How is your health?
Thank you, everything is alright. I’m healthy, I have to be on the strip all the time. I am constantly running somewhere and doing something. In general, I am already a senior, an officially approved pensioner. And the fact that I am a pensioner, I found out suddenly and unexpectedly. I got a call from social services asking if I was going to retire. I wondered – in what pension? Until then, I had been running and spinning like a squirrel in a wheel and I didn’t think about any kind of pension. all kinds of shows, theatres, trips, flights, trips. And then suddenly they call me and tell me that I am a pensioner… It was a surprise for me. I already like the name better seniors. I am a senior citizen and receive a senior citizen’s allowance.
Each other, upon retirement, begins to write books.
A journalist already wanted to write about me and started interviewing fellow human beings, but that style of language was not really close to me. On the other hand, writing by yourself is utter laziness. Of course, I don’t lack adventures, there would be material for collected articles. I don’t have time to write at all, I have to travel. I’m sick of traveling. Don’t give me food and drink, just give me somewhere to go. I don’t travel with travel companies, I always find cheap tickets for 60-70 euros – there and back. I like active recreation. Walks along the mountains and mountain paths, along the sea and the ocean.
Is traveling a kind of addiction?
Yes, certainly. That bearded man upstairs has made this world so interesting and beautiful. It would be a sin not to see and enjoy it all. I keep hearing him urging me to go somewhere. For example – go to the Red Sea and go snorkeling! Look, what fish, what custodians! How wonderful it all is! And people are so peculiar too! And when I have enjoyed it for two or three weeks, I return to my homeland and laugh out loud. I come back home and see the same old political crabs go after the same country bully. If a person has traveled around the world, then really everything that happens here looks funny.
There is such a realization that a person does not realize two things – that he is already dead and that he is stupid. In both cases, fellow human beings have no choice but to grieve. And a person who does not know that he is stupid can quite safely get on the podium and claim that he knows how to run the country. But what to do there – the rest have to live on. The way this world is, you have to love it. Our life is full of surprises. If we know how to live with good and bright thoughts, then those surprises will be positive.
Of course, I not only travel, but also work. I have performances in the Daugavpils Theater and the Eastern border. I also filmed – Indra Burkovskis and I are in the main roles in the movie Postcard from Rome. It is the story of a person affected by dementia. I always have something to do, I don’t sit on the sofa, I don’t pick my nose and I don’t teach others how to live properly.
Have you been traveling for a long time?
As I came out of my mother’s body, I started traveling. The thing is, my parents were big travelers. During the Soviet era, they had a mosis, the so-called emka. With it, we traveled all over Latvia. We drove through the forests – mother picked mushrooms, father fished and hunted. You can say that I got the joy of traveling and enjoying nature with mother’s milk. Over time, that circle of travel began to expand more and more. For example, during the Soviet years, my wife and I hitchhiked to Dagestan, where one of my best friends lived at the time. It’s a blood friend of mine, as I say. I met him at the end of the eighties in the center of Riga. It all started with him offering me to smoke weed. That’s how we started talking and became friends. Later, I went to Dagestan every summer, while he visited me in winters.
We are traveling as a couple – me and my wife. It is usually the wife who finds the cheap flight tickets. She finds something, calls me and asks – are we flying? I answer that of course we fly. Being a freelancer, I can afford it. On the other hand, theater actors do not have such freedom. They have to slave away in the theater and do what the theater director and directors tell them. If they’re told to run bare-bottomed across the stage and holler, they’ll do it. However, I choose what I play. I invest the money I earn in travel, my heart and eyes are full of the whole wide world. This valuable experience will be with me even when I stand in front of that bearded gentleman. What can be more beautiful than the nature of this world?
Is your future life already planned?
I’ve never done it because everything happens to me without planning. The bearded guy who lives upstairs and who I talk to regularly gives me everything I need. He juggles both work in theaters and travels. For example, I only have to think about which part of the world I haven’t been to, and after two or three months a cheap ticket comes to me. All I have to do is buy it and fly away. Similarly with roles. I found the play, the role and the director myself. It happens that the theaters themselves invite me. As a guest artist, I have played in all Latvian theaters.
You have always stood out with optimism in interviews. Do you also tend to be down and depressed?
I have always liked to make people happy, many people think of me as a comedian. In the past, my wife’s colleagues at work even thought that my wife’s home life is full of joy and laughter. The wife, however, objected and explained that it is difficult to find a bigger annoyance than me. And it’s true – I’m grumpy. Entertaining others is hard and hard work. Especially if the audience is Latvian. It is no secret that Latvians are the smartest and most intelligent nation, we know everything. And that is why Latvians constantly teach each other how to live properly.
Clearly, I also get depressed moods. Looking for a way out, I read plays. Such positives that can then be offered to the audience. I don’t understand at all why black, depressing plays are performed. And then the audience sits in the hall gloomily and depressingly waits for the break, when they can go to the buffet and grab something.
Are you a company person?
No. I don’t like going to events and parties. Of course, because of work, I am constantly around people. When there is an event to be held, everyone considers it their duty to come over, tap on the shoulder, offer a drink and talk. I guess because there’s so much to be around people, I like being alone. Maybe not alone, but with the lady. When we travel, we don’t travel in large groups, but in pairs. But even then I walked alone along the ocean’s edge or in silence along the mountain paths. I also grow mushrooms alone. Then it happens that already at six in the morning I’m in the forest on the Engure side and I’m wandering around alone for three hours. I know good mushroom places, the mushrooms themselves come to me. And it’s not just the mushrooms that make me happy. Waiting for the sunrise in the forest is fantastic!
You can say that I am not a very social person. There are no more friends either, everyone has already passed away. But I have shows. These are plays that I have found myself. The Witness is shown in the eastern border, where I play with Aija Dzērvi and Pēteri Galviņa. People laugh at first and cry at the end.
Lately I don’t go around the theaters much and watch what others are showing, I just occasionally read and see what the critics have to say. I am such an individual – lonely. Although, of course, I am not alone, I have a family – my wife, three daughters, two granddaughters and one grandson. I’m fine.
