Zsolt Sárközi

Now that summer is here, my daily routine starts with watering the garden. I like to take it slow in the morning: a cup of coffee, some gardening, and a film perhaps.

Rock ‘n’ roll. Anything that is filled with the ancient power of music. I only got hooked on electronic music for a while. I don’t really have one particular favourite, but I can listen to Pink Floyd at any time.

I scarcely read, I don’t have the time. I do most of my reading when I travel.

I lived in New York for a while, and that was probably the most exciting period of my life. I’d love to go back there.

I can get creative in the kitchen but I am not an expert cook. I’m glad that my daughter also cooks and that it is important for her, just like for me, that the dish served should also look good.

I used to take pride in not reading the news, but now it seems you can’t survive without it.

Oh, a lot of different magazines.

A hat and a good old Tool T-shirt. I used to have a fine pair of boots but they somehow ended up in the Danube.

I’m sure I could come up with some, for example T-shirts with large brand signs. I don’t like clothes that a lot of people wear. I also wouldn’t wear nylon tracksuits for the world.

In the early ‘90s, before I retired as a successful athlete, I went to a tattoo parlour one day (I wanted to get a tattoo of an old Joker card). That was when I fell in love with it and I became a tattoo artist a year later. During my first visit, while I was waiting for the tattooing to begin, a biker kid walked in with the same card in his hand. I was stunned and quickly forgot about the Joker tattoo. I had been working as a tattoo artist for 8 years before I finally got my first tattoo. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t want one. I had my idea for a tattoo every day but the next morning I always realized that I didn’t really want that tattoo on me. I eventually got a nice, pure drawing on my back. It was started by a friend, Jana, who lives in Miami now, and later Boris went through the whole thing again.

Not really. It may sound a bit strange, but tattooing is sort of a “Buddhist” job. You complete a tattoo, and then you might even take a photo of it, but chances are that you won’t ever see it again. You must learn to let your art pieces go, you can’t grow attached to them. You can be satisfied with it but you can’t fall in love with your work. You must start letting it go while you are still working on it because otherwise you will lose your objectivity and your critical attitude. If you let it go, you can move away from it and then the person getting the tattoo will be able to love it very much.
There are no tattoos I made that I love very much, but the people I tattooed are crazy about the tattoos they get. It is a great job; you can meet a lot of cool guys. I’m fortunate because people from distant corners of the world travel here for my style, if I can call what I do a style. It is simple to stay inspired and energetic in this way. I can choose from great assignments.

With Maynard James Keenan, the vocalist for Tool, although I think we would choose wine over coffee. (Editor’s note: Keenan owns wineries in Arizona.)

Whenever I am asked who taught me tattooing, I always mention Adrián Kupcsik. He was a very interesting reference point in my life. He gave me some very basic advice in his own peculiar way. He urged me to become a perfectionist. It was his influence that finally made me into a designer, a sketcher as a tattoo artist. But I think I also had an influence on him.
Actually, I could name a lot of people who had an influence on me. I started my career similarly to others: I copied other tattoo artists’ work. And then I realized that this was no good because I would not be able to find my own path. I learnt a lot about decency and open-mindedness from others. My second karate master Tibor Nagy educated me a lot: he literally beat me until I understood the importance of respecting life, people and the elderly in particular.

They should be open-minded. They’d better keep the gates of their mind open as long as they can. And they should learn a lot. They should learn to live and let live. It’d be great if people could understand the importance of this principle in this country. They should live life as if they only lived once even if they know it is not the case. And whenever life happens to present them with an opportunity, they should recognize it and make sacrifices to seize it.