The Budapest Bardroom

Aubrey Ramage-Lay is a graduate of the Eugene Lang College of the New School University. He has also attended many other excellent universities such as University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Massachusetts College of Art. Currently he is making fine art as well as writing and exploring life around the globe. He currently resides in Budapest, Hungary.

Aubrey’s first book, Walking as Saints, was published in 2009. The book is about the chains of perfection; how free will is impossible if you cannot make the wrong choices. It is about Lucifer’s struggle to break free of the perfection of God, from the inevitability of the Plan. The book also ask the question which came first, the Planner or the Plan.

1. Are you currently working on anything, and why’s it taking so long?

“I am currently writing a novel about a pair of foreigners who come to Budapest and have their identities broken down and rebuilt. It is about how travel changes you. It is taking so long because I am so lazy.”

2. Do you actually have moments of inspiration or is writing just a process of slogging day in and day out?

“I am occasionally inspired to write but mostly it is just a question of slogging, again, I am very lazy.”

3. What’s the last thing you read that made your hair stand up on end?

“No question, it was Haunting by Chuck Palahunik. Hair raising for any writer I would think.  It’s a ghost story about the creative process!”

4. What would you have been if you hadn’t become a writer?

“I am also an artist so I guess that’s what I would be doing, I have also done just about every job anyone has ever thought of. I never want to work in an office again that’s for sure though.”

5. What’s the worst thing about writing a book?

“All the typing.”

Rachel Hammond is an England born South African; previously an advertising assistant; currently a kindergarten teacher and always a singer.

After studying singing and song-writing through the National School of Arts in 2001, Rae taught herself guitar (with the help of an old primary school teacher). Shortly afterwards she embarked upon her travels where she discovered the London music scene and fronted a flurry of bands of varying genres from rap rock to Ryan Adams fanatic melancholies. An avid practicer of capoeira, she was lead her to love and lives here in Budapest – and this is where she lays her hat.

1. What was your first (poem / piece of writing), and how bad was it?

“My first piece was a poem-turned-song called ‘Don’t Leave’. My singing teacher helped me turn the chorus into something catchy (something I hadn’t yet mastered) and I performed it at the end of year concert. Surprisingly, I found out I was the only student that year who performed their own work instead of a cover and that resulted in a fellow student, also a debuting South African artist, approaching me to get rights to record ‘Don’t Leave’ as her first release single. I was (am) pretty chuffed, but have yet to see a copy of that CD.”

2. Are you currently working on anything, and why’s it taking so long?

“2009 unfortunately has been less than fruitful lyrically and I’ve been stuck in a cliched writer’s block.  I decided to go back to my roots, listening to every single different genre of music I can, and learn new songs.  I make them my own and cover them in a contrasting genre. Sounds complicated and it is. But it never fails. Before I know it I’ve learnt (or made up) four or five new chords, used my vocals on a new level, and practiced how to not sound like someone else. So yes, I’m working on how to be me.”

3. Do you actually have moments of inspiration or is writing just a process of slogging day in and day out?

“Moments. It’s all about the moment. Sometimes I write three entire songs one after the other in the space of an hour. Sometimes seven months can go by without even the motivation to pick up my guitar. I’ve just come through the latter and spent an hour last night writing two poems, that’ll become songs by Monday. It’s a great feeling of relief.”

4. Name a writer/poet who you’d be most psyched to see show up at your Bardroom gig and how would you return the compliment if he/she liked your set?

“KT Tunstall. I’ve no idea how I’d ever return her compliment. I’d ask to have a coffee with her to get to know her a bit better.  I’d ask her who she wrote about in her song ‘Heal Over’.”

5. Does poetry matter anymore?

“To me, yes. As I mentioned above, going back to the roots is as good as a holiday. Whether it be reading Shakespear or Dr Seuss, listening to some country or rap, or counting the syllables in a new song that just ‘doesn’t go’.  I don’t and have never used mind expanding drugs and writing a poem or lyrics is my only release and means of expression. Poems can be novels, they tell a structured story whether they’re a jingle, a middle eight or an entire album. And sometimes rhyming’s fun. Rappers, country singers and even thrash metal’s impenetrable growling rhymes.”

Stephen Ladek is a Budapest-based singer/songwriter originally from Colorado, USA. His music is influenced by the Indigo Girls, Pink Floyd, Nickel Creek, Rush, David Wilcox, Lyle Lovett and many others with lyrics that are generally reflections of life-as-it-should-be. Stephen was the former lead singer and guitarist for ‘The Flow.’ He has also performed as a back up guitarist and vocalist for ‘Big Orange Pop.’ Most recently Stephen performed as a member of ‘The LMNOPs’ in Washington, DC. Samples of his solo work and ‘The Flow’ can be found at: http://www.graberladek.com/songs/sladeksongs.htm.

1. Are you currently working on anything, and why’s it taking so long?

“I’ve been working on a solo album for literally ten years. After leaving the last band I played with, life took over and all the spaces that used to be filled with music were stuffed with travel, work and now… my son!”

2. Do you actually have moments of inspiration or is writing just a process of slogging day in and day out?

“I personally have moments of inspiration that provide me with a small riff, a bass line, a lyric or some other snippet that just feels right. I usually build a song by combining one or two of these snippits somehow. The music almost always comes first though. Sometimes a song takes ten minutes, sometimes years.”

3. Did you ever get laid because something you wrote?

“My wife continues to tell me that my music is a key reason she ever bothered to show up and meet me at the first party where we were set up. I’m going with yes.”

4. Name a writer who you’d be most psyched to see show up at your Bardroom gig and how would you return the compliment if he/she liked your set?

“Hands down, the Indigo Girls (Amy Ray and Emily Sailers). They’re the only group in the world whose entire collection I own. My homage to/for them? I can trace my decision to pursue song writing to their first (Grammy Award Winning) self-titled release and I like to think that Amy taught me to sing.”

5. Does music matter anymore?

“Music will always matter. We vibrate as living beings and music connects with that. The better question is do we really need a sound track to our lives? With so many of my and future generations stuck with iPod earbuds in all the time, we’re losing the authentic experience of being in the world while at the same time diminishing our ability to commercials from works of genius.”

Zaid Sethi was born in Pakistan and emigrated to England with his parents at the age of one. He has been writing and traveling for the last 15 years, spending time in Central Asia, the Caucuses and St Petersburg. he has lived in Hungary for three years.

In 2009, Zaid published his first book of short stories, entitled The End of the World. According to Zaid, “this is a collection of short stories in which characters enter a world where fairness and understanding count for nothing. These stories are about the relationships that inspire us as human beings to strive to achieve more than any sense of reality would allow.”

1. What was your first (poem / piece of writing), and how bad was it?

Socialist drivel but penned and executed with passion. Thirteen, and lots of people to show off to. “Oh look, it rhymes, isn’t he a clever lad!” and thinking that Elliot would be glad he was dead when I was finished with poetry and I would tell any latter day Ezra Pound to get stuffed!

But then in that quiet place we all find ourselves in when there is no-one to show off to I read Journey of the Magi and wept, there isn’t anything worse than living long enough to find out that you are a fraud!

2. Are you currently working on anything, and why’s it taking so long?

A novel. I feel I have to write one because that is the only chance I would have to find a publisher, so I’m told. I keep being asked that I need to have something to say. Really! If that were true why are there so many who get away with nothing very much. I have something to say but am afraid that it isn’t dramatic or interesting enough, you know like cutting off a hand to be free or being crucified. I suppose that is my excuse because I am not able to write like Dan Brown.

3. Do you actually have moments of inspiration or is writing just a process of slogging day in and day out?

Gosh, I wish it were a slog, day in day out. Can you imagine doing an interview and saying ‘well, I work for about 8 hours a day, disciplined, ordered, productive. Producing 500 words or was it 1500 words a day.’

No, for me it is an intellectual pregnancy the gestation of which drains any capacity for emotion that I could have left and then when it is done I bleed, I mean I write and when I have finished I can’t believe anyone could attribute the words to me. I have too many moments of inspiration that die exposed to time and inattention but then I find one that consumes me when there is nothing to distract me.

4. Please define irony.

Me, a writer.

5. What’s the worst thing about writing a book?

Finding someone to publish it so that you don’t have to worry about finding people to read it.