David Foldvari – We Have To Stop the Border

Hi David. This is not a typical interview. We’re mates having a chat, actually more like playing a game. I’ll just throw out words and you have to come up with answers. Thanks.

1.

Rupert Murdoch

There is nothing new I can say about this that hasn’t already been said. Most people are too tired and worn out to pay attention to him and turn away in disgust whenever his name appears anywhere.

SB: I’ll add Jerry Hall to that

2.

“God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we’ve been all raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t and we’re slowly learning that fact and we’re very, very pissed off.” 

This is from Chuck Palahniuk, I recognize this. But the context has changed, because we now have our great war, and our great depression. I wonder what this guy would say if he jumped forward in time 20 years to today. Maybe he would remember his ‘middle-child-of-history’ phase with fondness, and call it the good old days.

SB: Indeed, from Fight Club. I think dystopian films/books, from Orwell to Blade Runner & Mad Max, are super relevant nowadays, tragically so. Dug up Fight Club and got blown away by the genius of Palahniuk being able to deliver Tyler Durden’s minimalist one liners so many years ago. I love them.

“The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.”

I also prefer a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire, that does not sound nice to me at all. The deathly inner consuming fire is for madmen only.

SB: Hm. Then Hermann Hesse was a mad man, so was C.J. Jung. I also have to mention Hjalmar Söderberg here as well, or even Buñuel. They were all bat shit mad then. I know what you mean but I think on the other hand that this extra fire gives birth to the genius – this fire within is the womb of creativity. The hard part is to utilize this fire for construction and not self–destruction. All talented artists have this ongoing life battle I believe trying to balance this fire out and keep it under control, yet feed from it and grow. It’s fucking hard. You just got to be a ballerina man. Balance is everything.

Civico Zero/Ground Zero, Italy

Civico Zero is a day-care center in Rome for refugee children who have traveled great distances by themselves. Or do you mean Italy, the Ground Zero of the current crisis? A lot of people are calling Italy the ‘Ground Zero’ of the refugee crisis because they’ve been dealing with refugees flooding into their country for about 10 years. And what I learnt when I was there is that because of the amount of time they have had to deal with this situation, they seem to be far more aware of what’s happening than the rest of Europe and the Western world. There are a lot of people there who are trying to help and contribute something positive. I don’t know what the solution to any of this will be, but sitting and watching people drown is not going to work.

SB: The surreal thing about this is that there’s another immigration that has been going on for a while in parallel. Italian people have been moving to London, Berlin and the Nordic cities. More than half of Italy’s youth have left the country because of lack of work opportunities in their homeland. Yes, the question is what’s next? I don’t give the whole European Union thing much time before it collapses, certainly if we don’t prevent our politicians leading us to that direction.

“I’m more of a warrior than you’ll ever be. I believe in the class war. I believe in the battle of the sexes. I believe in my tribe. I believe in the righteous, intelligent clued-up section of the working classes against the brain-dead moronic masses, as well as the mediocre, soulless bourgeoisie.” 

That’s from Irvine Welsh. What is this interest you have in the bourgeoisie? You should come to London where almost all culture has been replaced by the gluttony of wealthy people. Galleries, clubs and small shops have mostly been replaced by chain stores, coffee shops, fake ‘street food’ vendors and investment properties. The only thing people do here any more is eat.

SB: Hahahaha. Yeah it’s from Irvine. Thought to quote him because of my previous interview, plus you love him. My obsession is that I hate bourgeoisie attitudes. Mediocrity & ignorance, I friggin hate.

Kurt Vonnegut

You ought to read Man Without a Country. Here is a quote you’ll like from it:

“In case you haven’t noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appalling powerful weaponry – who stand unopposed. In case you haven’t noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis once were. And with good reason. In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound ’em and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want. Piece of cake.”

Sirens of Titan is my favorite. “Don’t truth me, Unk, and I won’t truth you.” Or something like that.

SB: Brilliant. You were right. I love it. You see it’s all about branding. Bad guys just re-brand themselves wearing different uniforms. I mentioned Kurt Vonnegut because over ten years ago you were THAT awesome person suggesting books for me to read. My favorite from him is a super short story. Thanasphere. Check it out.

6.

“If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”

They’re only as bad as any other human in pursuit of power. The real problem is that the relentless pursuit of power is a trait of psychopaths and megalomaniacs, and those are the people that we allow to make decisions about what happens with the world on a daily basis.

SB: Could not agree more. But I think it’s time for compassionate empaths to fight back with unity, collectivity and love. I think love is the answer. More powerful than hate & greed. I really truly believe so. We can’t be this dumb not to recognize this.

7.

Pigeon (drawing)

That is a re-interpretation of something I found on the back of a family photo from the early 1900s. Family and origins interest me. I’ve ended up using it on a lot of my work. It’s just a fat pigeon, ultimately.

“Elmentem az édesanyámhoz. Jól van. Úgy él, mint számtalan évvel ezelőtt. Maga művelteti a kis földjét, a kis szőlejét. Nem szorul senkire. Más ember, mint én vagyok. Más fajból voltak ők, mint amit ideadtak nekünk. Azok tudtak élni. Még akkor lehetett is élni. És jól tudtak élni. Ezek itt nem tudnak. Nem is tudják, mi a szép és mi a jó élet. Nem tudják mi a jó falat, a jóízű pihenés. Nem szeretem ezt a mai világot. Azt mondják átmeneti idők. Csakhogy én nem kívántam átmeneti időt. Arra sem emlékszem, hogy ezt az egész életet valaha kiköveteltem volna. Protekciót biztos nem vettem igénybe. Már arra sem vagyok kíváncsi, hogy minek örülhet az ember ha magyar.”

This just reminds me how little Hungarian I now speak. I struggle to string sentences together. I understand it fine, but formulating thoughts is becoming really difficult. I often feel embarrassed when I have to talk in Hungarian because I sound stupid. It is very frustrating to have thoughts that you can only express in broken fragments from the remnants of the vocabulary of an 11 year old. Why are you sending this quote? Are you suggesting that Hungarians are always moaning? Or are you suggesting that every generation romanticizes the one that came before it? Or are you testing my Hungarian literary knowledge? Because it is non-existent, I had to Google that quote because I didn’t know where it came from. How do you feel about being Hungarian now, with all the refugee stuff and everything else in the news? I don’t think I understand what it means to be Hungarian any more, but I don’t know if that ever really mattered very much anyway.

SB: No, none of that David. This melancholic, nostalgic quote is from an amazing Hungarian film, Szinbad by Huszarik Zoltan, based on Gyula Krudy’s Adventures of Sinbad novel. It was written not long after 1900 yet incredibly relevant today I feel, just as Orwell is. It mentions the power of small communities and self-made produce and questions the morality of the 1900s. It truly is an existentialist masterpiece, I think. The book and film were introduced to me when I was a kid by my grandfather, who was a Renaissance man in every way & my hero. Ever since that time, this quote hits me from time to time. I feel somewhat jealous of my grandfather’s generation actually. Those guys knew how to live, not like my or future generations (not having much in the way of future perspective) being brought up on iPads and social media. I feel these great gentlemen and women with such integrity and grace are vanishing phenomena from our ever-decaying society. I’ll close with this:

“Now, I’m closing my eyes. Blessed be your coming, my life’s a dream, my dreams are my life.” Sinbad