'Red Dragon' (2002)
I am truly fascinated by mirrors. I am of the opinion that sometimes they can retain the image of what they reflect, and this is one of the principal reasons why they are so otherworldly, for, if I am correct, this would mean that a mirror can unknowingly reflect an incident from any time of its actual history. During my life, I have found them both fascinating and uncanny, and although my reason always informs me that the afterlife, the Other Side, call it what you will, doesn't exist, there is something fantastically eerie, yet magical (not to mention, indispensable for a dandy like me, darlings) about them. And the fact remains that some of my most uncanny experiences have happened via mirrors. For example, in the spring of 2023, following what can only be described as one of, if not the most harrowing experiences of mine and my fine lady's lives, a time when we very nearly forced into homelessness due to being a victim of the hideous "section 21: no fault eviction" law, at the behest of our previous, greedy landlord, we were, to our everlasting gratitude, rescued at the final hour by a couple who have become dear friends of ours, and who, like a miracle (the CF social worker at the hospital at the time actually called it that), offered us a property they owned to rent. It came after we had spent the previous four months frantically trying to find somewhere to live in the town, down by our beloved sea, that we had worked so hard over the previous ten years to build a life in and make our home. Just a few short weeks after the immense relief of finding out we did indeed have somewhere to move to, we were then in Brighton to see James perform with a full orchestra, the first concert we had attended since 2019 because of the pandemic. And then, after the extraordinary concert, as we were having a quick nightcap at the Grand Hotel before we went back to our room at the Travelodge, I happened to glance in one of the old hotel's many mirrors, and very naturally announced to my fine lady that, "I've just seen Oscar in the mirror." She, understandably, suddenly went cold and said, "Oh my god, don't say that, I'll never get to sleep tonight," but I had mentioned it to her in all innocence, and was simply relaying who and what I had just glimpsed: Oscar Wilde. As I was still in such a heightened state of emotion after everything that had happened to us in the last few months, not to mention the heart-somersaulting concert we had just attended, who knows if it was my imagination or actually Oscar that I saw in the Grand Hotel's mirror. But I had also mentioned it so casually because, to this day, I am convinced it is Oscar that I saw. As any regular readers will already know from these pages, Oscar Wilde is a huge influence on my life, and he and Bosie actually stayed at the Grand Hotel in the late nineteenth century, so there is every possibility that his spirit lingers there, and it felt like he had been one of the many energies fighting in our corner during those previous hellish few months. Was it actually him or my overheated emotions? Who knows how these things actually play out, but, when all's said and done, why not? And, who among you, dear faithful readers, with hand on heart, would not feel a tremble of uneasiness if you looked into a mirror, during the bewitching hour, at an old hotel or theatre that is steeped in over a hundred years of history?
Mirrors, like eyes, and photographs, are full of strange, hidden depths, and can anybody say for absolute certain that mirrors don't somehow retain an imprint, of everyone, and perhaps even everything, that they have at some point reflected? And what if these reflections are then, perhaps, somehow visible to us, even if it's only during rare, perceptive moments, when we are in an emotionally overwrought state or when the soul in question is desperately trying to make itself known and visible to us, from beyond that silvery veil?
Anyway, with all that in mind, here are a few of my favourite pictures of Lydia involving that spectacular, eerie, and magisterial phenomena that is human beings and mirrors. Oh, the magical mysteries they contain!
'Mirror Images'
the surface of things."
- Graham McNeil
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