Everything and nothing

You ask me, what’s up? What has changed since we last met?

Everything and nothing.

My dad, my godfather, my godmother, my grandmother died in 12 months.

My mom is still alive. My brother is still alive. I live happily with my wife and two sons.

You ask me, how things are in the office? Has anything changed?

Everything and nothing.

In 2013, after 17 years of Sony Music employment, I was fired, but offered to do marketing for the company as an agent. My best friend and I started a company called Hear Hungary. After a year and a half, our paths parted. I founded another company: Keytracks and basically restarted again. A new recruit, then friend called David helped a lot. He died in February, 2019. We established a foundation in Kulcs (translates to Key in English:) I would like to build a studio/concert hall, which I call the Sonic Temple in my mind.

I am sitting in the same room as in 2005, only now renting it from Sony Music. And we are marketing their international releases, still learning a lot every day. On top of that I do the same with local artists as I did in 1989. I visit rehearsals, do interviews, write articles, organise concerts, release their music.

You ask me, what do I think about the affairs of the world? What has changed?

After a long search, I defined myself as a Christian Leftist at the time of the regime change in 1989. Today, I am afraid to use this category, because of the clerical politicians and the politicizing priests.

I wear the same blue worker jacket as I did 20 years ago, only now I don’t have Rage Against The Machine embroidery on it, but Mudfield, a local band from East of Hungary. They played Killing In The Name during a recent concert in Szeghalom. On the cover of that record you see Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who burned himself to death protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. On the other hand, the singer of Mudfield wrote a song about patriotism. There is no ’left’ versus ’right’. There are no differences between a believer and an atheist. I like to go to church, but I prefer to be alone with the Creator. And you don’t even need a church for that. I can find peace with him even out in the fields. I avoid the word of God because it embarrasses me to refer to it as a person, and open the discussion if he exists or not. I prefer Buddhist philosophy. Philosophy, not religion. We are one. Interconnected.

What’s new in this?

Everything and nothing.

It is an amazing experience to listen to and read the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Tendzin Gyaco, Ajahn Chan, Jack Kornfield. To understand the unconscious naturalness of my past actions in my youth. Feeling wiser and wiser and in the same time realising how much I do not know about the world.
It is similarily revelatory experience to hear/read quotations from my absurdist favorites of my adolescence in these Buddhist teachings. Camus. Sartre. It’s wonderful to see the puzzle pieces falling into place and I find my peace of mind.

“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” – Nikos Kazantzakis