December

We are encouraged to approach everything face-on. Make eye contact; put our shoulders back and square up to our fears. All well and good. Fake it until you make it. But facing those demons always leaves part of us exposed. We should also celebrate the backs of things. Ignoring what is on the reverse will only give us half the picture.

Why is that some instruments have richly patterned and lustrous ‘backs'? People do not really need to see them: the audience sees the outward facing side. But the private back tells its own story. The back belongs to the performer, not the audience and carries its history in subtle scratches and marks that only the player can understand. The back has its own meaning. My recorder has a single hole on its otherwise plain back but one that can change the octave. It has its own utility.

One of my favourite artworks is the Wilton Diptych, in the National Gallery. Opened up, facing us, it is a sumptuous and skilful devotional ‘picture book’,  rich with gold leaf and ultramarine. But it is the back which I always return to for its simplicity: the beautifully rendered white hart, the symbol of Richard II.

I have begun to love the backs of things. Old industrial buildings backing onto canals and urban rivers. Broken windows, stained walls, cobwebs and rusting metalwork; bright green weed floating in long strands on the placid waters like Ophelia’s hair. The backs of shops with their piles of flattened cardboard; tired staff catching a hurried smoke. Back gardens, seen from a passing train: some tidy and well kept; some full of life’s discard. Back doors to the private side of houses. The backs of heads; their vulnerability and meekness.

Spines of books backing out of a library shelf. The backs of old photographs, where someone has scribbled long-forgotten names and dates. Our third age, with its trials but also its riches. December, too: the back end of our year which will come to a close after the festivities are over and the New Year waits to be counted in. And watching the precious back of somebody you love as they walk away.