W.’s impressed. A toilet for every part of the city centre. I left nothing to chance!
Manchester lacks a river, W. says. It lacks an expanse. That’s why Mancunian thoughts are always claustrophobic thoughts, he says. It’s why Mancunian thinkers are constrained, trying to fight their way free.
And there’s the rain, brought by the terrible Westerlies, W. says. Manchester is particularly prone to Westerlies, which roll across its plain. The weather is so heavy here, W. says. So crushing.
The Mancunian thinker has constantly to struggle against melancholia, and thoughts of suicide, W. says. He thinks of Alan Turing, eating an apple he’d coated in cyanide. He thinks of Ian Curtis, hanging himself from the rope of a clothes-airer.
Sometimes, W. thinks that it’s only the destroyed thinker who can press thought towards what matters most. That it’s only destroyed thoughts that can think the whole. Is that why, despite everything, he reads my work so carefully? Is that why he still believes that I might have something to say?
There can be no thought from a regenerated city, W. says, as we look up at the warehouses converted into luxury flats. There can be no thought without dilapidation! No thought without urban blight!
Of course, I’m exactly the kind of person who would be drawn to Manchester, W. says. Exactly the type to make the Mancunian mistake.
I romanticised Mancunian despair, W. says. I didn’t realise that Mancunian despair is only the desire to leave Manchester, the city in which I had just marooned myself in my error.
W. sees me as a young student, quite lost in Manchester. He sees me: a speck, an atom, rucksack on my back, trying to find my way around. Didn’t I understand that the city was no place for me? That it was hard enough for those who belonged there?
What did I think I was doing? Whose life did I think I was leading? Did I think I could just become a man of the north? Did I think that northern despair had anything to do with my supposed despair? Did I think that the desolated landscapes of Manchester were the correlate of my supposed desolation?
The Mancunian soul is old and dark, W. says. The Mancunian soul has depths I cannot understand. Complexities! Did I think the Mancunian music that drew me to the city appeared from nowhere? Did I think Joy Division could happen just like that? Ian Curtis? Early New Order?
It is the poor who are the key to Manchester, W. says. The disenfranchised. The same people whose misery Engels documented, in his account of the city. Cotton workers spitting blood. Mill labourers with curved spines. Hollow-eyed children wandering among rubbish heaps …
Engels thought the poor would revolt, W. says. Hadn’t Manchester been the city of protest? The city of Chartism? Ah, but the merchants of Manchester crushed the workers’ movement. They massacred the protestors on the common land of St Peter’s Field, and built the Free Trade Hall on the site of the massacre, mocking the dead, laughing at them. But Engels thought the north would rise again. He thought Manchester, the first city of the industrial revolution, would become the first city of the workers’ revolution.
But the merchants of Manchester borrowed new models of internal organisation from the military — they borrowed bureaucracy, and the chain of command. The worker was encouraged to defer gratification, to develop long-term goals and self-discipline, in view of future rewards …
That’s how the merchants of Manchester placed blinkers over the workers’ eyes, W. says. That’s how they placed a muzzle over the workers’ mouths, and an iron collar around the workers’ necks. And so Manchester became the Egypt of the workers’ captivity. It became a workhouse, an open prison.
But Engels knew their end would come eventually, the merchants of Manchester, W. says. Capital is always greater than you, that’s the lesson. Investors move elsewhere. Trade becomes unprofitable. Firms go out of business. Whole regions are ruined by capital flight …
The Mancunian textile industry was destroyed by foreign competition. Its independent banks closed or relocated to London. Mass manufacturing became unprofitable, and mass unemployment arrived for good …
And Manchester fell asleep, W. says. The north had been broken, its industries destroyed. And Manchester lay down on its plain and slept. And as it turned in its sleep, Mancunian despair echoed in back-lane recording studios. As Manchester stirred uneasily, Mancunian horror sang on stage and record …
And idiots like me came to Manchester, didn’t they? W. says. Idiot-tourists, drawn by the depths of the Mancunian soul, by Mancunian melancholy. Idiots wandered among the derelict warehouses, and along the old viaducts and deserted towpaths. Idiots with their rucksacks came to live in the ruins.
‘Think of what others might have achieved in your place’, W. says. ‘Think of what others might have done had they been given what you were given’. A desk. A computer. A set of bookshelves. And time, W. says. Above alclass="underline" time.
I’m a usurper, aren’t I? W. says. I’ve taken the place someone else should have had. Someone cleverer than me, of course, W. says. More hard-working. Yes, he can picture it, W. says. Someone slimmer than me, dressed in a black shirt and black jeans. Someone taller than me, built like a missile of thought.
God knows, I’ve taken his place, too, W. says. I’ve taken his time. In fact, I’ve taken everyone’s time, everyone who’s had to listen to me, and, heaven forfend, to read me.
‘Why do you write such bad books?’, W. wonders, as he often does. Of course, it’s a sign that something has collapsed that I can publish anything at all. Do I think I could have published something in the old days?, he says. Do I think I could have brought out a first book and then a second book when there were proper publishers and proper editors?
Ah, how did I slip past the gatekeepers? How did I slip a first book and then a second book past them? I thought I’d been cunning — I thought I’d been clever, W. knows that. Here’s a chance, here’s a niche, I thought. No one’s looking, I thought. A doorway has opened, and if I just sneak through …
I thought I’d seen an opportunity, W. says. I thought I’d seen something no one else had seen: a chance, a possibility. I thought I’d got one over on the world, which in fact I hadn’t. I thought I’d stolen a march on the real thinkers, the real writers, who were too busy procrastinating to seize the day.
Oh, they might be able to think, they might be able to write, but only I’m hungry enough, that’s what I thought, isn’t it? Only I’m keen enough to see the situation for what it is, and take advantage of it, that was it, wasn’t it? Only I’m desperate enough: that’s what I told myself. I’ve been out in the cold so long, I whimpered to myself. I’ve suffered enough, I wept to myself, and the tears glistened on my cheeks.