interview
Published on 13.08.2024
humans of mumush: the faces behind the festival
We sat down on the benches built into the playground, they faced a golden field, blocks of neatly gathered hay scattered all over it. I messed around with my phone for a bit, trying to figure out if I even have enough storage space to record the interview. Krisztián waited patiently while his kids played in the sandbox behind us. Their masterplan was to build a tunnel through which they can shake hands, so, obviously, the first step was to pour a handful of sand down their father’s shirt. His son laughed gleefully as he made his escape towards the other end of the playground. It was a day of summer’s silence, the calm of a heat haze mingling with the laughter of kids.
“Well you did say that you wanted a more natural interview” Krisztián said, chuckling, while he brushed the grains of sand from his back. I grinned and felt relief wash over me: This would be an easy conversation. I pressed ‘Record’ and got to it: “I think we should start with your reason for being here.” Krisztián’s eyes shifted towards the field as he considered my question. I have always known him to be a man that, more often than not, considered his thoughts before he spoke. “And by ‘Why are you here’ I’m not necessarily referring to what is your use here, or your practical purpose, but rather why you are here, personally, what brought you here.”A few moments stretched into a minute as we sat quietly, the only sounds being a July breeze ruffling the leaves and his kids working on their tunnel.
We looked at each other as he exhaled and laughed at the absurdity of the question:
“I think that… I think that, in a way, what I’m doing is that… I’m looking for the meaning of my life. That’s what I’m doing here now. And, it seems that this is the closest I’ve ever been to finding it.”
“Have you ever had a phase in your life in which you thought you were as close to finding it as it feels this time around?”
“No, not like this. Not by far.” His answer came with a tone that implied his absolute confidence in the truth of it.
“Do you remember the moment, or period, when you realized this? Or for how long have you already been here when you figured this out, or what things happened around you then?”
“This is very funny because I realized it at the very beginning, it’s quite interesting. I actually remember the moment. It was an interesting thing that in 2019 when we organized the test run of the festival, I had a conversation with Brodi, who has significant experience in the hospitality industry, organizing events and working at the radio as well. He had been in the “festival” sphere for a long time. The two of us were having a conversation and the clock struck midnight. He had this huge digital wristwatch, one that was a big block and would display the time with large numbers. And it lit up with 00:00. Now, before then I didn’t think much of the mysticism of numbers... But what’s funny is that a short while before that I got this tattoo.” He pointed to his arm which, among others, also displayed a heart with a dagger running through it. The numbers “0.0” under it. The style seemed something of the old days, something that sailors might get on their adventures.
He went on to explain the symbolism of what he had etched into his skin: “My grandfather had the same exact tattoo, under it he had the date of when he was discharged from the military. Now I’d never been in the army so I thought a lot about what numbers I should add and somehow I felt that now, in this moment, I have the opportunity to start everything from zero. That’s why it’s ‘0.0’. A few hours after I got the tattoo we were discussing the festival with Brodi: How we could build a community around it and what potential it has, about building a festival with the community in mind and attracting creative people… Then his clock hit the zeros and that’s when I felt like this is what I was waiting for, what I was wishing for so many years”
“Did you feel the difference in yourself after this realization? How did it manifest if so?”
“Of course I felt it. There is this concept of the flow state, which we are all trying to feel, and live in, for as long as possible, and that weekend I felt that I’m just flowing. I’m where I need to be, the things that need to happen are happening; A lot of coincidences, a lot of lucky moments, that’s how that weekend was for me.”
“Was this followed by you immediately starting to make plans to move here?”
“This wasn’t clear as of yet, how to do this. But it was clear to me that I would like to move here and take part or contribute to the community.
“Was there any difficulty in figuring out what it is that you could contribute?”
“I still don’t know what I could contribute, it’s still not clear, or what is the value that I categorically add, that’s still not clear to me, I’m still looking for it…” He took the taste of a few more words as he considered it further and added “But there are a few things that are clear, for example my view on how to be environmentally conscious or my skills that help with human connection are of use here.”
“How would you describe your life before you found whatever you found here? What did your inner world look like?”
Something half-way between a guffaw and a sigh was his first answer though he found his words immediately. “Well I was right in the middle of a deep burnout.” His tone was playful, despite the hard reality of his story. “Right after a divorce, I believe it was barely a week after I moved out of the family home.” He stopped to think for a second, taking a drag from his cigarette “My companies weren’t going too well either, one of them was pretty much on the brink of bankruptcy. So when this happened it was a pretty dark period, the deepest of my life so far.”
“And now?”
“Now?” His smile instantly returned “Now I’m living one of the best phases of my life. Obviously there are still things missing but mentally this is the most balanced I have ever been.”
“Do you feel like this is the Mumush effect? Could you have gotten to this point without it? Or could you have otherwise gotten to this point in this amount of time?”
“That’s hard to answer because I can’t know what could have been… It’s more than likely that it would have been much harder; I got a lot from the people, from the community here, a lot of help, but I received a lot of help from outside as well. After this happened, after 2019, there was one year in which I visited rarely, and a year in which I didn’t even attend the festival at all. I missed out on the whole summer here, I pulled myself out of the situation to build myself. There were a lot of things happening then. But I managed to build my life up a lot in those days. So it’s hard to answer what could have been but it’s definitely sure that it helped a lot. And it’s more and more helpful day by day.”
“Do you have a purpose here?”
“Of course.”
The little ones pulled our attention away before he could finish his answer. “Daddy you have to see how deep we dug the hole.”
Their tunnel plan had been progressing finely! His youngest, Kende, pointed to his older sister, Zéfi, who had managed to dig quite a deep hole in the sandbox.
“Oh wow. Reach into it, let me see how deep it is” Their father said curiously. His daughter reached all the way down, her arm disappearing almost completely. “Oh my, that really is deep. Well tell me when you managed to dig through and can reach each other’s hands.” The kids agreed excitedly and went back to their project.
Krisztián’s gaze lingered on his little ones a bit longer, watching them work together in the sandbox, serenity emanating from him.
“I have a desire to help as many people as possible,” he answered, facing me once more “this is also because I was deep in a bad place as well, and I feel like, on my way to rebuilding myself, I’ve found a lot of tools which I’d love to share with others. So that’s what I see as my purpose, to help as many people as possible or to be able to establish a place where people can really build themselves back up.”
“What would that place look like, practically speaking?”
“It would be a place which offers freedom and responsibility alike. Where you have physical labor, and mental, but also the opportunity to rest, in perfect balance. And all this without any artificial influences, because I think that’s really the problem in these situations, when a person is down deep, that their environment has an impact on them and the source of that impact should be considered. It matters if the influence comes from the neighbor living above you, in the apartment building, or from the swallow’s nest on a tree. These are the things that make a difference, if you are working on something in front of a computer and you’re flooded by pop-up ads or you’re working with your hands to build a mud-hut. These things matter.” I considered his words as I laid back in the bench to take in the moment. Across the field I saw the mud-hut we built in my first week here, towards the tail end of spring. We built it to house the Info Point and, truth be told, it was an experience. Working with mud, for a week, and learning to build with it, had been exciting. That was the first time I was a part of Krisztián’s team.
“So, the way I understood it earlier is that you have a role in the environment team.”
“Yes. Zsolt is the main coordinator of the environment team and I’m sort of second after him.”
“What kind of work does this entail?”
“Well it’s the maintenance of the territory, cleaning the terrain, the thickets, the trees and also sorting out the hay. We already started building so the mud-hut we built together is also part of this. This is the type of work we do and when we go about doing this, in the build week, the teams need coordination and that’s something I have a role in.”
“What do you like most about this?”
“Working with people.” His answer came without a hint of hesitation.
“Which part of that? Would it be the teaching? The coordinating? Or just seeing how they experience all of this?”
“I don’t know if I could call this teaching… or even coordinating.” He laughed here, struggling a bit with the concept. “Actually it is coordinating” To me it seemed like his modesty was in a tug of war to accept that he actually leads people. “The coordination of the work, directing people.”
“So you like that part as well?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about your house, in the village, that you are working on at the moment.”
“The house I’m currently working on is planned to be an animal farm, with the purpose of animal therapy. A petting zoo, if you will” An image came to mind here. Barely two nights before our interview we had a bonfire at Krisztián’s yard and he showed me that his chickens sleep on a tree. They would climb the coop and jump onto some of the highest branches, to then sleep while covered with the leaves. They all kept saying this was normal, but I haven’t ever seen anything like it.
“Would this be an animal sanctuary as well?”
“Yes, there would definitely be space for saved animals as well.”
At this point, joyful screaming grabs our attention. His daughter shouts: “Dad we made it, we made it!”
“Really?” He turned on the bench to see the children’s handiwork.
“Yes! Yes! Look!” Both kids laid down onto the sand, their arms disappearing under it, as they laughed, and shook hands in the tunnel. “Come try it, Dad, come’on”
“Well excuse me” Krisztián said to me with a smile and got up to inspect the tunnel of the siblings. He got down, flat onto his chest, and reached in to shake his daughter’s hand through the tunnel. It was such a moment of pure familial love that I felt embarrassed for a second, like I’m intruding on their privacy; Like I shouldn’t be welcomed into this scene of easygoing love. But all three of them were some of the warmest people I’ve ever known.
Sharing that moment with them, feeling the lightness of being, in that moment, a question came to me: “Krisztián… How much do your kids understand of your life here?” I asked softly, “Do you tell them a lot about it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Would this life be attractive to them? This sort of working under the clear blue sky and living a community life. Or in any case, would you like to pass this down to them?”
Krisztián turned towards the sandbox and asked “Kids, does this life, in nature, attract you in an-“ Before he could finish his question, his daughter cut in “Yes, a lot.”
He went on to ask them “Would you like to live this way?”
“Yes, especially with this playground.” This was his boy, answering while still playing in the sandbox.
“And would you give up your comfortable bathtub at home?”
His daughter answered this time “Yes, I always liked taking baths in creeks anyway.”
“I would like to keep the bathtub a bit though,” His son said whimsically.
“We could have a comfortable bathtub here as well but I’m fine with a creek.”, his daughter answered once more and her father and me looked at each other, both grinning at the children’s thoughts.
“Did you find your answer?” Krisztián asked, laughing.
“I did, I did.” As we shared that moment an image of Krisztián, from a few weeks ago, popped into my mind. “I remember when we were breaking down the site after the wedding: I ran into you during the day and you just seemed…” I struggled, for a bit, to find the right word. “You seemed so carefree, and aloof, while working. And since then I’ve noticed that you sort of always have that calm demeanor. Is that right? Is that way of being really your day to day?”
Krisztián broke out laughing heartily once more “Oh no, not at all!” He took a minute until the mirth of the moment passed us, and then went on “I can hide it nicely, but there is a lot of tension in me. But it’s not helpful at all to pass it on to people, I realized this.”
“Why do you hide it though?”
“Because it’s not useful for me if I pass it on… Even more so, it’s counter-productive”
“Would this tension be worse if you wouldn’t have this life here?”
“Obviously. If I’d be at home in my bed then I’d probably just remain stuck there. If I’d be in another setting then it would be worse. I’m sure that it would last more, I know this because I’ve been through it. I’m an anxious type of person, with a tendency towards depression. In any case, it helps that I’m outside, that I’m surrounded by animals, by people. These things help.”
I barely had a bit over two months since I first joined them, his words spoke to me. I felt the damn sweet salve of healing on every bit of my fried soul. I’ve also heard stories of others finding some semblance of peace here. I was just wondering about the obvious: “We’ve danced around this point for a while now, but do you think that this is a place of healing?”
“For me it is. And to return to our previous subject, that’s what I would like for others to find here, to find what I found here, what I’m trying to experience here. I’d gladly share these conclusions but that doesn’t have the same power as when somebody lives it and goes through those phases. Truth is that lots of times I wonder what would have been if 10 years ago somebody would have told me the things I tell myself now, and I don’t know if that would have saved me or not but rather… It’s likely that it would have helped but still, this is a constant dilemma for me.”
“Do you think that 10 years ago youd have been open to advice?” I knew how I was at that age, you’d have better luck financing a full college tuition for a bag of bricks. I was stubborn and felt immortal… But looking at Krisztián, it was hard to believe that he had ever been that way.
“Yes, yes. But I’m very stubborn so I don’t think I would have accepted that advice in the form it would have come to me. I’d have paid it heed in any case, I still do that. If information is coming to me from outside sources then I pay it attention but I always question everything. There is no source to which I can say that this is 100% and I will integrate it.”
“Have you seen, since 2019, a volunteer, or somebody simply attending the festival, going through the process you went through?”
“This is happening to everybody on the crew” He said with a chuckle and went on “Absolutely everybody is going through this here. We are evolving and growing together. This is what I realized: This place, this is an autodidactic heaven. We learn a lot from each other but there is a vast amount of information, coming in, which isn’t from an official source. By this I mean that it isn’t like somebody studied these things at university and is here passing it on, this isn’t typical. It’s rather that something interests you so you did your research, you practiced it and you pass it on.”
“Let’s talk about music a bit, if you brought the self-teaching aspect up. I’ve seen a lot of people here being interested in playing music but you are the one I’ve seen the most, so far, just sitting by yourself with your laptop and looking for music. Even when I see you walk I see you with your headphones on, you seem like you’re always listening to music. You mention your upcoming dj set at the festival a lot more often than anybody else, you seem really excited. So I’m curious about when you started and what this means to you.”
“2016 in August? I woke up Sunday morning at Teknival and everything became very clear to me. When I listened to a set it seemed like something I could do and asked myself what it would be like to do it. Fast forward and I started working on it… a year and a half ago? So like 6 years later I started working on it, though I did have a short period when I worked on it 5 years ago. It wasn’t anything complex, I just downloaded production software and played around with it. This happened when I was going through a rough patch and was looking for anything to pull me out of it. I played around with that for a few months. But I love music, I always did. I danced for 9 years as well and did folk dancing choreography and for about half a year I was a professional dancer as well. Even in Cluj I attended a lot of jam sessions and was always around music.”
“What does it feel like to follow Pneomatix’s set on the stage?”
“I don’t know, but when the idea of playing music first came to me in 2016 I’d have never thought that this would happen, especially since I don’t have a single mix uploaded anywhere online. I didn’t even ever make a mix because I always improvised. I never had a pre-planned mix for a show. I have a database filled with music and I try to read the crowd and react to it. Technically speaking, I’m still very far from everything because I don’t have too much time to dedicate to this. That’s why I talk about it so much because I don’t have a concrete image in my head about what will be. Whenever somebody asks me to play a show I always say yes but don’t prepare with a pre-made set because if I try to do that I just overthink it since I don’t have the knowledge to build a coherent set, I don’t have the experience to put together a playlist that stands its ground. So I’m an extreme beginner and that’s why I always ask for everybody’s opinion."
“Are you nervous about it at all?”
“Not anymore. I was nervous so far but that was pointless because yea, you can make mistakes and I had that experience when you can lead your audience into a bad trip. Once I closed a party and was fully unprepared for it, I played pretty dark music and I didn’t have the presence of mind to pull people out of that place so I just ended my set on that dark note. And the other thing is that music has such a deep effect on me that I …. That I… I can just connect to it completely. So I’m really there in the music. And then when this set happened I went so dark that I fell apart and the crowd fell apart as well. I couldn’t pull them out of it and there was a gloomy atmosphere left over from my set and that’s when I realized that it can be a huge responsibility. So since then I’ve been a bit worried about it but I haven’t played music as dark since. I like that type of music, it has its place as well but I’m a bit in the safe mode since then. So this is why I talk about it so much because I lack the confidence… But I would love to get better at it. But to have a career and make money from it…” His face turned sour, as if tasting something he didn’t like. “I don’t see that happening for me. If I can give a good experience to friends, that’s completely fine to me.”
“I noticed that the recurring motif, in most of your answers, was the community and how to contribute something positive to it. Would it be correct to assume that this is a driving force in your life?”
“Yes, that preoccupies me the most. That’s how I try to build myself as well. Your environment is a mirror of you: If you break down the elements and you disconnect from your ego and observe yourself, and your environment, then you will see that it is really your mirror image. That’s how I’m trying to build myself, in a way that it’s good for my environment as well. This could be considered an egocentric approach if one really wants to see that in it.”
“You mentioned that there is a lot of tension in you, and I guess there’s anxiety as well then, so I assume you think about the future a lot since that’s basically the definition of anxiety. When you think about the future do you worry about this place surviving? Or do you have fears that you might ever lose it?”
“There are moments, yes. There are moments when I have doubts but that’s a normal thing, I think. The problem would be if I would never have any doubts. There can’t be an idyllic place, or rather, there can be one but we need to be realistic.”
“What would your advice be for somebody, who arrives here , to the festival, the first time in their life without any kind of idea or concept of this place, and maybe they are also going through a rough patch of their own: Maybe a bad breakup or losing a job or whatever it might be. What would you tell this person? “
“I’d welcome them, probably, and let them discover the place by themselves. All I’d do is to make sure that this person feels safe and the rest is up to them.”
I made my way back towards Mumush HQ, the afternoon light, and my dog, both on my heels. Though I was the one pushing for a candid, sincere interview, it took me by surprise that I actually got one. Maybe I’ve become a bit cynical in the last few years and that’s why it seemed to me that people, these days, had become more and more guarded. They had become wary of opening up, fearful to own what, and who, they are... But we can’t spend our lives exchanging pleasantries, with our real self cowering in the dark confines of our soul. If we don’t want to sit out the experience of our own lives then we all need to learn to be more open and own who we are… Even if sometimes we don’t like the person staring back at us in the mirror.
I came away from our conversation with a newfound respect for Krisztián. I have always thought highly of him but the way he owned the bad times and the good, the way he carried himself, the humility of recognizing where he came from and the gratefulness to want to share where he had arrived to. For me, he is one of the most sincere men, one that knows how to laugh in the face of hardship and how to be kind to those in need. Krisztián is a father, a partner, a friend, he is patience and gentle wisdom. Krisztián is a human of Mumush.
interview by laci