After Things

So Manchester International Festival has officially finished. Comparisons with two years ago are highly positive, it clearly taking on board some of that debut event's failings. Much of the best work this year came out of genuine collaborations with Manchester based cultural institutions, or gained from making the most of the cities venues, whether regular ones or unusual ones (like the Velodrome or the office block for "It Felt Like a Kiss.") It still remains a selective festival - in that its hard to imagine anyone finding the desire, the time, or indeed, the funds to go to its ten signature events. I managed Kraftwerk and "Procession", as I was away for much of the fortnight; but really wished I'd been able to stay around for "It Felt Like a Kiss", Elbow/Halle and the performance art at the Whitworth. Didn't hear anyone say much about Acosta or the Royal Exchange or Durutti Column, and I'm sure that Rufus Wainwright was ok if you like that kind of thing; but all in all, there seemed a definite buzz about the place - helped by there being a buzz on the social media channels - that means that next time, all being well, I'll take two weeks out of my diary to enjoy the whole thing. Of course, other things were going on at the same time, so whether it was an underwhelming Fall gig on Saturday, a fun Social Media Cafe at the BBC, or regular events like the degree show, sideshows like Iain Sinclair at Urbis or the Independent Publishers market in St. Ann's square the city seemed full to bursting with cultural activities. I'm not so convinced that we need the big bang of the Royal Opera House, as the cost - in particular the running costs - seem out of proportion to the benefits, particularly when the city has such a vibrant cultural life as is; yet we do need some more and better, and more diverse public spaces, indoor and outdoor. For perhaps the first time in a long time, I felt Manchester was living up to, and surpassing its ambitions culturally, rather than being a somewhat reluctant advocate. Life of course goes on, and it would be a shame as the summer holidays dawn, if everything dries up in the post-festival mud. There's plenty of art still showing in the city, but probably precious little in the way of music or literature - at least until September comes along. My cultural diary has an empty look for the next few weeks, though there's the August Other Room in a couple of weeks, and Cornershop at Moho next Monday...

Writing about Manchester

Oxygen Books has a series of successful books about various cities, with their City Lit London the latest. It is London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Cambridge and Oxford that come to mind when you think about English Literature's love of the city, not Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool or Manchester. Perhaps the helter-skelter growth of the 19th century Victorian cities saw too fast a rise, and the 20th century, too fast a decline. Ra Page's "City Life Book of Manchester Stories", a decade ago, attempted to get writers associated with the city to write a story about it; and there's been a fair share of poems, novels, and yes, stories that have taken place in contemporary Manchester in the year's since - I'm thinking of Joe Stretch's "Friction", Gwendoline Riley's "Cold Water" and "Sick Notes," and Neil Campbell's "Broken Doll" amongst others. Yet the city hasn't yet seen it's "Augie March." Then there's Dave Haslam's non-fiction history of the city's music, "Manchester, England." I think all of these would find a place in a City-Lit Book of Manchester, if it ever came to pass.

Manchester is written about all the time of course, either in the newspapers (football pages particularly), or through its music or filmic location. Surely, our mythical anthology would have to find room for a Coronation Street script, something from the first series of "Cracker", maybe a few words from "Shameless" and "Cold Feet" (preferably across the page from each other, as glorious contrasts.) Older writers would be well-served of course; I'm not sure how much de Quincey dwelled on his city, but we'd have room for Frederick Engels, and much Mrs. Gaskell, never mind some considerable chunks of Anthony Burgess's 2-volume biography, the only books of his to dwell at length in the city. The classic non-fiction work might find a place, "The Salford Slum," perhaps with David Constantine's poem about the groups of young men from Salford Streets who perished in the First World War.

As "Procession" showed last week, any anthology of Manchester would have to include the words of Mark E. Smith, the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Morrissey and Shaun Ryder amongst its gems.

There's always a difficulty, of course - is it writing "about" the city or writing "from" the city? An anthologist would surely find room for "Love will tear us apart" even if it doesn't mention a location, as surely as emigres such as Engels and W.G. Sebald. I'm yet to read it, (or listen to it - since that's the version available at the moment), but am looking forward to another visitor to the city's words of wisdom. Writing for the new arts and culture magazine Corridor8, Iain Sinclair is at Urbis next week, reading a piece of psychogeography from walking round the city.

Seasons to be jolly, and otherwise...

It's festival season in Manchester, yet we've too much else to do. I'm "on tour" with work in Bristol, Cambridge and London over the next couple of weeks, so my Manchester International Festival fun has been reduced to Kraftwerk and Steve Reich, and the Procession. Annoyed to have missed the opening of the exhibition tonight - I always bump into old friends at these things - but hope to get to see it later in the week. Whether I find time (or inclination) to catch the Banksy show in Bristol is another matter. There does seem to be an awful lot going on at the moment - and on the one hand I'm a little gutted that I didn't bag tickets for Halle/Elbow and It Felt Like A Kiss, on the other, realise I'd have probably needed to take a fortnight off. After all, last night was also Manchester's Social Media Cafe - relocated to the sauna-like conditions of the BBC bar. The presentations always seem to mould themselves, so there seemed to be good audiences for all three. I enjoyed hearing about social objects and how they are like the periodic table from local web developer @hereinthehive, and hilarity followed through the crowdsourced little movie put together by Maria Ruban, The Joy of Ceefax, and a game of Ceefax Bingo to match. All good, slightly off-kilter fun; and that's the thing, there's a need for some creative, imaginative spaces in the city...

...which possibly explains why I'm feeling a little gloomily seasonal myself. After a couple of fantastic weeks, I've either reached entertainment burn-out, or just a necessary correction - my biorhythms are clearly a little off, as the last couple of days just been feeling a bit gloomy, and tiny little things have annoyed me out of proportion to their importance. It may just be a natural clearing of the airways after all the stimulation, or perhaps I'm just feeling the distance between the mundane and the sublime, both of which are amply to be found in my life at the moment. I get paid for the former, and pay for the latter - which might be better than the other way round, but still leaves one feeling a little like Leonard Bast. Suffering a little bit of ennui, I think, and though there's good ennui and bad ennui, I'm thinking this is the latter, more "what's the point?" than "I don't know what to do next." Perhaps being in other cities may help me get over this, though I kind of think I could probably do with some solitude, rather than stimuli at the moment. There'll be no let up, though, as I'll be back professional Manchestering for the Fall on the 18th July.

Partly I think its again down to the way that there's so much excitement about "all this digital stuff" but the one area I care about, literature, is hardly thinking about it. Notwithstanding the last posting about flarf and conceptual writing, I think the art form stays as it is; books, stories, poems - these are what writers care about, and everything else is a distraction - no different for me, than for John Donne or George Orwell then. If the key element of the Manchester festival this year has seen art break from its normal environments, and alter somewhat the relationship between performer and audience, then its a truly difficult thing for literature to achieve whilst still remaining primarily literature. I've some ideas about how we could do things differently (more in presentation of work than in the work itself), but not even sure where this would fit...more food for thought.