Candle – Meditations of Neilus Aurelius

As I sit here watching the flickering flame of the candle beside me, the whole world seems to be a flickering flame in the face of the virus that has engulfed us. Not even emperors or the powerful of our own time are able to totally control it. It is a humbling corrective to their own towering self-confidence, should they possess it. Indeed it is a humbling corrective to us all, in our own little busy worlds, which have now perforce been interrupted in the most dramatic and sudden way.

In the wake of the week’s events in our own country, indeed across the world, it seems pointless, even crass and insulting to the suffering of others to write a meditation about anything else. I must admit to feeling numb and powerless myself, as indeed we all are, like someone standing stock still in the street when an accident happens, a neutral observer but unable to do little if anything to prevent it. Nevertheless, despite our fears and inherent panic at the spread of the virus and the sudden restrictions that have been imposed upon us, life must continue as far as possible. We must take up again our preoccupations and activities with calm determination and above all hope, hope for the future. The flame, though flickering, is not yet spent.

So with this in mind, I would like to share with you an exhibition I attended early last week before the closures at the National Portrait Gallery near Trafalgar Square. It was a display of David Hockey’s portraits. They included works from his teenage years in the 1950’s to the present day. The passage of time was very evident in the drawings, prints and paintings. This was because the portraits were of four particular sitters who are close to him: his muse Celia Birtwell, his mother Laura, his lover Gregory Evans, his print maker Maurice Payne as well as a series of portraits of himself.

They were executed in various locations around the world which gave the exhibition an exotic feel though being portraits there was equally an intimacy about them. Hockney is a fine draughtsman. His drawing skills are remarkable particularly in depicting the clothing of the sitters: the detailed prints of Celia’s numerous dresses for example. He is also an acute realist: these were not flattering portraits but carefully outlined the changes time had wrought on the sitter (including himself of course!). Yet though he accurately showed how the effects of age had changed the subject, the expression on their faces changed little and so their personality, their inner spirit seemed constant.

It was the self portraits that fascinated me. I have always been deeply moved by the realism in Rembrandt’s self-portraits (especially his ones painted in old age) and the realism in Hockey’s moved me too. It is Rembrandt’s eyes that draw you to him and they show you the ages of man: from quirky insecure youth to benign accepting old age. But in

Hockney’s portraits the eyes are always the same: they look startled, almost scared like a deer suddenly disturbed in a forest. I suppose this may be a trope that he uses for all of them and this startled stare even looks out at us from his first drawings as a teenager in his room in Bradford. This constant expression helps us to appreciate the different backgrounds and locations, the different clothes he wears over the years, the different media he uses at times and of course the changes in his face wrought by age.

But it is an odd expression. It is as if he has been caught in the act of painting, as if his art is reprehensible. The title for each one might be ‘The Guilty Artist’! That was certainly the cumulative effect they had on me. For a moment I wondered if it was something to do with his sexuality, with being afraid to be who he is, especially when gay men of his generation had to be closeted and furtive, when every expression of their sexuality had to be behind closed doors and there was always that fear of the door being suddenly opened and being found out, exposed. But this does not sit with the fact that he has been openly gay and even flamboyantly so for most of his adult life in contrast with his contemporary and fellow Yorkshireman, the writer Alan Bennett who only ‘came out’ in his later years.

Maybe that startled look does stem from a primal fear of being found out that was deep rooted from his teenage years.

Or perhaps it is something to do with the embarrassment about being in any way artistic and creative when you are brought up with an ordinary working class background. But then I may be reading something of myself into Hockney’s paintings. My own feelings of embarrassment were unnecessary really as the adults around me and my peers accepted that I wrote little plays and enjoyed acting. My primary school teacher encouraged me. She thought I would end up as a producer or director for BBC Drama.

And yet it is an extremely courageous act to commit a portrait of oneself to paper or canvas especially when it is realistic rather than narcissistic! There are times when I have shied way from writing this blog because I have been a little wary of committing myself to paper as it were. It is a private act that becomes public. Perhaps it is my childhood and teenage embarrassment taking hold again.

In one way I found the exhibition depressing. Walking around and gradually observing these five sitters (including the artist) getting older and older made me feel as if I was growing old with them! In truth they made me realise my own age. I am not young anymore myself. Looking back on my walk around these portraits with their constant expressions, I see that Hockney has hit upon a truth about human nature: our bodies grow older but we look out to the world with the same eyes we did as a child or young person. This can make us forget our real age sometimes: we think we are younger than we are in reality. As I have been working with young people for over half my life, yes, as others

have repeatedly pointed out, working with young people keeps you young, but it can also lead to self delusion at times!

Inevitably the restrictions imposed this week for our own good have also reminded me of my age and vulnerability. I am but four years off 70! Living alone has compounded this. I have always said that living alone is an art form, something in the coming days of isolation we may have to learn. But so many friends, neighbours and colleagues and of course family have been in touch for which I am so very grateful.

So I am once again reminded of the stained glass window in St Pierre de Montmatre in Paris. That abstract stained glass reminded me many years ago about all my family and friends, each one a bright and colourful pane of glass welded to the other by the molten lead of affection and love. We may be well aware at present that we are an individual and isolated pane of glass. We may even feel that our bright and cheerful colour has faded but the sun will still shine through it. And we need to remember that we may be a single pane but we are surrounded by the molten lead of affection and love.

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

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A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

As I sit here by my solitary candle I am looking at the corner opposite me in my lounge. It is now empty. Today I took down the Christmas decorations and so the tree in the opposite corner is no longer there. My candle seems very solitary indeed now that the lights on the tree are packed away upstairs. Now that the garlands and cards are gone from my bookshelves too, the room seems empty indeed and cold as if a chill winter breeze has crept in though the window or under the door.

I am reminded once again of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, when the Spirit of Christmas Future returns Scrooge to the Cratchits’ parlour and the corner where Tiny Tim used to sit is sadly empty. Of course, Scrooge changes heart when he wakes up in the present on Christmas morning. He helps Tiny Tim as much as he can and presumably Tim recovers from his illness and lives so the corner will not be empty at all. And of course I will be putting up the decorations and tree once again in December and, like Tiny Tim’s corner, my lounge corner will not be empty once more either. And it will once again glow with the lights on the tree.

At the end of ‘A Christmas Carol’ we are told that ‘it was always said of Mr Scrooge that he knew how to keep Christmas well’. We are also reminded: ‘May that be truly said of all of us.’ What does this mean? Scrooge’s sudden change of heart, indeed the opening of his heart in generosity to others, including those less fortunate than himself, did not end with that first Christmas season when he became truly alive. The spirit of Christmas remained alive in him throughout the year. Moreover, his heart had been opened for the rest of his days.

You may remember the phrase ‘A dog isn’t just for Christmas’, warning people not to buy a puppy for Christmas without being aware of the responsibilities of looking after it afterwards. Well perhaps Dickens is saying ‘Christmas isn’t just for Christmas’. We should keep the generous spirit of Christmas alight in our hearts even though the Christmas lights have been extinguished in our home. Just as, if we buy or receive a dog or puppy at Christmas, we have the responsibility to look after it, so we also have the responsibility to be generous and kind to others, especially those less fortunate than ourselves, all the year round. If we are looking for a New Year’s resolution perhaps this should be it. Or perhaps we should be thinking more in terms of a New Year’s attitude.

A few days ago, I mentioned to a friend that my lounge looked gloomy now that the decorations had been taken down and packed away. He suggested that we should put up different decorations for each month of the year, in line with the seasons I suppose. I do know that in Hungary (and I imagine other parts of Eastern Europe) people put up an Easter tree in their homes. This is very often a large bunch of bare branches decorated with ribbons and imitation eggs made from wood or papier-mache. The eggs are painted with traditional designs and are very colourful. I have a few on my Christmas tree! When I bought them in Budapest several years ago, I thought they were Christmas decorations!

My Christmas lights may be put away now but my solitary candle is still burning brightly. Perhaps in the year ahead, we should burn a candle to remind ourselves of the spirit of Christmas in season and out of season and to remind ourselves to live by that spirit. And

to encourage us, in the dark and uncertain opening days of this New Year and new decade.

Happy New Year.

Ave atque vale – Hail and Farewell! Till 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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A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

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

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

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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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius