Archive Moment 1

(As we kick off the newest phase of the interchange, I thought it might be salutary to glance back at the first. Here's the little piece I did for the British Council on our first trip. The original page, complete with my rubbish photos, is available here.)

An indefinite grasp of the Cyrillic alphabet and a marked reluctance to leave the same few north-east streets is not the best qualification for travelling to Bulgaria. So the British Council representative in Sofia, Leah Davcheva, could hardly have been impressed when, after meeting the distinguished British–Jordanian novelist Fadia Faquir and the poet, editor and Arts Council bigwig Mark Robinson, she was introduced to what could only be described as Intimidated Chimp Boy (me). Especially as this trio needed to work with six Bulgarian writers and two musicians (the wonderfully-named Bluba Lu) to put together a series of unique events in a matter of days.

However, a swift drive through the city, past decaying apartment blocks, loud new billboards, and what seemed a very large statue holding aloft a submachine-gun, began to work its usual reviving magic. All I need to know is how the shambolic intricacies of life go on in each new place, and I become wedded to it as My Next Home. Here it took the sight of a black-clad art student turning her back on the national football stadium to draw that giant submachine-gun as it rose over some shopping booths and straggly autumn trees, and I had bonded. That and the very large guard-dogs who were terrifying another British Council administrator as we pulled up the drive to the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency in the nearby village of Boyana.

The BTA was a timelocked 1970s paradise of lukewarm showers, bare chalet rooms, and the statutory superfluous East European lightswitch which appears to trigger nothing in the vicinity, but which may be sending the guard-dogs into attack mode elsewhere in the complex. What I assumed were owls hooting through the evening trees turned out to be wolves (hence the dogs). In a way that seemed pretty British, it was homely rather than hospitable, and I found it comforting rather than comfortable. The staff appeared astonished that we needed to play loud music after 7.00 p.m. for anything other than our own amusement, and objected on behalf of non-existent other guests when this clashed with the Chelski–Lazio game. But then they provided an endless stream of excellent three-course meals which introduced us to the particular pleasures of Bulgarian food: yoghurt and aubergine salads, roasted red peppers, numerous rissoles and very good coffee (and beer), which kept the creative turbines buzzing.

We had flown in on Air France, and rapidly found we had to continue our aesthetic odyssey by Air Pants (as in ‘flying by the seat of your’). Our plans for exercise-based writing workshops (to induce artistic dialogue) fizzled out in the face of the Bulgarian writers’ unfamiliarity with this standard Brit-poet work method. Our assumption that we were producing a single ‘show’ which could be replicated in the different venues gave a sad pop and collapsed when the musicians explained that the acoustics of a large university foyer and an open market place would oblige them to come up with very different musical strategies (cathedral-ambient and techno-industrial to be precise), and we would all have to adjust our sets to fit. Then there was the breaking down into compatible trios for the bookshops and gallery events (who? where?), and the over-riding question: what were we going to do in the prison? In the heart of Sofia Prison, to be precise, possibly without music, possibly without mikes, certainly with a couple of hundred ‘repeat offenders’ as they were euphemistically known. Air Pants was experiencing mild turbulence.

In the event, all the events went splendidly, and the dialogue we assumed we’d have to manufacture was achieved in the heat of twelve-hour days of rehearsals and one-hour ‘just go for it’ performances. The blue billiard table, with no tip on the cue and one ball missing, taught us all the ice-breaking esperanto of ‘billiardski’ – especially when we realised we were playing by two completely different sets of rules. The trio events meant we were engaged in close readings of at least two others’ work – worked with Georgi Gospodinov and Nadezhda Radoulova on a themed reading which ended with me reciting something rude but lyrical in Bulgarian while they made a far far better job of my Scots. And the group readings produced some star performances: Toma Markov’s rap that had all the prisoners stomping and clapping to the beat; Plamen Doynov’s wry greeting to the black marketeers at Sitnyakovo Market; the decidedly cool Momcil Nikolov’s extremely wierd stories (for a man who’d never read in public before, he certainly knew how to relate a nude scene with fork). Then there were VBV’s leather trousers...

But before that we had the statutary number of ‘visiting writers’ moments’: Fadia and I in the sixteenth-century Banya Bashi mosque bumping into a bloke from Luton; Mark and I straining our necks in the tiny Boyana church filled with stunning mosaics – and a guide who couldn’t stop talking; the exceedingly laid-back drummer in that traditional restaurant who bore a curious resemblance to Momcil; the photo of Plamen eating which, in the fearless search for the worst pun of the week, we entitled ‘Plamen’s Lunch’; the little man with a teapot sitting on the back of St George’s horse in the icon room beneath the Nevski Cathedral...and that late-night moment in the last rehearsal when the musicians said they were going to improvise the gig at the Back Stage Club. Erk.

This should have been fine: Dimitar Paskalev and Konstantin Katsarski are extraordinarily supple and inventive players. It was just that we didn’t have texts of similar dexterity: if they were playing a fast blues and you were due to read a slow moody narrative, what happens next? A short informative debate followed on the universal language of music and the static-ness of text (and our inability to yell ‘Spooky Celtic but not Clannad’ in Bulgarian). We fastened our Air Pants seatbelts and pressed on. In the end the hidden rock stars in each of us manifested for a spontaneous wig-out fuelled by quantities of Zagorka beer and the evident delight of the 150 strong audience who’d packed into the tiny club. And VBV’s leather trousers.

The next day, Mark, Fadia and I wandered past a building designed by Dimitar (yes, he’s a top architect as well as a great musician; no, I’m not envious, much) on route to Bluba Lu’s studio, where we laid down the vocals for what we expect to be a Christmas smash-hit double concept album. We then climbed into a taxi for the airport, having filled every available waking hour with what we all love best: words at their most passionate and boundary-bashing. Soon these writers and musicians will visit us: I hope they recognise something of the bustling chaotic brilliance of their home in the north-east of England.