MEDITATION 76

As I sit beside my candle to begin this meditation, I am looking in the corner opposite across my lounge. This is where my cd’s are housed on shelves that are virtually full now, almost from ceiling to floor. This is my prized classical music library and there are also several shelves of film music and musicals as well. I must also mention some more cd’s neatly stacked on or below my coffee table. Beside me to my left are more shelves of DVD’s and Blu-ray’s. Behind me are my bookshelves which are also full. I appear to be quite a collector. I hasten to add that there is still space to get to the front door in case of fire! I haven’t completely submerged myself in culture yet.

However I take comfort in the fact that they have been collected over a long period of time. I have been collecting my cd’s, for example, over the last three decades, and before that I collected LP’s since being a teenager. I replaced my favourite LP’s with the cd versions in the early 90’s. Some, as with my books and movies, were gifts or bought at reduced price in a sale. Some of my music was a given to me by my old friend Brian, who passed away ten years ago. Some I purchased on my many trips to Budapest, where cd’s were cheaper than here. When I was running the Drama tours, after a week of organising and directing, I would always visit my favourite classical music stores in a moment of spare time and treat myself to an album – or two. I would do the same when I was there on holiday of course. One of the stores even gave me a discount card.

I also take comfort from a remark by my Hungarian friend, Mariann, when she visited my house quite a while ago. She looked at my bookshelves and said, ‘Books make a home.’

You may be thinking that all these books and music and movies must have been a solace to me during the pandemic or at least helped to get me through it. The answer is yes and no. My retirement finally began as the pandemic started and part of my retirement plan was to absorb myself in my reading and music and movies, now that I would have time to do so. But, as with all of us, the lockdowns left me too unsettled at times to enjoy them. I did purchase more cd’s though, some of which I still haven’t played. Then I discovered that I now had three versions of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, as a result! I forgot to check I already had two – or did I? I think it was comfort-buying more than anything. A buffer again the storm. I am sure I will play them eventually.

Recently I have been led to reflect on why we collect things. Yes we may have a particular interest or hobby but what drives us on to collect more. Is it the innate need to possess within us or the primitive hunter/gatherer syndrome? Is it curiosity – I must hear that or see that? Is it the novelty of the new – a new artist on the block – I must hear or see him or her? Is it compulsion or obsession? The bottom line is: do we ever ask ourselves: Do I really need that?

Perhaps creating a collection is a relaxation from a stressful professional job, like my purchasing the odd cd or two in Budapest on my Drama tours. My Hungarian friend Adam is a high powered lawyer in Budapest and has a large collection of Star Wars figures and memorabilia going back to his childhood for instance. He also collects figures from TV series from his childhood. Perhaps he is harking back to his childhood when his life was less stressful, when he wasn’t so high profile. I must ask him. He also collects 1990s Honda sports cars – not models but the real thing! He currently has four, I believe, or

it it five? He scours the Internet for spare parts. I remember bringing a pair of head lamps in my luggage for him on a visit a few year ago! He has driven me around Hungary in one of them. Sitting in it, I imagined I was in some 1990’s American cop show. Although the cars are quite low to the ground and I am no longer agile enough (if ever!) to quickly get out and shout ‘Freeze!’

Another example of this is from many years ago when I was a student in Oxford. A high powered professor of Medicine at my college would occasionally invite small groups of his students for dinner and to see his elaborate train set which he kept set up in the loft. Digital collecting is so very easy isn’t it? Just a click then it is on its way. But not as satisfying or relaxing as spending time browsing in a shop. My dear friend Alan tells me he likes to listen to music while doing the family ironing. Currently he has collected 2,500 songs on Spotify and has 76 albums saved digitally too. He must have a lot of ironing to do! I should not jest as I have four complete Wagner Ring cycles and four complete versions of the nine Beethoven symphonies on disc! And all the rest. As I look at my music collection I realise that some discs reflect earlier enthusiasms which I no longer have. So perhaps I need to decide which I really want to keep and give away the rest as my dear late friend Brian did.

But where is the enjoyment – purely in possession? Sometimes I look around my shelves and think when will I have the time to absorb all this, to really enjoy it. I think back to my childhood and youth, when I would use my birthday or pocket money to buy a book and go home and immediately curl up in a chair and begin to read it. Or I would buy a record and take it home and play it over and over again and really absorb and enjoy the music. I had so few books or albums then I suppose. The ones I had were special. The connection between purchase and enjoyment was immediate then. I also used the local library to borrow books and music too, even when I moved to London and my little bedsit in Brixton. Borrowing rather than buying? Dear me! But I lived with more modest means then.

As I look around the lounge again I realise that, when you include my TV and the cable box, this little room is quite an entertainment centre. I am now a man of riches and treasures too: well, treasures to me. It appears I am wealthy man. It is good to look around our rooms with fresh eyes and take in our possessions. To realise just how wealthy we are compared with many others – and some of those others may live not very far from us. So we should be grateful for what we have and share our treasures with others if possible. And perhaps try to pay no attention to that little insidious voice encouraging us to purchase more and take that itching finger away from our phone or laptop where Amazon and other sites pedal their wares.

Some of these books and cd’s and movies are like old friends to me. Some are barely new acquaintances as I have hardly played them or read them, if at all. Some too, like true friends, have helped see me through difficult times.

But they are not really friends. Real friends cannot be bought, let alone possessed. Generally we only acquire real friends by accident, not by intention, where we find ourselves at different times on life’s journey. We shouldn’t pick them up and put them down again either like a cd or a book, let alone leave them to gather dust on the shelf. Friendships have to be kept in good repair. They are our true treasures, our true wealth.

Marcus advises us: ‘Whenever you want to cheer yourself up, think of the qualities of your fellows’, for which we could read ‘friends.’ So, instead of playing or streaming that movie or music or interminable Netflix series, or clicking on Amazon to buy something new, we could cheer ourselves up by reflecting on our friends and be thankful for them. And then give them a call.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 63

As I sit here gazing at the candle beside my tablet, I am recalling a different light, or rather lights from a visit I made last week. They were not candles but little electric lights and they were glimmering in trees in a park on a balmy eveningas darkness was slowly descending. The park was situated in Chichester, where a friend and myself had made a return visit after a rather rainy one last autumn. I noticed the lights when we came out of the Festival Theatre after a performance of a new production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, ‘South Pacific’. Just as the lights were glowing on the branches, so we were glowing too after a wonderful and rather emotional performance.

To my shame, I have never visited the Festival Theatre at Chichester before. It is one of the items on my retirement bucket list. I guess I can cross that one off now! My friend and I seemed to have fallen in love with the town and its environs on our visit last October so we decided to have an overnight stay as well as visiting the theatre. It was an opportunity to revisit the Cathedral and its beautiful gardens among other places.

What could be better than a big musical with big tunes for a first live theatre outing after the asperity of the last eighteen months? The performance was quite an emotional occasion precisely because it was our first live theatre outing since lockdown. It was probably the same for most of the audience. Because of this, I sensed that the emotional moments in the show were somehow heightened, more potent than they might have been in a performance under more usual circumstances.

I knew the songs but had never seen ‘South Pacific’ live before. It was a highly imaginative and at times beautiful production, by artistic director Daniel Evans, with wonderful singing and dance numbers. It was one of those productions that never puts a foot wrong from curtain up to curtain call.

I must admit to being a little uneasy when I entered the theatre. As with everything else at present, there were rules to follow about moving around in the building. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I have never been in Festival theatre before. Activities I usually never think twice about, such as walking into a restaurant or catching a train have become a little complicated because of the restrictions, hence my unease. However, the front of house staff were very welcoming and helpful and once I was in my seat, I felt at home (as I always do in a theatre).

I was also a little apprehensive about how the performance would be received. After all the theatre was half-full because of social distancing and we were all wearing masks in the audience. Would the performers be able to achieve a rapport with the audience? Would the audience feel restricted in their response because of their masks. As soon as the orchestra struck up and the lights went up on that stage, I forgot all that. Mr Rodgers and Mr Hammerstein began to weave their spell. More than that, jaded theatre-goer that I am, I felt a visceral excitement as if I’d never seen a theatre performance before. This excitement seemed to pervade the auditorium. There was an eagerness to be entertained, no, more than that, a hunger.

In the end, the fact that the audience were socially distanced and masked didn’t matter. We were totally with the show. The silence and attentiveness of the audience were palpable. The final applause was genuine, heartwarming – an act of love from us to the company. I suppose we were so acutely aware that we were so fortunate to be able to experience a big live show in these times. I think we also appreciated just how difficult rehearsals must have been, judging from the rehearsal photos in the programme with everyone in masks and visors, and not to mention the endless testing of such a large cast and necessary absences that must have taken place, which has been true of all work places. We were applauding to show our appreciation of not just the performance, but of the company’s struggle to get it on the stage.

I remember that in one of my early blogs, I mentioned seeing performances of Wagner’s epic ‘Ring’ cycle of four operas at the Royal Opera House. This would have been in autumn 2018, I think. In that meditation, I mentioned that just as the evil Alberich and his brother Mime forge the Ring on stage, that a ring was also forged between the performers and the audience over the four operas. The mark of a successful performance is when the performers and audience become an invisible and indivisible ring or circle. It may not happen for the whole performance but when it does happen, those moments are magical. That was true of the performance of ‘South Pacific’ which I experienced last Friday. The experience was doubly magical because the ring or circle was somehow created in the midst of our common adversity. Theatre is at its most sublime when it renews the audience and the cast too, hopefully. The performance I saw was an act of renewal for all of us who saw it or performed it. It has reminded me of just how important theatre is. It is a crying shame that our present government fails to see this.

The auditorium of the Festival Theatre is based on the shape of the Ancient Greek and Roman amphitheatres, with the audience as two thirds of the circle and the stage completing it. Therefore, the configuration of the auditorium no doubt helped the company to achieve that magic circle with the audience.

I mentioned earlier that I hadn’t been there before. However I have been to its successor many times – the Olivier Theatre on London’s South Bank. Its auditorium is based on the Chichester one. Initially Laurence Olivier was involved in establishing the Festival Theatre which opened in 1962 and, together with complementary performances at the Old Vic theatre in London, it was the genesis of the National Theatre. When the National Theatre finally developed its home on the South Bank, one of the three auditoriums, the Olivier, was given a similar design to the Festival Theatre.

I have also been to the Festival Theatre’s predecessor several times. The design of the Festival Theatre auditorium, in turn, was based on the Festival Theatre at Stratford, Ontario in Canada. They have an annual Shakespeare Festival there, which I attended several times in the early 1990’s.

I was thinking of those two theatres, the Olivier, on London’s South Bank and the one at Stratford, Ontario, while I sat waiting for the performance of ‘South Pacific’ to begin at Chichester. Here I was, sitting at last in the third of the trio, the Festival Theatre in Chichester, or rather the middle one as regards their opening.

How many theatres have I attended in my life? How many magic circles have I been part of? Not in every theatre or every performance I attended. But when it happens, you know you have experienced something special. How many productions have I directed or appeared in that have succeeded in achieving that circle with an audience? Again, not every one. But when it happens, you know you have been part of something special. It is nothing to do with the price of the ticket or with your hard work as director or performer.

And it is not guaranteed in every performance. It just happens. It is magic, the circle is magic. A magic which streaming at home cannot provide.

I am looking forward to being part of that magic again in the future. Certainly as an audience member. Perhaps as an actor or director – who knows?

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

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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