MEDITATION 109

I am writing this meditation in my lounge and at the appropriate time: evening. There are not one but two candles beside me.

As I sit here I am reminding myself of sunflowers. I am not trying to conjure up a summer landscape of fields of sunflowers, golden in the sunlight. Although I could be excused for doing so as today has been very wintry: dark, dank and chill. The sunflowers in my mind are not in a field or a garden but in a vase. Not all of them are in cheerful bloom either. Some are drooping and one or two look as if they have already expired.

They are in fact as unreal as my imagining. They are the sunflowers painted by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90). We may think that he painted only one picture of sunflowers – the famous one. But in fact he painted several and two of them have been on display in a recent exhibition at London’s National Gallery. The exhibition partly celebrates the centenary of the Gallery’s acquisition of one of the ‘Sunflowers’ paintings. That is the famous one. There is also another one on display however from Philadelphia.

The aim of the exhibition has been to bring together paintings from the artist’s time in the South of France in 1888-9. Moreover, it is the first time the paintings have been exhibited together as some are from private collections. It is also the first time that the National Gallery has mounted a Van Gogh exhibition. Not only are there paintings on display but also some of the artist’s drawings in ink and chalk.

The Gallery has billed the exhibition as ‘a once in a century exhibition’ which is no hyperbole. I am sure these masterpieces will not be seen together in one place for many a year. Standing in one of the exhibition rooms and looking around the walls I did feel privileged for a moment. The big shows which major galleries mount with artwork often from around the world provide a unique opportunity to see normally far flung artworks under one roof. We are privileged to have the opportunity to see them. And there was I, before we went in, observing to my friend Teresa that exhibition ticket prices seem to be escalating!

Needless to say the exhibition has been hugely popular and Teresa was very fortunate to obtain tickets for the Friday of the final weekend. It was sold out all day and the Gallery was staying open all night too until Saturday morning to enable as many people as possible to witness this unique exhibition. I discovered this on a notice as I entered the Gallery, which led me to have visions of late night clubbers wandering in and taking in Van Gogh’s bright vibrant colours with tired, bleary eyes. Depending on what state they were in, they might be seeing two vases of sunflowers at once – or rather four!

As might be expected, despite timed entrance tickets, the exhibition was very full and it was difficult to get close to individual paintings as there were always clusters of people around them. This was as I imagined it would be, but I was nevertheless a little disappointed and rather impatient. I began to use the tactics I adopt in a theatre bar in the interval to edge my way closer to a particular painting. My small stature has its uses!

I did become rather agitated, however, as I moved from the first room to the second, which was much larger, with more paintings on display than the first and therefore there were more clusters of people gathered in front of each picture.

The people in the room were no doubt as anxious as I was to see everything. Despite this, I did notice that people gave way to disabled visitors and parents with buggies and children.One of the problems with large groups around one painting is that the numbers often force you to look too closely at the picture and, with others in front of you, it is difficult to view it at the right distance. This was especially true of the famous ‘starry night’ picture (‘Starry Night over the Rhône’).

Of course many were taking photos of pictures on their phones. This is understandable as they will not have the chance to see some of the pictures again (unless they buy the expensive catalogue). But taking photos of artworks has become a natural reflex in galleries now, almost muscle memory. I am as guilty myself, although I took few photos this time. This is because it’s impossible to capture Van Gogh’s wide brush strokes on a flat image however detailed the image may be.

There was a moment when I felt like giving up. There were just too many people in the room. It was his signature that calmed me down – that inimitable ‘Vincent’ in his broad stroke. It was daubed on the side of a box of plants in the famous painting of his chair. I had managed to find a gap as a small group moved on so I could view the painting quite comfortably. The chair was in his bedroom in the ‘Yellow House’ where he lived and there was another painting of the room itself on display on another wall. But this painting was just the chair and the box of plants to the side.

The signature began to draw me into the picture. Inevitably I became oblivious to the others around me. The chair reminded me of my kitchen as I have four similar ones around my kitchen table. I bought them because they looked like the Van Gogh chair and now, after seeing the actual picture, I am reminded of him whenever I look at them at home.

On the chair was his pipe and tobacco. It was an invitation to intimacy, as if in the midst of all the people in that large room he was saying, ‘Hello – I am here in the middle of all this. Stand still and you will find me’.

And I did. I stood still, blocking out everyone around me, looking at the picture till I was ready to move on. And that is how I spent the rest of my time there, standing still and letting the picture in front of me take me in so that I forgot everyone milling around me for that moment. I concentrated on the particular pictures that caught my attention – of which there were many.

The late theatre director Peter Brook wrote that a play is a series of moments. An exhibition can be a series of moments too, if we will stop and look and let the picture take us out of ourselves. It may mean concentrating on only a few pictures for a length of time. This can be difficult when there is so much to see in a major exhibition like the Van Gogh one. But then, there is only so much that we can absorb and maybe we should let our instinct lead us to the pictures that speak to us in an immediate way, as I did.

I cannot describe all the pictures or drawings I experienced. Most poignant were the ones that Van Gogh painted or sketched while he was in the mental hospital of Saint-Paul at Saint-Remy, where he had voluntarily committed himself several mental crises. They were of the hospital gardens and the fields behind and are far from bleak.

As my friend and I left the exhibition and went out into the early evening of dark winter, we both agreed that we felt uplifted by the world we had experienced of vibrant colours, of parks, fields, gardens and flowers all touched by the sunshine of Southern France.

How amazing that in the darkness of his mental state, Van Gogh was inspired to create pictures of such bright vibrant light.

In this week when the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is being commemorated and Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners are slowly being freed and thousands of displaced Palestinians have begun to return to what is left of Gaza we must have hope that light will come from darkness.

Ave atque Vale

Neilus Aurelius

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National Gallery London Peter Brook

Van Gogh Exhibition

Van Gogh Sunflowers Liberation of Auschwitz

Art Appreciation/Exhibitions Palestine/Israeli Conflict.

Arles

San-Remy.

River Rhône

Meditation 46

As I write this meditation, I am not gazing at the candle in front of me. I am writing on my kitchen table and looking at the array of magnets on the fridge in the corner. The surfaces of the fridge door, the freezer door under it and the side of the fridge opposite me are almost completely filled with magnets.

I have been collecting them on my travels for over fifteen years I think. Some are from museums or art galleries or historical buildings as I can’t resist gift shops in those places. I have a penchant for cultural souvenirs, you see.

Many of them are small oblong pieces of tin with a photo or art reproduction printed on them and some are encased in plastic squares or oblongs. There are those of places I have visited around the world. As might be expected not a few are from Hungary and my numerous visits there and from Vancouver Island where I usually visit every year too.

Others are from the exhibitions I mentioned. Indeed my fridge boasts its own miniature art gallery: there are a Van Gogh, a Vermeer, 2 Caravaggio’s, 3 Michelangelo’s (including the statue of David), a Toulouse Lautrec, part of the stained glass at the Church of Sainte Chapelle in Paris, a portrait of Anne Boleyn, 2 pictures by Emily Carr (from Vancouver Island -one of my favourite artists), an Atkinson Grimshaw (the 19th Century Yorkshire artist) and a view of Lake Keitele in Finland by Aksell Gellen-Kallela (one of my favourite pictures in London’s National Gallery) among others. You might argue that in the early days of lockdown, when movement was severely restricted, there was no need for me to visit a gallery anyway. All I had to do was look at my fridge!

There is also a photo of the head of a Greek Philosopher, (from Budapest’s National Gallery), a magnet which Marcus Aurelius would no doubt appreciate. Needless to say, he also graces the side of my fridge: in a photo of the impressive statue of him in Rome’s Capitoline Museum, arm uplifted and hailing his empire on his horse. I do not know how he would react to being reduced to an image of 2 inches by 3 inches on a fridge wall. It is so unlike the large statues of him around the empire or the huge column with its spiralling frescoes of his triumphs in the Piazza Colonna in Rome. Perhaps he would accept the reduction of his grandeur to a small picture with stoic humility.

Some of the magnets are ceramic or metal figures. There’s a mini Shakespeare memorial from Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church where he is buried; a gargoyle from Notre Dame in Paris, a bejewelled masked gentleman from the Venice carnival and a miniature plaque of the Renaissance King Mattyas of Hungary. Reflecting my love of movies, there’s an Oscar statuette, a mini movie clapperboard and an tiny enamel ruby slipper from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ as well as long oblong posters of ‘Metropolis’ and ‘King Kong.’ There are several theatre posters too including one from Broadway.

One of my favourites is from Vancouver: a small wooden scene in dark and light brown and ivory wood showing a bear and a cub in the snow. The largest magnet is a mini upright piano with a lid which opens to reveal a tiny keyboard. I got this in Budapest when the Liszt 200th anniversary celebrations were on.

My literary interests are reflected in magnets of several quotes from Shakespeare and from Oscar Wilde and Dickens (as well as an illustration from ‘A Christmas Carol’) and my love of John Steinbeck’s ‘Cannery Row’ by a 1930’s advert for canned anchovies from Monterey in California. There’s also a mini library of books from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

However, I have frequently found that a museum or gallery gift shop doesn’t stock a card or magnet of the picture I would most like a copy of. Some of the ones on my fridge are therefore second best!

I have almost forgotten to mention that several friends have brought me magnets from their own travels. Isn’t it lovely to be remembered by friends when they are on holiday?

As you may have already gathered, this plethora of magnets not only reflects my travels but also my interests. Like photographs, there are memories encased in them. I can remember where and when I bought most of them. With some of them, I have distinct memories of the complete day or afternoon when I purchased them: who I was with; where else I visited that day and other pictures or artefacts I looked at in the same place.

There are two magnets with 19th century American portraits on them, from a small exhibition in the tiny art gallery in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. I had dived in there as I wanted to escape the relentless crowds and overpowering noise of the main strip. It was blissfully quiet in the gallery I remember. There was an impressive exhibition of landscape photography there too (but no magnets!). I have rarely spent such a long time in such a small gallery – I was there for over an hour, partly just to get some peace and quiet. I told the assistant as I was leaving that it was the best $15 I had spent. She beamed at my compliment till I told her it was the only place where I could find peace and quiet in Las Vegas! Then she laughed and agreed with me and I sweetened my potentially acid comment with some genuine appreciation of the exhibits, especially the photographs. Although, I desisted from purchasing the glossy book of the photos at $150 a copy! I bought the magnets of the 19th Century portraits instead. I remember treating myself to a blueberry ice cream and coffee in the gelateria next door afterwards before braving the crowds again.

I am afraid Las Vegas and I didn’t get on. It is endlessly brash and loud; yes the word is ‘endless.’ It is like a loud uncontrollable class except in school the class will disappear when the bell goes. In Las Vegas, the class goes on 24/7! However, if asked, I would be delighted to headline there with my cabaret!

I found the fridge magnets were a comfort early in lockdown when I couldn’t go far, let alone travel to another country and when all the galleries and museums in London were closed. They reminded me that I have been very fortunate to travel abroad and so regularly and through my travels to make international friendships. I have also been fortunate to have seen so many wonderful works of art and historical buildings first hand and to share them with my friends who accompanied me and sometimes with yourself, dear reader, in this blog.

My life so far has been so rich, most of all in friendships. If I never travel again abroad or never enter another gallery, I haven’t done so badly out of life! I learnt in those early months of lockdown that it is important to be thankful for what we have and for what we have had. It is a way of being positive in these difficult times, which sadly continue.

It appears that the lockdown is tightening again, especially if people aren’t sensible and do not adhere to the new restrictions. Once again our horizons are potentially becoming narrower and in some areas of the U.K., this is already the case. We are being asked to accept and endure the situation again. Marcus, as a Stoic philosopher, would encourage us to do this. But ‘endure’ is a harsh word it is a difficult thing to do, as we have all learnt in the last six months or so. At least we have had some practice if another major lockdown comes.

Despite the ominous signs, nevertheless, I am hoping that next month I will be able to finally take my luxury trip to Puglia, in Southern Italy, which is my retirement present to myself. So by the end of October, hopefully another magnet (or two) will grace my fridge doors.

In these last months, I have learnt that ‘hope’ is a difficult thing too, even though the word is only one syllable and sounds lighter than ‘endure.’ It is difficult because it involves the future, which we have no control over. The more our plans for the future are scuppered, the less we feel like hoping. But hope we must, for it is a positive virtue and the best way to endure is to be positive.

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!

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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

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