The Vanishing

Apologies to all readers who are a bit fed up of crying over spilt milk. I would like to, instead, draw your attention to some music, a festival and a film.

Namely, the Manchester International Festival. A recent trip to the city yielded a visit to a performance called The Vanishing by Michael Mayhew, a live artist based in Manchester. In this particular instance, Mayhew sought to record and represent stories of vanishings in people's lives, the bigger project having him question notions of invisibility, and involving travel to Australia to track down a missing sibling as well as collaborating with a magician on illusions. The day's performance resulted in a sonic representation of recordings of people's stories as shared with the individual performers; audio that rose and fell and boomed within the high ceilings and mosaiced floors of the town hall, a whisper rising to a crescendo to a rasp, a momentary silence shattered by the sound of waves crashing, and chanted stories blurted, shouted, scrawled on the black clad performers walking the globe they had mapped in their heads. I closed my eyes and relaxed while one of the performers, in this instance a friend, writhed beside me, her eyes shut tight as she chanted, chanted, chanted...

Also featured in the festival were two rising stars of British music, Bat for Lashes and Kid Harpoon who, caught my ear, but, i missed.....i missed.....i missed.....

As for my latest trip to the cinema; Marion Cotillard is phenomenal in La Vie En Rose. Her large, expressive eyes coupled with the little sparrow's soulful voice are delightfully haunting. I'll play some music and let it fester.