Tag: new york

MEDITATION 87

​It is quite comfortable to be sitting here by the candle on the table beside me. The candle flame gives a welcoming glow which contrasts with the hostile icy blasts outside, which are more reminiscent of January than early March. Ideally I should be gazing into a glowing fireplace, which would be even more comfortable and welcoming, but I don’t have one. A radiator, warm thought it is, doesn’t have the same effect. However I have substituted the fireplace with a glass of red wine so I am glowing a little. 

​As I sit here, glass in hand, a Strauss waltz is playing in my memory. I am tempted to play my cd of Strauss waltzes but I am too comfortable to get up and find it in my cd racks. So I will let it fade away in my thoughts as I try to remember what brought the Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss into my head. 

​    It is not a memory of a glittering ballroom or of an old movie for that matter or a classical concert I once attended. The memory is of a visit to a local charity shop. I recently went there to give away some books and cd’s I don’t need anymore. ‘Did I ever really need them?’ I asked myself. In answer to the question, I began to slowly empty some of my shelves. It’s a retirement thing. 

​So when I had deposited my cultural detritus with the charity shop assistant, I made my way out only to notice some boxes of old LP’s on a table in the middle of the shop. I couldn’t help but stop and browse through them. What opportunity do we have these days of spending time in a store to browse through LP’s or cd’s or DVD’s for that matter? The music shops have gone and browsing has to be online now, which isn’t the same. So I relished the chance to browse. Perhaps it was muscle memory – I used to spend so much time browsing in HMV and other stores when they were open.

​In the first box I explored quite near the front was an LP of Strauss Waltzes and Polkas. It was identical to one I bought when I was a teenager -I was 13 or 14 years old I guess. I remembered the cover so well. It was of a brightly lit spiral staircase in some elegant mansion photographed from above. And here was the album again in my hands. 

​For a moment memories of playing it came back. I used to play it on our radiogram with its spindly legs in our front room. The record player part of the radiogram would pull down when you wanted to use it, I remember. The radio itself was on the top. I would sit beside the radiogram listening to those waltzes and be transported into another world, to those glittering ballrooms and the ladies in their elegant dresses accompanied by gentlemen in their uniforms or evening dress across the ballroom floor.   

​Despite having a potent imagination, I couldn’t conceive then, sitting in our front room in Redcar that many years later I would be listening to those waltzes live at a BBC Proms orchestral concert in the Royal Albert Hall, let alone in the elegant surroundings of the New York Cafe and numerous other coffee houses in Budapest.  

​We would visit the New York Cafe every year on our Drama tour. It was the teachers’ treat at the end of the tour though we did usually bring a few students with us. The resident pianist was quite a virtuoso. He would work his way through waltzes, polkas, songs from the shows and operettas with great finesse while reading the newspaper at the same time. It was spread across the top of the piano above the keyboard. The New York cafe has changed now. It was closed for a long while while the building was remodelled into a high class hotel. The cafe has reopened but our multi-tasking pianist seems to have disappeared.  

​I continued flicking through the boxes in the shop and discovered yet another LP from my youth, a box set of 3 LP’s actually, of Handel’s ‘Messiah’. It had Salvador Dali’s striking depiction of the Crucifixion on the box lid. I bought my own copy of it it when I was in the Sixth Form I think.  Dali’s picture on the box lid stood out from all the other album covers I flicked through in W.H. Smith on Redcar High Street all those years ago. I guess that’s why I bought it, aside from having sung some of the choruses (including the famous Hallelujah one) in the school choir in a concert. Memories flooded in again.  I remembered playing the album on a portable record player in my bedroom. It was black and quite bulky, though not as bulky as the radiogram downstairs. I took the records and player with me to university eventually I think and then on to my bedsit in Brixton in South London. I remember listening to ‘Messiah’ in my bedsit.  

​I then quickly flicked through all the other boxes to see if any other memories of my youth were on display in the charity shop. There was: a recording of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony which I definitely did buy when I was in the Sixth Form.  I loved the intense slow movement as I was an intense young man then. As the notes drifted over me and played with my emotions as I lay in my room, again I could hardly imagine that I would see Gustav Mahler’s conducting baton on display in a museum in Budapest. It was actually a ceremonial one in an ivory casing, given to him when he was musical director of the Budapest Opera House in 1891.

​Fortunately I couldn’t find any more albums. It would have been very odd to find my entire record collection from my bedroom in Redcar in the LP boxes in Oxfam in Kingston, many miles and many years away.

​I am sure that if you are or were into rock music you could easily find albums from your teenage years in any charity shop. So I am obviously not the only one who’s youth is on display. But these were classical albums and those particular recordings of Mahler, Handel and Strauss, which I had bought and played over and over again. After all, there was only one version of The Beatles ‘Sgt Pepper’ when it was released so only one possible cover. So if you saw it in a charity shop, you wouldn’t be too surprised. But it seemed odd to me that those particular recordings from my paltry teenage collection should be in those boxes and that I was able to hold them again, even though they weren’t my own particular copies.  

​I found myself smiling when I picked up those albums. If I possessed an LP player at home (and they have become very popular again and are rather expensive) I would have bought them. I have the Mahler recording on cd now anyway. Everything gets reissued eventually, sometimes over and over again. I wonder if I’ll ever be reissued. 

I had so few albums then that I would play them over an over again. Now I have so many cd’s that I have hardly played some of them at all.  Hence the decision to give some away. The immediate link between buying an album and playing it straight away and really listening has gone perhaps, especially with streaming music. 

​The shop I was in specialised in books and music. There are others which are more general. Sometimes among the bric-a-brac I have seen on the shelves I have noticed kitchen ware and crockery that I remembered from years ago. I guess it is the designs that hold the memories, just like the album covers. 

​Those shops are very handy if you are looking for props for a play. I used charity shops a lot when I was putting a production together. I know professional companies do too. Last night I watched the final episode of ‘Endeavour’ on TV, about the early career of Inspector Morse. It was set in the early 70’s. I wonder how may props they used in the interior scenes originated in charity shops. Some of the interiors were quite nostalgic. 

​I am not a frequenter of charity shops. I guess I we be in and out of the Oxfam bookshop now and then with some more of my cultural detritus. 

​Perhaps charity shops should be renamed. Perhaps they should be called Memory Shops.

​Incidentally, when I returned to the Oxfam bookstore a week later, the boxes of LP’s had gone.

​But then, so has my youth.  

​​Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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MEDITATION 78

When I began my last meditation, a lone Parisian violin was playing in my mind. It was a poignant memory, if you remember, of a recent visit to Paris. As I light the candle beside me and begin this new meditation, another musical instrument is playing an equally poignant melody in my consciousness. It is a solo piano and the music is a nocturne by Chopin. A nocturne is a short night piece and meditative, so highly conducive to writing this reflection. I have the complete Chopin Nocturnes in my cd collection but I am not playing them at this present moment. The nocturne in my head is another memory from my recent visit to Paris.

The gentle tune takes me back to a morning visit to the Pere Lachaise cemetery in the heart of the city. I was standing in front of Chopin’s grave. Though he was Polish, he died in Paris in 1849, at the young age of 39 of tuberculosis, which he had suffered from for most of his adult life. As well as being a composer, he was also a great performer on the piano and of the stature of a rock star across Europe in his time. 

A monument stood above his grave: a seated lady with a broken lyre in her lap looking down in grief. I have just discovered that the figure is of Euterpe, the muse of music. Behind the monument was a wall of trees, vibrantly green in the morning sunshine.

A small group of visitors stood  in front of the grave. Some took a brief look at the monument then moved on. Other like me stood for a while to pay their respects.

People had left tributes to Chopin at the bottom of the monument: small plants, little posies of flowers, single roses and a few small Polish flags. One tribute caught my eye. It was a sheet of music of one of his compositions, though I could not make out the title clearly.  It looked a little rumpled laying on the stone step in front of the monument as there had been rain the day before. A single flower lay across it.  

As I stepped back from the grave, a piano began to play behind me. It was one of the nocturnes: delicate and sad. I turned round. A man standing in the group was playing the nocturne on his phone. Instead of listening to it himself, he had turned on the speaker so that we could all hear it. It was his tribute. We all stood still, looking towards the grave, as the tender notes floated on the spring breeze.

I wanted to cry. I am half – Polish after all. If you can’t cry in a cemetery, where can you cry. Poor Frederic so far from his homeland, I thought. Although his heart is buried in a church in Warsaw, in Poland, where his heart always was. And he lives on of course in his music. The nocturne finished, I gave a nod of thanks to the man with the phone and walked on. Short as it was, it was the most moving concert I have ever attended. 

I have never visited the cemetery before. It is like a small town itself within the city. There are long avenues of trees between the sections of graves. It made for a peaceful walk in the spring sunshine. Despite having a map, the graves were rather difficult to find, however, as the map only indicated the section they are situated in and the sections are quite large.  Also the graves are not in chronological order so recent ones are often laying side by side with ones over a hundred years old or earlier, as the cemetery opened in 1804. Well chronology has no meaning anymore for the dead in eternity.

There are many other famous people buried there and one of my reasons for visiting was to find the grave of Marcel Proust (1871-1922) the novelist. It is the centenary of his death this year and I have been reading his great seven volume novel: ‘In Search of Lost Time’, which I have mentioned in these meditations before. He was a great music lover and adored Chopin’s music, which is mentioned in his novel. I have also been reading several books about Proust himself. One included a map of the places where Proust lived in Paris. He spent most of his life there. With my patient friend Phil, I sought out these places the day before, most of which are near the Madeleine church. So, it was important to discover his final resting place, which is a simple grave of black marble with no monument.

This simplicity was unlike Oscar Wilde’s tomb, which I also visited, He had a simple grave at first having died a pauper in 1900 and was then buried outside Paris in Bagneux. However, he was transferred to Pere Lachaise in 1909 and then a grandiose sphinx – like monument (sculpted in 1911 by Sir Jacob Epstein) was placed there.

So many artists, musicians and writers are buried in the shady avenues of Pere Lachaise. We found some of them including: the composers Rossini and Cherubini, the novelists Balzac and Colette, the singer Edith Piaf and rock musician Jim Morrison from Doors, the actor Yves Montand, the composer Michel Le Grand and George Melies, one of the pioneers of the cinema. I would like to go back to find some others and revisit Frederic, Marcel, and Oscar of course. 

Once outside the cemetery we found a good bistro for lunch. Opposite us were the opulent offices of several grand funeral directors. No doubt they provide opulent funerals over the road in the cemetery at a grand price. I began to think that it would be good to be buried in Pere Lachaise, when my time comes, though I doubt that I could afford it. I had this thought not because I would be buried among the cultural elite of the last two hundred years, or because of all the grand monuments, but because of the peaceful avenues of trees.  Well who would visit my grave in Paris anyway? Although it would be as good an excuse as any for a Eurostar jaunt for my friends.  Perhaps if I was buried there, one of my ex students might leave a few pages of one of my scripts on top of my grave with a flower across it. Perhaps not only as a tribute but also as an apology for the lines they never learnt properly!  

The visit to Pere Lachaise was important to me to pay homage, to say thank you to some of those who have enriched my life. It is why I visit Shakespeare’s grave every time I go to Stratford- Upon-Avon.

You may have deduced from my meditations, that I something of a cultural tourist. Does that term exist or have I invented it? Well I am. It is easy for me to be reminded of my cultural tourism as I only have to look around the rooms in my house. Not only are there photos on display from my holidays but also pictures (I have two Rembrandts and a Da Vinci – but only copies of course!); framed posters (two Broadway productions I saw in New York for example) and on the shelves books I bought abroad, and cd’s, souvenirs posing as artefacts and of course my large collection of fridge magnets on display in the kitchen. Not  to mention the thousands of photos on my I phone and laptop from my travels! 

A photo encapsulates a memory, more than that, it evokes a memory if we look at it for long enough. Sadly these days we tend to snap away on our phones too quickly and look at the photos too quickly too, especially when we are scrolling through them to see which ones we want to delete. But do we really look at the ones that are left after our digital cull?

Along with the cultural souvenirs I have just listed, the photos can also be a trigger to our memory, if we stop and reflect, if we take a moment to remember.

Marcel Proust’s great novel ‘In Search of Lost Time’ is about memory. No-one describes how memories fade in and out of our consciousness as well as he does. He believed that as well as wanting to remember a memory, by looking at a photo for example or by trying to remember one, there is involuntary memory. This is when a memory comes to us clearly and concretely, unaided and unasked for, as a surprise, almost a revelation.

Like my lone Parisian violin and my piano nocturne.  

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 71

I am thinking of places I have visited as I sit here beside my candle and begin to write. I have especially been recalling places abroad. Hopefully I will be able to travel internationally again this year. I have been rather hesitant about travelling abroad because of the endlessly changing restrictions both here and where I might like to visit. I admire friends who have bravely negotiated the minefield of shifting entry requirements and accompanying stress to enjoy a vacation overseas.    

My last trip abroad was in February 2020: to Budapest for my final Drama tour. Dear me, that is almost two years ago now. I hope to return there in late April to see friends and visit the Kolibri Theatre again, where our final performance took place and where, as at my school, I was given a wonderful farewell.

On that final evening I was given a beautiful plaque with a hand carved Harlequin puppet attached to it (the theatre began as a children’s puppet theatre).  Under the puppet is a citation on a small metal plate, declaring me to be an honorary member of the theatre. Needless to say, I was very moved to receive the plaque and I am very proud of it.

Since receiving it, off and on through the lockdowns, as well as writing this blog I have been revising some of the play scripts I wrote for my school. I have presented one of these, ‘The Sea Serpent’ (based on a Canadian First Nations Legend) to the Kolibri. It is being translated into Hungarian and may be performed there as part of the theatre’s repertoire. So hopefully, in late April, I will be visiting the Theatre to discuss a possible production of the script with my dear friends there. It is a very exciting prospect.

But I have not been thinking of Budapest particularly as I sit here by my candle. Memories  of my two visits to New York have returned to my thoughts. I was there in 2015 and 2016. Needless to say, I have been remembering the shows I saw on Broadway and Central Park and the museums and art galleries and bustling streets. One place in particular has returned to my mind and impressed itself on me again.  I have been remembering a room I visited, a silent room.

This room is in the United Nations Headquarters, which I visited on my second trip in 2016. Please understand that I was not invited to speak to the delegates, let alone the Security Council! Though of course I had my speech prepared just in case! No I was just paying a visit as a lowly tourist.

The U.N. Headquarters is a place of talk: speeches, debate, discussion, negotiation, conflict even.  The Swedish diplomat and economist Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961) was the second General Secretary of the U.N. He decided that in the midst of all the discussions and negotiations there needed to be a place of silence in the building; a place where delegates and others could go to be quiet and recollect and think, even just to clear their heads before yet another round of negotiations. So, though the building had only been open for a few years and was presumably considered to be completed, he arranged for a ‘silent room’ to be designed and constructed.

The room is situated on the ground floor not far from the main entrance and below the General Assembly.  Its shape is oblong and the ceiling is quite high and, as I remember,  the walls are of a neutral grey. It is softly lit to aid reflection. I remember clearly the moment I first entered the room. The silence and calm absorbed me immediately. I felt as if I was imposing on the room’s stillness as I sat down. Perhaps this was because I was the only person in the room at that point.

In the middle of the room there is a large granite oblong stone. It is on a grey plinth and spotlit from above. It  is quite imposing in its simplicity. My eyes were drawn towards it as I sat there. But then there was nothing else in the room or on the walls to distract me. 

The stone was chosen by Hammarskjold himself according to the information panel outside. He suggested that ‘the stone reminds us of the firm and the permanent in a world of movement and change’. He chose the stone because he was looking for a simple symbol that could speak to people of many different faiths or none.  He was searching for ‘simple things which speak to all of us in the same language. We have sought for such things and we have found them in the shaft of light striking the shimmering surface of solid rock. A symbol to many of how the light of spirit gives life to matter.’ The shaft of light refracted on the stone was indeed very striking, as I sat there. 

He believed that ‘We all have within us a centre of silence surrounded by stillness’.  Presumably he created the room to hopefully help delegates and others from different nations and cultures to find this centre of silence in the midst of all the endless words and talk in the building. A place not only of reflection and re-thinking but of steadying the mind and therefore of refreshment and true re-creation. I wonder how many people have availed themselves of this oasis of calm over the decades and how many do so now. Moreover, how often negotiations continued in a quieter key afterwards and how many decisions or resolutions were altered or completely changed as a result, hopefully for the good.

I could understand what Dag Hammarskjold was aiming for as I sat there enveloped in the stillness like a blanket.The silence was not intimidating but comforting.  In the silence, my mind and my eyes became relaxed and relieved of the exhausting stimuli of the morning’s tourism. The stone drew me in and I could almost feel its cold surface even though I was seated a long way from it near the door.  I emerged from the room, calm and refreshed and ready to take up my tourist wanderings again.  But not before slowly reading the information panels outside and noting down Hammarskjold’s words from them. Then I  meandered down to the basement where the gift shop (and obligatory fridge magnets) awaited me.

Over the last two years we have been made acutely aware that we live in ‘a world of movement and change’. The world is ever thus but the pandemic has impressed this upon us even more. This is because it has affected our daily lives, which have been constantly shifting with the pandemic’s movement and with changes in government rules as a result. Perhaps we have been searching for a stone to cling to in this maelstrom, something firm that does not change, something permanent.  Or perhaps at times in our inertia, exhaustion and dark moments we have been looking for that spark of life to keep us going each day: that ‘light of spirit that gives life to matter.’

Dag Hammarskjold appeared to see this permanence and this spark of life within ourselves: within our own centre of silence.  He believes, first of all, that we all have this centre within us as I do. To find this centre, we must begin by finding a little time and a place to practice the stillness that surrounds it. And I have learnt from sitting in that room in the UN Headquarters that silence is not intimidating, least of all threatening, but it is comforting and recreating if you give it time.

Let me close with some more words of Dag Hammarskjold, I recently discovered in another blog. He wrote them in his diary at the beginning of 1953 (the year of my birth). They are a short and succinct way of saying goodbye to the old year and heralding in the new.

‘Night is coming on.

For all that has been – thanks!

To all that shall be – Yes!’

Four months after writing this, he was elected as Secretary General to the U.N. That must have been a big ‘Yes’!

Ave atque Vale! Hail and Farewell.

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Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 53

As I sit here beside my candle writing this meditation this evening, I am thinking over the day’s events. I, a pseudo-philosophical emperor, have been rebuked by a philosophical ex-President. This afternoon, I have been reading Barack Obama’s memoir ‘A Promised Land’. In his preface to the book, he explains how he came to write it after he left office in January 2017. He explains that he wrote his book in longhand because he feels that using a computer ‘gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness.’ There is a hint of humility in this which is endearing.

Perhaps I should take him as my model and write my meditations in longhand first, instead of using my own mini-computer, my I pad. Then, hopefully, I will be sure that my blog will not contain ‘half-baked thoughts’ under the ‘mask of tidiness.’ I hope it doesn’t. But that is for you to decide, dear reader.

If I decide to write out my reflections in longhand, perhaps I should use the same stationery as Mr Obama does: lawyer’s yellow lined paper. He may use these ‘legal pads’ to remind him of his earlier career as a lawyer and to put him at his ease before writing. My little I pad, which has travelled everywhere with me, certainly puts me at my ease when I open it to begin to write.  

There are advantages to writing with a computer, which we are all well aware of. We are able to correct the text we are writing as we go along; to cut and paste words, phrases, sentences and even entire paragraphs or sections, moving them around the text at will. My handwriting is not of the best so I prefer writing letters, even personal ones, on my laptop or I pad. As Mr Obama says, whatever we write is given a ‘smooth gloss’ and a ‘mask of tidiness’ because we are seeing it in print on the screen, as I am seeing this meditation now.

Psychologically, seeing your words in print on the screen is a way of boosting your personal confidence. I have found this to be true. Most writers have issues with personal confidence. Seeing my words on my I pad screen in a lovely elegant font has often provided a boost to my confidence, more than my untidy scrawl on paper has! But then, Shakespeare’s handwriting was also an untidy scrawl so I am in good company, though I will never come anywhere near to his genius!

There are also advantages to writing in longhand, which can be a slower, quieter and more relaxed occupation than typing away on a keyboard. It can also give rise to reflection, as dear Marcus Aurelius obviously discovered when he was was writing his own meditations, which are the inspiration for this blog. Writing by hand can allow for time to stop and think. I am sure you can stop and think using a keyboard too, but there is always that tendency to want to quickly clatter away on a keyboard. I have to force myself to take my time.  These days we see so much text on various devices that our eyes can become strained and our brains addled with text; and not only the text itself, but also the light on the screen behind it. Writing in longhand, therefore, could be a recuperative alternative.

There is a danger to seeing our words or the words of others in print on a screen, which Mr Obama has pinpointed. ‘Half-baked thoughts’ are given a ‘gloss’, an importance, an authenticity even, which they may not deserve. ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers’ says the old warning. In our own time, the warning might be ‘Don’t believe everything you read on a screen.’  Dear me: that warning could include this blog! However, I have always tried to be honest, sincere and truthful with you, dear reader.

The plethora of websites and social media create a miasma of fact, truth, half-truth, opinion, prediction, rumour and surmise on our screens, fogging our minds. The result is that it is often difficult to see clearly, to distinguish fact from opinion, truth from half-truth and a valid prediction from rumour or surmise. This is particularly true of social media.

I studied ‘O’ level Latin at school. The set text for the examination was excerpts from Book Six of  Virgil’s epic poem ‘The Aeneid’, where the hero Aeneas, after escaping from Troy, on his wande

rings visits his ancestors in the underworld. A phrase from the epic poem has always stuck with me in translation: ‘Truth veiled in obscurity.’ Virgil might be describing our media rather than the mist-laden, dark depths of the underworld. To traverse the underworld and avoid falling into the dank river Acheron, our hero Aeneas has to tread slowly and carefully. To find our way through the miasma of the media to arrive at the facts and the truth, it is often necessary for us to read slowly and carefully too.        

But, of course, often we don’t. We skim read quickly, especially if we are glancing at the news on a smartphone. This is the advantage of a smartphone, we have everything ‘on the go’, with the result that our minds are often ‘on the go’ too, reading too quickly and not digesting what we have read.

Reactions to the news on social media are also frequently made ‘on the go’, without thought, reflection, or reserve. Although it must be admitted that an initial response may be highly relevant. However, so many comments on Twitter and Facebook are knee-jerk reactions to events. They are often ‘too rash, too unadvised, too sudden’ as Juliet says of Romeo’s protestations of love in Shakespeare’s play, as was often the case with Mr Obama’s successor, and his endless tweets. 

I have also recently been reading a collection of the letters of Leonard Bernstein (1918-90), the American music conductor, pianist and composer. His works include several symphonies, ballet scores, film scores and of course the music theatre pieces ‘West Side Story’ and ‘On The Town’.

Bernstein was quite close to the Kennedy family and conducted a special performance of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, ‘The Resurrection’ with his orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, two days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22 1963. (Incidentally, almost four years later, Kennedy’s younger brother, Robert, was also assassinated, and Bernstein arranged and conducted the music for his funeral Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York).

Bernstein also appeared at the ‘Night of the Stars’ a memorial for President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in New York on the day after the concert he had conducted. There, he gave an address to the audience, which is included in this collection of his letters. In his address he mentioned John F. Kennedy’s final speech, which he was to have made in Dallas on the fateful day when he was murdered. In it President Kennedy would have put forward the precept that  ‘America’s leadership must be guided by learning and reason.’  By ‘learning’ I presume that he meant not only appropriate reading and research, but also listening to others to learn from them. 

I sincerely hope this precept will be adopted by the new incumbent of the White House. I was very impressed with Joe Biden’s inaugural address which to me encapsulated not only the ideals but also the soul of America. I hope his term will be guided by learning, reason  – and a search for and respect for truth.’

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 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 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!

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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

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.

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.

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

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