Meditations of Neilus Aurelius

I am still staying here on Vancouver Island in my aunt’s apartment and I am once again writing by lamplight and not my usual candlelight. My aunt goes to bed early so there is a stillness in the apartment and there is much of the evening left. I have been out on her balcony looking at the sky. The sky always seems more open and expansive here than in my little garden at home in the UK. Of course the sky is open and expansive everywhere, but here there are less houses to block the view. Tall spruces and pines on the horizon add to the sky’s grandeur. High as they are, they are dwarfed beneath its immensity.

A full moon has already appeared, even though the sky has not yet darkened and is still a light azure. Streaks of pink twilight clouds try in vain to hide the moon from view. I am reminded of Shakespeare’s line from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’: ‘the watery eye of the moon.’ The moon does look like a watery eye tonight. Its shadowy contours look like tears forming. So as I gaze at the sky, I am at one with Shakespeare again. Those moments have been magical in my life. I am sure he was a sky-gazer himself in his youth in rural Stratford and in London for that matter for there were fewer tall buildings then to block his view.

As I look at the moon, I wonder what it would be like if could see two moons from the earth in the night sky. What if they were in orbit close together – like two great eyes shedding tears for the woes of our world? My reverie is broken as a flock of crying seagulls, presumably on their last flight of the day, suddenly dart through the sky beneath the moon as the chill night breeze rustles the leaves of the pines.

I sit down and admonish myself for not sitting in my own garden enough so far this year and looking at the sky. Marcus would have spent hours gazing at the sky on the Danube plains on his campaigns, helping him to reflect, as much as gazing at the fire in his tent would. Sky-gazing is an ancient form of meditation and no doubt it was practiced by the indigenous communities on this island as it was by indigenous communities across the world.

I am now thinking back to a little ceremony I was privileged to witness this evening. It was conducted by Bruce Underwood, a representative of the Salish nation. The Salish are one of the Canadian First Nations. They are the indigenous people of this particular part of Vancouver Island. The Pacific Ocean on this coastline is also known as the Salish Sea, being named after them.

Bruce Underwood, the Salish representative was performing a ‘blanketing’ ceremony. In the ceremony, someone receives a blanket as a symbol of high regard and respect from the Salish nation. The blanket, which has a clasp to turn it into a cloak, is placed over the person’s shoulders, like a ceremonial robe. Before he did this, Bruce gave a speech explaining that we are all people of the spirit and that our own spirit speaks to the spirit in another person. Just as the spirit of one nation can speak to another nation, one community to another community and needs to in these fractured times.

Then he chanted a song, a blessing, while slowly beating a small drum. The slow beat of the drum reminded me of the slow beating of the heart. The chant was haunting, strong and resonant in his baritone voice, yet gentle and beautiful. As soon as he begin to sing it, I was aware of the echoes of distant times and places. It reminded me of the soaring of the human spirit through the centuries, as simple as a sea bird in flight.

Through this simple chant, this Salish man’s spirit spoke to my spirit and perhaps the spirits of his ancestors did too. For there is more to us than our physical selves and our cognitive selves for that matter, our critical and analytical faculties. Our minds are never still, forever processing the endless bombardment of different media. It is only in stillness and silence that our own spirit can speak to us and the spirits of others too, as his spirit did to me. We are mind, body and spirit and the chant was an integrated expression of all three: the drumbeat signifying the body; the words of the chant, the mind and the music of the chant, the spirit. So his slow dignified chant helped me to listen to my own spirit and to experience the spirits of other times, of other ages.

It also prepared me for the blanketing ceremony that followed. There is nothing regal about a blanket yet the ceremony was as dignified as a coronation. A coronation robe is a symbol of power and therefore of finest gold cloth and bejewelled. A blanket is a piece of woollen cloth after all, but it is warm, protective and comforting over the shoulders. I could see from a distance that the blanket had a special woven design. What it signified I do not know. But it was lowered on the person’s shoulders with great dignity.

There have been times when I have felt lonely, apprehensive or lost and it has seemed as if my shoulders were covered with a blanket of snow. But there have been other times when I have felt surrounded by love – the genuine love and affection of friends and family, the respect of colleagues and students. The ceremony I witnessed tonight has made me realise that I am more than surrounded by love – I am blanketed by it. This is what covers me, keeps me warm, protects and comforts me. It invests me with a special dignity. We are all blanketed – it is just that we don’t stop and listen to our spirit to realise it.

By now I imagine you are wondering who was ‘blanketed’ at this little ceremony and where it took place. You may even be thinking it was myself! Well it wasn’t. Although, as I have just explained, in a highly personal way, I did feel ‘blanketed’ myself.

The person who was ‘blanketed’ was a priest, Fr Rolf Hasenach, at the beginning of a party at his church to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of his ordination. The ‘blanketing’ was a sign of respect which the Salish nation have for him as he does for them. It was an acknowledgment by Fr Rolf and his parish community that the celebration was talking place on the sacred ancestral lands of the Salish people. So Bruce Underwood, their representative was invited to give a welcome and a blessing before the great ‘potlatch’ – the great feast – to celebrate the anniversary. Hence his chant with the drum.

It was a wonderful occasion with 350 parishioners and I felt privileged to be invited and especially to witness the blanketing ceremony at the beginning of the festivities. Some of Rolf’s brother priests were present and the local bishop and yes, prayers were said too. I felt that he was also blanketed with the deep and warm affection of all the guests in the room. As was I being only an annual visitor.

But as the Salish representative said, we are all spirit and our spirits speak to eachother. Fr Rolf’s celebration was a witness to that. In the Christian church we speak of the ‘communion of saints’, of being one, through prayer and through silence, with the holy men and women who have gone before us. Perhaps there is also the ‘communion of spirits’: of being one with the spirits that have gone before us. They may not be people we have ever met or even read about or know about. As I listened to the Salish chant, I was experiencing this, as much as when I listen to ancient plainchant sung by monks in a monastery. There is a unity of spirit which binds all humanity together. Any attempts at uniting peoples is an expression of this.

At the celebration, I felt myself wanting to stand up and recite a toast written by Noel Coward for a one act play of his called ‘Family Album’.

‘Here’s a toast to each of us
And all of us together.
Here’s a toast to happiness
And reasonable pride.
May our touch on life
Be lighter than a seabird’s feather
And may all sorrows in our path
Politely step aside.’

May our touch on life be lighter than a seabird’s feather, indeed, and may our own spirit circle and soar like a seabird too.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

I am writing this away from home and by lamplight rather than candlelight. I am in a place that Marcus would not have known about and would not have been able to conquer, thousands of miles away from the mainland of Europe.

At present I am on a little holiday in Canada, visiting family on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I come here almost every summer. My aunt Barbara lives in a little town called Sidney by the Pacific Ocean. This afternoon, the ocean lived up its name: it was peaceful, placid and still. So was the grey heron I observed, perfectly poised on one leg in the water by the shore, as thin and elegant as a ballet dancer en pointe.

However, since I arrived a few days ago, I have been far from calm and cool and collected like Mr Heron. To begin with, dear auntie no longer has wi-fi. I find this quite irksome as I have to go down the hall to my cousin’s apartment or to a coffee shop to read my mails, check my bank and credit card accounts, What’s Ap and Messenger, see who has died recently on Wikipedia and continue with my Italian course on Duo Lingo. Not to be able to comprehensively use my I phone at a swipe has seemed like losing a limb. Of course I would have lost a small amount of money as well as a limb if, in impatience, desperation and extravagance, I had switched on mobile data on my phone thereby enabling instant Internet access.

In addition to this inconvenience, I have been able to receive texts on my phone but unable to send them. So my sense of isolation has seemed complete. I might as well have been in the far flung Northern territories like the Yukon, where they are enjoying very warm weather at the moment according to local TV here. The text situation has now been rectified but nevertheless my first text-less twenty-four hours here have been exceedingly bleak.

Over the last day or so, I have spent much of my time settling in and catching up with the family but, nevertheless, I have been constantly checking a phone that wasn’t doing anything. As a result, I have felt bereft, dare I say it, in cold turkey. I have realised how addicted I am to my phone. A prominent businessman recently commented that his mobile phone is his mistress, and a mistress to be obeyed. How right he is. We are not only addicted to instant gratification but also to instant communication. I am an impatient person, and even more so since I purchased an I phone. ‘Why haven’t they replied yet?’ I ask myself, ‘Why haven’t I got an e mail?’ I suppose, now that I am retired I have nothing else to think about.

This continual concentration on the little screen in our hand can also stop us from noticing our surroundings or the people around us. A friend recently told me that he was annoyed with people who watch movies on their phone while they are walking in the street and so slow down the people behind them. When I first tried to use google maps to find the house of a friend I was visiting, I actually bumped into a lamp post!

Headphones can make people oblivious to others around them. I have often found it amusing watching people talking into their phones in the street or on the bus or train. They look as if they are talking to themselves, sometimes quite dramatically as if they are insane. It is annoying, however, when their conversations are forced upon others sitting close to them. The other summer, I remember sitting opposite a woman on the train and being most disconcerted as she talked to her boy friend or partner on the other end of the line in graphic detail about the rampant sex they had enjoyed the night before. And this was on a crowded train on a Saturday afternoon with families sitting nearby. Private lives are becoming a thing of the past.

So I felt rather guilty this afternoon, as I observed Mr Heron, who also appeared to have lost a limb as he stood elegantly on one leg in the waves. Since arriving here, I have been so immersed in my phone trauma I have hardly noticed the tall stately pines in the creamy twilight; the driftwood on the shore, blanched white by the waves; the small islands on the horizon, like blue grey pillows on the surface of the azure sea.

As I breathed in the sweet smell of the ocean and watched a lone boat skid over the waves breaking the stillness, I decided that technology may be a wonderful tool but it is also a tyrant.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

It is quite a while since I last sat beside my candle to reflect and to compose a meditation. I have been busy directing and presenting our latest school production at the Rose Theatre Kingston: ‘The Prince and the Pauper’, which took place last week.

As I sit here preparing to write my meditation beside my candle, I am thinking of Marcus Aurelius, my inspiration. I am remembering his face. I have seen it recently or rather a marble representation of it. I have just been on a visit to Florence and there, in the Uffizi Gallery, were two very long corridors lined with numerous Greek and Roman statues. Among these there were many Caesars looking down in imperial disdain on the herds of visitors as if they were captives dragged home to Rome. There seemed to be a statue or bust of every Emperor that lived. I noticed Hadrian, who looks quite similar to Marcus himself as they both have beards. Indeed, for a moment I thought Hadrian was Marcus until I read the little card in Italian and English on the wall beside the bust and realised he wasn’t. My mistake led me in search of Marcus himself.

Marcus was born during Hadrian’s reign. His rise to power was by adoption: when his wealthy father died, he was adopted by his grandfather and then, when his grandfather died, by his uncle, Aurelius Antoninus. Marcus then took his uncle’s name: Aurelius. Hadrian had no sons to succeed him so he adopted Aurelius Antoninus as his heir and when Hadrian died, he became Emperor Antoninus Pius. There is a temple to him in the Forum in Rome. And so, when Antoninus Pius died, Marcus Aurelius himself became Emperor, through all those adoptions. It could be argued he became Emperor by accident.
Half way through my search through the thicket of tourists in the long corridor I found his old uncle Antoninus Pius, looking serious and grave as a ‘pius’ (dutiful) man should.

I finally discovered Marcus at the end of the corridor with his stoical detached gaze on top of a black marble plinth. It was an older Marcus that I saw, with his curled hair and full beard, very much the philosopher rather than the military commander.

Because I was looking at a bust of his head and shoulders, it seemed as if he was about to turn his head and share his thoughts with me. A full length statue would have emphasised his power and conquests like the huge bronze one of him on horseback, hand raised in blessing, in the Capitoline Museum in Rome which I have seen several times and which has never ceased to impress me.

Yet here there was an intimacy about our encounter even though his eyes seemed to be looking beyond and above the corridor, lost in meditation again, perhaps sensing the aimlessness of the constant movement of the crowds around him. In his “Meditations’ he writes ‘No action should be undertaken without aim or other than in conformity with a principle affirming the art of life’. In other words, our actions should be focused and should conform to our own philosophy, a philosophy that upholds life. We have seen very little of that among our politicians recently!
I must admit to being a little hard on my fellow gallery visitors. They are not necessarily aimless. After all one of the aims of going to a gallery is to explore, to discover and to appreciate. Not all visitors are aiming for a famous picture or sculpture or the work of a favourite artist. However so many were moving quickly from picture to picture, from statue to statue without staying long enough to take in what they were seeing, except perhaps to have the obligatory selfie with the famous ones.

This was borne out by a video presentation towards the end of the gallery route. My friend Alan, who accompanied me, watched it. A photographer, posing as a gallery visitor with an I pad, filmed the reactions of visitors to some of the gallery rooms. He turned these into a short film. His montage included people who would come up to a picture, take a photo of it and then move on, without even a cursory look at it. Our culture seems to be about grabbing and taking home, about acquisition and possession. Grabbing the picture as a digital image on a phone or I pad is more important than letting the picture grab the person. Possession is more important than interaction.

But back to Marcus. I was interacting with him even though his gaze was not on me but above me. His eyes looked real and the artist, whoever he was, had caught the depth of Marcus’ personality in them. They were the eyes of a real thinker. I have always presumed that classical statues had blank eyes with no pupils, to signify either that the statue was a representation of a dead person, who’s spirit was no longer in the body or that the statue was just that, a statue and not a real person. But apparently, the Romans gradually developed the idea of portraiture in statuary.

Impressive though Marcus’s stare was, it could not match the intensity and fire of the eyes Michelangelo’s David, which we saw at the Academia Gallery the following afternoon. But then, David is not a philosopher but a youth about to fire the stone from his sling that felled the giant Goliath. Situated in its huge grey alcove at the end of a great hall, the sheer size of the statue created an atmosphere of hushed respect, of silent awe among the onlookers. The overwhelming magnetism of the statue forced visitors to stop and look.

It is sad that Michelangelo’s David, along with Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ has become an artistic cliche. They are the most famous works of art and have been reproduced in so many different ways and used to advertise so many different products from chocolates and fridge magnets to underwear. On my trip I noticed ‘David’ kitchen aprons and briefs and a tee shirt with a cartoon Mona Lisa doing the ‘dab’ arm gesture of current youth culture.
Yet, David certainly towers above all this banal consumerism. I have yet to see the Mona Lisa in the Paris Louvre. David’s face is an enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s smile is purported to be. Sometimes he looks very stern, at others serene and then as if he is smiling. The young Michelangelo’s achievement is to create a figure that is the embodiment of stillness and yet about to exert great energy and strength. His achievement is even more emphasised by six other male statues in the great hall, all unfinished from his later life. Their bodies seem to be wrestling with the rock that still confines them, their torsos writhing to come alive. From a rock such as theirs, David was brought to life.

The eyes, it is in the eyes -as a good actor and director knows. How do we look at works of art? With the intense, focused gaze of David? Or with the meditative gaze of Marcus? Or with the blank almost pupil-less stare of an Ancient Greek statue?

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!
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Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

As I sit here besides my flickering candle and begin to write, I am thinking of someone else who wrote by candlelight. Someone who has been in my thoughts recently. This is Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch artist. When he was in his early twenties, he lived in South London for three years between 1873 and 1876. I have just been to an exhibition called ‘Van Gogh and Britain’ at the Tate Britain gallery. It is about those years when he lived here. It is ironic that the gallery is on Millbank as Vauxhall is opposite it on the other side of the river and Van Gough lived near the Oval and in Stockwell not far from Vauxhall. As my friend Teresa and I stepped out onto Millbank after seeing the exhibition, I could not help thinking that Van Gogh no doubt strolled along this street himself on his frequent walks by the Thames. But he would not have passed the Gallery as the site was a prison then, apparently.

There are numerous facsimiles of his letters home in the exhibition. They are written in his neat handwriting with letters unjoined. I have never seen his handwriting before except his signature ‘Vincent’ at the bottom of his paintings. He would write in Dutch and in English as he was fluent in both. Sometimes there would be little pencil sketches of views of places he had seen on his walks at the top or bottom corner of the letter. The river and the embankment seemed to hold a fascination for him. He wasn’t a professional artist then, but worked in the art trade for a man called Goupil, who was a relative.
In one letter he has copied a poem – ‘To Autumn’ by John Keats – which influenced him. The exhibition is about influences: how those three years in London influenced him (and nurtured him as an artist) and how he influenced other artists (up to the 1950’s). From the paintings and sketches of his own on display there are very definite connections between them and paintings and sketches of British artists that he saw while he was here: notably Constable and Millais.

I was very interested to discover that Van Gogh also greatly admired Dickens. He read ‘A Christmas Carol’ every year and also admired ‘Hard Times’, Dickens’ satire on a Northern Industrial town. He related to Dickens’ portrayals of the lower classes and championing of the poor and his pictures are directly influenced by this in his depictions of labourers and farmers.

He was similarly influenced by prints of the engravings of Gustave Dore, who was famous for his epic pictures of the Bible but also for his scenes of the life of the London Poor. I used several of them for my production of ‘Oliver Twist’ as digital projections for backdrops. One picture by Dore, of the exercise yard at Newgate prison shows prisoners walking in circles in a dismal cramped yard with high walls. It was the direct inspiration for Van Gogh’s own picture of the yard in the asylum at San Remy, where he was an inmate for a while and where he continued to paint. Like the prisoners, the inmates walk around the yard in a repetitive circle.

The prints, known as ‘black and whites’ were sold in his uncle’s art shop and he bought several, which he kept and took back to the Netherlands with him and eventually to Paris and Arles. ‘I often felt low in England but the Black and White and Dickens made up for it all,’ he wrote later.
As I walked around the exhibition, I was reminded of a play I saw in 2003 called ‘Vincent In Brixton’ by Nicholas Wright. It is a fictional account of when he was living in a boarding house in Hackford Road (there is a blue plaque there now). He falls in love with the landlady’s daughter Eugenie (which was apparently true) and later with her mother, a grieving widowed teacher (which is fictional). I remember vividly a long scene where the mother (wonderfully played by Clare Higgins) and Vincent (played by the equally wonderful Dutch actor Jochum Ten Haaf) slowly fall in love. It was one of the most beautifully paced and tender scenes I have ever seen in the theatre as they both realise their feelings for each other and as slowly Ursula comes out of her depression. She encourages him in his art and he leads her out of her grief. Of course he eventually moves on, leaving her more devastated than before. It is the ache of teaching: they always move on.

Vincent’s famous painting of the harbour at Arles, ‘Starry Night’ could be linked to a sketch from his days in London. He frequently made sketches on his walks around the capital and particularly liked walking along the embankment by the river. He also liked prints of views of the Embankment and collected them. There is one in the exhibition by Giuseppe De Nittis depicting Victoria Embankment in 1875. Unlike ‘Starry Night’ it is a morning or afternoon scene. A well dressed man and woman, genteelly perambulate along the riverside away from the artist. They are placed in the centre of the scene.

By contrast, the two figures in Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ are in the bottom right hand corner of the frame, hardly noticeable and dwarfed by the night sky and the curved river bend and the bright lights of the town. They are an artisan couple, huddled together as they trudge along, weary and middle-aged or perhaps older as their faces are indistinct as is their class. They are not elegantly dressed like the two respectable figures in De Nittis’ print: the man wears an ill-fitting jacket and the woman is enveloped in a woollen shawl. Significantly they are on the other side of the water from the town and trudging through a field or waste land in the gloom. Not for them the well-lit streets. Not for Van Gogh either as his perspective is from the wasteland too. Perhaps his perspective always was.

The stars in the night sky explode like miniature fireworks. The lights of the town are streaks of yellow, golden banners reflected in the deep blue, almost black gloom of the river. The bridge across the river is a shadow and barely visible.

What impressed me was the various shades of deep blue to almost black and the thick brush strokes on the canvas. Just by looking at them I could almost touch them. The uneven surface of the oil painting gleamed in the light of the exhibition room. No reproduction could match this bold texture or the various hues of blue or the dazzling gold of the exploding stars, as was obvious to me when I visited the gift shop at the end of the exhibition and looked at the reproductions there. So why did people take photos of the picture with their phones as I stood absorbing it? How could they capture the painting’s vibrant textures in a flat digital image?

There were several self portraits in the show. Van Gogh’s eyes were characteristically intense and pained with an inner vision. If you didn’t already possess a superficial knowledge of his life, his times of severe depression and mental illness are clear from his uncomfortable stare. There was a kind of arrogance about his suffering saying ‘You cannot understand what I feel.’

In his ‘Self Portrait With a Felt Hat’, his pale drawn face is emphasised by his auburn beard under a black hat. His eyes are brooding and intense, angry almost at our effrontery for snapping with a phone; for trying to capture his essence in a digital image;for looking but not looking at his work; for moving on from picture to picture quickly instead of lingering and absorbing his vision. Vincent said ‘One must find beautiful that which is beautiful.’ How could anyone find beauty in his work by quickly moving from one picture to another or by being more interested in snapping it that spending a little time to look at it, to find the beauty in it for oneself?

Nowhere was this more evident than in one of the last rooms, where the famous ‘Sunflowers’ picture was displayed. Everyone was snapping away: it seemed to me to be almost aggressive, as if everyone was grasping and clutching at the picture: ‘It is famous, I must have it on my phone.’ Instead of being passive for a few minutes and absorbing the glorious exuberance of the yellows. The flowers seem to embrace you in their intense warmth. For the first time I noticed tinges of Vincent’s own auburn hair in the petals. In his depression is this what he longed to be: glorious warm sunshine? Or is that what he was deep down? Are the sunflowers a depiction of his true spirit?

We have become so used to swiping and skimming and scrolling that we cannot be still or rather our eyes cannot be still. How can we appreciate art or beauty unless our eyes can be still? Unless our minds and our spirit can be still?

As I close I am thinking of Vincent’s letters again. Of his neat handwriting with unjoined letters. My handwriting has become virtually undecipherable. I must learn to be still again.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

As I sit here beside the steady flame of my candle, I have been trying to remember how many productions I have directed at my school. My first one – ‘A Christmas Carol’ – was in December 1983. Initially I began counting them on my fingers as I tried to remember them in chronological order. I did quite well. But inevitably, another play came to mind and I had got the order wrong so I had to start counting again. At that point I wrote down the number 10 on a piece of paper, whenever I got to the next ten. But then another two had slipped the net and I got worried about the right order of another two and I stopped. This ceased to be a memory exercise, let alone an exercise in mindfulness (as my mental stress evolved rather than dissolved). It became an exercise in humility, as, in the end, I couldn’t remember them all in my head. So I had to bow to writing all the titles down, in order year by year, and, strangely enough, they fell into place. When, I looked over them, I hadn’t missed out one.

The truth is, I tend not to write things down. This is because I have always had a good memory. I’ve always been efficient at learning lines: I am a ‘quick study’ as they say in the Theatre. It’s how I got through my exams at school: I learnt the information like a role and would pretend I was teaching the topic to a class. This wasn’t so useful when I did my English finals at Oxford with ten exams in a row! I did a lot of talking to an imaginary class that week! But it was the germ of my career. I can’t stop imparting my knowledge to others. I guess I am a natural teacher – and probably a crashing bore at times too! My friends have never told me I am, so they must be good friends. Perhaps after reading this, they will! No wonder I wasn’t successful in bars sometimes.

So after I compiled my list, I discovered I have notched up 57 productions (including the latest one I am directing – ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ – which will be on at the Rose Theatre Kingston on Thursday June 27 – tickets can booked on the theatre website!). Alongside that list, there are 27 tours of Hungary, some involving one play but more often then not two.

In his surreal early poem, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock’, T.S.Eliot writes: ‘I have measured out my life in coffee spoons’. Similarly, I could write: ‘I have measured out my life in productions.’ In fact, I just have this evening, with my list. Except, of course there has been more to my life than presenting plays. In my school career, I was teaching English and Drama too. Heaven knows how many lessons I have taught in 34 years at the school! And I spent a lot of time guiding sixth form students towards university and some towards drama school.

But there has been more to my life than school. I didn’t become a teacher until I was 27 and worked in offices before that and saw so much theatre (and took in many ideas for staging by osmosis!). And now I am moving on from teaching to blogging and writing. As I have mentioned in a previous blog, friendships (both in and out of school) have been so very important to me, as well as family too.

I was thinking about my image of the stained glass window again the other day. In another blog, I likened all my friendships to a stained glass window of abstract design: each pane a separate friend and linked together through knowing me. The other day I was thinking of my own life as a stained glass window too, composed of the various facets of my life. I imagine my teaching and my theatre work would be two very large panes and I an unsure which would be in the centre. Actually my Christian faith would take centre place. The pattern is unimportant, I suppose, the arrangement doesn’t matter really. Or perhaps the design is something I should explore further.

However, it is important to realise that, as individuals, we are many different things. We may not be a polymath, learned in many different subjects and academic disciplines. We may not be a Renaissance man or woman (like Da Vinci or Michelangelo) with creative skills in different areas. But our lives do have many different facets. There is that bland phrase ‘life’s rich tapestry’: well each individual life is a rich tapestry.
However it is very easy to fall into the trap of being defined by one’s work, concentrating on one pane of glass in the window, if you like. This is often when work takes over and that is very easy if you aren’t in a relationship as I discovered around my 50th birthday. I was living to work rather than working to live. It can be so easy to fall into this trap if you are in the creative arts. You begin to think in terms of the next project all the time, in my case, the next production or the next tour.

I suppose great artists never get out of this syndrome and that may be why, frequently, they aren’t very good with relationships. They live for their art, like the opera singer Tosca, in Puccini’s opera, who sings ‘I live for Art, I live for Love.’ She is meant to be a great singer (and you have to be to sing the role itself) but she is also a highly jealous lover. Her jealousy is manipulated by the villain Baron Scarpia, leading to her tragic end. The greatest exponent of the role, Maria Callas, mirrored the syndrome in her own life: she was a phenomenal operatic artist but her personal life was tragic.

This syndrome of thinking of the next project all the time has stayed with me, but to a lesser degree. It is difficult to shake off, especially as I have been writing for school as well. It has not just involved planning a play but writing it as well, you see. That has continued into my retirement as I am still directing at school.

It is so important not be defined by your job or retirement can seem not only like a loss of focus or purpose, but a loss of identity. Shakespeare’s King Lear goes through this in what is Shakespeare’s most monumental and bleak tragedy. King Lear is old and decides to give up his kingdom to his daughters. But he cannot stop being King even though he has given up his kingdom. This is because kingship is his identity. Even in his madness in a howling storm he shouts to the elements ‘Aye, I am every inch a King.’ I have not felt like Lear since I officially retired in 2017, but I have had my moments. I even envisaging my retirement as my next project for a while! The syndrome persists you see.

The problem is we are constantly defined by what we do. How often, since leaving university, have I heard the line ‘What are you doing now?’ It has morphed into ‘What are you going to do now you have retired?’ And I feel a compulsion to say something, as if I am making an excuse for being idle. These questions are given out of an interest in my life and concern, I hasten to add.

I have learnt that the real question is not ‘What are you going to do now?’, bur ‘What are you going to be now?’ Life is not about doing but being. Being a whole person.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

Once again I sit here gazing at the candle before me, and like Marcus, I reflect up on my life or one part of it: my youth.

I have spent the long weekend at my old Oxford college: Pembroke. I go there once a year to preach to students at Sunday Evensong and to catch up with friends, including the chaplain, Andrew Teale, who is a most kind host.

Inevitably memories flood in as I walk around the college where I studied English for three years. Pembroke is a small college: intimate and cosy, I would say, and I felt at home there most of the time and made good friends there, a few of whom are still part of my life now. One, my friend Peter, came to Evensong and stayed to dine in Hall. As we looked out over the sea of young faces in Hall, the inevitable line came to us both: ‘Were we ever that young?’

I like to stay in college in one of the guest rooms and one room in particular, which overlooks the Chapel Quad. I look out onto the small squat 17th Century chapel to the left and the Victorian dining Hall ahead with the lawn in the centre. This weekend students have been playing croquet on it. But it is the buildings to the right almost under the window which most attract my interest. At this time of year, with the window open, I can smell the lush wisteria that blooms around the entrance of the old senior common room and the roses around the arch to North Quad immediately under the window sill. The stillness is inviting in this heady fragrance.As the sky darkens, the old lamps in the walls of the buildings make their sandstone glisten. I sit watching the sky fade ineluctably into night and the glow of the lamps growing stronger, giving warmth to the gloom.

When I was an undergraduate in college, I noticed little of this, except the stillness and the freshness of the twilight sometimes. Summer term is something special in Oxford. My first summer term was like arriving at college for the first time all over again. The college looked so different in the summer, and the city too: the other college gardens and the parks and Christchurch Meadow by the river. I was intense and in my own world in a way: self absorbed then recklessly convivial. Little has changed! I was young – and, dear me, the students do look so very young now to my older eyes. No: I am wrong. I do remember being caught up in the stillness of those summer evenings fading into night and the intoxicating perfume of the flowers.

But I didn’t notice the lamps then: the indigo sky, yes, but not the lamps. Perhaps lamp-gazing in the twilight is for older people, when we are more mellow and content, when life is less intense, less raw, less filled with angst. Less vibrant? No: I am still capable of reverie: in that room overlooking Chapel Quad. When I was an undergraduate it was that heavy floral perfume that sent me into a reverie, and the violet sky. Now it is the glow of the lamps. I am older now, so I am looking in a different direction, I suppose. The reverie is still real, still potent, but not as intense.

Earlier today I visited the Weston Library, which is the new building opposite the university’s main library: the Bodleian. The Bodleian Library is one of the largest libraries in the world and houses manuscripts and books ancient and new. It is the old medieval university library which was restored by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1598. The library has a right to a copy of any book that is printed and famous people have bequeathed their private papers to the library too and there are a multitude of volumes from all over the globe.

So the Weston library is a new overspill of the extensive stock for use by students and academics. I like to go in there because on the ground floor there are always some interesting exhibitions and there’s a gift shop and cafe.

As I sat in the cafe in the entrance hall this morning, I noticed two strange customers seated a few tables away, opposite me. It was a man and woman dressed in identical long dark green gaberdine coats and identical woollen green and cream hats. It was cold for May today but they looked trussed up for winter and they both wore mittens. There were two large cups of coffee infront of them: they were sharing one and the other was being saved for later as the saucer was placed over the top of the cup to keep the contents warm.

It was difficult to work out their ages as their faces were lined and worn with care. They could have been late middle-age or a little younger. The man’s face and hands were dirty but the woman looked cleaner and their bags were on the floor beside them.

Oxford is famous for its eccentrics but I am not sure they were. I would call them ‘homeless’, but it seems too modern a word for the odd couple sipping coffee opposite me. If they were both male, I would use the old phrase ‘gentlemen of the road’ or ‘tramps’. They seemed to be vagrants. But their innate dignity makes me ashamed to use any of those phrases to describe them. They seemed more like late 19th or early 20th Century rural travellers, going from place to place looking for work. Yet they were happy and content and totally at home in the tall and spacious modern entrance hall, watching the world go by, looking rural and incongruous in this centre of academia: to be written about, rather than writing themselves. Or perhaps in their shabby bags, a masterpiece lay hidden. Or a thesis to shake the world.

The woman’s face was round and lined: an apt subject for Rembrandt to paint. The man had a red hatchet face and would have been more at home in an illustration in a Dickens’ novel. As they conversed their heads bobbed about in comical fashion. There was something cosy about them, as if they were Hobbit residents of Tolkien’s Shire.

As I observed them, I tried to work out their relationship: fellow travellers perhaps? Or brother and sister? Husband and wife? Or lovers even. The man would look around now and then as if protecting the woman from a hostile world. They sat side by side and seemed close and intimate, sharing the cup of coffee lovingly. Then the man looked around again and quickly kissed her on the cheek. Such a tender moment as if they were two secret lovers on the run.

I finished my coffee and wandered into the gift shop. Then I went into the exhibitions. I was meeting a friend for lunch and still had time to kill when I came out so I got myself another coffee.

There they still were, sipping coffee from their own loving cup, cocooned in their own company, comfortable and free. I envied them their intimacy – something I have never known.

Then I worked out where they were from. They would have been at home in a Thomas Hardy novel. They had brought Hardy’s Wessex into the Weston Library. His novels are on the shelves somewhere. I thought of students studying them and analysing them

somewhere in the library or sequestered in their rooms in colleges nearby.

Perhaps they would learn more from studying this deeply intimate and totally free couple and then their own intense student angst would drift away. I wish mine had.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

As I begin to write, I look for a moment at the little flame of the candle behind my tablet. I realise what damage a small flame can do, as I reflect upon the devastation caused by the fire in Norte Dame Cathedral in Paris. Although, at present, we do not know how that momentous conflagration was caused.

So, for several days I have not been candle-gazing but fire-gazing as I have been following the incident on the television news. When I first saw the news late on Tuesday evening, I must confess to being initially as shocked as the crowds who quickly assembled on the Ile De La Cite to witness the blaze. Their shock was palpable as they silently watched the cathedral enveloped by flames. The heart of the Gothic Cathedral was a roaring fire and easily visible as the roof had caved in. It was the shock of disbelief and impotence as there was nothing the numerous bystanders could do except watch as the hundreds of firefighters, dwarfed by the conflagration, fought to douse the flames. The shock was shared by millions around the globe.

It is remarkable that this cathedral in Paris inspires so much international affection, perhaps because it is a main tourist attraction in Paris and so many have visited the basilica as a tourist, or, like myself, as a Christian, to worship as well. This affection has resulted in an outpouring of donations to restore Notre Dame.

I find it even more remarkable that, over the last few days, the cathedral has emerged as a potent symbol not only for Parisians but for the French nation, that it has a special place in their consciousness, in their hearts. It is a symbol of Paris, of France itself and perhaps because of recent terrorist attacks, even more potent.

Perhaps this is partly due to Victor Hugo’s famous novel ‘Notre Dame de Paris’. The book has been frequently mentioned over the last few days in the media in connection with the fire. Hugo’s famous 1831 story of the hunchback bell ringer Quasimodo and the gypsy girl Esmeralda has made the building a part of global culture. Indeed, Hugo has created our image of the cathedral, much as Shakespeare has of ancient Rome. The cathedral itself is a character in the novel, it could be argued the main character, so detailed and atmospheric is Hugo’s description of the ‘majestic and sublime edifice.’ Prophetically, the building catches fire towards the end of the novel as Quasimodo wards off armies of the populace by pouring boiling oil on them as they try to rescue Esmeralda from the cathedral: ‘two spouts terminating in gargoyles, vomited sheets of fiery rain.’

Hugo wrote the book to draw attention to the dilapidated cathedral itself – ‘the countless defacements and mutilations which men and time have subjected to that venerable monument’ – and other historic churches and buildings of Gothic architecture which had been ransacked and defaced in the revolution and left to go to ruin or destroyed to make way for new buildings. In a way his novel is a campaign document and he does digress from the plot at times (and at length) to make his point. As a result his novel and his campaigning led to the extensive renovation of the cathedral. So, to some extent Hugo has come to rescue of the cathedral once again in 2019. Apparently sales of his novel have soared in the last few days on Amazon!

I have always been haunted by the story since seeing the classic 1939 film as a child (and many times since). Charles Laughton brings great dignity and pathos to the role of Quasimodo in one of the greatest acting performances on film. I have recently looked at the film again on a luminous blue ray transfer. The film is very true to Hugo’s vision of medieval Paris with amazing sets and highly detailed artwork and detailed crowd scenes (all filmed under the sweltering Californian sunshine!).

The film led me to read the novel as a teenager and again years later. I had the idea of dramatising it as a school production a few years after I first came to the school. Going to Paris and seeing the Cathedral for myself finally inspired me to write it along with my colleague Phil Watkins in 2006. He had thought it would be a good project for a school production too. Now the burnt out Cathedral seems to be calling me, telling me to revive that production again.

The burnt out shell seems to be an image of Europe itself, an image of European civilisation even, dilapidated, crumbling, falling in on itself. Yet still standing; it is not completely destroyed. The rose windows are still intact and the April sun shines through them, the interlaced stained glass, an image of the interdependence and good will of nations. What is precious has miraculously been preserved. It is an image of survival. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, it will also be an image of renewal. Of resurrection.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

It is evening and the darkness is only closing in because the days are getting longer and the nights shorter now. The candle burns cheerfully beside me as I begin to write. It is as if it has realised that Spring has come, although the sky has been grey and devoid of sunshine all day! Whenever I begin to write this blog, so many memories and different facets of my life come to mind. This was especially true in my last one, when I had just visited Redcar, my hometown, and memories of my childhood and youth understandably crowded in.

Yesterday evening I visited another place which evoked memories and reminded me of different aspects of my life.

I was at a performance in the West End at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. I visited that theatre several times when I was a teenager, on annual visits to London with my mother and grandmother. When I was 14 and in the 3rd Year (Year 9 as it is now) our class had to undertake a History project. Being a budding actor and excited by my fleeting visits to the West End stage, I concentrated on London’s historic theatres and, in particular, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. The elegant auditorium impressed me so much and took a hold on my imagination, as there is reputedly a ghost in the theatre. It was built in 1716 and was only the third theatre to receive a Royal warrant (after the other Theatre Royals in Drury Lane and Covent Garden). It was known affectionately as ‘the little theatre in the Hay’ as it is smaller than the other two though equally as opulent.

The interior has been beautifully restored in recent years but even without this, to my young eyes it was magnificent, with powder blue seats in the Upper Circle where we sat and an elegant Victorian bar with marble floors and glass mirrors. I felt so sophisticated and a true gentleman as I drank my ginger beer there in the interval. I have moved on to wine and gin and tonics since then of course!

The first play I saw there was the 18th century comedy, ‘The Rivals’ by Sheridan starring Sir Ralph Richardson who was wonderful, I remember. And to be seeing an 18th Century play in an 18th Century theatre was perfect: the action on the stage matched the ambiance of the auditorium. I am sure Sheridan’s comedy had played there many times before, down the years.

We went back the following year for ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’- my first introduction to Oscar Wilde’s comedy, with Dame Flora Robson, not as Lady Bracknell but as a highly strung Miss Prism. It was a delightful comic characterisation and I remember it clearly. But I wasn’t allowed to elegantly swill ginger beer in the bar this time as we were at a matinee and the licensing laws didn’t allow theatre bars to be open for matinees then. So we had afternoon tea instead. This was brought to our seats by elderly waitresses on trays which clipped to the back of the seats infront of us (and complete with china cups, tea pot, sugar bowl, milk and hot water jugs and fruit cake, would you believe!). The way they juggled the trays up and down the upper circle stairs would be worthy of Cirque Du Soleil these days!

I enjoyed the play so much that I bought the LP’s of a 1940’s production with Sir John Gielgud and Dame Edith Evans (as Lady Bracknell with her definitive rendition of ‘A handbag?’). When I got home, I would play those records over and over again and eventually knew the play virtually by heart. I was surprised how much I remembered many years later (in 2002) when I directed the play at my school. I also played Lady Bracknell and managed to avoid imitating Dame Edith’s ‘A Handbaaaag?’

Memories of those performances swirled in my head as I sat in the theatre last night, waiting for the performance to begin and I shared some of them with my friend Phil who was with me. However, at the moment, the theatre is not playing host to an elegant society comedy, but a musical based on the classic sit-com ‘Only Fools and Horses.’ Nothing could be more different: the chirpy, cheerful exploits of the wheeler dealer Del Boy and his family in 1980’s Peckham in South London. A very incongruous production for the historical Haymarket Theatre. Photos of the show in the foyer reminded me of watching it on TV, but more than that, it brought back memories of when I used to work in Peckham myself at Camberwell Unemployment Benefit Office.

I worked there in my twenties before I began my teaching career. It was a difficult time for me: I was rather lost and in my ‘terrible twenties’ as I call those years. I found it very challenging trying to deal with human need but being circumvented by unemployment benefit rules. I survived there for three years, however, and made some good friends there, three of whom, Alan, Teresa and Janice have remained friends since.

It was my friendships and my visits to the theatre that got me through. I saw everything I could: plays, musicals, opera, ballet. I thought I might become an actor or a director or even an opera director but of course didn’t have the personal drive or confidence then. At the back of my mind I knew I could be a teacher, though. I remember being with my friend Teresa at a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company and thinking about it: instead of being an actor, maybe I could become a teacher to help young people to appreciate Shakespeare. And that’s what I tried to do in the end.

So it was rather strange last night seeing those two worlds – Peckham and the plush West End Theatre – together.

However, I wasn’t at the Haymarket Theatre last night to see a performance of ‘Only Fools and Horses’. It was to attend a ‘Sunday Encounter’ – one of a series of weekly interviews with current theatre stars. Sir Derek Jacobi was being interviewed by his ‘Last Tango in Halifax’ co-star Anne Reid. You may have surmised from earlier paragraphs that when I was a teenager I was in awe of theatre Knights and Dames. I would look out for them in films and on television and of course it was a thrill to have the chance to see them live on stage. Sadly I never saw Sir Laurence Olivier on stage. ‘Sir Laurence’ was one of my father’s nicknames for me when I was a teenager as he knew I had theatre ambitions. Olivier was mentioned frequently by Sir Derek in his reminiscences as he gave the young actor a place at the Old Vic in the first National Theatre company.

Now I am no longer in awe of theatre royalty and it wasn’t because Derek Jacobi is a ‘Sir’ that I was interested to hear him last night. I have seen him many times on stage before anyway. I idolised him when I was a young man, long before he was a Sir. He was the kind of actor I would have liked to have been: sensitive, perceptive, witty and a master at playing Shakespeare and Chekhov (my two dramatist idols). He has a beautiful voice and has formidable vocal skills, being able to play Shakespeare’s poetry and to find the poetry in what ever text he is performing. As a vocal actor myself, I have always tried to emulate him and to pass on some of the skills he demonstrates to my students. Indeed, when I am being mannered as an actor, I sometimes dissolve into an impersonation of him!

Obliquely, Sir Derek gave my teaching career a boost. I had a rather shaky start in the first two years (as most of us do) and was even thinking of giving it up and going on the stage. Sir Derek was appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre in a triumphant season in Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ as Benedict and Prospero in ‘The Tempest and as Cyrano de Bergerac. Needless to say I saw all of them and he was the best Benedict I have ever seen and heart-rending as Cyrano. He was also very genuine when I got his autograph afterwards. So I decided I would write a fan letter to him (care of the stage door of the Barbican) and to say that, at the age of 29, I was thinking of becoming an actor. To my surprise he wrote a long handwritten letter back and was very helpful. His advice was the advice he had been given as a young actor: ‘If you want to act: think twice. If you have to act: go ahead.’ So I persevered as an English teacher! And eventually I found my true niche as a Drama teacher. I have kept the letter and have never forgotten the advice. I have passed it on to many students who were thinking of an acting career themselves.

So I had ended up where I was meant to be. I am a very fortunate man!

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

The candlelight beside me is steady this evening as I begin to write. However I will not be writing about the small flame of a candle this time, but about a larger more vibrant light.

I have recently been back to my hometown, Redcar, which is on the North East coast in Cleveland. I was visiting my sister Ann for the weekend. Ann collected me from the station at Thirsk, a market town in North Yorkshire. As we drove towards Redcar, I could see a flare glowing in the twilight sky. It was from one of the tall narrow jets outside the local chemical works. It was a continuous stream of red and gold as it rose in the sky. The flare was stately and thin compared with the huge tubby grey chimneys belching smoke behind it. It was magnificent, yet welcoming.

We were driving on the edge of Wilton, Redcar’s main industrial area. Clearly the ICI chemical works is still in operation, but tragically the steelworks over the road has finally closed down. Many years ago, My father worked in both: British Steel (or Dorman Long as it was originally) and ICI. I remember him bringing home plastic beakers and small bowls, samples from the plastics plant he worked in at ICI.

Whenever I go into my school, I am still reminded of my hometown. One of the girders supporting the stairs to the first floor has ‘Dorman Long, Middlesbrough’ emblazoned on it. That area of the school is part of the original building, which was opened in 1959. I like to think my father shaped that girder in the blast furnaces he used to work in.

Observing the flare from my sister’s car reminded me of being on the local bus when I was a teenager on the way home from school in Middlesbrough. Often on the journey I would notice the flare. It would burn all day and all night. If I was coming home at night from Middlesbrough, from the cinema or from a rehearsal at Teeside Youth Theatre, I remember it burning brightly in the dark. It was like a beacon reminding me I was almost home. And now the flare was welcoming me home again.

At that time, of course, Teeside (as it was known then) was flourishing and quite prosperous with other light industry besides the two giants at Wilton and with Middlesbrough docks still operating.

I remember Mr Maidens my English teacher telling me that Teeside was a good place to live because there was plenty of industry to support the area and there was so much beautiful countryside round about: the coastline by the North Sea and, inland, the rolling North Yorkshire Moors. He took the class to see ‘Macbeth’ at the newly opened Forum Theatre in Billingham (where ICI’s other large works was situated). The theatre was a source of civic pride. The metal framed set for the production had been built by the local steel works. That production starred a very young Michael Gambon in the title role. I was so excited to see a live Shakespeare play, even though some of my fellow pupils weren’t really bothered and were quite boisterous. Fortunately some of us ended up in a side box away from our unruly mates, though it wasn’t all gilt and red plush like the West End, but very modern and metallic. Ever the theatre critic, at age 15, I thought Sir Michael was good but not magnetic in the role!

That was half a century ago. The area has slowly gone into decline and the steel works is no more. So now the flare is a beacon of hope – hope that the area will once again be prosperous. It is also a symbol of the warmth of the local people.

The people of Redcar have lived with an unclear future for decades. Now the nation (and indeed Europe) is living with an unclear future too. Every day the future becomes more a and more uneasy as the ‘ignorant armies’ are still ‘clashing’ in the House of Commons (to quote Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ again -as I did a few months ago). Times are even more unsettling as we witness terrorist attacks in New Zealand and Europe, and not long ago, in our own country.

The flare has reminded me of another poem – this time by W.H.Auden: ‘September 1, 1939’.

It’s set in a bar on 52nd Street in New York, where Auden was living before the imminent outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. He writes:

‘We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.’

In these fragmented times of unease, may we all be a point of light – an affirming flame – a flare of hope.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

When I last wrote, it was beside a lone electric lamp in my hotel room in Budapest as the dawn was breaking over the Buda hills. Now I am home again and a candle burns by me as usual. Our little Drama tour has been successful with excellent performances and enthusiastic audiences. Since I came home, I have been missing my colleagues and students. It has been an intense six days of company and good company at that. So it is understandable that I have been feeling a little flat now I am home alone.

When I was in my hotel room that morning, I was apprehensive about the performances of ‘A Christmas Carol’ in the afternoon. It was director’s nerves. We had a long day ahead of us: arriving at 10 followed by setting up the show and quick rehearsals before curtain up at 2, a break, then curtain up again at 6. It all seemed quite daunting. It had been a long time since we had performed twice in one day.

As soon as I got to the theatre, my nerves dissolved. I was back at the Kolibri Theatre and among friends to help set up the show. We have been performing there for so long that it really is like coming home to me. I was also forgetting how committed and determined my cast were. Arriving at the theatre galvanized them and, once we had been through the play in the first performance, they virtually ran the second one themselves. They were truly a magnificent cast. And the audiences were wonderful too. Once again, actors and audience became a circle.

I had forgotten too how much energy my students have and how much youthful generosity of spirit, the ability to throw themselves into their performances without reserve, to give without counting the cost. This is a quality we lose as we grow older: we are prudent, we think twice, we hold back and yes, that is the wisdom of age. But, in the process, we lose the innocent ardor, the passionate enthusiasm of youth. How fortunate I have been to work with young people and to have been surrounded by that enthusiasm and ardor, which has, at times carried me along with it.

I must confess that, as I watched the sun rise over the hills that morning, I was also feeling old. This made the prospect of the day ahead even more daunting. Over the first few days of the tour, being with much younger colleagues and even younger students, I was very much aware of my age. That was nothing to do with my colleagues or students. They were, as I have mentioned, very good company. But I realised I can’t rush around Budapest like I used to!

Again, once I got into the theatre and started rehearsing, my sixties’ ennui dissipated. I suddenly had enough energy to power the national grid! As I used to say in lessons: I was neon lights, I was Broadway.

In January, I was back at the Royal Opera House, this time to see their wonderful production of Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’. In the cast was the legendary Placido Domingo, still singing (and in fine voice) at the age of 78. And an exemplary actor. Once he would have played the tenor role, the youthful lover, Alfredo (and I have a recording of him in that role). Now he was playing the baritone role of Germont, Alfredo’s father. Once he was one of the famous Three Tenors, but now he has re-trained his voice to the lower register of baritone and in the process has learnt a whole new repertoire and keeps on learning more roles. I have learnt from him. He has adapted his prodigious talent and taken a new direction. However, that new direction follows on from what he did before: he is still singing on stage.

Without wishing to compare myself to such a great musician and actor, my life has been similar recently: I have taken a new direction: I am no longer a teacher, I am retired. But, as before, I am still directing young people. What a lucky man I am!

I have also learnt that, though I am growing older, I still have much to give (as has Domingo). Infact, becoming old is not an excuse not to give.

I have visited relatives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada for several years and as a result have become a great fan of the B. C. artist Emily Carr. Emily was a revolutionary. She was a rare female artist in that part of the world at the start of the twentieth century and decided not to marry because her art came first. She loved the primeval forests and had a great appreciation of the art of the First Nations indigenous tribes, even taking boats and canoes to paint their scattered coastal villages and desolate totems. They christened her ‘Klee Wyk’ – ‘the laughing one’ – because she was always smiling. For a long while, Emily had to abandon her art to give classes and run a boarding house in her native Victoria. Eventually she went back to her art but was not understood, appreciated or recognized until she was well into middle age. Eventually in her old age she wrote books about her childhood, her travels and some of the strange guests in her boarding house. Like Placido, she adapted.

She once compared her later years to a bucket of water. She wrote:

‘I don’t want to trickle out. I want to pour till the pail is empty, the last bit going in a gush, not drops.’

That is how I want to be too.

Ave atque ale until the next blog.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius