives you only one main message:
"Philosophy is boring."

Well of course it sure isn't? But this, how order and system "generally" shows you how Literature and History is "boring and has to be memorized" and even in a certain way, how Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry are based on memorizing (and copying) formulas, how Biology can't get you over the edge of questioning Adam and Eve, also especially Religion Culture and Ethics classes and then Philosophy leaves you there.
(Of course I'm excluding the idealist teachers beyond this generalization, who are about to lose their jobs)

If you don't find certain sources, wonder about those and read them those template knowledge, things that are memorized, not learned and just used in exams are just nicely gets vaporized. Naturally, I too am quite surprised that, under this absurd and weird conditions how could this happened to me, but as I said before and again, that's avoiding me (or protecting me) from this system, that error of "Why?" reflex has a lot to do with it.

When talking about Philosphy I'm also annoyed about this, and people are still doing it:
Like "Have you read Kant? What did Nietzsche say?", in an exact opposite way, creating an expectation of a memorized data knowledge. Well those guys were saying what you are quoting from memorization because maybe to expand your horizon instead of just saying it, dear memorizer?

For me Philosophy, has to be done while staying loyal with its definition, actually exact translation, that is the love of knowledge. Means, to want to know, to love to know, to learn, about everything, from every aspect, scientifically and questioning while trying to think, that's actually what Philosophy is, that simple and easy. With putting boundaries, forcing it to be "scholastic" you can't philosophize, it's against its logic, it's as absurd as expecting a bird in a cage to fly. As my personal opinion, it's like this. That's why, to every subject systematically limited and bound I approach with doubt and asking "Why?", I think it has to be asked; to Dogmas, Rules, Boundaries... etc. etc. to whatever you can think of...

To conclude:

I used "I, I think, my..." templates, sounds awfully selfish indeed, but you see, I could tell you a bit about "Me", I hope.

If it happens, (that I'm not lazy and write again) see you in other writings...

- Aernath