Ryan Lane (in Hunglish)

Sziasztok, Jánó vagyok. Közép-Európa első világra szóló podcast csatornáját hallgatjátok Magyarországról. Ez a Budapest.fm. Hi, my name is Ray, and you're listening to the number one podcast station in Central Europe, Budapest.fm, podcasting to the world from Hungary. Sziasztok mindenkinek. Itt vagyunk Ryan Lane-nel. Well, Ryan is a poet, a musician, a translator, probably some more things too. Tell us about yourself, Ryan. Where are you from? Sure. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm from Arizona originally in the U.S. Arizona, nice. I grew up in a town called Prescott. Prescott. Well, we say Prescott. That's like the local pronunciation. It's spelled Prescott, but if you say Prescott, we know you're not from Prescott. What do you call people from Prescott? Are they Prescottians? Prescottonians. Prescottonians. Yeah, I kind of had that little fancy cowboy hat. So yeah, I lived there from age five to eighteen, and I moved to the Phoenix area to go to school. Phoenix, Arizona. Phoenix, Arizona. Word. And then you live in Budapest now? Yes, I live in Budapest now. I first made it here on a scholarship trip in 2011 for three weeks after my first year of college. Oh yeah? Yeah. It was this kind of bizarre situation where there's this foundation in Arizona called the Flynn Foundation, which gives these scholarships to twenty high school kids from the state every year. And part of their program— Nice. Part of their program was what?—was that they would take these students after their first year of school to Hungary and Romania, or in my year's case, Hungary and Serbia. I think it's... for three weeks. It was like this super random thing. Someone had a connection, I think, with— An organization here where they would, like, organize this big trip. And so we, you know, for three weeks, we traveled around the country, met professors, politicians, you know, university students that we would stay with. And, you know, we had the evenings to ourselves, which, you know, to a bunch of 19- and 20-year-olds from the United States. And this is in Hungary and Serbia? This is in, yeah. So it was Belgrade and Budapest, so you were in the countryside. We were in the countryside too. Oh, cool. Yeah, so, you know, Budapest was kind of like a base. We'd spend like four or five days here at a time. Then we actually went to Bratislava as well, in Slovakia. And then, you know, we went to, you know, various parts in the Hungarian countryside and then, you know, slowly made our way down through Vojvodina in Serbia to Belgrade. So we went to, like, Sombor, and then we saw— Nice. Were you going down the Danube? You know, I don't know how close— Yeah, I always thought it would be a good trip because, you know, the Danube starts in the Black Forest and goes all the way down through Romania at the Black Sea. So it would be very interesting to take that entire trip down through Austria, through Budapest, through even Bratislava, because it goes through, I think, what, four or five capitals through Europe or something like that. Yeah, something crazy. Even, I think, Bucharest, Romania, it's right next to it. It's not— Anyway, so you went there, you did some traveling, 2011, with this organization, with this scholarship, and then you just stayed in Budapest after that? You've been here ever since? It wasn't quite so straightforward. So, yeah, so we have this trip. It was a total blast. Go back to Arizona, and I fall into this, like, funk for six months. I couldn't figure it out. How old are you then? I'm 19. 19 to 20. And it took me a long time to piece it together. And then just one day, I was with a friend, and it just dawned on me. I was like, I just need to be back. I don't know why. I have no reason to be here. There's nothing. There was no professional thing. There was no family thing. I, you know, kept up some contacts, but, like, you know, no real pressing situation. And so I figured out a way. I took a year off of school, enrolled in some classes at this, you know, computer science school here. Just took a half load. It was basically just a logistical— What was the name of the school? The Queen Computing Institute of Technology. Oh, cool, because that's where Tom, my friend, he's been on the program before, Bob Thomas, everyone, you might know him, you might love him, I hope you love him. But he was at AIT. Yeah. When I visited him to come to Budapest for the first time in Ketzertizenhat, and that was when I first got the first taste of Budapest. And then I moved back with him in 2018. And then we both met our significant others over here while we were living together, and now we live with them. But yeah, so that was my initial burst. Oh, egészségedre, to Zsuzsi és Angie és Júla. Good to see you guys. Felesegem vagy mennyei … … Zsuzsi és Júla és Angie és Angie, … … Kislán. So basically, you were here, and then you came back because something drew you here. And when was that, when you came back here? That was the fall of 2012. 2012, okay. Yeah. Cool. About like a year and change after that first trip. And what did you do? Did you have a place to stay? You knew a friend? You just moved into a random apartment? Actually, yeah, I'm glad you asked that. It was a great, great little situation. So one of the homestays from that original scholarship trip and I kept in touch, and she was moving to New York at the same time that I was wrapping up an internship there and moving to Hungary. And so we overlapped in Long Island for like four days. So I helped her get a bank account set up, and she gave me the keys to her apartment. Wow, nice trade. Walked and, you know, started paying rent to the landlord, and he was happy that he didn't have to do anything. So that worked out beautifully. And where was that apartment? That was on Csengery utca. I shared a wall with the Tetőrázza. Uh-huh, yeah, so I could reach out and touch it. Wow, cool. Yeah, it was wild. So that was Ketzertizenkettő, és how long were you there then? I was there for a year. For a year. Yeah, so dipped into 2013. I was only at AAT for that semester, and then I got an internship at Prezi and was working there full time through the summer, and then made the difficult decision to return back to Arizona. Yeah, so at that point my parents were getting divorced. A friend of mine had invited me to, like, work on his company there, like, you know, move and do the Hacker House thing. And then I also just realized I hadn't prepared my life there to just bail and just live here. So there was a lot of things to tie up. So that was, like, two and a half years of finishing stuff in Arizona, and, you know, a ton of things happened. Then 2015 rolls around and I take a Euro trip with my sister. We had both finished school around the same time, and we end up here. And, you know, I was sort of like— Trying to figure out, is the pole still there? And it was all still there. The circumstances would change, the people would sort of shift in and out, but whatever that pull was has been constant. And so then you stayed here ever since then? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was another like three or four months of job searching, so I went back to Arizona while I was like applying for stuff, and then I made the big move in February of 2016. So that's now, what, six years ago. Nice. And then you speak Hungarian, beszélsz magyarul? Igen, igen, most már igen. Wow. And how was that process? How did you learn Hungarian? Was it with a teacher? Was it just on the street? How did you go about learning? Yeah, it was with teachers. So the first sort of instruction I had was with the Hungarian professor at AIT. She taught a twice-a-week, two-hours-a-piece course, and so that was excellent. I enjoyed it a lot. And then after that, I started just studying with private teachers. So I've had four in total. And it's funny how they would come in and out of my process, and there was so many different stages. The language is one of the great loves of my life, but the learning process of it was also fascinating. There's just so many components to it. Az első nyelvneked? Nem, az egy idegen nyelv. Ez a második idegen nyelvem volt, és az első az spanyol volt. Spanyol. És beszélsz jobban spanyolul vagy magyarul? Most már magyarul. Magyarul. Volt egy olyan időszak, amikor jobban beszéltem spanyolul, és aztán jobban megtanultam a magyart, és aztán visszamentem Erzsébetbe, akkor jobban újraindult a spanyol nálam. De mikor visszaköltöztem, és akkor folytattam a tanulást, akkor nem tudom, most nincs verseny, akkor sokkal jobban beszélek magyarul most. Yeah, mint az enyém, mert tanultam olaszul iskolában, és tanultam olaszul hat éves, de nem tényleg tanultam olaszul, csak iskola olaszul, de most magyar is really my first real language that I've learned because I've been able to, you know, actually live in a place and speak it, whereas back in high school, learning Italian was more paper by the books. But now, you know, I would like to learn Italian again. Yeah. But why do you like Hungarian so much, miért? What is it about Hungarian that you love so much? Yeah, is it, I mean, it's fascinating. Do you have any preference of, like, what language I answer this question? Whatever you want. Cool, cool. So, the structure of Hungarian is just absolutely gorgeous. And so, you know, I mean, so, so many people say that it's impossible to learn, or it's, like, super, super hard to learn. I'm really interested in your answer to that question or your response to that proposition. But the way that I understand it and the way that I experienced it was that the first six months are just a pain. They're just awful because it's just, you can't rely on any of the grammatical structures that you just take for granted, right? You know, and even it helps if you've learned another language and how to decompose some of it, but then, you know, especially if you haven't learned one at all, then it's just like, just a soup. But then, you know, after enough investment and when it starts to come together, it just reveals this incredible structure that you can, you know, just build things on top of. And then the sort of semantic logic that that structure allows is just… It's so unimaginable to me. I just love it. It's like I love reading it, I love speaking it, I love having conversations and debates and, like, getting into the weeds of something with someone in Hungarian, because there's just—there's things you can do with the shapes that are just different. And every language has these unique properties, but something about Hungarian... nehéz neked magyar? Nekem nem nehéz. Soha nehéz? Soha nem volt. Tényleg? Igen. Hát, én... Szerintem lehet, hogy azért nem volt nehéz, mert imádtam minden adott lépést, és akkor ami, mondjuk, mások nehéznek élnének meg, akkor én csak élvezetesnek éltem meg az egészet. És neked mi a legnehezebb dolog a magyarból? Például nekem, oké, azt hiszem, lehet beszélni magyarul kicsit jó, és igazából beszélek kicsit, mint az a hülye ... férfi, de tetszik, és kényelmes. És nekem mindig nem fontos nekem, ha beszélek igaz vagy csak hülye, csak most lehet kommunikálni. Now I can communicate, exactly, just like that. De nekem hallgatni a magyarul nehezebb, mint az beszéltem. És igazából azt hiszem, olvasni a legnehezebb, mert olvasni nem tényleg how I learn Hungarian, például tényleg tanultam magyarul a Coachmaban, a Saunaházban, sok dolog, ahol lehet beszélni emberekkel, de nem tényleg tiszta magyar minden. És most például tanárom, Orsi, nagyon jó tanár, és egész idő, azt hiszem három éve és hat hónap, csak tanultam vele, csak tanultam vele, és nagyon jó tanár, de most nem tényleg tanultam a könyvből, tényleg csak a beszélgetés, tényleg nem tudom, ha... oké, hosszú történet, rövid, nekem legnehezebb dolog a magyarul, vagy nehezebb dolgok magyarul, olvas... Hogy olvasok és hallgok, és igenis neked, vagy mit a legnehezebb dolog magyarul? Szerintem változott. Változott. Mit jelent változott? Változott, hogy egykor ez egyik volt a legnehezebb, és aztán máskor a második volt, és szóval ez változott. Nem maradt, hanem változott. Oké. És szerintem attól függ, hogy mit használtam, vagy mivel foglalkozom a legjobban. Szóval az elején nagyon sokat beszéltem, és akkor ugyanaz a helyzet, mint nálad, hogy sokkal könnyebb volt nekem beszélgetni, mert akkor csak gyakoroltam, és az akkori magyar barátaim nagyon segítőkészek voltak, és akkor állandóan engedték, hogy... És amikor beszél a magyar emberrel, mit az a reakció? Hát általában nagyon örülnek. Nagyon örülnek, nekik is, gondolom. Igen, azt hiszem, csak pozitív a reakció általában, és nagyon jó pozitív validation nekem. Igen, mert amikor csak kis dolog lehet mondani, már: Ó, nagyon jó, és something changed with the interactions, not necessarily that I would have with, like, my girlfriend's friends, at the time girlfriend, now fiancée, but with her friends, or not necessarily with, like, cool people I met playing soccer or at the bars, but just random Hungarians that maybe don't speak English. Like when you can show them that you speak a little bit of Hungarian, the whole, like, attitude changes. Not necessarily from a bad one to a good one, but definitely from whatever it was before to much better. Igen, mindenképpen, mindenképpen. És ez nem igaz minden országban. Szóval mondjuk a spanyol országban, vagy egy spanyolul beszélő országban zajlana ez a folyamat, akkor nem annyira lepődnek meg, mert annyira sokan... Annyira sokan beszélnek spanyolul, akik nem spanyol anyanyelvűek, ugye. De ez egy segítőkészség a külföldieknek, hogy jó, akkor ez nagyon jó, hogy valaki megtanulja ezt a nyelvet. Szerintem ez egy ritka jó dolog. Ez nagyon jó dolog. Wow. You're really good at Hungarian. I can even hear, like, you have more of the accent of, like, you talk a little bit like a Hungarian, your mouth a little bit, like, closed, and just like sort of just this, like, Hungarian accent. Whereas I feel like when I'm talking Hungarian, it's like a guy from New York that's taking the language and just, like, bashing it into my mouth, and it's coming out like a little bit more. But I mean, but I've noticed just watching your material over the years, it's getting way better. Yeah. It's getting better fast. Well, exactly. From, exactly, or since September, amikor a YouTube lejátszóra tényleg a HyperSpeed a magyarul nekem. És kicsit furcsa, nem tudom, ha you experienced the same, de amikor… vagy nem amikor, de minden idő… visszajutem Amerikába például, mindig idő visszajutem, tényleg nem beszélek magyarul, de amikor visszajutem ide, csak nem tudom, talán mert I was chilling out and my brain was, like, relaxing, but somehow then when I come back, it's like I hit, like, a power-up, and then it gets all of a sudden much faster. Gyorsabb és gyorsabb és gyorsabb, és most tényleg lehet gyakorolni minden nap lejátszóra, és most ezért nagyon jobban mint az mielőtt, például múlt éve. Ja, ja. És egyébként most… Azt mondta nekem, fordítsa magyarul angolban, és mit? Hát most inkább verseket fordítok. Verseket? Wow. Igen. Épp három versen dolgozom, ezek egyébként ebben a könyvben található, mind az eredeti, mind a másik fordítótól lefordítását. Az énekes semmire, Costaneda, és két Simon Márton vers, Simon Márton egy nagyon jó kortárs költő. És te a költő? Én nem vagyok költő magam, igen, de valamennyire nagyon bejött ez a költeményfordítás, vagy versfordítás, mert tudod, nagyon szűk lehetőségek prózához képest. Úgyhogy fordítani egy verset, akkor sokkal szűkebb lehetőség tere, mondjuk. Igen. Szóval, és általában a jó versek nagyon mélyek, azért szerintem versek, mert az a tömörség, hogy nagyon sokat mond egy nagyon pici helyben, az gyakorlatilag ezek lényege a költészetnek. És akkor lefordítani azt a mélységet egy nagyon izgalmas felfedezés a nyelvben, még... Míg én fajta megismerkedés isteniivel. Lehet olvasni magyar vers nekünk? I mean, persze, yeah, tell me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's hear it, let's hear it. Find the poem that you want to read. I want to hear you read it. Ja, akkor azt a verset, ami épp… Dezső Kosztolányi. Igen. Kosztolányi Dezső. Kosztolányi Dezső. Tetszik a Harminc két éves vagyok, mert most harmincos vagyok, és ő a versje Harminc két éves vagyok. Nem ismerem. Azt hiszem… első, első, you read the first one that you want to read, and then I'll read that one. Jó, szuper, szuper. No. Just the Dezső Kosztolányi competition. Igen. Szeretettel. Kosztolányi Dezső. Énekes semmiről. Amit ma tartok, a szelédtem, amit ma tudtam, elfeledtem. Az arcomat kezembe réttem, és elnyúlok az üres sötétben, a mélyen áramló delében. Annál mi van, a semmi űsebb, még énnekem is ismerősebb. Rossz sem lehet, mivel erősebb, és tartósabb is, mint az élet, mely vérrel ázott és merősebb. Szokatlan új itt ez a köntös, pár évre szóló, szűk, de göncös, rossz gúnya, melyet a könyv öntöz, beótonos lesz majd a régi, végtelen, bő, közömbös. Én is öröktől ebbe voltam. E semmiségre ráomoltan, míg nem javultan és romoltan, tanulni sem kell, tudjuk ezt rég, eltűnni és feküdni holtan. Ha félsz, a másvilágba ír át, verd a halottak némi sírját, tudd meg konok, nugalmuk írját, de nem felelnek, úgy telelnek, bírjuk mi is, ha ők is kibírják. Pajtás, dalolj hát, mondd utánam, mi volt a mi bajunk korábban, hogy nem jártunk a föld porában, mi fajt szívednek és szívemnek Cézár, Napóleon korában. Ha, nice. Imádom. Nagyon jó. Which year was that? Let's see, 1936, Hámánsz ősz. Wow, just on the eve of World War II. Very cool. All right, now I'm gonna read—this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna read the English, and then we can discuss this poem, and then we'll switch over. I'll read the Hungarian, and then you read the English. Sounds great. All right. So this is Kosztolányi Dezső, Énekes, semmi úr, vagy Song of Nothing. All I now cherish, I'll let perish. All I now see, I'll let it vanish. With face and hands and so to finish, laid in the dark where nothing else is, save deep magnetic pools and pulses. Whatever comes, the void came earlier. Even to me, it's more familiar, and can't be all bad since it's peculiar. Power can give birth to life and body, which in themselves are weak and bloody. The garment I wear is strange, newfangled, good for some years, half patched, half strangled, watered with tears in mocks entangled. How homely is its every sentence, its timelessness gains in acquaintance. I from eternity came hither, melted into the altogether, did not improve the caging, rather, and all we've learned, we've known for ages. We disappear and die by stages. If you're afraid, go otherworldly, beat on the silent grave, seek boldly. The balm which keeps them dumb and surly, their answer is they will not share it. But if they can, we too can bear it. Good friend, now sing with me in chorus. What was it once that could devour us, from walking in the dust before us? Why were our hearts in constant sorrow through Caesar's nights, Napoleon's morrow? So as a translator, is this translation helpful in figuring out how to do it, or do you try to do it just plain without looking at someone else's? I definitely try to avoid looking at someone else's at the beginning. And do you think there's a difference between poetry translations versus prose translations, for instance? Oh, well, yeah, for sure. Vagy több szobadságod van a prózában fordítani, vagy a prózai fordításban szerintem. És emiatt lehet, ha találni egy jó hangot, és nem kell elengedni, vagy kompromisszumot kötni egy csomó mindennel. De érvben, ha mondjuk megtalálod a jó hangot angolul például, akkor valószínűleg a legtöbb esetben azt jelenti, hogy el kell engedned bizonyos részleteket. Ah, értem. És most, wow, it's so good to see you guys being so excited about Hungarian literature. Nagyon jól esik ez látni. Köszönöm szépen, Mörn F, nagyon jól hangzik. És oké, most szeretnék olvasni. Talán nem Dézső Kosztolány, de Its Endre ádi. Párizsban járt az ősz. Oké. Párizsba tegnap beszökött az ősz, Szent Mihály útján suhant nesztelen, Kánikulában, halk lombok alatt S találkozott velem. Bílagtám éppen a Szajna felé, S égtek lelkemben kis rőzse-dalok: Füstjük se kék, furcsa, búsak, bíborak, Arról, hogy meghalok. Elért az ősz és súgott valamit, Szent Mihály útja beleremegett, Zúm, zúm, röpködtek végig az uton Tréfás falevelek. Egy perc: a Nyár meg sem hűlt bele, S Párizsból az ősz kacagva szaladt, It járt s hogy itt járt, én tudom csupán, Nyögő lombok alatt. Ezerkilencszáz hat. Árma Pierden, Paris. You want to take the English there? Yeah, happily. Another great translation by George Szirtes. Okay. Enreadi. Autumn appeared in Paris. Autumn appeared in Paris yesterday, silent down Saint-Michel its swift advance, in stifling heat under unmoving branches, we met as if by chance. Ambling in the direction of the Seine, my soul was brent with tiny shreds of song, dark things, augments, squibs, laments, which whispered that death would not be long. Autumn cut up and mumbled in my ear. The entire boulevard trembled to the eaves. Along the street, as if half Justine, flew bright-eyed civic leaves. A moment, summer hardly had drawn breath, but autumn was on its cackling way and now was gone, and I the only living witness under the creaking bow. Bow, maybe. That's what I also wonder, like here he's translated zoom zoom, which I guess, what's that called? Onomatopoeia, when it's like a word that sounds like... and he goes sss. And for me that's like quite a different auditory sensation. And also, one question I have about these translations: Pedol a ritmus, azt hiszem, George Szirtes. Ki ez George Szirtes? Ó, ő egy orjási fordító. Meg maga a kultúris, szóval ő kultúr... És magyar vagy amerikai? Hát magyar. Magyar. Ő nyolc éves volt, amikor emigrált Angliába, családjával. Hát ötvenhat volt. Igen, vagy egy évvel vagy két évvel később. Kommunista idők. Igen, igen. Nem tudom. Hát lehet, hogy ő fordította le a legtöbbet angolra, de nem vagyok benne biztosan, de szerintem igen. And it seems to me like he tries to keep a similar rhythm in the, or maybe not a similar rhythm, but he has a rhythm in the poetry that is like trying to match the rhyming and stuff. So as the translator, is that difficult to try to find not only the meaning but also, like, the rhythm? Does that add another layer of difficulty? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's like these are all different, like, parameters of constraints. What are the parameters of the constraints? So some of them, and of course, you know, I should say that I'm just starting off doing this stuff, so I'm still very, very green. But one of them is rhythm, one of them is rhyme, one of them is literal meaning. Another really hard one is, like, intertextual references, right? So, you know, there's some things where there's a line that's actually quoting another poem from a hundred years prior that might not be translated yet. So then it's like, what do you do with that one? Right. And then, of course— And how do you find out something like that? Like, is there a way to figure out what the reference is? No, it's just your own education. So there's potential references that you're missing that you don't even realize. Oh yeah, that's almost guaranteed to happen. Because it's like, you know, I mean, the poets that we read, or that Hungarians read, are typically, like, incredibly educated people, right? And they're participating in a tradition that's, like, vast and large. And, like, if— In our case, for example, we grew up in a totally different place. We didn't go to high school here, so there's a ton of stuff that's missing from our knowledge. And so you want to sort of fill that in as much as you can. És azt hiszem a kultúra Magyarországon nagyon-nagyon fontos embereknek. Tehát sok szobrok, sok emlékere, sok utcaneve, sok épület neve, sok dolog a kultúra. És azt hiszem Amerikában nagyon furcsa nekünk, mert oké, Amerikában sok híres kultúr, de általában a régi kultúr, csak nem tudom Walt Whitman, és oké, nem tudom, nem tudom ki. És oké, is a beat kultúr, például Jack Kerouac és modernebb kultúr, de tényleg Magyarországon az első dolog, mit I noticed was that like every other name is Petőfi Sándor utca, Petőfi Sándor híd, Vörösmarty Mihály, József Attila, és Ady Endre, és sok a national hősök általában a kultúr. És érdekes, nem? Oh, de. And I love that about Hungarian culture. That's one of the things that drew me to it the most, which is that they, like Hungarians appreciate—I mean, of course, these are, now to jump into just massive generalizations, but—

There's a strain in the culture that just appreciates greatness, and it doesn't discriminate by occupation, right? So whereas in the U.S., you have this sort of marriage between legitimacy and money-making, right? So it's like if you're not a professional— I mean, if you're not paying rent from your thing, then it doesn't, like, count as much. Here it doesn't matter. They care about the products of the work, right? So the great poets have statues because they've done great things. It doesn't matter that it's literature, and it doesn't matter that a ton of them were poor, you know, couldn't eat a lot of the time. They still produced great things, and that sort of appreciation of greatness and the cultivation of it. And of course, there's like an inverted dark side of it that actually pulls in the other direction. Are all great poets tortured? Probably not. I don't think so. I'm not, like, I'm not an expert on this, but my sense is probably not. Okay, that's good. Yeah. I mean, there's plenty that are, of course. Like József Attila. He seems to be the prototypical tortured poet. Yeah, like he's an extreme case, for sure. What I always wonder is all these guys were such famous poets. Do you think people knew during their time that they were gonna have statues named after them? Or is this like a retroactive thing that's been, like, retconned back into the history, let's say, as like a hyper-appreciation of the national heritage? For instance, I don't know. I couldn't name one poet in Hungary today that I would say, okay, that guy's gonna have a statue named after him one day. Is it just because we live in a different time, or do you think it was similar back then and they only started to be appreciated after their death? Fortunately, I think that the appreciation, in large part, was present. And I even think that's true in today's case in some cases. For example, there's a poet who's living today. His name is Lackfi János. He's very well regarded. And I am a good friend with one of his close collaborators, named Szína Robert, who's a classical guitarist. And so they will often do— Like, he'll score music to his poetry, and they'll, like, do these performances. And I remember talking with Robert once, and he said, No, like, Janos will go on. Like, our stuff will have its purpose and it will serve its time, but he will be remembered. Oh, cool. And that was really touching to see. But in the case of, like, József Attila and Ady and all of these people, you know, the big ones in this book, there was a sense that people knew it. People really got it. And I don't know why, because I think in the U.S., as a counterexample, there's a lot of this sense of, like, you don't know until they're dead and it's like 50 years ago, and then there's a lot of rewriting of history. And there's plenty of rewriting of history everywhere, here too. But somehow these folks were famous when they were alive, and it's amazing because they're artists. Oké, és most a Magyar Történelem. Tetszik a magyar történelem? Nagyon. Miért? Azért jó kérdés. Szerintem azért, mert jobban ismerem a helyet. Jobban ismerem a történelmet. A helyet? A helyet. Az országot, a kultúrát, a népet. Ha jobban ismerem a történetét. És milyen évek kedvencek a magyar történelemben? Például honfoglalás, tatárjárás, modern történelem, világháború, Rákóczi. Kedvencek? Hát lehet, hogy van, de ezek ilyen tetszőleges valamennyire, mármint hogy nem... Vagy csak egy könyv veled, sziget, a deserted szigetbe, és egy könyv honfoglalás könyv, és egy könyv második világháború könyv. Mit próbálsz? Ó, hát az a választék, akkor a honfoglalás. Honfoglalás. Miért nagyon romantikus, nem? Itt Alexa kapott ezt a könyvet nekem születésnapos, most idős férfi vagyok, mert harmincosa születésnapod volt múlt kedd. Köszi szépen. Igazából nagyon fantasztikus, klassz, brutál régi honfoglalás, mert most olvasok sok honfoglalás történeteket, meséket, mert például most csinálok ezt a Walking with Willie, With Willie YouTube sorozat, és mindig új téma nekem, de most tényleg olvasok sok honfoglalás, és érdekes nekem, mert például most csak mutatom és olvastam, és csinálok új epizódot a magyar honfoglalás, de a Fehérló mondája. Ismered ezt a történetet? Nem, talán. A Fehérló volt például Árpád. És hat más vezér volt Pannonmedenceben. Talán a Don folyóban, és talán most, oké, nyolcszázkilencvenhat, a honfoglalás év, 896. De két év ezelőtt voltak a Don folyó és Ukrán Kárpát-hegy, és most Árpád azt mondta, ó, kell megtalálni új földet. És egy vezér volt Kund, és Kund kisfia volt Kusid, és Kusid elment a Pannonmedencebe, és találkozott Szvatoplukkal, és Szvatopluk volt a Morávia király. És azt mondta Szvatopluk, itt vagyunk a magyarok, és Szvatopluk azt hitte, oké, ki ez a parasztok, talán itt... Oh, here we go. Brazilás gifted. Cheers, guys, I'm driving a Camry and listening. Ryan's Hungarian is really nice. Jóban mint az enyém. I couldn't tell he is American. No accent, no grammatical mistakes. I can hear he is not native only by the rhythm. All right, well, wow, that's high praise. No one's ever said that about me. No one's ever said that about me. Köszi a bókot. This is something to strive for. Oké, anyway, Szvatopluk azt mondta, oké, itt a parasztok, nem rossz, mert igazából kell több ember itt csinálni ezt a földet, jobban földet. És Kusid... Hozott a Föld pedola a sár fekete föld, és a fű, édes fű, és a folyó, és amikor visszajött Arpád és a más vezér, Kusidas mondta, Ó, tényleg jó föld ott. És most Árpád azt mondta, Oké, most lehet hozni fehér ló veli. És a fehér lovot az ajándék Szvatopluk. És adott a fehér lót Szvatoplukba, és Szvatopluk azt mondta, Ó, tényleg parasztok, mert itt az ajándék. És azt mondta, Oké, mit szeretnél, Kusid? És Kusid azt mondta, csak a föld, csak a víz, csak a fű. Igen. És most Kusid visszajött Árpádhez, és most, oké, igazából we just traded the horse for the entire place. And that was like their casus belli to then go and invade, and then there was a battle, and they say that Szvatopluk fell off his horse and drowned in the river. Now, who knows how much of this is all true, because this is all chronicled by medieval chroniclers 300 years after the fact and then passed down in legend to us today. But I just thought it was an interesting, like, origin story for the Hungarian people here because it was based on... But Nagyjános, csak egy pillanat, mert is a másik nagy híres történetet, a fehér ló fia. És a fehér ló fia tényleg a népmesék, és a szítok, hunok, avarok, közép-ázsiai mesék. És Arany János, persze, de Arany János kisfiúja volt Arany László. És Arany László nem tényleg eredeti, író, tényleg kicsit eredeti, de több népmesék collected. And one népmese that he collected. Collected was this Fehérlófia, and it's a crazy story. But the way that I found it was there's this guy, Jankovics Marcell, and he is a rajzoló, or he actually just died, but he's the one that illustrated a lot of the Magyar népmesék, Tündérvitéz, and Fehérlófia. Wow. Legendary psychedelicus film, azt megnéztem. Ez a kilencszáz negyvenkettő, és a ez a fehér ló, and she gives birth to a human boy, and he's the Fehérlófia, and then he travels on this crazy adventure and meets his older brothers who he didn't know about, like the stone crusher guy and the iron bender guy who lives inside the mountain, and then some crazy shit happens. But anyway, long story short, this idea of the Fehérló was through the ancient Hungarian tradition, all the way from their ancient Scythian and Magyarok and Avarok forefathers to this origin story. And it's interesting because you were saying to me before, like, have you gotten into any of the theories on what's true and what's not? Do you think that's important to know what the truth is of the origins? That's a great question. That's a really good question. I think in some ways it's important, or it's worthwhile to get as close as you can. I mean, there's some stuff that you will just never figure out. Like most of what anonymous wrote about, like we just won't be able to verify it. But I think when you can get—and the reason why I think it's important to go as far as you can towards the truth is that it gives you a common basis to, like, lay it down. Because if you don't have it, then you have these, like, warring stories and— If you just have stories that are fighting each other, they're like, it's like a meme battle, essentially. Then it's like, you basically have no basis on, like, synthesizing it into a single thing. But it's interesting. It's almost a paradox because that only matters if people think it matters. Like, you know what I mean? Like, if it didn't matter at all, and you could take a little of this, one guy believes this, and okay, whatever. But the fact of the matter is that there's these other people that are saying, No, our way's right. Our way's right. And, like, I feel like for me, like, you know, I don't really care that much. I like a good story. Whatever is, like, the more interesting story wins. But then I feel sometimes a little bit, not responsible, because I think there's so many people that are, you know, putting stuff out there and doing this and doing that, and we're all sort of shepherding the ancient knowledge along in our own little way. But sometimes, like, I'm very easily won over to, like, the romantic perspective. And I like this idea that there's these different groups and they all have their separate ethnic identities, and I think it's really cool and amazing. But then we look at, like, history, and we see, you know, before World War One, for instance, there was all these waves of romanticism and building up the idea of the nation state, and it ended in this, like, chaotic clusterfuck. And we're seeing it again now today with the, you know, Putin thinking that Ukraine was, like, never an independent country, and now he's going in with bombs and stuff. So I don't know. What are your thoughts on all that? I think it's worthwhile, and I haven't heard this perspective articulated very, very often, but I think it's important to try and get the best of both worlds when you can, right? So, in some ways, we are just walking, like you said very well, shepherds of ancient wisdom or ancient tradition or multiple traditions. And there's a certain degree of it where it will just be, it just lives in language. It lives in the stories that we tell each other. Now there's some way of getting— A little bit of objectivity. We'll never get the whole thing, but it gives us a little, some stuff to work with. And then we should embrace our ability to storytell in a way that serves us the best. I mean, serves us globally. Like, there's—and this is a thing that I talk about a lot and I think about a lot in terms of the role of, like, nationalism in a nation's identity, because there's a way where you can understand yourself, say, as a culture that isn't in conflict with being, you know, global citizens or something like that, or sharing land even with people. And so I always say, if you see a dichotomy that's causing conflict, it's probably false. Find a way to get the higher dimensional view where, like, you can have the best of it all. Szeretnél nem szeretnél, de imádsz magyar étel. Igen. Mien a kedvenc étel? Szegedi halászlé. Szegedi halászlé. Igen. Nagyon jó. És Szeged elmentél? Igen, igen. Többször is. Ott szoktunk felvenni bizonyos zenét, mondjuk a zenekarral. Ah, zenész vagy. Igen, igen. Milyen zene, zenész vagy? Like, főképpen én zenekarban játszom. A frontembere vagyok a Valami Lesz nevű formációnak. Mi a neve a formáció? Valami Lesz. Valami Lesz. Aha, igen. Mit jelent, Valami Lesz? Something will be. Whatever will be, will be. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Kész ara, lesz ara. Igen, igen, igen. Nem pontosan. Általában egy magyar azt mondja, hogy hát valami lesz, amikor van egy összetett helyzet, és nem… Nem teljes mértékben tudja befolyásolni az eredményét, de azért elfogadják, hogy a jövő meg fog történni, és akkor valahogy olyan valami lesz, és nem tudjuk mi pontosan, de ami tetszik benne, hogy van abban a kifejezésben, vagy abban a gondolatban van egy implikált remény, hogy valami mi lesz, tudjunk kezelni majd. Szóval tudjunk élni, túlélni. És hol játszottak? Kocsma, színház. Hát szóval régen, szóval ez egy hosszú történet, mint a zenekar, nem tudom, most öt éves lesz, és öt éves azt jelenti, hogy volt, mikor kezdtünk használni ezt a nevet. Azért a formáció annyira sokat változott, hogy nem is teljesen vagyok biztos, hogy egy zenekarnak nevezhető mostanában, de nem léptünk föl, vagy nem játszottunk egy koncertet a Covid után. Covid alatt csak egy új lemezt készítjük, ami épp fog kijönni, nagyon hamar, az első dal, az első single a lemezből. Az a március, szerintem március közepén, ebben az évben. Igen. Igen, izgatmas. Igen, igen. Nagyon vártunk, nagyon régóta dolgozunk. Az első CD record neked? Hát igen, igen, ez az első mondjuk komolyabb anyag lesz. Cool. És hol utazol Magyarországon? Hol utaztam? Szóval Szegedet említottél. Igen, Pécs. Pécs. Miskolc. Tokaj? Tokaj, nem voltam Tokajban. Nem, nem Tokaj. Villány? De, lehet, hogy egyszer voltam. És hol szeretnél? Oh, például Mészáros Balaton. Igen, igen. Hol Balatonban? Balatonfüred. Balatonfüred nagyon szép hely. Tihany. Tihany nagyon szép. Észak-Balaton. Észak-Balaton, a Badacsony mellett is. Igen, igen, Badacsony. Badacsony többször. És sífok is. Sífok is, az is egy jó hely. És azt hiszel itt maradsz Magyarországon? Igen, igen. Tényleg? Forever? Hát igen, igen. Lehet, hogy lesz olyan szakasz, amikor nem tudom, külföldre költözöm valami miatt, nem tudom, ha gyerekeim lesznek, és akkor azt akarjunk egy családdal, nem tudom, adni valami más… Barátnőd magyar? Nincs barátnőm. Nincs, nincs. De magyarok, tudod, hipotetikusan, ha lesz valami család, és akkor lehet, hogy… Igen, igen. De mit tudom én, van az a közmondás, vagy ki mondta ezt, ez nagyszerű, nem emlékszem, de valami nagy költő lehet, vagy mit tudom én, azt mondta, hogy itt enned, halnod kell. Nem tudom, ha ezt hallottad. Halnod kell. Halnod, hogy you need die here, like you need to live here, you need to die here magyarként. Szóval nem vagyok magyar, de azért nem bánom, ha itt élnem, halnom kell. Wow. Érdekes. És igazából a tetszik a magyar nyelvtörő? Nyelvtörő? It's like tongue twisters. Ja, hát igen, nem annyira foglalkoztam velük. I think people think I'm better at Hungarian than I am because I've memorized a lot of tongue twisters. Például az ipafai papnak fapipája van, ezért az ipafai fapipa papi fapipa. Vagy: Fekete pika pata kopog a pepita kövön. És igen, csak az emberek tényleg tetszik, amikor lehet olvasni ezeket a nyelvtörők, és például ha lehet küldeni, kérlek, nyelvtörő nekünk, és utána lehet olvasni. De most igen, és főcímdal például, megzga család. Ilyen megzga család. Megzga család volt a magyar Jetsons, és mindig az… How do you say to sing? Énekel, énekel. Mindig szeretnék. Oh, Vörösmarty Szózatban van az ‘itt élned, halnod kell.’ Oh, is that what you just said? Vörösmarty. Vörösmarty. Szózatban. ‘Sírodon.’ Köszönöm szépen, sírodon. Köszi, igen, tényleg köszönjük. Vörösmarty. ‘Itt élned, halnod kell.’ Erős. Here, here, here you live. Here, here you live. Well, so word by word, it’s like, here, like to live, to die, need, whatever. But yeah, so you need to live and die here. Igen. És sok magyar barátai vannak. Van, igen. Sok magyar barátom. És mit szeretnél csinálni itt? What would you like to do here that you haven’t done already in Hungary? Oh. Like in terms of your life, do you have any goals to open a business or become a restaurateur or things like that? Oh yeah, I got a ton of stuff. Well, I mean, so I’m kind of working on them now. So there’s the band, which you talked about. I spend a lot of time with the band’s work to express... Different things that I see kind of coming from a different culture that I find in Hungary. So there's sort of like rubbing the two cultures up against each other in like a parallax format. That's like a lot of the content of the music. Parallax. Yeah, parallax is like—I've never heard that word before. I think it means, it's like what your eyes do to, like, figure out depth perception. It's like approaching something from two different angles and you get more information from it. Wow, cool. So, yeah, that's like a lot of— I wonder what that is in Hungarian. Parallax. Probably just like parallax, something like that. Yeah. That's actually what I find the hardest Hungarian words for me. I mean, now I'm getting a little bit better, but it was always like akadémia instead of like—because I'm used to saying academy, so like I hear, I see that I want to say like akadémi or like, I don't know, just something that's been Hungarianized from the original language always trips me up more than like legnyűrűbb pillangó or something like that. Although there's this one guy who's writing on all my YouTube videos now, because I always say legnyűrűbb, and he's insistent that legnyűrűbb is not a valid form of it—or not that it's not valid. He says that it's incorrect because to say something is gyönyörű already means that it's like very gorgeous, and so to say leggyönyörűbb is like unnecessary. But I always thought that you can just make leg and baba everything. That's actually what I find to be like one of the easiest things about the Hungarian language is the superlatives. Yeah, because you just add the leg and the bb, and it's like leg…bb, …bb. Yeah, and you can do that with a lot of things. I mean, like, you can make pretty much anything into a verb. Like, I tried to do it before with koncentrációzni, but not really a good example. But you can make anything a verb. Yeah, you can make anything, like— Like, gyros, gyros, Vilmos, Vilmosos, or Ryanos. Like, something like—what would you describe that kind of word? It means, like, it's kind of adding, like, like—like Ryan, like Willie, like krumplis. Krumplis, yeah, potato-like, or potatoy. Potatoy. Yeah. Okay, someone just looked it up. Parallaxis or látószög, elhajás. Oh, the comments are coming in. István Takács from the Liverpool pub: Legoptimálisabb is the one which is really double done. Yeah, okay. Oh yeah, that's true. That would make sense. And then subkukszabatfüp said, vum.ong. I think this might be a Russian hacker coming in on the stream, so I don't want to misdirect any of Putin's tank formations, so we'll leave that one to go. And yeah, so like, what's going on this weekend? You have any plans? Let's see here. I got a ton of stuff to do music-wise, getting more of this record together. What does a day in your life look like, like an average day? What do you do? Yeah, so, you know, I wake up, I work out in one form or another, typically, and then I start working as a software engineer. That's my main job. I work for a company called Culdesac out of Tempe, Arizona. We make carless cities, or walkable cities and neighborhoods, which is, you know, in Europe not an invention, but in the western United States a deeply needed thing. You make walkable cities. You make the cities walkable. Or we make walkable cities. We, like, build the cities. You build the cities? Yeah. Our first project is a thousand-person neighborhood in Tempe that we're building from scratch. Oh, wow. You can't—it's like in your lease that you can't— Keep a private car on the premise, and as a result, you can build a much more beautiful place because you don't have a sea of parking you need to support. Huh. There must be a lot of money behind that project. That sounds like it takes a lot of capital intensive. That's very true. So, yeah, you know, so my weekdays are like working. You know, I usually start like around noonish or like early afternoon and, you know, work through sort of early night, like late evening, where I get a couple meetings with colleagues. And then, you know, it's like there's, there's, I do like, I squeeze in like music stuff and translation stuff like in pockets and things. I have a lot of music lessons, I guess. So I, you know, study with some music, with some voice teachers and, you know, on the weekends I've started to take drum lessons. I mean, this is to support, like, songwriting, so just be more fluent in these things. So that's like one aspect of stuff. And, yeah, so, I mean— What about for fun, like with friends? Do you go to bars? Do you go to play music, or— Yeah, it's, it's these days there's the friends that I collaborate with on different projects. There's friends who I'll just see for like a long coffee or a chat in a bar or whatever, and then that, you know, that's like much more infrequent. That's like, you know, I'll get together with one person maybe every two weeks or something like that, or like something will come together over a weekend or whatever. But at this stage in my life, I'm much more interested in pushing these projects along. I mean, they just have my full attention. You know, the music, the translation, you know, my work with Kuldesak. It's like I just, I wake up and I think about these things and I think about the things that draw me to this place and what I see that I'm trying to express. Sometimes they're complicated ideas, and they take a lot of effort to clear up and then to communicate. And have you met other people that are similar to you, like doing this similar type of stuff, translation and Hungarian interests? I've met people who, I mean, no one who's, like, combining it in the same way, which makes sense. I mean, we're all individual people who do our own collection of things. But, so yeah, I've met translators. For instance, you're the first American I've met that's as interested, if not actually probably more interested in Hungarian poetry than I am. So, like, I haven't met too many people that are Americans that are here that are learning poetry and things like that. And I felt the same way about you with history. Like, when I first saw your stuff, when there was some press about you, I think in 2020, I was like, you know, this guy knows more Hungarian history than I do, and I'm so glad that he's doing this because it's like you're invigorating something that has a lot of material and excitement in it. You're making it accessible to people here and to people who are not from here. And, you know, I'm doing the same thing in slightly different parts of the society. Nice. And I've met translators who also are, you know, they're even more into the poetry and the culture than I am, but then they concentrate on the literature itself, perhaps. And so— Do you know who Festi Arpad is? I don't. He was a Hungarian painter. His name is Festi Arpad. He's a painter. Festi Arpad. Festi Arpad. Okay, okay. But yeah, no, I did think the same thing. Igazából érdekes, mert a csak mentem a Opusztere, és Opuszter, a Magyar Open Air Történelem Adventure Park. Mellett, Szeged mellett, a Michael Botlik. Hi, Willie, what's up? Have a nice day. Mizu. Szép napot. De Opuszter, nagyon érdekes múzeum igazából, és a Nomad Parkon foglalás, dogok, és ember lovagol, és pedao sok szobor, és tényleg igazi hősök tere, mert itt a hősök tere sok hős, de ott tényleg sok hős, és kisebb, de több emberek. És is a leghíresebb dolog ott, Opuszteren, a Festi Arpad Turkep. And it's like a giant panorama picture that a whole building has to house, and it has music and special effects, and it's all about the honfoglalás, és Arpad, és a hatmas vezér. Nagyon romantikus, igazából egy oldalal ebben a képben, a pogány, a pagan, pagan thematic. It's a beautiful painting, a nagyon-nagyon érdekes. De mit akartam mondani volt, Festi Arpad nagyon híres a magyar festmény, painter, de is Gruziában, in Georgia, mentünk oda a Lexaval mut nyáron, és igazából Tbilisziben a szobor, Festi Arpad szobor, mert Festi Arpad volt a magyar, de ment Grúziaba, és ő... Festett a legfontosabb grúz versek a Night in the Panther's Skin, and now they honor him. So anyway, I guess we only got about a minute left here, but the point that I wanted to make was it was very interesting. This is a Hungarian guy that went to a different culture, and he was super enthused by it. And I think that there's people like us and like me and like you that have been throughout history sort of giving another perspective to cultures that sometimes when you're inside of it, you can't really see clearly. One hundred percent. Do you have any other thoughts before we wrap it up here today? Oh, just that it's been an honor to chat with you about this. I'm so glad you're doing what you're doing, and I hope that we can continue to help each other in the future. Likewise, likewise. Nagyon jó. Andrea, macho, nagyon jó a magyarod. Köszönöm szépen, köszönöm szépen. All right, well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Ryan. Köszönöm szépen, Mindenkinek. Köszönöm szépen, Ray, for putting us together, and just wishing everyone to stay safe and healthy, and stay napot, szép estét, szép délutánt, wherever you may be. Have a good one.