MEDITATION 66

The days are becoming shorter now and the evening air is chill as winter, in the guise of autumn, stealthily approaches. I have lit my candle earlier than usual to write my meditation as the skies are darkening earlier. As the season changes, summer travels seem a long way away, even if they were only a few weeks ago. They have receded into memory, memories enlivened hopefully by photographs.

As I gaze at the flame’s light, my mind has gone back to a very different kind of light and another memory of my stay in Castle Thirlstane in the Scottish Borders a few weeks ago. I am remembering a thin pale light in the dark, not from a candle or a lantern (as would befit a historic castle) but from a mobile phone.

The journey from the Castle to Lauder, the nearest village, is straightforward on foot. On our first evening, my friend Simon and I walked down the long drive, passing the field with grazing sheep I mentioned in my last blog and then another two fields with corralled horses on each side of the path and a field of cattle beyond. We then veered to the right and ascended a small but steep hill which took us into Lauder’s high street. What could be simpler? And a delightful saunter in the sunshine before supper, too.

However, the walk back after our meal was very different. As we left the high street with its street lights, we slowly walked down the steep little hill again but into enveloping darkness. It was pitch black ahead of us until we could see the lights of the castle in the distance as we tentatively turned the bend. I have often wondered what it would be like to be a character in a Gothic horror tale and now I was experiencing it: walking on foot in the sombre darkness of night, my only beacon, the light from a window in a looming castle as I drew closer. It was a scene worthy of Mary Shelley and ‘Frankenstein’, Charlotte Bronte and ‘Jane Eyre’ or Edgar Alan Poe. I was truly under the ‘cloak of darkness’ and at last I understood the meaning of that cliche.

Except that the lighted castle window wasn’t our only beacon. My friend Simon was using his mobile phone screen to light us on the pathway. Eventually we could see a glimmer of another little oblong light. It was as if this light in the distance was signalling or answering the little oblong light in my friend’s hand. The light was from the keypad which opened the wooden gate to the castle drive. Once we were there and put the code onto the keypad, the gate opened to us, in a very slow, eerie Gothic manner, to reveal the final stretch of our nocturnal walk to the side entrance of the castle, where our apartment was situated.

On that first walk home to the castle, we were so intent on finding our way that we hardly noticed the night sky except it’s gloomy pall as we commenced our descent from the high street. Walking in that darkness and trying to see the ground under my feet made me feel a little vulnerable despite my friend at my side. I felt uneasy as I couldn’t see the path ahead of me clearly. One of my foibles is that I have a fear of falling, and fear of failing too, if truth be known. The answer is to slow down and take one step at a time, as I have had to do over the last eighteen months, indeed, as we all have had to do. We haven’t been able to see the path ahead clearly in the pandemic gloom. Fortunately we now seem to be emerging from it slowly.

I cannot remember when I last walked in such complete darkness without street lights. I do have a vivid memory of walking in the dark in the countryside when I was a teenager. I was a member of Teeside Youth Theatre then, when I was in the Sixth Form. A group of us were on a weekend to Stratford – Upon -Avon in the summer holidays. We saw two plays in two days, I remember. Some of us also wanted to go for a midnight ramble along the streets of Stratford and ended up in some barely lit lanes till there were no streetlights at all and we were in a small wood or field. The place is probably all built up now as my teenage years were a long time ago! It was a magical walk, a kind of enchantment. I had a sense of Shakespeare whenever we ambled. Perhaps it was my youthful excitement at being there, along the lanes and paths and fields he may have trod. I was every impressionable then. No – I still get that sense of Shakespeare in and around Stratford at times when I visit. I had no fear of falling then, wandering around in the dark with my fellow actors. But of course youth was holding me up.

We had supper in Lauder again on the final night of our holiday. So, once more we had to make our way back to the castle in the dark. This time I was more relaxed about it. We stopped to look at the night sky sprinkled with glittering stars. Simon pointed out to me the Plough constellation and some of the others. He gave me quite an astronomy lesson as we looked up into the clear night sky. He pointed to the North Star, which I found interesting as it is mentioned in Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’. ‘I am constant as the Northern Star,’ says Caesar ironically to the Senate, a few moments before he is assassinated. I remember the line well, having directed the play three times. I also played Caesar myself in the second of those productions and remember enjoying the speech. It suggests total confidence based on absolute power. So different from keeping order in a classroom – or trying to!

Looking up at the North Star in the night sky, it was larger and grander than the other stars clustered around it: like Caesar, at that moment in the play, surrounded by the senators. Perhaps Shakespeare gazed up at it in Stratford, as I was doing now in Scotland, and perhaps it gave him the image he needed to describe Caesar’s power and total self-belief. Perhaps, he stood in that field where I stood on my Youth Theatre ramble.

Looking up at the night sky made me realise, of course, that I am not in my own universe, another trait of mine! I belong to a far more expansive one, beyond comprehension. I am one tiny being in a huge cosmos. I did not feel vulnerable this time, but I did feel finite, in the face of the infinite. Just as Caesar, in his own universe, is very definitely made to feel finite when the senators stab him to death a moment after his speech.

Buddhists engage in sky meditation, looking at the sky for a length of time. I found this very useful when I was in the throes of lockdown. It helped me come out of myself, as I stood gazing at the sky from my garden. All those months in lockdown made me even more self-conscious than I usually am, and self-consciousness can be debilitating. Sky meditation is also an act of humility, reminding us of who and where we are in the cosmos; of our finiteness as one tiny being in a huge universe.

It can also be comforting. Our dear friend, Marcus Aurelius, had that same sense of being part of the Universe. The Greek Stoic philosophers called the Universe, ‘to pan’, which means ‘the All’. He writes, ‘Think of the universe as one living creature, comprising one substance and one soul: how all is absorbed into this one consciousness.’

The poet Dante (1265-1321) in his poetic masterpiece ‘The Divine Comedy’ gazes at the stars and sees, like Marcus, the unity of creation. He sees it as a volume whose pages are bound together by divine love:

‘In its depth I saw that it contained,

bound up by love into a single volume,

the scattered pages of the universe.’

He is seeing beyond the universe to a divine author behind it, binding the pages together: to a loving creator, which, those of us who are religious, also see. Again it is a comforting thought: we are not a random scattered page, blown hither and thither, or a mere cipher on it, but we are bound to the rest of the universe in grand design. In other words, we have our place. It is our role in life to find out what or where that place is.

So because of its stellar beauty on the final night of our stay, the sky did not seem bleak and foreboding like the first night. The stars and their little glittering lights, observed by Marcus, Dante, Shakespeare and countless generations as well as ourselves were warm and reassuring in the deep impenetrable blackness of the night sky. Burning thousands upon thousands of miles away, they were little flames in the darkness.

I am reminded of some words of St Francis, ‘All the darkness of the world cannot extinguish the light of one single candle.’ We too must be little flames in the darkness like the stars.

I mentioned that quote in my first meditation, which was exactly three years ago. I would like to thank those of you who have followed my blog over the last three tumultuous years and those who have joined the journey along the way. In particular, I would like to thank Henry, one of my former students, who set up the blog and who posts the meditations, even though now he is very busy as a producer on LBC radio.

Because he is having a holiday, the blog will be taking a break too for several weeks.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell– 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.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 52

Happy New Year, dear reader!

As I sit here writing my first meditation of this year, I am gazing at two candles. One has a steady flame and the other a weak and flickering one. They arouse in me the conflicting emotions we are going through in this third lockdown. The weak and wavering flame brings to my mind the horrific trail of tragedy and suffering caused by the lethal and contagious second virus and all the fears and uncertainties that accompany it. The steady flame reminds me that vaccines have now arrived to combat it accompanied by a solid hope for the future. In these bleak times, mirrored by the gloomy weather, we must remember St Francis’ words: ‘All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the flame of a single candle’ – the candle of hope.

Since the year began, I have been getting through lockdown by reading books given me by friends at Christmas. A rare instance has occurred in my reading: chapters in a book I am reading have been mirrored by current events. The book is ‘Shakespeare in a Divided America’ by James Shapiro. Shapiro is an English professor at Columbia university and has written several popular books about Shakespeare and his plays as well as fronting his own BBC series. In his book he explores the enduring influence of Shakespeare on his country, and not only on its actors, directors and writers but also on its politicians and different classes of society. It is a fascinating read and shows how productions and approaches to the plays have also been influenced by the events of the day from the early 1800’s to the present.

In his opening chapter, he describes a particular production of ‘Julius Caesar’ at length. The production took place in the summer of 2017 during Donald’ Trump’s first year of office. It was staged in the 1,800 seat open air ‘Delacorte Theater’ in New York’s Central Park. The play was presented in modern costumes and with a modern setting, actually not so much modern as contemporary and totally up to date. Caesar was presented as a thinly veiled Donald Trump and was apparently a meticulously detailed portrayal by Greg Henry, who like Trump is tall and who sported a mane of blond hair. Some of Caesar’s plebeian supporters (like Trump’s) wore red baseball caps. The caps had ‘Make Rome Great Again’ written on them.

In the play Caesar is assassinated in the Senate with only the members of the senate present. The people of Rome are going about their business elsewhere. In this production, apparently the director seated some of them in the audience so when Caesar was murdered, they stood up and shouted out in shock, anger and outrage and mimicking Trump supporters. As you probably know, after the murder, Mark Antony gives an oration over the body of Caesar in the Forum, inciting the people to violence against the conspirators and murderers. The mob runs amok in the streets and in a short but brutal scene they beat an innocent man to death. He is Cinna the poet, whom they mistake for Cinna the conspirator. When he pleads his identity to them, they don’t care anyway and bludgeon him in their bloodlust.

I little imagined that a few days after reading this chapter, similar scenes would be played out in the U.S.A’s own Capitol in Washington. Yet again a mob armed with makeshift (and real) weapons was running amok and storming the Capitol. They were not incited by another Mark Antony but by another Caesar himself, who had not been assassinated himself but his hopes of re-election had (and his ego too, if that is possible). They were making their voices heard in the most destructive and violent way.

The director of the production I have briefly described above was Oskar Eustis. He gave a speech at the curtain call of the first performance. In it he remarked that ‘like Drama, Democracy depends on the conflict of different points of view. Nobody owns the truth. We all own the culture.’

His words greatly affected me. The conflict of different points of view, indeed freedom of speech, is not about who shouts loudest or who clogs the media most effectively with lies and unsubstantiated false information. Our media, as ‘Macbeth’ says ‘is smothered in surmise.’ Fake news, real fake news (not Trump’s version) is another contagion as lethal as the current virus.

Consensus and compromise are now seen to be the weak option and unworthy of a nation’s so called ‘sovereignty’, as has been sadly evident in this country in the last four years of Brexit. Similarly anything other than an entrenched position is seen as weakness. And yet our government has been forced to change their minds and their policies by the onslaught of the virus. Entrenchment and an pandemic do not mix.

In November, I attended an online seminar about the U.S. election results, given by my Oxford college and led by a panel of American alumni who had pursued political careers eventually after graduating. The consensus of the panel was that American politics has become strongly polarised as a result of the Trump years of administration. There was now no room for a middle ground. They felt that hopefully this may change and Politics in the US may become less relentlessly combative if Biden ushers in a quieter and less aggressive (and impulsive) administration.

Trump’s four year tenure of the White House could be summed up by a quote from another Shakespeare play, ‘Measure for Measure’:

‘But man, proud man

Dressed in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape

Plays such fantastical tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep.’

These lines not only apply to Donald Trump, of course. They could apply to other political leaders past and present. They could also apply to any of us who are in a position of authority over others.

How do these ‘fantastical tricks’ by those in authority originate? Perhaps the answer lies back in ‘Julius Caesar.’ In the play, Brutus says of Caesar:

‘The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins

Remorse from power.’

In Brutus’ comment, ‘remorse’ means mercy: if mercy is separated from power then greatness is abused or diminished. In other words, when the gaining and exercise of power is more important than the needs of the people. People should come first. Power should be used to care for and protect the people not to subjugate or exploit them. Or use them to bolster up a monstrous ego trip.

In these last ten months, we have been potently reminded of how fragile human life is. In the last two months since the U.S. Election, we have also been reminded how fragile democracy can be.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – 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!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

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

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 44

As I sit here beside my candle, watching the steady flame, I am thinking of Marcus Aurelius, the inspiration for this blog. It is wonderful that we are able to read his own ‘Meditations’, which he wrote over 1,800 years ago and in a paperback edition too which is readily available in bookstores or even as a kindle book!

Though they were written in Latin and I have therefore been dependent upon a translator, yet he seems to be very present to me as I read them, as if he is really speaking to me despite the centuries between us. How far the real Marcus is reflected in these pages or how far it is the Marcus he would like the reader to see, I, of course, will never know. But there is an honesty and a genuine humility in his writing that makes me think he is truly present in his words. For one thing, he never mentions his military successes, whereas, for instance, his imperial ancestor, Julius Caesar, wrote extensively and interminably about his in his ‘Gallic Wars’!

I dare to hope that something of my own self is reflected in my own meditations in this blog, that I am present to you the reader through my writing.

During the months of lockdown since March, we have been present to each other in many different ways, thanks to digital technology, and in ways that Marcus could not have dreamt of. I say ‘being present’ because in these dark days, it hasn’t just been a case of contacting friends and family and acquaintances, but it has also involved being present to them as a support and encouragement and to share anxieties which may have meant spending a little more time than usual with them on a call.

There have been so many ways through which we have been present to others, not just the phone or e mail but through texts and group chats, and visually through FaceTime, WhatsApp, Skype and of course the new medium of Zoom.

Video calls on whatever platform have enabled us to see who we are speaking to, which has been so important and a great comfort, as for several long months we weren’t allowed to meet friends or possibly even family because of movement restrictions. Looking at my emails, I think that texts and video calls are replacing the personal e mail to friends and acquaintances. I might be wrong about this – it may be that people just don’t want to write to me anymore!
FaceTime, WhatsApp and Zoom were new to me at the start of lockdown, but as someone who lives alone, they have been another lifeline for me (as well as calls, mails and texts) once I got used to them. In the early months, it was wonderful to be able to have a video call with my family, to see them as well as talk to them and of course my close friends too across the country and across the world.

However I must admit that I found triple conversations and a three way split screen difficult to handle on the small screen of an I phone! The smaller screen made me feel constricted. I am much more comfortable and relaxed with a Zoom call on the wider screen of a laptop. Maybe my big personality is more suited to a wider format! I would certainly have been at home in one of those wide screen epics of years gone by. Perhaps I could have played Marcus Aurelius (as Alec Guinness did in ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’ and, less successfully, Richard Harris, in ‘Gladiator’).

I have had such a variety of Zoom calls in these recent months, a committee meeting or two, two lectures with the Dickens’ Fellowship (of which I am a member), a series of group meditations and one memorable evening when I spend two hours chatting with my dear friends David and Peter, while we drank our bottles of wine on our respective sofas in our homes across London from eachother. It was digital decadence! However, it does seem rather silly at times: talking to a laptop screen which then talks back to you! It’s like being in an old sci-fi movie without the dramatic and earnest conversations from screen to screen!

In a video call our friends or family are there but not there. They are present to us but not physically present. I must confess to being saddened sometimes when the video call was over, and in a way that I wouldn’t have been if it was an ordinary audio phone call. It is the fact that you can see family or friends (which is wonderful) but they are not really present with you in the room. So when the call is over and you wave and end the call, there can be a sense of loss, an emptiness. A video call can never replace being with that person or persons. Nevertheless, it has been a comfort, indeed a marvel, in these dark months we have been going through.

Another comfort to me has been the streaming of theatre productions online. These have been from the archive of the National Theatre, the Royal Opera and Royal Shakespeare Company. Over the last decade, these companies (and others under the National Theatre umbrella) have streamed live performances to cinemas and a selection of these performances have been streamed in lockdown on BBC I player and YouTube and are therefore quite recent. They have filled quite a few evenings for me and I have been able to catch up on productions I have missed. One advantage of these filmed performances is that the cameras enable you to see the actors close up, which may not be possible from where you are sitting in the theatre.

One of these productions was Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in a performance from 2019 at the new Bridge Theatre, by Tower Bridge on the Thames. I must admit that having directed the play five times and seen as many if not more productions of this play, I felt a little jaded about it as it started. It turned out to be an exciting, very funny and spectacular immersive theatre experience. The Bridge Theatre is able to change its seating for whatever production and had taken out the stalls seats so audience could stand while the play took place on a series of platforms and also above their heads as there were actors on trapezes above them at times. (‘Oh to do something like this in my school drama studio,’ I thought to myself!) The rest of the audience were seated in the circle on three sides. As is customary at present, there was some gender swapping of roles: Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Fairies, swapped lines for instance which created some hilarious situations. But the production was highly detailed and the text was very clear so Shakespeare was well served by this energetic company. Most important of all, it had warmth and was life-affirming and was magical (as all successful productions of this play should be).

I have mentioned in a previous blog (when I discussed seeing Wagner’s Ring Cycle of 4 operas at the Opera House) that a successful theatre performance creates an invisible ring binding the performers and the audience. This production of Shakespeare’s ‘Dream’ created that invisible ring from its first moment until the riotous final curtain call. There were many moments when I too, sitting in my armchair at home, felt part of that ring too. The experience was all embracing. What an achievement for the director Nicholas Hytner and his actors.
But they were only moments. Because I was not physically present in the audience. I certainly wish I had been last summer. As the play was nearing its final act, I began to feel saddened in the midst of the joyous atmosphere of the show. For our theatres are closed and I am missing them. We do not know when they will re-opened or when an immersive production like ‘The Dream’ with actors moving, running and dancing through the audience will happen again.

Much has been touted about Zoom and other platforms being the way forward while coronavirus and the threat of it remains with us and beyond, when we are back to a kind of normal. There has been talk of digital lessons in schools, webinars and digital lectures in university and other educational institutions, digital conferencing etc. In certain situations this may be a way forward. But we must remember that nothing can replace the physical presence of a person. And we cannot let digital communication distance us from eachother and break the bond of our common humanity (which the production I have discussed so potently celebrated). We are social beings which means being physically present to eachother.

There are times on summer days when dark clouds appear and stay there in the sky. It seems as if the sun will never come out again. But it will and does. I am sure we have had those moments in these recent months, when we thought the dark clouds wouldn’t go. Well lockdown is beginning to ease and the sun is peeping through the clouds. We are able to move around more and see more of eachother. I have been able to visit my family in Leeds and friends in the London area too. I have been able to visit an ‘old friend’ the National Gallery (as another friend of mine puts it). But more about these in my next blog.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – 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!
And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.
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