Slow Reader: an exhibition of broken words

Slow Reader is an exhibition of broken words created by me, and hinted at in this here blog post here, and brought to you by Art Works Manchester.

I created this work as a kind of escape from the intense writing process for my Fringe show (see posts passim). There are a bunch of themes at work in Slow Reader, namely:

> Good writing is about editing, about ditching everything superfluous. It’s likely, therefore, that a writer will have deleted many more words than will have ended up in their final draft. Slow Reader is about that creative process of cast-offs and half-ideas; the fuzzy fragments that live at the edges of the creative mind that either don’t coalesce into something solid, or are written and then destroyed.

> The text in the exhibition is taken from several years' worth of my short stories. Many phrases and feelings live on from that work as fragments in my mind, as half-memories. This is those fragments writ large on the walls of a Manchester pub.

> The title also plays my habit of losing my place in a book. I don't fold pages or use bookmarks. I am an idiot.

You can see Slow Reader on display at Sandbar, Grosvenor Street from now for a couple of months or so.

   

I'm holding a launch tonight (not really a launch, just some drinks and that) and there are examples of the exhibition pieces below.

I feel empty (a Slow Reader teaser)

I feel empty.

I feel like a Cadbury creme egg that's had its sweet gloop tongued out by an anteater.

I feel like a Stereophonics jewel case without its CD, just some pastry crumbs and a greasy fingerprint.

I feel like a room without a roof nor walls nor furniture nor that family of spectacle-wearing grouse that I swear I saw living here last week.

I feel like the innermost soul of a television talent show: a yearning, brown vacuum of lost intent and forgotten dreams.

I feel like the inside of a balloon.

I've barely gone a day this past couple of weeks without a deadline approaching in the next hour, whether that means show editing, or hitting a flyering spot, or meeting up with someone, or - indeed - sleeping. The fringe was like a hurricane, or at least, a very stern gale. I'm now untethered, flapping gently in a dull breeze, waiting for someone to blow me.

Jeez, I really fancy a creme egg.

Anyhoo, I need a new project. And that project is about to hit like a hurricane train full of creme eggs and grouse.

Watch this space for Slow Reader, coming to a Manchester near you (i.e. Manchester) (i.e. it's a new thing that's about to happen somewhere in Manchester and it's been months in the planning)...