ASLI METE

Artist: Asli Mete

Title: 'Can you be Naive for me?'

Medium: Creative Writing

Self-Expression:

"You can find beauty anywhere. That is why the perspective that I chose as a writer is very important. My style of writing always hides a message behind the narrator. This is why the narrator always changes in my stories because I am trying to put the reader somewhere they have never been before. This is the biggest message I want to convey; to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is why naive (the magazine) is called naive. When I say ‘can you be naive for me?’ I am asking you to be like a baby; no experience, no judgement, no preconceived notions, no prior knowledge. In Turkish, when we call somebody naive we say ‘saf’ which actually translates to ‘pure’. Saf is a piece of soap, water is saf. My mom would say that a lot, she would always say ‘young girls that have no experience in life are saf’ because they are pure, and then when you go out and explore the world, men and the culture don’t see you as pure anymore and that’s because you have built knowledge. I always found beauty in that though...being naive. That is why, as a writer, I try to put myself in a position where even though I know a lot about life, and even though I’ve travelled enough and met a lot of people, I still try to be naive every time I meet somebody or go somewhere, because I think that’s the fairest you can be to life. I would say that this is the first version of me you will meet, because I will give you the fair chance to introduce yourself the way you want to be introduced, without any external influences, because I think everybody deserves that."