10 Spells from the Smoke
Ten snaps from short trips to London and Bristol
The presposterously perfect Poly among the Polaroids. Poly Styrene in the Taboo nightclub, 1986, in the Tate Modern Leigh Bowery exhibition.
There’s nothing lovelier than reading old postcards between friends.
Watching a 1988 Clothes Show episode on a big screen (my god, I loved the Clothes Show so much – on late Sunday afternoons, flashing so many bigger, bolder worlds into so many living rooms) then finding one of Bowery’s outfits from this episode a few rooms later.
Yes.
Finding little things you love in the middle of so much in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Like feeling something Studio Ghibli-like, happy-sad, in Miho Sato’s Windy Day 2…
Spotting Bob and Roberta Smith popping up on busy walls…
Loving the use of pumice stone in the middle of bright acrylics in Tim Waskett’s 20s & 50s…
…and chancing on a massive mummer figure in wood lurking behind a blood-red wall.
Seeing old friends. This week has involved a birthday art and pub crawl my old gang, a night celebrating with the lovely Kat Lister and her boyfriend James, a reunion with all my old colleagues at Word Magazine, round the corner from our old office, in the pub where I had my wedding reception fourteen years ago,, and taking my friend Ian around all the Summer exhibition bits and bobs above.
The day marked a year after his book, 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer, came out, and the birthday of his lovely mum, who died earlier this year. We toasted her, and I toasted him, and it felt properly celebratory – of friendship, of family, of spending a simple afternoon in the summer together with someone you’ve known for years. I recommend it.
Making new friends. I’ve already posted this on Instagram, but it bears repeating for me to include this in my weekly online diary. Before London, I went to Bristol, where I met Alexis Gregory for the first time, a playwright who got in touch with me a few years ago, saying he’d read a huge piece I’d written about Donna Summer’s I Feel Love in The Quietus. He was writing a one-person play, using the song’s futuristic template as a way to explore queer futures. and he asked my permission to use a few parts of my feature. Of course I said yes, and a friendship began.
Then Alexis asked me late last year if I’d consider being his writing mentor, if he got funding to develop an ambitious non-fiction project of his (a book with a fantastic idea behind it). He got the funding, and over the last few months, we’ve been having meetings online, and I’ve been reading his writing, which can be very funny and cheeky, but also incredibly touching and profound.
We met “IRL”, as he says in the play, after I saw FutureQueer for the first time at Bristol’s Wardrobe Theatre, as part of Bristol Pride. If you live in London, it’s on at The Divine in Stoke Newington this Wednesday. It’s brilliant, as is he.
Stretch your wings. Meet people. See things. It’s that simple, really, isn’t it?
What a glorious week!