I wear my city on my sleeve. For a long time I longed to leave, but as soon as I did my longing cracked back in on itself. I found myself shaped like the A4400, Birmingham’s inner ring road, by then already in a state of partial dismantling.
I used to hold my breath in the underpasses. I came across a set of photographs taken during the building of the road in the 1960s, during a time when I wasn’t there, and I was strangely sad. Because the photographs showed concrete collapsing into nothing – overhangs that were not overhangs, or only might have been – they closed my eyes to time, and I couldn’t decide if what I was seeing was construction or destruction. Not being able to decide if something is constructive or destructive, and not being able to decide if those words are the right words anyway – that element of irresolution definitely staggers through Midland, the novel I eventually assembled.
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I used to hold my breath in the underpasses. I came across a set of photographs taken during the building of the road in the 1960s, during a time when I wasn’t there, and I was strangely sad. Because the photographs showed concrete collapsing into nothing – overhangs that were not overhangs, or only might have been – they closed my eyes to time, and I couldn’t decide if what I was seeing was construction or destruction. Not being able to decide if something is constructive or destructive, and not being able to decide if those words are the right words anyway – that element of irresolution definitely staggers through Midland, the novel I eventually assembled.
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