Ideas don’t simply “appear” the way Mendeleev dreamt of the periodic table. For me, they build up…like an infinite pile of dirty dishes that you can’t ignore any longer. Creation doesn’t feel optional, it is more like necessary, it makes me genuinely sick. Especially when you find yourself in a country you never got to chose, one you straight up stumbled into while running for your life, with no destination, no place to stay. My family was hosted by the kindest people of the Hungarian-Unitarian School. After settling, my first instinct was to isolate myself in a classroom with a piano for three months. To play, to write, to do anything but face the struggles of tomorrow. My body was here, but my mind was far away. It feels way too personal to write, but I think this saved me.
Pain by itself is a destructive force. Left untouched, it devours you, it rots in your heart until nothing remains. Grief. The only way through is to redirect it is to turn it into flow. Bow your eyes to the piano keys and let it out. Write a poem and scream it into the forest. In those moments there is no creative doubt, only survival through expression. As Nina Simone once said, freedom is having no space for fear.
Nina Simone has always been one of my greatest inspirations. She never sang for entertainment. She sang the voices of the unheard, offering release and connection through shared suffering. She was her times, her people, her politics. Strong women like her are my greatest hope. Their pain, expressed with such authenticity, moves me deeply. It gives me strength not to give up. I will be heard. My music will be heard. And my pain will transform into the most beautiful flowers.
I’ll make it clear now. I don’t want to explain the facts of my experience as a refugee. Words are useless. You’ve already read all of it in the newspaper, over and over. What matters is not the story itself, but the weight of it inside the chest…the silence after another explosion.
That’s what I want you to feel, not my past. Try to notice the echo of your own reflection in it. Because pain is not foreign, that’s was makes us human. It’s yours too. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear it in the keys of the piano, in the lyrics and it’s hidden meanings. That is where we meet.