GROUP MEMBERS

Yasemin (FİRİDİN) ARSLAN



It has been three years since I first got acquainted with the flute. I don’t remember how this idea has ever popped up in my head, but it has indeed been a very good idea! When I started playing the flute, I was a 3rd year student at Computer Engineering Department in Bilkent University. Learning to play the flute was an extra struggle for someone who was over busy with her classes, but I never took it as a burden, and rather worked resolutely. Because every new thing I learned about the flute thrilled me as if I was discovering a secret of the universe. I have already graduated and started to work now. Neither the school projects nor the over-time work would keep me apart from my flute. Now and then my friends have grumbled that I have been ignoring them when I have to run for my flute class or practice too much. In fact, it is the result of those efforts now, which gives me today this chance to say aloud from herein. We have never imagined that we would come along this much when we first assembled the Lirik Nefesler. We have made our way in time. With our original intention of “distributing our efforts to others, and not staying with our own selves”, this way has taken us to autism. Before getting to know autism, I admit that I had felt uneasy. I had thought that I would have felt upset and had agony when I would have met the autistic children… However, this has never been the case. When I first met them, a cloud of happiness filled in me, a smile got stuck on my face and then I wondered why I had once thought that I would have been so sad. I watched them curiously... Each one of the autistic children seemed to live as if in a world of his or her own, and in particular harmony. Our music was our tool to include us into this harmony. Their becoming calm by the start of the music, their accompanying with the music and much more than these, their thanks at the end of our performance have impressed me… Their thanks in words, and thanks in their eyes… Lirik Nefesler have not only introduced autism to me, but also improved my self-confidence. At the beginning, I trembled while playing in front of others. But now, I feel myself as a part of a whole with those in front of me, and I feel as if I am playing alone myself. It makes me happier to play in a group rather than playing alone. Because, you need a harmony, and to meet in a common emotion in onder to play in an assembly. Being able to have acquired this harmony, being part of this group, and sharing our love with people in terms of our music, significantly gives me pleasure and peace.