# 359

So I live in Budapest mostly because I’m Hungarian. I tried to avoid telling this fact about myself but it seems like even some nice Russian guy have figured it out who wrote cool things about me on the internet. - I did not google my name this time it was a friend of mine - That’s the deal when you read Eastern Europe in my columns. You might have thought of that I’m polish and imagined my location to be grey and smell like cabbage but actually it’s totally dark and stinks of moonshine.
One of the few good things about being Hungarian is I can read whatever Laszlo Krasznahorkai writes. - Actually it’s Krasznahorkai Laszlo, as my real name is Vargyai Viktor. We use a switched order -. And there is no need for a middle man as a translator between us so not only his thoughts are reachable for me but also the selection of the words in his never ending sentences. I’m kinda obsessed with him lately and reading now one of his books called War and War made me wonder on the whole thing. It’s about this guy who goes crazy and travels from a small rural town in Hungary to New York because he thinks that’s the center of the world in this modern age. There he stays in a small room and creates a homepage about his message he feels like he has to share with eternity. The funny thing is about it is how we Hungarians are really alike. Even if we are at the center of the world we just stay in our dirty holes and think about the whole universe and we feel like whatever we are doing is soo important the whole world should know about it and when it’s done things will change. It also made me realize too something I already wrote in one of my columns. After all we all just live in rooms so why does a country matter that much?
Sadly it matters so much in some aspects. There are unseen lines what are drawn deep into us. There is distance and that’s the worst. The worst is when the distance between two places is not can only be counted in length. Actually the worst is when there is distance between you and the whole universe even if it’s just a small fucked up town where you’ve been tragically stick in.  
The room I used to live in faced a hill and in one of it’s bushes during the winters there was always fire burning. People lived there and it felt shattering to witness how just in few meters – aka. length in Europe - there is another world that is completely different than what I live in. Mine is about surviving the soul crushing reality of capitalism that sooner or later turns you into a lame adult their is to just survive life that has turned it’s back on them. I could see them and they might have seen me as well if they cared at all about those block of flats where my family owns a home. There was a border between us and at their end is the place everyone is afraid to end up.
It was also strange when I arrived to the states there was a line which till I haven’t stepped over I was afraid of and then I entered another world as I walked through. There are lines drawn by markets, politics, cultures languages, fortunes. And for some reason some people always just wanna be at the hot spot of these best circumstances.
I always believed the center of the world is where we feel good. And there are places for sure from where you should run away but there are situations you should run to or realize them around you and then stick to. A drunk dance in a bar is a drunk dance everywhere. It matters who does that and how and when and what you feel. There are those rooms. We are in them. And we should create and reach for the world to grab it and make it our own. But after all what matters is this nation less and universal thing: doing something or better doing something together. Creating and sharing. I got hugged at a weird birthday party in Berlin of some legendary german fast core band’s drummer where while most people were snorting cocaine I was talking to a really elfish looking Swedish guy who was a traveler. I never felt like I should move or anchor myself to the road thus I told him I look on places as if you don’t like them instead of escaping them you should try to make them better. With finding people with whom it will be better or just try and it will follow. Or realize there are things all around us that needs no place, time or culture. These things can’t go through google translation just through you. Like the noise of VOID. That blasting amazing sounds which come along with lyrics but you can understand one’s frustration even without the slightest knowledge of English as well. As we do non Italian speakers with WRETCHED.

Nowadays I love music or people who do things which are happening in rooms. Locked rooms where they are creating something that could not be held back. What launches them out into the world. When the world comes to your room to see what’s happening there. When from a hidden position from a beaten situation people rise up and do something undeniably good. When they become needed and thus free. Or they just feel good cause they have made it as they do what they want because they haven’t listened to anyone telling them what they can or cannot do. Aren’t they the real center of the world?
But after all like what is the center of the world? Is it Olympia? With all of it’s crazy, drugged out love jams and garden hardcore rippings all in a feedback mist? Haven’t you wished to live there in a long haired commune in some unlocked door punk house?  Was it Switzerland with the Hot Love era dozen perfection bands? Who recreated or reclaimed post punk, proto weird music? All those cold melodies which are still making our hearts warm?  With their own Joe Strummer aka the genius Rudolph Dietrich? Is it Tampa Florida with all the CULT RITUAL connected bands? Their noise, their beauty, their unstoppable and uncountable force of pure teenage angst? Or was it Italy with its totally fucked up mutant hardcore bands? Brazil? Spain? Washington DC? LA? People put these places on maps and you wish you would live there. But it always had to be people - the same part of nature you likely are too.
I live in Budapest and it has 2 million residents. San Francisco doesn’t have a million but there were more punks at every show, there is MRR, and every band I saw could play their instruments. They had amazing places, record shops and the whole city has a history. As just yours and everyone else’s but maybe it’s so far unwritten.   
But yeah as always it’s not this easy. And some people just wanna get by with life not ride it into a tamed horse. There come all the unseen lines made up by the always cruelty of this unequal world. Cause yeah you could even find your joy under the circumstance of poverty but most of us just wanna not be bothered with striving to get enough money for food or being afraid of losing our rooms. It’s like we would like to buy stuffs but we enjoy being ditch diggers. To wear patches that not only hold our cloths together but as symbols of stating it’s still us vs them. We are survivors of not joining a war. A meal is good if you prepare it with passion and patience not only at fancy restaurants. I go to the market where a top chef goes too and the veggies are cheap as well. But I know I’m in a better situation than so many people. And I see my friends in struggle with their conscience when they have to choose between free times or some fucked up corporate job. And how those who choose not to grow up rather choose to sooner or later go broke. It’s never the money we miss. We miss the privilege where we could afford to be poor but still not have to be in a class struggle.
Guess I’m lucky for this cause even if I still feel the lack of stability with a better job I have million things that keep me forget the danger that’s in the corner of my everyday’s. I can entertain myself and i want many of my friend to be part of this as well. I’m just sometimes scared. Because if I had a job that pays me good then with all the other things I do I would feel like I made it. And if I made it that would mean it’s the end. I don’t feel ready for that. I’m 26 but I feel like I’m 16. Also I’m afraid with the chance to grow up I will stop wanting to be young. Not to not be able to do my things but not want to do them on the first base. I remember I wanted to leave Hungary only for to see better shows and have better chances to entertain myself. Now I wanna stay here forever cause I have found so many good people with whom we make amazing things. Now with a friend of mine we booked almost all of our contemporary favorites to play here. But it’s heartbreaking how my friends tell me they are happy cause we are doing things but they wish we will carry on. But it’s me who want them to carry on. I want to trust them. Because when we book a show we not only book it for ourselves we book it cause we believe many people will come and it will be a great night of punk joy.
I really hated the movie Children of Men for the same reason everybody loved it so much. The backgrounds. With all those immigrants kept in cages waiting to be deported back. And I have no idea how is it to be an immigrant, how is it when even with the risk of being deported back and before that to be kept like an animal feels. And my rage comes at the point where I can’t understand this fucking world why is it making people to choose this? But at the same time I just feel that many people just go to live elsewhere cause they are running away from themselves and the real tragedy is what I just wrote that even millions of people can’t decide and then rise up to make a country or just a town more livable so they run away to live like rats but to live. It’s just so upsetting. It’s upsetting how people lose their cities and their abilities to live but still I believe in fighting. A fight to block out this fucked up world. To build a better one even among and within ourselves. Cause sadly or not, not everyone could live in that one city and this is why I hated Children of Men. It simply sold the idea that there are only like four cities in the whole world worth to live in.   
For a reason we all want to be elsewhere. Henry Miller’s Air-Conditioned Nightmare starts with a conversation between him and a Hungarian friend of his. That friend is happy now cause he always wanted to live in New York and now he does while Miller wonders away to Budapest. Budapest was then governed by some semi fascist regent and we were in a flow that led right into Second World War. Still he wanted to be here. We envy each other’s places. While being in the US people who toured Western Europe were complaining how there punks criticize Americans because they think punk is so easy for them yanks. While in some western countries squatters get extra money if they own dogs. People have to face community service if they smash a brick into a cop’s face while in San Francisco you got shot if you don’t have a bus ticket and you run away from cops.
What I envy in people is the extra energy. The power and will to carry on. It’s in abroad but it’s in every town. Those crazy people, who sit down, anchor them to somewhere and just do their things. Maybe they are legends, maybe they are nameless. But still they are cornerstones of the scene. Even if you are not one of them you are a part of their work too if you just help them with your existence. This magazine could be put out cause you have bought it. A show is just some crazy dude who wrote an e-mail to a band to perform in a room without the audience. A band is just some people making noise at a room without listeners. We are all part of it and we all need each other. We are in this together. And we are everywhere. For some reason from a line, people are different, they speak different, act different, live different but still there is something that makes us stick together instantly even if we were raised different and somewhere else. I love this. I love that I’m a part of this magazine from the other end of the world from a shady room. But I love it more that I can always write about my friends, about what is happening with us and I love that you whoever you are can maybe understand this all. Cause even english is not being my first language maybe my thoughts could go through these lines.
So this all was not against moving. Mobilization is one of the best things ever. Whoever decides to leave their town for a better life and start it all over again are the strongest people. But sometimes you have to look from what you run and where you run to. While I could be better elsewhere I lie myself into believing I’m a do-er. Thus I sit on my ass and try to do things. Cause after all maybe Krasznahorkai was right when he got asked if he feels better in Berlin. He replied: No. But it’s not Berlins fault. He is hungarian and he is destined to not feel good anywhere.