There used to be an excellent radio show called The Way People Live, hosted by Benas Rupeika. He hasn’t been producing the show since around 2018. However, there is still an active Facebook group with a description that reads: “Unexpected encounters, thoughts, and memories about life, images, and faces inspired by the long-running radio show of the same name.” The group is filled with posts about seemingly everyday matters that, in reality, are deeply significant events and moments.
Very often people try to prove to us that they are very uninteresting and have nothing to say. When we do manage to persuade them, the result surprises them too. As we said goodbye to the year, we had a sense that there was a lack of adventure, so we decided to dedicate an entire issue to exploring how these Kaunas’ people live and how they come home from their jobs, offices, and performances.
There were more than a few people who tried to talk us out of it. They tried to lure us to their workplaces or reschedule the meeting sometime in the spring. But we didn’t give up, just so that you too could get a glimpse of simple and cozy, but unique and valuable (not necessarily just in terms of building materials and furniture) flats and houses.
Who would have thought that we’d find dried flower collections in the homes of not one but two of the people featured in the magazine? Birutė Letukaitė and Rokas Jurkus are separated by almost fifty years and a few kilometers, but what they have in common are dead roses. Teodoras Biliūnas and Kristina Šilinytė are more often on the other side of the screen and lens, but this time they show us how one collects a dowry. Gediminas Zujus had to be lured back to Šančiai from Vilnius. Vilnius native Viktorija Vitkauskaitė shares her elegant experience as a guest in Kaunas, while Monika Balčiauskaitė invites us to revisit a once very lively apartment on Kęstučio Street.
Another important stop in this issue is Tbilisi, where Gintaras Česonis wandered with his camera. Let this be our symbolic support and wish to the Kartvelians. The staircase is an integral element of visiting someone as well as leaving, but how often do we pay attention to this liminal space?
