Red at night

On the bus

Honesty without thought, truth without a wink,
Creation of the purest form,
of nature, forever, yet on the brink,
on life's blank canvass or the fogged up window on a bus,
with lifes own breath in the afternoon rush,
Innocent faces disapear as they drip,
to the sea with the rest, and the water of thick

Égtájak Iroda: Vendégségben Budapesten

Listening: Vad Fruttik - Fénystopposok



15. Határon túli magyar találkozó Budapesten.

I wanted to keep a diary, but it was the most fast pased, the most exciting and probably the best 10 days of my trip.

However, I documented the 10 days fairly well with my camera, which I brought with me everywhere.

Basically it was a 10 day, completely free, program for Hungarian Youths living outside the borders of Hungary. There were close to 800 of us, and over the 10 days we got to meet Hungarians from almost every country in the world, each speaking Hungarian with different accents, based on which country they came from.

I heard about this program from a friend of mine who works at the Hungarian Radio in Melbourne. He told me to keep a diary and that he would film a multi-part documentary about my trip once I come home. But as I mentioned before, I didnt get around to writing the diary (during the program), so I'm going to attempt, as best as I can, to relive the 10 days, with the help of photos, and document it in this blog.

The link to the website for the organisation that ran the program is below:

Winter

I noticed it had just been snowing, it was so fresh and soft. I had to go take a couple of shots.

A double pack of phat meegz

Missing some of the ordinary things about life in Australia. Like Mi Goreng. Craving it so hard lately.

But listening to Phat Meegz still makes me happy.

I dont know what it is about this album, but I dont think I will ever get bored of it. The band has uploaded it for free download on bandcamp.

For A Girl

Let's lose them, let's lose ourselves,
Together for a while, together while it lasts,
Forgetting the sun, forgetting the setting,
It's just you and me behind this door,
Waiting for it to end, waiting for it to go on forever,
And our silence, your smile, and the lock of four eyes,
Up the stairs and across the hall,
The echoing sound of nothing but our own,
In a familiar place, under strange hands,
A familiar feeling, like the time before

If PJ Harvey was here...

I would ask everybody to leave.

When the time comes

Back and forth in the day to day blur
written on paper by her, the words do not stir
Patience inside me as I pass the world by,
Patience in the city, can do nothing but hide,
When the words they are ready, the words they will come,
to their place in my heart, their place one by one,
And the words they do fill me, they are the life within me,
And the words they do fill me, as does your memory

And when you smile those sad sad eyes

Bat For Lashes - Sad Eyes

I don't like the things you don't say
Leaving it for such a long long time
Why do you show me those sad sad eyes
Each time you decide to passo n by?

And when you smile
those sad sad eyes
look sadder and sadder still...

Autumn's hue in those sad eyes
Makes me love and love them more
I'll have a bath, I'll make the dinner
Then I'll go away for a long, long time
But still, you've not passed by door

I can tell that you're lonely
but it seems now, there's nothing you want me to do
I won't try to take the sadness from those eyes that I love
Leave it open for someone else to.

Trying to hold it together
Keep my love as light as a feather
Keep my heart breaking in the dark
Come and spend the night...

The Desperate Kingdom of Love

Such a chill, such a chill.

I was in Slovakia a few weeks ago, and I felt like listening to OK Computer, by Radiohead. This is already an incredible album, and pretty much kills me every time listen to it, but I came upon a really strange realization while I listened the 4th track, Exit Music (for a film). I wanted to pay attention to the lyrics, because if there’s one thing I do with songs, is overlook (or overlisten?) the lyrics, which a lot of the time are just as powerful, if not more powerful, than the music itself. I started listening to the lyrics, but found myself unable to concentrate. Not even after a verse I found myself so taken by the music that I forgot that I was listening to the lyrics.
I start the song from the beginning and this time I make sure to listen to the lyrics only. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to follow the lyrics up until the buildup, where the bass comes in, with minimal restarts. The pinnacle of the buildup is THE part of the song that always gives me the shivers, and I found it impossible to concentrate on the lyrics beyond that point. The music is just too powerful; it’s just too raw, too honest and too authentic. I don’t know, but I couldn’t do it. The music just felt too good. I am absorbed by it so much every time that I don’t care about anything else; I just enjoy it as it comes. It fills me from my head down to the bottom, to the tips of my toes.

It’s a rare experience, and few groups are able to do this. Few groups are able to reach that level and are able to hit that nerve within me.

Radiohead somehow manages to consistently combine the music and lyrics into a homogeneous mixture of beautiful emotional sounds which must resonate at the same frequency as the human body.

This is how music should be, all the time. Thank you, Radiohead.

HDR

The worst thing about photography is the fact that you never capture exactly what you see. There is such a diversity of colours and brightness levels that a camera simply cannot capture. Compromises have to be made for a satisfactory picture to be produced, and sometimes it’s hard to come to a happy medium.

Days with bright sunlight often tend to blow out the sky out, leaving it completely white. If you attempt to capture some of the sky the way it actually looks, with its cloud formations and deep blue colour, then you’re likely to underexpose the subject of the photo. The greater the difference between the brightest colour and the darkest, the harder it is to come to a happy compromise. This difference is called the dynamic range of a photo.

The dynamic range that can be captured in a photo depends on the camera sensor and the file type. Different cameras obviously have different sensors, the better sensors being capable of capturing a greater dynamic range than other sensors. The file type is probably the more important of the two. Cameras can usually save in JPEG or raw. Shooting in JPEG limits the amount of information stored in a photo, and basically puts the camera in control of what is being saved. This severely limits the potential of photos when post processing, and hence limits the higher dynamic range that could be achieved.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and this type of photography produces exactly that: A photo that has a High Dynamic Range. This is done with a combination of photos taken at different Exposure Values in order to piece together something that more accurately represents what the human eye sees, something that would otherwise be impossible with one photo.

I had my first attempt of this yesterday, and here are my results:

Comparing a photo with a HDR to one without, a standard photo, is like comparing the same piece of music being played straight, note for note, without variation in volume, without accentuating important parts and without playing with the physical nature of the instrument itself. It’s like listening to an important piece of writing being read by a politician, or a poet.

The poetic feeling comes and it goes

For the sake of knowledge,
there is no other
than shapes and colours
and feeling each other.

the poetic feeling comes and it goes
holding my faith,
in my hands and my toes.

I want to hold it,
it's grander than light,
I want to consume it
make it all of my life.

I want to inspire it,
take hold of my soul,
but the truth is I surround it
it’s the greatest thing I know.

It’s nothing I can hold
it’s nothing I can eat
it’s something that I feel,
before I go to sleep.

there’s no recollection in dimes
in shapes or times,
it’s all I feel every minute,
of any day, anytime.

My essance lies within it
My presence with it shines,
I am the revolution within it,
it’s forever and always this time.

Szabó Petra

A friend of mine wrote this beautiful poem, and every so often I feel like it perfectly describes the mood I'm in.

1000m Above Sealevel

Listening: Four Tet – Pause

Today we went up to the highest point in the area, a hill from which you could see (at least while we were there, an autumn afternoon doesn’t usually bring the clearest weather) 7 or 8 villages and the city, Székelyudvarhely, in the distance.

Sose fogom elfelejteni azt az út, fel a kilátóhoz, a terepjáróban. Ahogy a délutáni nap sütött a lombos, vékony fák között… Ahogy a levelek gyulladtok fel, mint egy vadtűz, a ragyogó napfénytől.

Amikor megérkeztünk a hegytetejére, felnéztem a kilátó irányban. Ott lobogott a magyar és székely zászlók. Egy jó melegítő érzés áradt ki a szívemből, mosolyogtam és a kilátóhoz indultam.

Csodálatos volt a kilátás. A hegyek, mint hullámok, kifolytak a tájon. A melegítő őszi színek egy hideg napnyugtáskor megkezdte az égő lángot bennem, és a székely pálinkát, amit ittunk a lapos, jéghideg alumínium üvegből, elkezdte a futótüzet.

Megígértem magamnak, hogy visszajövök.

Házad lehet bárhol, de hazád csak itt.

I mentioned earlier the lovely messages carved into the gates, here are some examples:

A béjövőnek szállás, a kimenőnek békesség.

Áldás a bémenőnek, üdv a kijövőknek.

Béke a bejövőre, áldás a kimenőre!

Békesség a bemenőknek, egészség a kimenőknek.

Ha e zajló nagyvilágban baj és bánat kerget, jó szándékú szívvel mihozzánk betérhetsz.

Ha jó szándék hoz, e kapun bejöhetsz, különben az úton fel s alá elmehetsz.

Házad lehet bárhol, de hazád csak itt.

Isten hozott. Ha mész, Isten legyen veled.

Jó szívű barát, béjöhetsz.

Őseidnek szent hitéhez, nemzetednek gyökeréhez – testvér – ne légy hűtlen soha.

Szíves vendéglátó e kapu gazdája, de a gonosz embert furkósbottal várja.

Szíves vendéglátó e kapu gazdája, de a gonoszt, álnokot végképpen kizárja.

Szíves vendéglátó e kapu gazdája, ki a fáradt utast tárt karokkal várja.

Térj be hozzánk vándor, ha erre visz az utad, ha jó a szándékod, itt szeretet fogad.

Vándor! Ez a kapu nem akar kizárni, csak azt mutatja meg, merre kell bejárni.

Vándor, ha elfáradsz az élet útján, bizalommal térj be e kapu alatt, ha jó a szándékod, itt szeretet fogad.