Despite the massive global impact of mental health conditions, it’s very often hard to open up about you anxieties and ask for help when you most need it. Luckily, in recent years, we have seen a positive shift in the way people view and talk about their mental health. Conversations about depression, addictions, racial-equality, fears, and more have moved from the private to the public sphere, with artists continuing their often poetic dialogue through personal work and intimate lyrics. Seeing many imperfections of the modern society, our today’s guest MΓ‘tΓ© shines a light on some of the issues and inspires and urges us to stop, step out of our egos, open our eyes to other perspectives that are offered to us by others, and reflect on important issues related to our society and human culture as a whole.
Over three years since our last feature for Budapest based emotive indie singer-songwriter THE BOY AND THE TELE with three atmopsheric tracks dubbed “therapy tapes”, available now via Bandcamp. To celebrated, we have teamed up with MΓ‘tΓ© to give us his bitter-sweet perspective on the world in 2020, which he shared through a special commentary below.
“ππππππ ππππβπ‘ π π’ππππ ππ π‘π ππππ ππππ. πΌβπ ππππ‘πππππ¦ πππ‘ πππππ π‘π ππ ππ‘ πππ¦ππππ. πΌβπ£π πππππ βππ ππ¦ π€ππ ππππ πππ€. πβπ πππ₯π‘ πππ πΌ π€πππ‘π ππ πππππ π‘π ππ ππ’π. πβππ πππ ππ π πππππ’ππ, πππ βππ π‘π ππ, π ππππ ππ‘ π€ππ π€πππ‘π‘ππ ππ¦ π ππππππ ππ π πππ‘.” – πΎπ’ππ‘ πππππππ’π‘
Words by MΓ‘tΓ©, aka THE BOY AND THE TELE:
“I am not a musician, I do not make a living from making music. But this is one of the things that helps me get by. I am not a professional, I record my instruments in my living room and the vocals in the kitchen. But maybe this does not matter? I think a lot about why I am doing this. I think musicians and artists in general should have a responsibility in what they do or how they do it or what they choose as a topic for their art. Because they influence other people with what they do. And in this respect, I lack the energy to cover things that I think would be important. For which many times I feel shameful. Music is only therapy for me. Maybe it should be more…
We live in a pretty messed up world, even if we donβt think about 2020, this year was only the cherry on top, I would say. Human society as a whole behaves as a careless teenager, as if we would not want to take responsibility on the actions we make. Not only we are on the brink of exploiting nature, we seem to have exploited ourselves, emotianally, financially, socially. All the hate, discrimination, ignorance and carelessness that is floding from every news channel, political parties, etc. makes me scared a lot of times, especially due to the fact that I have a son, for whom I should be confident to say that everything is going to be alright. Even though the signs show that it will not be.
Now is not about having choices, we cannot say that we may change, we need to change. We need to change the way how we look at nature, we need to change how we look at our future, we need to change how we look at each other. Now is not the time, when people should think about the other person based on the colour of their skin, political views, sexual identity, gender or religion. All these things are social constructs. None of this matters. We should start to be more empathetic to each other, because that will be the only way.
I never considered myself a βclosed-mindedβ person. But music showed me that it does not matter who the person is behind the instrument or the microphone. What matters is what they do. You cannot hear colour, you cannot hear gender, you cannot hear sexual identity. What you hear is the other person, what they represent, the emotions. And that is what is important, I think. We, humanity, should be open minded and listen to each other. We can disagree on certain things and aspects, but we cannot disagree on the fact that the way we currently live is not sustainable. Not for nature, and not for humanity either. We are lost in our egos.
How should we resolve our problems? How should we change? What needs to be done? Unfortunately, I am not smart enough to tell. But we have to do something. Care more, listen more, understand more, forgive more, do more and try to be better. We cannot be perfect, but we can try to be better.
I know that all this seems a little dark, and I know that there are a lot of good people with good intentions and I can see that as well. So, there still must be hope.
To end this βrantβ, I come back to good old Vonnegut, and what he wrote in Catβs Cradle”
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
I hope some of this made sense.
Be safe and take care,
