virus – Meditations of Neilus Aurelius

The candle beside me is flickering as I write this new meditation. This is because there is a breeze from my lounge window, which is open as it is still warm this evening. It is one of those long drawn out balmy evenings when twilight seems to stretch out forever and the darkness of night is an afterthought.

When I was a student, I used to love evenings such as this one, when I would slowly wend my way home to my little rented room through the streets of North Oxford, past large walled gardens, the night air heavy with the perfume of foliage in full bloom. Would that I was a student again, ambling aimlessly along those sweet-scented avenues under a sensual indigo sky. But the past is another country. Moreover, I do not want to be young again. But I would rather be somewhere else this evening, in another place.

However, now that I am retired I am free to amble aimlessly again should I so wish. Within the restrictions of the current unprecedented situation of course.

After another week of lockdown, I am beginning to feel ‘cabined, cribbed and confined’ as Macbeth says in Shakespeare’s play. I am sure I am not the only one to be feeling this way at present. Even though the lockdown is easing slightly, we are perhaps still apprehensive about the future and at times ‘cabined, cribbed and confined’ in our own fears. It is the uncertainty about the future and our lack of control over it that is the seed of our unease which leads to a lack of interest in the present and so inertia seeps in. And yet, as I have mentioned before, we have no real control over the future anyway.

These fears and worries are exacerbated by the media frenzy about the virus and mixed messages from our government and medical experts. Perhaps we should take advice from Mark Twain (the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn), who wrote ‘I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which have never happened.’

Feeling ‘cabined, cribbed and confined’ can have the effect of shortening our perspective. It makes us long for wider horizons and breathtaking vistas. No doubt this is one of the reasons why people have dashed to the coast and to national parks despite the lockdown. We are looking for something above and beyond the relentless news which overwhelms us, something more expansive to escape into.

I imagine that is why some people threw themselves into binge-watching box sets of TV dramas when the lockdown began, not just to occupy the time but to be enveloped in an all-consuming storyline. For the same reason, sales of long 19th century novels increased substantially in the first weeks of lockdown: another way of escaping into an expansive narrative. That must be one of the reasons why I reached for ‘David Copperfield’ on my bookshelf and immersed myself in it again. It was comfort reading: a long involved story

that I know but don’t know, as there are always scenes and details that you don’t remember in a long novel. We have needed to escape into another world, whether between the covers of a book or streamed on a screen. It is a way of coping with the fears and frustrations of the moment. To be in another place, even if it is an imaginary one in a fiction.

I doubt Marcus Aurelius would have approved of escaping into a story. The novel didn’t exist when he was alive, let alone movies or television. However, there were the great legends and myths of the gods and goddesses and their dealings with mere mortals. There were also Homer and Virgil’s great epic poems about the legend of Troy which are expansive narratives in themselves. I think he would have looked at them for a message, a moral to help him through the lockdown (as we can do too of course in our own reading).

He would definitely have taken solace in philosophy, and especially the Stoic philosophy which he tried to live up to: to accept and endure. That is what we have to do at present: accept and endure. We can learn from Marcus and the Stoics, then, though it does seem rather a joyless approach. A good story can help us in our endurance, if only to take our mind off things for a while. It might even provide us with a way through.

As I have mentioned previously, Marcus would have used the contemplation of Nature to help him to endure too. As he writes, ‘Nature, all that your seasons bring is fruit to me, all comes from you, exists in you, returns to you.’ He would have gazed at the sky as can we. The sky is its own breathtaking vista (especially as there is so little air traffic at the moment). We do not need to hurry to the seaside or a national park to find it. We can lose ourselves in its immensity by looking up from our garden (however small) or our balcony or window.

Ciaran Frederick, who took the photos of Neilus Aurelius for this website, is an ex-student of mine and is currently studying photography at the South Bank University in London. He has found a different way of escaping to another place: by revisiting places he has been to through his photographs.

He has created a booklet called ‘Dreamland’ as a lockdown project. It comprises landscapes of places he visited in 2016 and 2017 in Iceland, Australia, Ireland and parts of the U.K.. They are places he would like to revisit but of course he can’t at present. Many of the landscapes are bleak and isolated with solitary barns, cottages, dilapidated buildings and stone walls.They remind me of the covers of the ‘concept’ albums of the progressive rock bands I used to love when I was Ciaran’s age!

His aim is to put ‘a positive twist on the depressing feelings of lockdown’. So though the locations and objects reflect the bleak feelings of emptiness in lockdown, inspired by Aerochrome film, he has coloured the images with different shades of blue and pink to

give a sense of calm and excitement. Therefore the forests, plains and overgrown grass and bushes surrounding the objects are varied shades of pink and the skies and waters are different hues of blue and green creating a vibrancy of hope.

Like Ciaran, we need to find our own calm and excitement and hope in the bleak circumstances we are living through. Though we may feel we are living a monochrome existence at the moment, we need rediscover the colours in our life.

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

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

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

Ciaran’s ‘Dreamland booklet can be ordered on http://www.ciaranfrederick.co.uk

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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