by Ignas Staškevičius, from recordings made on June 27, 2018, and June 26, 2019, in Vilnius

Q.: Mark, let’s begin with this question: how do you understand yourself?

A.: I believe I don’t understand myself fully.

I understood myself once in 1991. When I unexpectedly found myself [in a crowd] in Kaunas, defending the last… Defending… What sort of defense was that? Across the street from the so-called last free television station on Daukanto street I unexpectedly found myself in a crowd because I wanted to replace the announcer who was proclaiming in English: “S.O.S., nations of the world save us, this is the last free station in Lithuania!” But he was whining this over the air like some sort of famished kitten, so I decided the nations of the world wouldn’t understand a word of what he was saying, and I offered to replace him. I walked eleven kilometers from my house buried in snow, it was January, buried up to the door handle. No automobiles were driving. I walked eleven kilometers to the center of Kaunas because I decided to help, and there I found thousands of people and found myself facing tanks which were snoozing on the next street over. They weren’t moving, they were idling, and the barrels were so long that my entire classroom of students could’ve sat on one barrel. So then I went to the hotel across the street, back then there were these pay telephones which cost two kopeks, I inserted them and called the editorial office, saying: “You need to replace the announcer, what is he mumbling over there? Nobody understands him at all. You need a person who speaks English normally if you want to announce to the world you are perishing.” But they had already found someone, there was this woman from California in Kaunas at the time, and I finally heard abroad American pronunciation, a broad normal southern accent which reminded me of Voice of America a little bit, and everything was fine.

But then I couldn’t extract myself from the crowd. It was very strange. It was like Feliz, carnival night. Meaning very immediately, within an hour, we would all depart this location for heaven… People were carrying hot-dogs around… There was Italian music in the air, the restaurants were open even though it was dark, people carried hot-dogs around on paper plates, like little girl vendors from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables from the time of the French Revolution, wearing sashes but with winter jackets on top. During the blizzard everything was shared for free, coffee, hot-dogs… And I thought, OK, an hour from now we will all go to heaven. That tank, sixty thousand tons, when it drives around the street then all the coffee services, chinaware and candelabra will rattle in the house. So I thought, I should eat and drink, and whatever will be will be. But I couldn’t, I was stuck at the front of the crowd. To my right was this grandmother type wearing a beret, she was pulling me down to the ground, she pulled me the whole time, and to my left was this young boy, maybe 12 years old, and as I clasped his hand I was afraid I might squeeze his too hard. And I couldn’t get out, they were pressing on my back, and I had no where to go, in other words. I’m not calling myself a hero at all, I simply didn’t have a way out. We drank coffee… and waited for the tanks. I could move freely to the hotel across the street where I had used the payphone, the Metropolis Hotel, because I didn’t want to play the hero, I didn’t want to be any sort of hero. Whether I was there or not, whatever would happen would happen anyway. But… But I stood there until the end, because I had caught that pathos on offer, that revolutionary pathos, and… Well, they couldn’t do that to a guy with two kopeks in his pocket for the payphone, if they sicked the tanks on us, that would mean they were demonically in the wrong. And I never liked it when people didn’t argue rationally with me but used brute force to press their point.

So I stood there to the end, and after that, many years later, I realized I had challenged and checked myself then. I realized and I told friends from around the world, Americans, Californians, Israelis, Brits, Germans: a man never knows himself completely and only when he is pressed to extremes does he understand what he is capable of doing. In normal life he is too relaxed, and when he is thrown a little bit side to side, he still doesn’t really understand himself. But extreme situations… show the man what he truly is.

And at the time I realized that I am actually a coward, but in one way or another I might find myself on the front line, and I won’t surrender that position. If I decide not to. So my self-respect didn’t suffer, and after that I realized that it’s very important to experience this, that you are living several lives here which normal people in other stable countries don’t experience. They don’t come to know the wholeness of life, what they really are. They don’t challenge themselves, and the years pass by, everything passes by so quickly.

So this experience really enriched me. It showed me I can do something. This is one of those inner truths. Existential truths.

There is a lot of talk about fake news nowadays around the world. And really, the social networks where every person can write whatever they want, and if that is organized propaganda or ideology, or big money, an individual candidate can really suffer during any election, they can help the other candidate. So there were elections recently in the Czech Republic. The president of the Academy of Sciences ran against the incumbent Zeman who is pro-Moscow. So false information about his opponent, the professor and head of the Academy of Sciences, ruined him, that he was a former KGB agent, that he had an entire harem of wives… Voters didn’t check whether this was true or not. It was expedient, end of story. So this goes into the subconscious and swirls around, and ruins your ratings. But actually, in my eyes… Truth can be objective, and there are clear criteria for demonstrating the truth. In journalism there can also be objective truth based on eye-witness reports about an event, by comparison of statements akin to a detective story.

The most important thing to the person, however, because life is so short, are the truths which enrich the individual, which open onto greater vistas and enlightenment. I am not talking about religion here. Religion is also fake news: many gods, paganism, Christianity, Judaism, too… If it is presented for mass consumption. Sometimes this is simply fake news for the mentally disabled. The only thing worthwhile is that which stands up to your thorough examination, because you cannot be a modern educated person and honestly tell yourself there is a God. Such a person could go to the grave doubting this. Because it isn’t proven. I characterize myself as an agnostic. I don’t know.

The most important truths to me are those which enrich me. And they don’t come cheaply. Those which upset me. Those which open my eyes, which change me. These are the most valuable truths of all. You can let them issue from yourself, they teach you, they enrich you as a person. This is very subjective and… History shows that in this regard there is also the danger of a plenitude of errors and self-deceptions. Powerful propaganda can convince millions of people, but only provides them with what some führer says from the podium, or some leader, right? Or some self-proclaimed messiah of any stripe. But the person… If he has life experience, if he is honest with himself, if he is educated, he is able to think critically, to check things from the inside out, to separate the grain from the chaff: to decide what are illusions, enticing lies, perhaps comfortable lies, but still lies. What excites on an empty stomach, and what is a refined drink. And what is ethically, morally and aesthetically true.

Q.: You know, I’m surprised that in talking about how you see yourself, you haven’t mentioned you’re a writer.

A.: I’m a writer, I’m the author of ten, nine books, right now I’m writing the tenth. Yes, this is one of my identities. I am also, I was a soccer player, I was a boxer, I am the head of my family, I have a dog and I am a dog lover. I have many identities. I am a Jew, I am a Lithuania, I am many things. But my most effective self, as it were, what enriches me the most, is my relationship to the world as an artist. As a writer. As a person who seeks the precise verbalization of my emotions…

Full interview in Lithuanian here.