Alpha Waves w/ Pınar Deniz
Summer opens up a door made out of dreams. When you enter through it; time, space, and all concepts break away from reality and invite you to a place where everything in life is bathed in a positive light. It is like always seeing the glass half full… “The world is a scary place without my dreams,” says Pınar, and invites us to a summer dream. May you find your own utopia!
Where do you see yourself today in your acting career, in which you started with the “saving the world” motive?
A journey that never ends and I learn more every day. To save the world, I had to heal my own world, make it beautiful. I realized I couldn’t change the world without returning to myself. The world
is full of painful stories… My way of saving the world is to touch people’s lives with the characters I play. I feel like I am on the right track when people say to me things like, “You’re telling my story”, or “You’ve touched a place in my heart.”
Do you think you are lucky?
I’m one of those who creates their own luck. In order to get something, I have to want and work hard. I’m not one of those people who takes chances.
Do you face your fears?
The biggest challenge of my life! I wrote, “Face your every fear!” in my notebook years ago. We’re taught to be afraid of emotions we don’t experience. When a child is taught to stay away from fire without being burned, we take away the impulse of curiosity. In fact, we live and grow with the fears of others as if they were our own fears. I do not know why but I was so afraid of cats, one day I decided to face it, and I adopted a cat. Although we stayed away from each other for the first three days, the feeling I felt afterward was incredible…As I got older, I learned not to set limits on myself and to live as I wished, without fear.
Summer-winter, love-violence, black-white… You can go on and on! What do you think about binary opposition? Do you believe in transitions? Do you live life on the edges, with all the ups and downs?
‘It is death that keeps man alive,’ says Oruç Aruoba. You can’t experience life without thinking about death. Life is based entirely on these oppositions. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been a positive person and thought that the only goal was to “be happy.” At the beginning of 2020, I was tucked away reading books in my own melancholic world and I realized that you do not appreciate happiness without experiencing pain. I’m incredibly conflicted, even within myself. One of the women in me can say black and the other can say white. I’m trying to balance myself in life. When one of the women in me chooses to live on the edge, I first say “Let go, live spontaneously!” but when I realize it is getting out of hand, I try to restrain her.
How do you balance these feelings?
By being aware. As soon as I experience the most extreme moment of my life, I stop and take a picture of it. There were times when I questioned what I have become. When that happens, I go back to the essence and question what I should learn from it. Anyone can become anything. I try not to judge my emotions, the person I am. Otherwise, I become exactly who I judge. The mistakes I’ve made, the way I’ve reacted, the people I’ve upset… I say, “it’ll all go away, and you will remember its mark.”
Do your anxiety surface as you get to know yourself?
Absolutely. As we become aware of ourselves and begin to learn, the anxiety begins to spring. In my first acting experience, I had zero anxiety because it was like a game for me, I wasn’t aware of the severity of the whole deal. When I got into it and started training, my perception of acting changed, and then the anxiety began to surface. What if I can’t be a good actor, what if I can’t make it? And as I got to know myself, I was struggling with the question of what if I wasn’t a good person. I have also come across and still continue to come across all kinds of information that will illuminate my path, such as NLP, breath therapies, reiki. The more I know, the more I deal with myself, the more I become restless. I realized how complex and infinite my own universe is. That restlessness makes me even more human. Is it possible for someone who has a problem with life to not worry?
Is life like a race, a struggle, or are you in a peaceful mindset?
I also ask myself a different version of that question. What phase am I going through right now and how am I feeling? I have put a complicated period of my life behind me (hopefully) I feel incredibly peaceful now. After the storm, the sea has calmed down and I lay backward in the still water, just watching the sky. I stopped talking about the future, and that keeps me in the ’moment’. I don’t know what to do in the summer, how will I be feeling in five years, where to go tomorrow. “I don’t know” is a great sentence. I think it’s very exciting not to know what’s going to happen to me in 5 minutes and what I’m going to feel.
How does dreaming affect you?
It always encourages me to see more, to create more. The world is a terrible place without my dreams. I like living in my own utopia.
Where do you get your motivation?
Definitely from nature! Every time I surround myself with nature, I create a new self. Buildings, cars make me claustrophobic. Reading books, listening to music in nature is my greatest meditation.
How would you describe summer?
A sense of refreshment, freedom, and happiness… I am definitely a summer child. As soon as I see the sun, I feel like I’m bursting with excitement. I immediately feel like traveling elsewhere, to the deep blue of the skies.
How do you know the summer is coming?
The first time my foot touches the water, the summer begins. I don’t even need to go into the water, even lying on the shore is enough to be happy. Everything feels better, makes more sense, people seem happier.
Do you believe in summer love?
I’ve always fallen in love in the summertime. As Orhan Veli once said, “This beautiful weather ruined me. I’ve fallen in love.’ All my emotions get stronger, and I feel a bit more relaxed.
Close your eyes and tell us a story of the sea, sand, and plenty of sunlight!
Exactly where I am now. I am shooting a movie right now, and I go to the most beautiful places of Lycia and rediscover myself in green and blue. It’s like all the ugliness of the world is disappearing. I have people I love with me, and I’m in a story where I can scream and sing and dance barefoot. There is no one happier than me.
What is it about the summer that is different from other seasons? What value does it add to our lives?
As a solar-powered person, I feel happy the first time the light fills the room. For me, the road trip season is on the way. I realized I do not like traveling in winter. I can’t enjoy it when I’m cold and I can’t concentrate where I am. When spring comes, I feel like people
are rejuvenating. We become liberated and we dance more. I cannot tell you how much I miss the summer right now. Here’s to summertime conversations without Covid!
In short;
A movie?
I lost my body
A character?
Raskolnikov
A line?
“Run if you cannot fly, walk if you cannot run, crawl if you cannot walk… but whatever you do, you have to move forward.”
Your latest discovery on Netflix?
Love, Death & Robots
Who do you talk to most on the phone?
With my manager Tuba!
A book?
The Papalagi, Erich Scheurmann.
A quote?
“invent yourself and then reinvent yourself, change your tone and shape so often that they can never categorize you. reinvigorate yourself and accept what is but only on the terms that you have invented and reinvented. be self-taught. and reinvent your life because you must; it is your life and its history and the present belong only to you.”
Charles Bukowski
What is the most streamed song on your playlist right now?
Lover, You Should’ve Come Over, Jeff Buckley
A summer night ritual?
I am outside, the air is getting colder, and I am laying there with a book in my hand. My friends will be here soon, and maybe I’ll start drinking and dancing…
Follow the link to watch Pınar’s UTOPIA!