A I write, a candle is not flickering beside me this time. Instead a lone electric lamp is my companion. I am in my hotel room in Budapest and through my window, above the buildings I can see the Buda hills wreathed in mist in the distance. Dawn is beginning to break and its pale cream light rises over the blue mounds of the hills. A bird has just flown over the trees towards them as if intrigued by their shadows.

So now I am in Pannonia, where Marcus and his legions once trod. My fancy would like to think that Marcus pitched his camp here on the site of this hotel and that in his tent, as he wrote his meditations at break of dawn he had the same view of the hills as I have now. He would have been writing more slowly than I am of course. He would not be pounding a portable keyboard attached to an I pad. No doubt he would have gazed into the gathering mists of dawn and slowly wrote on his parchment or wax tablet. To think that we might both be writing our thoughts onto tablets! And just as my meditation is saved on my mini computer so his would have been transferred to scrolls of parchment by a scribe. And somehow those scrolls survived to be read by far distant generations.

What will happen to my digital meditations? Will they survive? I am not so vain as to think that future generations will read my thoughts, let alone appreciate them. I do not know if I want them to. But I am enjoying sharing my thoughts with you, the followers of this blog and heartened by the positive comments I have received. Marcus’ own meditations were also an essentially private document, as I have said before, a compilation of the writings and teachings that had most influenced him, the ideals he aspired to, and in his striving to live up to them, made him who he was.

The light has gone off in my room. The electricity doesn’t appear to be working. So I am writing this now by the light of the dawn through the window. I am in true Marcus mode!

I awoke very early this morning at four. The hotel was quiet and unusually still. All 300 rooms. It was to early for the habitual slamming of doors and footsteps in the corridors. I could not hear a sound: ‘Not a mouse stirring’ as Francisco says in the opening scene of  Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’.  

I could not go back to sleep. I have my big show today: two performances of ‘A Christmas Carol’ at the Kolibri Theatre. It will be a long day: arriving at the theatre at 10 to set up and have a brief technical rehearsal for scene changes, lights and sound before curtain up at 2 and then a break and curtain up again at 6. So understandably my mind was teeming with things to do.  When these thoughts finally dissolved I turned over and tried to get to sleep again. But to no avail.

So I listened to the silence in my room. It was then that I realised just how still the hotel was. The silence was comforting, like a blanket around me. I have learnt that silence can be comforting. It is not necessarily threatening – something to run away from, to escape from into music or noise. In fact the best music has silent moments, as does the most effective drama. But silence can be challenging, challenging us to sit down, relax, to be still. To be aware of where we are and who we are.

In the silence as I lay there, I listened to my heartbeat – regular and strong. Being a cerebral person, living in my mind, my thoughts and, in my writing, my imagination, I am not always fully aware of my body. I live mainly in my head. As a result I have not taken care of my body as I should over the years!  It may seen strange that as I am an actor and a Drama teacher I am not always fully aware of my body. I am when I am on stage, of course, or demonstrating something in a rehearsal or class. Nevertheless, I have never been a very physical actor: my strength has been in my vocal skills and interpretation of text.    

As I listened to my heartbeat in the silence in the room, I wasn’t annoyed by it as I have been before: ‘All I want to do is get back to sleep and I can’t because I keep hearing my heartbeat!’ I just gave in and listened to it. As I listened, I was reminded that I am a physical being, that I am dependent on that heartbeat to live. And I was reminded of my mortality, that the time will come when that heartbeat will stop. In the silence it was a gentle beat, not an aggressive one: my heart is my old friend after all.

I wonder if Marcus listened to his own heartbeat in his tent in the night and if he was reminded of his own humanity and mortality. It would seem so from his writings. He is constantly aware of mortality, of what little time we have:. ‘No you do not have thousands of years to live,’ he writes, Urgency is on you. While you live, while you can, do good.’

Later in the day I was alone on the stage of the theatre. I had sent everyone off to lunch and was working out the scene changes alone. The theatre staff were at lunch too. I stopped scribbling for a moment and looked out into the auditorium.It was still. It was silent too. But the silence was one of expectancy – a performance was soon to take place. And again it was warm like a blanket. I was at home again in the Kolibri, where I have been for over twenty years. And hopefully I was doing good.

 

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

 

The flame of the candle is flickering tonight as I write beside it. I suppose that brings me back to the subject of my previous blog: Laurel and Hardy and their movies. When cinema began, around 1900, movies were first called ‘the flickers’.  That was because the projection machines were primitive. The image moved but it flickered, like the flame of my candle is at the moment. movies were very short. So the action was quick, far quicker than in a play on the stage. It was their attraction to audiences originally, I imagine, and still is today of course.

But it was also the sheer miracle of being able to see a picture that moves. When I was a child and a young man, going to the cinema was still called ‘going to the pictures’ (i.e.) to see the moving pictures and, to return to ‘the flickers’, going to the cinema was sometimes also called ‘going to the flicks.’ Another word for a movie, a film, was ‘a picture’ and still is. We still talk about a star’s next ‘picture’ or that was a ‘great picture’ and the motion picture industry.

However, originally the word ‘movies’ didn’t refer to the end product or to cinema in general. The ‘movies’ were the people who made them, the first colony who came out to Hollywood. It was a derogatory term. Those film pioneers who arrived in that quiet rural suburb of Los Angeles weren’t to be trusted, weren’t respectable: ‘Oh he or she is one of those movies,’ residents would say.          

A few years ago I wrote a play about the early days of cinema. It was called ‘Mickey and the Movies’. I see now that my title had that double meaning of ‘Movies’: the films and the people who make them. In the play, Mickey Malone is an Irish immigrant boy in New York who gets himself involved in a studio there and eventually find himself going with some of the ‘Movies’ to Hollywood. By accident he becomes a child star. I was trying to portray the improvisational side of filming comedy in silent films: a basic scenario, a camera and improvised action (which was how our dear friends Stan and Ollie began).

When I wrote my own scenario, I wanted to include a scene where Mickey sees his first ever moving picture. I wanted to try to capture the wonder of seeing a picture that moved for the first time. And it is that wonder, that magic of celluloid (what the director Orson Welles called the ‘ribbon of a dream’) that intoxicates Mickey and leads him to take any old job at a studio in Fort Lee, just outside New York before ending up in Hollywood.

My play kept flickering in my mind as I watched the movie ‘Stan and Ollie’ the other week and it has come back to me since. Maybe I will revive it as my final production next year. I have been thinking about it, though it will need an extensive re-write. The script begins with Mickey and his father and brothers on the ship from Ireland to New York. But if I rewrote it the play would begin in the present (with a modern day descendent of Mickey) and in an entirely different location.

A year or so after we did the production, I was in LA, staying in West Hollywood for a few days and I found myself with a morning to kill before catching my plane home. I was in that limbo we’ve all been through: what do you do with your final few hours  before you go to the airport. My dear friend and collaborator on ‘Mickey’, Phil Watkins, had given me a book on the silent star Rudolf Valentino as a gift after the production. So I thought I’d see if I could find dear old Rudy’s grave in my final hours in Hollywood. He was one of those stars, like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, who tragically died young (aged 28) and he was buried, after unprecedented outpourings of public grief in both New York (where he passed away) and in L.A. (where he lived and worked) in the old Hollywood Memorial Park. The old cemetery had been beautifully restored but with the new kitsch name of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  So off I went to find him.

The grounds were so extensive, I could have spent all day there. In the dazzling sunlight, the beautifully manicured lawns were so green it was like they were filmed in technicolor. And there was a huge lake with swans in the middle. When I went through the gate I was given a map which showed where everyone was resting. So many stars, moguls, directors, writers, musicians dotted among the grounds and in several huge mausoleums, which is where I eventually found Rudy.

As I sat on a bench resting for a minute and looked over the verdant green it seemed like one big Hollywood party. Except there were no more cocktails, scheming, or intrigue or romance or just plain fun but only silence, the silence of the grave. All that intense striving in whatever direction was over now. Like the end of a movie, I was just left with the cast of characters, with the names, either elegantly carved on marble monuments or engraved more modestly on brass plaques in the earth. One I stumbled over, I found very moving: it said ‘Hannah Chaplin’ and ‘Mother’. It was Charlie Chaplin’s mother who had been brought over from London by Charlie and his brother Sid. It appeared that she had died there in 1928. Seeing that plaque led me to write a play about Charlie’s early life.

As I sat there in the heat, a chill of sadness came over me. It was the accumulated  tragedy behind some of their lives I guess. I found myself saying a prayer for them and a thank you for all the pleasure they had given me through their work. I was there to pay my respects, I realised.

It was sad in another way too, because many of them were big stars with legions of fans and out there in the public gaze. But now, of course, so many were forgotten (except to film historians, students of cinema and movie buffs like me).  I thought it would be sobering for some of today’s stars with their big egos and tantrums to sit on that bench, to remind themselves of their own mortality, to remind themselves that they might be forgotten too.

And that is where I would begin my script: with a descendent of Mickey looking for his grave in the opulent lawns of a Hollywood cemetery, looking for Mickey the forgotten star.

I used to have a big old book, when I was eleven or twelve years old. It was called ‘Immortals of the Screen’ and had stills and photos of old movie stars in it: basically any stars who had passed away before 1966, when the book was published. It included a lot of silent stars and the book helped nurture in me an interest in film history. Not a few of the stars in that book were buried in that cemetery. And in a way they are immortal: through the movies they appeared in. We can still see them and hear them and study them, especially the great ones. And we can still be entertained by them.

Moreover, so many great movies have been lovingly restored and are now streamed or on TV or DVD or blue ray. I was watching the blue ray of one of my favourites: ‘Casablanca’ the other day. It looked more pristine than it probably did when it was first released in 1942.  The black and white photography glowed and Ingrid Bergman looked more beautiful then ever and even Bogart looked reasonably dashing. And my favourite actor, Claude Rains was as witty and suave as ever. But to think that I was watching actors from 77 years ago. Their performances were still alive, thanks to moving pictures. And here they were performing in my own lounge thanks to later technology, enabling me, if I was so inclined, to be able to watch them over and over again; to enjoy their performances even more or to study them. It is the same, of course, with recording and the human voice. We have over a century of recordings of musicians’ performances too. Quite a miracle isn’t it?  A kind of resurrection. A shimmer of the true resurrection which I believe in.

In a few days time I shall be leading the annual school Drama tour to Budapest, which I have mentioned in a previous blog. Therefore I shall be in Hungary, known to Marcus as Pannonia, where he led his legions. It will be appropriate, then that hopefully my next blog will be written there, between performances.

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

 

 

As I sit here writing beside my candle, winter is upon us at last. Blizzards and snow have slowed down the country or so it appears from the news on the television. Here, where I write, in the South West London area, what snow there was has turned to miserable freezing rain. In these wintery times, candlelight is cheering and comforting as is, of course, a blazing fire in the hearth. Something we miss with central heating!

It must have been a comfort to Marcus as the wind howled over the Danube plain outside his tent. A comfort and an inspiration: as fire-gazing can lead to internal reflection and even deeper, to meditation. The fire must have been a fixed point to help him focus on the centre of his consciousness in the whirlwind of his thoughts. I am probably wrong: I am imagining that Marcus’ mind was similar to my own! From his writings, I have a sense that there was a great stillness in Marcus. I doubt he got as frazzled as I do! But then as he was a Roman emperor with absolute power it was easy for him to radiate stillness. Or is that the image he presents to us in his ‘Meditations’? Is it what he wants us to imagine he is like? And his ‘Meditations’ are, after all, the compositions of a mind in repose.

When I was a child in the North East, I used to love gazing at the fire in my nan’s back kitchen. There was a huge black cast iron fire guard in front of it, usually festooned with her stockings, hung out to dry. An Alan Bennett scene! I paid no attention to her hosiery hanging there, but concentrated on the heart of the fire, watching the wood burning to grey ashes in the bed of white and orange flames and listening to the crackling and sputtering in the grate. Looking at the flames would lead me to my first stirrings of inner reflection. I would think of ideas for little plays I might write or poems.

I did a lot of writing then. I would coerce my school mates and friends in the street to be in my little plays. We’d act them out in the road. There were very few cars then, you see. One of my friends in the street – Michael – took a play of mine and passed it off as his own at his own school.

I remember I would arduously write out the parts by hand, like a little monk. And now, what seems like thousands of years later, in my retirement I am writing again and I am still a little monk. But in between, I have been writing plays for my school too, and coercing my students to take part instead. Except they haven’t needed much coercing because they enjoy it and because it might involve a week on tour in Budapest.

I’ve been thinking about my childhood in the last few weeks a lot. I have just seen the new film ‘Stan and Ollie’ about Laurel and Hardy, the great movie comics. They were part of my childhood. Their short comedy films were on BBC TV every Saturday teatime after the football results and before ‘Doctor Who’. I was ten or eleven years old when the first one was shown. It was ‘The Music Box’: Stan and Ollie trying to get that upright piano in a wooden crate up all those flights of steps. I vividly remember watching it in my nan’s back kitchen, which was where she had the television. I was leaning over the kitchen table with an iced bun in my hand entranced by their comic antics while the fire cackled in the background.The films were in black and white but what did that matter? Television was in black and white then too!

Of course those little comic gems have been repeated on TV so many times since – but not so much now, which is a great shame. And now they are on blue ray and DVD and I am

sure you can stream them. Through these little films (which were originally fillers on a cinema programme) and a handful of feature films, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy very quickly became international movie stars and held in great affection by a worldwide audience to the extent that they are now cinema icons. It is amazing to think that their films are 80 years old in the main (and the silent ones 90 years old) yet there is still such a strong interest in them and affection for them that recently a movie about their lives has been made.

In the film, Steve Coogan (Stan) and John C. Reilly (Ollie) are very adept at adapting the duo’s movie mannerisms to situations off camera and off stage in real life. The story deals with their final UK tour in the 50’s which was initially not as big a success as their tour a decade earlier. Their working relationship is under strain not least because Ollie’s health is in decline and because the offers are no longer coming. But the working relationship survives – because they are great friends. The friendship endures. And that is what shines through the slapstick mayhem in their films – there is an affectionate bond between them.

Their humour is gentle and warm. Yes humour has changed a great deal since they were in front on the cameras – it is more cynical, sarcastic, sexual and foul mouthed – even in family movies – and slapstick is not so funny to general audiences now. I’ve played some of their movies to my pupils -the younger ones love it, but the older ones don’t find it so funny. But when Stan and Ollie were working in the 20’s and 30’s,there were caustic, cynical and sexy sophisticated comedies too.

I think part of their enduring appeal is their screen personas, which was so very different from their off-camera personalities. Though Ollie was the dominant personality of the two

in the movies, in real life it was Stan who wrote the gags, directed and produced (in this he was like his contemporary Charlie Chaplin). He had already appeared in silent movies as a solo star. Ollie was a jobbing actor who generally went along with whatever Stan had devised.

Stan had that rare quality of being able to portray pure innocence on screen and not make it sentimental or something to be jeered at. It was a childlike innocence – Chaplin was more artful (in some ways like the Artful Dodger from his favourite book ‘Oliver Twist’). Stan may be slow-witted (and gets them both into high water as a result) but it is part of his charm. We don’t deride him for it, but laugh with him.

Ollie is all politeness, Southern gentility and charm. He is always eager to help others in the films. Despite his large frame, there is a grace about his movement at times, as there in Stan’s movement too, evident in their famous dance in ‘Way Out West’. He is a Southern gentleman (making use of his roots in Georgia) or tries to be in the most ridiculous of situations.

At the root of the duo’s appeal is there inherent goodness. They are good people to be with – as a German comedian commented in a TV documentary I recently saw.

Of course it was television in the main that prolonged their longevity with the public. Though their popularity was on the wain in the mid-1950’s, when their movies appeared on TV (first in the U.S.A and later in our own and other countries) they were given a new lease of life. And years later, after endless repeats the movies were issued on video and DVD and colourised and digitally restored. Modern technology has resurrected them. Yes it’s a kind of resurrection.

Of course, without the modern technology of the time, the development of the moving picture, Stan and Ollie would never have got together at all. I ask myself what would have happened to them instead. Before becoming besotted with the movies and working in cinemas around 1913, Hardy was a singer and had a cabaret and vaudeville act. Without the movies, he may have graduated to being a actor in plays and musicals around the U.S. I guess and maybe he would have got to Broadway. Laurel was a music hall comedian, in Fred Karno’s comic troupe (along with Charlie Chaplin). That may have been how he would have carried on, along with Charlie, playing the music hall and later variety circuits. If he survived World War One.

But for technology, they would never have got together and we would never have known them decades later.

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

 

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We are now well into January. As I gaze at the candle on my table, the flame is steady, almost still. The flickering of the flame is barely noticeable. But, as the New Year begins to roll forward, our world is far from steady and the future appears to be barely visible in the gloom of uncertainty and surmise, the miasma created by events and the media. It seems as if, as in the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’:

‘we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.‘

So it seems to us in the UK, on the verge of leaving our European community, which inevitably makes our common future uncertain, while over the last weeks, a cacophony of conflicting voices have been raised in the House of Commons, resulting in virtual anarchy. As might be expected, I have been entranced by the drama of it all, preventing me from going back to finishing my novel ‘Driftwood’, (perhaps an appropriate title for our movement towards March 29). Events in the House of Commons this week have been worthy of a Shakespearean history drama, with Mrs May almost deposed from her throne, except that there has been little if any poetic rhetoric in the house over the last few days. Civilised and dignified debate has been thrown out of the window into the River Thames. The debate has at times been reduced to barracking both within the chamber and on the streets outside the venerable building.

The debacle has been magnified by being televised and brought into our own homes and, of course, politicians of all persuasions have been keen to push forward their sound bites in the obligatory on the spot interviews with political commentators from the media. Considered opinion in our ‘rapid response’ age of social media appears to be on the decline. The referendum campaign itself, on both sides, was fought with soundbites, with passion rather than reasoned thought.              

In my last blog, a few weeks ago, I quoted Marcus:  

‘For we have been born for co-operation, as have hands, feet, eyelids and rows of upper and lower teeth. Therefore to thwart one another is unnatural and we do thwart one another when we show resentment and dislike.’      

His words from centuries ago are an apt analysis of last weeks’ events. The house has been intent upon thwarting Mrs May and her exit plan, as if any exit plan would be acceptable in its entirety. She for her part has emerged as being high-handed in her approach to the deal. She has shown little co-operation with members of her own party let alone other parts of the House. Therefore, her plan has been shot down, not only because some hardline Brexiteers had no intention of approving it anyway (as was evident from their comments on the deal before they had even seen it) but also because, the House, quite rightly, had begun to see that, on this issue, the government were intent upon riding roughshod over it.    

The sorry spectacle is leading to even more unease in people’s minds.  From the start, we are not used to making major decisions affecting our country’s future by voting in a referendum, as is Switzerland, which uses referenda as an integral part of its democratic process.  How the result is worked out in our own parliamentary system has therefore created problems. It has lead us into uncharted waters.

As it is, Brexit, a fragmentary act in itself, has caused considerable division in the country. It is like a stone thrown into a window, shattering it. Everywhere we can see nothing but cracks and fragments. This divisiveness has been not only echoed but trumpeted in the conflict between our elected leaders. An ever greater lack of trust of politicians is prevalent among the general public as, in the midst of the current ongoing farrago, politicians are seen to be pursuing their own or their party’s ambitions.

Furthermore, since the referendum in 2016, it has become gradually apparent that the process of leaving is a highly intricate process, not necessarily because the EU negotiators have made it so, but because our forty year relationship with the EU has been intricate, close, deep and mutually beneficial.  It has been an interdependent relationship. It is like trying to unpick the Bayeux tapestry. Needless to say, this intricacy in all its myriad detail has led to endless further debate and rancour.

At least now, at the last hour, Mrs May has perforce decided to discuss the exit deal with other parties as well as her own, which, of course, should have happened all along.  A cross party commission to deal with Brexit should have been set up from the start. Sadly the leader of the opposition is not taking part in these discussions.  It is to be hoped that Mrs May does listen to these other voices, however, and is prepared to adapt her plan.

This process of cross-party consultation is not only vital in arriving at an acceptable exit deal but even more so in deciding up and establishing the nature of our future relationship with the EU.

The time for ‘confused alarms of struggle and flight’ is over.

Now it is time to listen.  To eachother.

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

I gaze again at the flickering flame of a candle as I begin to write this blog now that I am home again from the North.  But the candle isn’t in a glass bowl with a Christmas design. The bowl has been put away with my other decorations for next Christmas. The tree has been packed away too. My lounge always looks so empty when it has been stripped of the seasonal decorations, like a shivering beggar in the snow. For once Christmas is over, the atmosphere becomes chilled and only warmed briefly by New Year’s Eve celebrations. Yet the hope which Christmas proclaims is still there to lead us into the New Year, however bleak the prospect might be, however apprehensive we might feel, however uncertain the future might seem for our country.

New Year is the traditional time for resolutions. As the year changes, we are encouraged to make some changes in our own life, sometimes even towards adopting a new lifestyle. Very often these resolutions dissolve by the end of January! Perhaps one of our resolutions, in the light of Christmas, might be to try to hope more, to adopt a more positive attitude to the future. That involves stepping back from our fears or anxieties so as to see the future more clearly and therefore inevitably more positively. ‘Physician, heal thyself’, I say to myself. For  I am a bag of fears. I always see the glass half empty rather than half full. So one of my resolutions shall be to hope more.

Hope involves having faith in yourself, having confidence in your own talents and powers realising you have the ability to cope with a situation that may be stressing you or making you anxious.

Ultimately the human spirit has the ability to persevere, to endure. Especially in situations which are out of our control.  ‘Pour on, I will endure’ shouts Shakespeare’s King Lear to the storm that rages around him on the heath, after he has been made homeless by two of his daughters. Through his perseverance and endurance, having shed his kingship, his mind in tatters, he learns to be himself. Perhaps that is where New Year resolutions should lead us to: to be more ourselves or even to discover ourselves.

Marcus has an interesting way of coping with difficult or stressful situations or people: ‘Say to thyself, at dawn, Marcus: today I shall run up against the ungrateful, the busy body, the over-bearing, the deceitful, the envious, the self-centred. All this has fallen to their lot because they are ignorant of good and evil.

But I, understanding the nature of the Good, that is fair and the Evil, that is ugly, and the nature of the evil-doer himself –  that he is my kin – though not of the same blood  – but sharing intelligence and a spark of the Divine- can neither be damaged by any of them nor can be angry with my kinsman or estranged from him.

For we have been born for co-operation, as have hands, feet, eyelids and rows of upper and lower teeth. Therefore to thwart one another is unnatural and we do thwart one another when we show resentment and dislike.’      

Marcus, the powerful Emperor makes a resolution to see the difficult person as a fellow human being, as a sharer in their common humanity, a ‘kinsman’. This is an amazing act of humility for one so powerful. But then, as an American priest once said to me, when I was a student, ‘You can be the President of the United States and still have personal humility.’ No comment!

It is interesting that Marcus makes this resolve ‘at dawn’, as if he is making this resolution every morning. So perhaps our resolutions should not just be a New Year thing but an daily commitment. Then we might achieve those changes.  We might even change our attitudes towards others, as Marcus tried to do. We might see the day differently. It might go better than we imagined.

One of the first monks was a man called St Antony who lived for many years as a hermit in the desert in Egypt in the 2nd Century. He was a wise and holy man and many people travelled to him for advice and he became known as the ‘spiritual doctor of Egypt’. Antony lived to be over a hundred year old. Every day, even as an old and wise man, he would start by saying ‘Today I begin.’  

Today we begin.

Happy New Year, my dear readers.

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

   

As I write this meditation, once again, a candle flickers in front of me through the painted glass of a small Christmas bowl. However, the scene on the bowl is different from the one I described in my last blog. In the background is a winter landscape with snow-capped hills and a starry sky, while in the foreground are large red candles with welcoming flames. Light in the winter darkness: the flame of faith, however feeble and fearful, still aglow, like the stars glistening in the black immensity of the winter night.  

It is a different bowl because I am in a different place. I am spending Christmas with my family in Leeds in West Yorkshire. The Hungarian candle bowl was a gift from me to them from several Christmases ago. No doubt on his travels with his military campaigns, Marcus wrote his “Meditations’ by the light of different candle bowls too. Or perhaps he paused, shrouded in furs, to look out of his tent at the winter stars in the expanse of darkness. Perhaps he did this in the Buda hills on his conquest of Pannonia (what is now Hungary). Perhaps he reflected on Nature, what he called the ‘All in All’, the one God behind the universe. For he had sensed that there was a bigger cosmic force than in the traditional Roman pantheon.

Christmas is about travelling. On my way here by train, I noticed that people were travelling with large luggage and extra bags even though they may only be staying at their destination for a few days over the holiday. Their bags were probably filled with gifts for family and friends. It can be an exasperating and annoying time for the traveller with the weight of the luggage and sometimes disrupted journeys, possibly underpinned by the emotional anxiety of travelling home to loved ones. For as my nephew Adam observed today, ‘Christmas is not about presents. It is about family.’

So many people at this time of year going on a journey. A journey of love or at least affection. At the heart of the Christmas story is Mary and Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem: a journey they were forced to take by law, to obey the Roman census. Later in the story they were forced to make another journey, into Egypt, to avoid the violence of Herod. They became refugees from violence, they sought asylum, they were for a brief period, immigrants. They were forced to make several journeys they did not wish to make. Perhaps at this time of comfort and joy, we should take a moment to think of those who are making similar journeys at this time and commit ourselves to helping them in some small way.  

Many years ago, I heard a talk at the National Theatre on London’s South Bank. It was given by the legendary Scottish theatre director, Bill Bryden. In his talk, he said that one of his approaches to directing a play was to find each character’s  journey through the play -something I have found useful in my own directing and teaching. This is true of life too. We are all on a journey through life. For some of us it is a pilgrimage.  And there are moments when, like the three wise men in the Christmas story, we need a guiding star. I found this to be true as my life pattern changed when I retired last year. In a way I was beginning another stage of my journey but it was unchartered territory. I needed to seek advice and affirmation from lots of my friends – for which many thanks. They were my guiding stars. We can be a guiding star for others, indeed it is our duty and responsibility to be so.

Perhaps we should, like Marcus, also find a moment to step out into the winter’s night and contemplate the stars in the immensity of the darkness and seek the ‘All in All’ there; the ‘All in All’ who became a defenceless refugee child for our sakes.

Merry Christmas, my dear readers.

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

 

As I write this meditation, the candle flickers in front of me through the painted glass of a small Christmas bowl. Painted around the bowl is a winter rural scene: farmhouses dripping with ice and a sleigh being pulled by horses in a snow drift lit by a half moon. I purchased it in Budapest and have given several others as Christmas gifts to friends and family. Candles in bowls would probably have been on Marcus’ table too as he wrote his Meditations or oil lamps of course.

The scene reminds me of the production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ which I mentioned in my last blog. We performed it in our studio theatre last week (to great success) and we used projected digital images to set the many scenes and to create the magical effects. One of the images was similar to the winter rural scene painted on my candle bowl.

In the play (and novel) Scrooge is taken by the Spirit of Christmas Past to revisit his old school days. This is where the image appeared as a backdrop. Scrooge says ‘Good heavens! I know this lane. And this is my old school!’ One of the most disconcerting experiences for Scrooge in the play is to have to witness scenes from his past and especially how he lost the love of his life, Bella, because of his addiction to creating wealth.

It would be disconcerting for us to have the opportunity to see ourselves as we once were. And to be forced to do so, as Scrooge is by the Spirit. Not only to see ourselves but also to observe our behaviour and hear what we said, especially in moments we would, like Scrooge, prefer to forget.

In the summer I experienced a little of that, when I was visiting family in Canada. My aunt Barbara has an obsession for photographs. She possesses dozens of albums from years ago. Every time I visit she gives me photos of the family or copies, for some are very precious to her. She left several in an envelope in my room this time.

One was a photo taken outside my parents’ house in Redcar. I am there standing in my school uniform with my father beside me. I must have been in the fifth year (Year 11) as we had a different uniform for the Sixth Form. I have a shock of black hair and a few discernible spots: the picture of adolescence! There I am with my trusty black brief case and a carrier bag of LP’s. Well it was 1970! I am barely smiling and I look self conscious as I never liked having my photo taken then. Photos were a rare occurrence: the age of the mobile phone camera and the selfie were a long way away. I look gauche. Lacking in self-confidence. Shy. Innocent. And I was then as I remember.

As I looked closely at the photo in my room in my aunt’s apartment on Vancouver Island I realised how far I had travelled. I was literally, physically thousands of miles away from Redcar in the North East of England and also thousands of miles away from myself as I

was then, aged 16. As I looked closely at my face I felt a sadness come upon me too. It was similar to the sadness that Scrooge feels as he witnesses his past again. Or at least, when I was watching Robert’s reactions as Scrooge in the scenes last week, I was reminded of the sadness I felt at that moment, looking at my 16 year old self in the photo in auntie’s apartment last summer.

As I looked at my young face, I thought about all the things that were going to happen to me afterwards, things I could never have predicted of course. And the sadness lingered a little. I didn’t have a very happy youth. And then I thought of those who befriended me and those who rescued me. And those who have stayed friends through all my life. And my family. And friends I didn’t know existed at the time (most of whom probably weren’t even born then). And all the places I never imagined visiting or living in then. All the places I never knew existed: like the house where I have lived for 25 years and my school where I have worked for 34. And I thought of my faith, through it all I kept my faith.

So I went out for a walk and sat on a bench looking out to the Pacific and the low grey mounds of the little islands in the ocean. And I had a Marcus moment. I recalled all my friends and their good qualities.

So the production was a success. My cast did become a company, indeed a little community, which is always my aim as a director (as I mentioned in a previous blog). And, (as I also mentioned in the same blog) the invisible ring between cast and audience was achieved I think, at least according to all the appreciative comments I have received from audience members. Even though we are a small oblong of a studio theatre and not a grand horseshoe-shaped opera house like Covent Garden. Despite the vicissitudes of all the scene changes in our 19 scene play, the actors and crew worked so well together, that I was able to enjoy the play a little from backstage and on the last night from the side of the audience too.

It goes without saying that a director sees the scenes over and over again in rehearsals and performance. It is a very special feeling to see performances grow in rehearsal and in performance and that is the real bonus for a director. Because of seeing scenes over and over again, there are individual scenes I can remember really well, moment by moment, even from years ago. And there are a few I’d rather forget of course! There are even certain lines, spoken by certain students, that I can hear in my mind. Maybe in my final moments on this earth, I shall hear them again at the last. (I hope that those of you reading this, who are my ex- Drama students won’t be bombarding me with texts and messages saying ‘Do you remember my scene? Do you remember my line?’!). There are several wonderful moments and speeches I am sure I will remember from my latest production.

But also, observing the play over and over again, a director realises aspects he hadn’t thought of. For instance, in rehearsal I began to realise that the real villain in the story is not Scrooge but Jacob Marley for it is young Marley who corrupts young Scrooge and leads him to become fixated on accumulating more wealth: ‘Business is business, Ebenezer.’

I have also realised that Scrooge (as an old man) begins the play as a person closed in on himself: ‘Secret and self-contained, as solitary as an oyster; warning all human sympathy to keep its distance.’ But by the end of the play, when he has learnt from observing his past, present and future, he opens himself up to everyone: ‘A Merry Christmas to everyone. A Happy New Year to the whole world!’

I hope and pray my own personal trajectory has been the same. This is the meaning of Christmas: to be open to everyone, not closed. It is the true open season.

Ave atque vale! Until the next blog.

As I sit here once again this evening gazing at the candle on the table beside me, I am extremely tired. I feel as if I am a sputtering flame about to expire. I have been working intensely over the last week or so on the final rehearsals for my latest production at my school: my adaptation of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol.’ It is a play I have directed before, ten years ago, when it officially opened our new studio theatre. But rehearsals for this one have been very rushed especially as, these days, I normally prepare a production for late January, not late November.

As I have entered a slower pace of life, being officially retired, fast-paced directing is quite a contrast and a challenge! It is invigorating though, like a quick gulp of espresso coffee. I am still sharing my expertise with my students although at an accelerated pace! I am trying to add in layers to their performances, minute by minute rather than rehearsal by rehearsal. Like me they are coping with putting the play together quickly and I now feel we will ‘have a show’ for opening night on Wednesday.

I am very proud of my cast and, as I mentioned in my last blog, a production is a wonderful way of bringing people together. And that is important in our age of de-unification and fragmentation, as our exit agreement is signed off by the EU and tensions rise again between Russia and the Ukraine and on the US/Mexico border etc, etc.

What would Dickens have thought of it all? I am sure he would have cast a satirical eye over the whole Brexit farrago: Nigel and Boris are Dickensian characters in themselves without the aid of the pen of Mr. Dickens himself. But I doubt they would have been characters in ‘A Christmas Carol’ – ‘We wish you a Merry Brexit!’ – I don’t think so! And Mr Trump? What would he have written about him? ‘Mr Trump was all trumpery, a pedlar of lies and political quackery; an arch twitterer of fake news and notions; a tanned balloon of hot air in the ascendant over the White House, changing direction this way and that, to stay afloat.’

As I have been dashing through the 19 scenes of my production, I’ve had no time really to stop and think about the story itself. Of course I have directed it before and the story is so familiar anyway. Too familiar perhaps after all the film, TV, stage and musical versions. It has never been out of print since it was first published in 1843. It has been indelibly etched on the nation’s imagination for over 150 years.

It is strange to think, then, that in his letters, Dickens’ calls ‘A Christmas Carol’ his ‘little book’. It was indeed a short novel but was an immediate bestseller, going through 13 editions in a year and proved one of his most popular works on bookshelves and on the stage. He himself gave numerous public readings of an abridged version for his charities across the UK and in his final years, in the USA.

When he was writing his ‘little book’, the Christmas holiday season was only just beginning to be revived in this country. But it was Dickens’ ‘little book’ that re-invented Christmas for the Victorian public and all the festivities of the season: dancing, carols, family gatherings, good food and drink. He even made the little-used phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ (which appears in the book) popular again. A remarkable achievement and probably an unintentional one.

But why did he write it? Dickens was inspired to write the story after visits to the ‘Ragged School’ for street children in London’s East End. He was passionate that the Poor, especially children, should not be forgotten and should not continue to be victims of the complacent and powerful wealthy classes. Scrooge has great wealth but will not use it to help others and is a miserable man as a result. In the story he comes to realise that it is only in giving that we can truly be happy, truly be ourselves. When asked to donate something to help the Poor, he says ‘Are there no prisons, no workhouses – which I pay my taxes for?’ Today he might say, ‘Are there no aid agencies? Is there no welfare state? Are there no food banks?’ Dickens makes him the epitome of selfishness and complacency.

His lines are quite famous. But in rehearsal today I heard a line that sums up this complacency. It is said by the Ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s old partner, who comes to haunt him on Christmas Eve. Marley is doomed to travel the earth for the selfishness he committed in his life. He has a speech wishing he had made mankind his business instead of making money his business and he says: ‘When I was alive, why did I walk through crowds of human beings with my eyes turned down?’ Why did he look away in the face of human need?

Dickens used his talents, energy, connections and personal wealth to try to alleviate the sufferings of the Poor. Above all he used his writing to open the eyes of others. Dickens didn’t walk with eyes turned down. Neither should we. Then we will have kept Christmas well.

Ave atque vale – Hail and Farewell! Till the next blog.

As I sit here about to write my meditation, I gaze at the candle on my table. The flame is flickering, wavering, unsteady. I would be a steady flame but tonight I find I am wavering too as I am very tired. Perhaps Marcus had the same thought as, stylus in hand, he looked at the candle before his eyes. He must have done a lot of candle-gazing in the dimness of his tent at the close of the day. And fire-gazing too, when the shadows lengthened and the business of the day was over.

When I was a boy, I would gaze into the fire in my grandmother’s kitchen at the back of her house. I would be fascinated by the paper and wood disintegrating into flaky embers before my eyes: all black and silver grey and bright orange. I would try to find shapes in the flames. And when I was a little older, I would let the flames shape my thoughts. I would stare and stare at the fire until my face was too hot to look at it any longer. Perhaps his candle-gazing and fire-gazing shaped Marcus’ thoughts too and led him to write.

While gazing at the candle just now, I have been thinking about the play I am currently directing at my school. A production is a special way of bringing people together. I always try to create a community among my student actors in rehearsals. Now that I am no longer teaching at the school and therefore not in school all the time, it is proving more difficult to bring the actors together. It was easier for Marcus: his military cohorts all swore an oath of allegiance to the Emperor and there were fierce penalties for those who defected. For a teacher or director, loyalty and respect have to be gained and not demanded.

The play is my own adaptation of Dickens’ novel ‘A Christmas Carol’. It was the first production I ever presented at the school – in 1984. Perhaps it may be my last. ‘In my end is my beginning’ as the poet T.S.Eliot wrote.

For that first production, I devised an updated version with Scrooge as an ‘Arthur Daley wheeler-dealer’ type who had made his money dabbling in the black market in the Second World War. We used the theme from the movie ‘Ghostbusters’, which was a huge hit at the time. The Ghost of Christmas Future, all clad in black, appeared on a motor cycle which he drove to the edge of the stage! Even then I was one for theatrical effects! There will certainly be a few in our present production, which is in its original Victorian setting. It will be performed on November 28-30 in the Studio Theatre at Richard Challoner School, New Malden. I have also always been one for publicity!

Yes, theatre is about community. Every production -professional, amateur or student – creates a community for the duration of rehearsals and performances. Therefore that community is intense but transient: ‘swift as a shadow, short as any dream’ (as Shakespeare says about love in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’). For my students that

experience of community is intensified by going on tour to Budapest, as is their achievement on stage. That is why they not infrequently experience a low once it is all over. The community has dissolved. Hopefully they will work again with some of their fellow actors and crew in a new production in the future but inevitably it will be a new cast and so a new community. And it will be a new cast and a new community for me too. Community – it is about community.

I was reminded of this last week when I attended the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. I was there for four times in the week as I was experiencing Wagner’s ‘Ring of the Nibelungs’, his cycle of four epic operas based on German and Norse mythology. It is a remarkable piece of music drama and puts enormous demands on the singers and orchestra musicians and conductor and well as presenting considerable imaginative challenges to the director and designers. For example, the first opera, ‘The Rheingold’ begins underneath the River Rhein where the Rheinmaidens live and the final opera, ‘The Twilight of the Gods’ ends with Brunhilde, Wotan’s daughter, riding through the flames as Valhalla, the home of the Gods is destroyed by fire. So there I was fire-gazing again – but this time I was witnessing a spectacular theatrical illusion, a truly epic visual climax to the four operas.

At the end of that fourth opera as singers, musicians and audience completed the epic journey they had experienced together over the four nights, there was a real sense of community among the singers on stage taking their bows. This was enhanced when Antonio Pappano, the conductor, brought the orchestra onto the stage to take bows with the singers. And not only the musicians but also the technicians and stage hands who had made the amazing staging and special effects possible.

There was also a sense of community among the audience, who in the main, would have attended the complete cycle and who sat in the same seats for each opera. My friend and I therefore had the same neighbours to the left and right of us in our row and got chatting about the performances over the four evenings. The opera house is a huge theatre and in a horseshoe shape and yet there was a real oneness among the audience who had experienced the four operas together and who warmly and wildly showed their appreciation particularly at the end of the last one. Also there was a oneness with the performers especially at that final curtain call. The huge physical space between the singers onstage and the audience in a semi-circle of four tiers around them dissolved. As in Ancient Greek Drama, the circle of performers and audience was complete. We had created our own Ring and as in Wagner’s music drama, it happened by magic.

And so as I gaze at the candle on my table again, with Wagner’s music still swirling in my mind, I realise that I do not need to try to create a community among my actors. It will

happen imperceptibly as if by magic. And hopefully the circle between my performers and their audience will be complete too. Come and join the circle.

Ave atque vale – until the next blog.

It has been a little while since I last sat at my table by a flickering candle to continue this blog. Marcus’ meditations must have been interrupted too sometimes. However, mine have not been stopped by the sudden dramas of a military campaign. I have only been away on a little holiday to Italy, to Assisi, the home of the 13th Century saints, Francis and Clare. As you might imagine, it is a place of peace and stillness despite the many tourists and pilgrims who trudge up and down the narrow steep streets to visit the churches that house the holy sites connected with them. I was one of them.

The old town, where I stayed, is built up out of the hills in the shadow of Mount Subasio. Its biscuit walls glitter in the sunlight by day or glow in the lamplight by night. Mists hover over majestic views of the new town on the plain beneath and the surrounding Umbrian countryside.

There are fields and fields of olive trees outside the town, and at this time of year, the olives are almost ripe for picking. My friends and I walked through groves of them as, having lost our way, we wandered in search of San Damiano, the intimate convent where St Clare, following the inspiration of St Francis, began her community of nuns. One tree attracted my attention as we made our way back. Olive trees take three years or more to bear fruit and can last for centuries. This one was grey, almost silver, and its boughs were spindly and gnarled. It looked decidedly elderly. The trunk was skeletal as if it had been chopped in half from top to bottom. The tree would have been more at home in some apocalyptic landscape. The hollowed out trunk looked like the victim of a nuclear war. The tree was leaning back from the pathway as if flexing for another attack. It was barely standing up in the earth. Yet it’s emaciated boughs were as leafy and green as the other trees that surrounded it and as laden with olives. It seemed like an image of my retirement!

On our last day, we drove to Norcia, the birthplace of St Benedict, an hour or so away. Sadly the town had suffered an earthquake in 2016 and two years on, the scars of the catastrophe were still there. We drove through arch of the old city gate which was held up by scaffolding and wooden struts as were so many other buildings around the main square. A ‘tourist information’ sign hung precariously from a tall building covered in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. The basilica and monastery of St Benedict itself were half demolished and from where I stood in the square, I could see the monks’ cells on the first floor, now devoid of the privacy of outer walls and doors. A light hung from the ceiling of one room and a bed and wash basin remained incongruously in another even though half of the floor had disappeared.

The tragedy of the earthquake lingered over Norcia like the mists over the plains around Assisi. Like the olive tree, the town was barely standing up. Yet despite the remnants of the devastation all around, shops and cafes were open, there was a bustling market in the square, and people were cheerfully going about their business in the autumn sunshine. Like the gnarled old olive tree, the town was still bearing fruit.

As I sipped my coffee outside a cafe off the town square, I asked myself how the people there could cope over the last two years. I looked down the street to the arch of the old city gate held up by scaffolding and wooden struts and found my answer. Like the arch they were being held up: by faith, by hope and by eachother. As we all are.

Ave atque vale – Hail and Farewell! Till the next blog.