At eleven, the cinema was the only place where we could truly vanish. Not from the world – from ourselves. Darkness had a peculiar weight back then, a kind of layered significance. There were days when we rushed out of the 3:30 screening straight into another cinema for the 5:45, and from there, onward to a third place. (Every cinema stuck to the same three showtimes: 3:30, 5:45, and 8:00.) There was no YouTube, no Netflix, hardly even VHS – maybe, at best, some smuggled VHS cassette from the West, re-copied so many times the picture was barely watchable – and sometimes, instead of Bruce Lee, you’d end up with badly dubbed German porn.
The films enchanted us. The experience wasn’t something you could just rewatch – you had to chase it down. If you missed it, it simply ceased to exist. It slipped out of your world before it ever had a chance to become part of it. Hair, for instance, I watched almost obsessively for weeks, going from cinema to cinema. Same with Jesus Christ Superstar.
Then came the high school years. The afternoon cinema marathons gradually faded out. I traded the darkness of movie theatres for the darkness of pubs, basement clubs, concert halls, and discos. Cinema stuck around as part of the dating toolkit, mostly just a stage for first dates. The films? Most of them vanished into oblivion. Not because they were bad, but because, meanwhile, something else claimed your attention. The presence of another person. The possibility of closeness. The hunger for physicality. The girls? I barely remember them either. Except one. She was a year older, and we went to the same school. As I mentioned, I was a math-track “geek.” I wasn’t exactly ostracised – people liked me – but it didn’t reflect well on anyone to befriend or date a math student. (I had another girlfriend from school back then. We dated for months in secret. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone – she was embarrassed…)
She took me to a screening followed by a discussion. I sat through Bicycle Thieves and a ninety-minute debate – the intellectual equivalent of jerking off – just so she would kneel in front of me for ten minutes afterwards in the park. Yep. That’s what sixteen is like. Everything for sex.
The next evening, instead of the usual pub crawl, I went with her to see Moziklip.
The film began, and from the very first moment, I felt exactly as I had years earlier when I first saw Hair. Everything around me disappeared. The music pulled me in — I was inside the songs.
Every hazy, metaphor-laced critique of the system hit me right between the eyes. For the first time, I felt how it was possible to rebel against a dictatorship through art. Thanks to that film, I later found my way into the alternative scene of the time — from Topo through Vaszlavik all the way to Kontroll Csoport.
What happened to the girl? Nothing. She had a boyfriend — who knew about me — but was so in love with her that he let it slide. I, on the other hand, was at that particular phase of life when one girl lasted about a week. So I handed her back. And we never spoke again. We’d probably pass each other on the street today without even recognising one another.
But back to the film. Why was it so good? I honestly don’t know. The songs bled into each other, yet each had its own rightful place. V’Moto-Rock, Komár László, Zorán, Sziámi, Katona Klári… Completely different worlds, entirely different genres — and yet they all came together as one. Somehow, everything pointed in the same direction. And each added a small piece to the bigger meaning.
“Forty for the ticket, maybe sixty for life –
But without illusions, nothing’s worth a thing.”
“While the heirs bawl, I watch the farce –
How they tend to my memory in the family circle.
They get the field, the car, the red couch…
Oh, it’s just a good old mess.”
“You’ll sleep tomorrow,
Believe me, it’ll do.
They’ve painted over the past,
And burned down the future.
We’re all Indians now,
With tattered ornaments on our heads.”
“We’ve already kicked the habit,
We live on nothing.
This is the final hour –
And we’ll spend it sober.
We’re not afraid
Of whatever comes to kill us.”
“I wake a little earlier now, just on my own,
And talk about my dreams less and less.
But you haven’t changed at all –
You just love more quietly now.”
“Our place is set, our bed made and waiting,
A security lock guards our dreams.
We’re cheap guys now, with no desires –
Our penny dreams already echo back at us.”
This isn’t a hit song. Nor is it some “interlude.” It’s an underwater scream — a song you don’t hear, only feel. Like waking from a dream of falling, and realising your body is still in free fall.
Seagull Island offers no handhold. There’s no chorus to hum along with. No story to be retold. Only a feeling — a slow, uninterrupted descent. Time isn’t linear here — it shatters, disperses, gets waterlogged.
The world doesn’t decay — it simply disappears. In the song, reality dissolves further and further beneath the surface. And by the time you notice, you’re already down there — on an island with no bridge, no direction, no return.
This song is a peculiar kind of grief. Not for someone, but for something. For time. For youth. For all the possibilities that never happened. An island where no one lives but you. And the music. Which doesn’t console you — it simply confirms: you’re already there too.
Postscript
Péter Tímár’s films have been a part of my life ever since. Healthy Eroticism, Slap‑Jack, Csinibaba — in every one of them, behind the cheerfulness, there’s always reality.