Love, in Passing Press

Love, in Passing is a non-profit, digital poetry & arts magazine dedicated to honouring the work of femme creatives.

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In Conversation with...Honey Gentry

In the quiet moments between chords and words, where melody meets memory, there is a place where stories are turned into striking lullabies, and it’s here, in the delicate space of creation, that Honey Gentry finds the pulse of her music—woven from both the light and shadow of love. As a songwriter, she doesn’t just craft songs; she distils emotion -- her soft, harmonic vocals metamorphosed into something both deeply personal and universally resonant. Drawing inspiration from the visuals of Hollywood’s golden age of cinema, Gentry’s discography is otherworldly to say the least – a lustrous ensemble of melancholy chords accompanied by velvety, dream-like vocals that enchant the listener. Having the opportunity to speak directly to Honey herself, I wanted to understand just what it is that inspires her approach to songwriting and how her love for film plays a unique role in the creative process…

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Charlotte: Hi Honey, it’s clear to see that you draw a lot of inspiration from the 1950’s/60’s when it comes to cinematography and your own music. What is it about this era that you feel drawn to and are there any specific elements of this time period you aim to incorporate into your own work?

Honey: It’s the late 60’s that inspires me so deeply. I think if I had to call on specific elements, I’d say it was the counterculture, anti-war sentiment, the civil rights movement, and more empowered, liberated consciousness that was growing out of that time - specifically for women. Living outside of the accepted norms of society to a path that’s right for you - I think of things like the rise of Wicca after the Witchcraft Act was repealed in the ‘50s. Just more freedom to explore and be free, than the generation before. 

Charlotte: Whilst on the topic of inspiration & aesthetic, I’m curious to know just how important you feel imagery and artistic cohesiveness is as an artist?

Honey: For me personally, I do like to have a visual ‘world’ that manifests alongside the music. Not so much that the music is the skeleton and the imagery is the flesh - more that the music is a full body but the imagery is an adornment that helps express the personality on first impression. With an album like Dreamgirl in particular, I had been so inspired by my trips to California and how it made me feel - naturally there was a lot of blues and pinks that were pulling through at that time in the surrounding imagery. Almost like the Pacific and her sunsets were just making themselves really known! Even the cover art had been taken two years before the music was written - when I came across the picture again I just knew it would work. Like that’s where I mentally was when these songs came about - especially Take Me Somewhere, the album closer. So, I do think it’s important to me, as it helps communicate something about the music that helps invite other people in.

The album that Honey is referring to, ‘Dreamgirl’, is her latest album, released in 2021 – and it truly is a spellbinding embodiment of work. The title track is one of my personal favourites. Beginning with softly-struck piano chords, the follow up of Honey’s vocals, rich yet gentle, transcend the production of this track and definitely earns its place as title track of the album.

Charlotte: How do you approach the balance between crafting dreamlike melodies and conveying depth or complexity through your lyrics?

Honey: Those two things go hand in hand for me; almost like the lyrics are trying to convey the conscious and the melody trying to convey the subconscious. I use one to influence the other. If I happen to write the music first, I try and feel out what lyrics want to come forward from the melodies. If I write lyrics first, I try to shape music around their emotion without too much effort; I try to let it flow out to support the lyrics. I try not to force either of those two aspects too much. 

Charlotte: I, myself have dabbled in the art of songwriting and found great inspiration in both old classics and the more abstract of cinema. I remember watching a film called ‘Shangri-La Suite’ a few years ago and it moved me so much I immediately picked up my guitar in the dead of night and wrote a 1960’s counterculture-esque song that I felt aligned magically with the poignant themes of the storyline. I’m wondering if you also can recall any films that have had a similar impact and inspired you to pick up a pen and paper?

Honey: Oh I love this, I’ll have to check this movie out! Film is so immersive - I think that’s why us songwriters and artists are so inspired by movies. And probably most of us are processing our stories in the same way - ‘watching’ them play out as we write them, describing what we’re seeing. My list of films that have played that role for me are probably so predictable as to be a total cliche list - basically if it came out in the 90s and is about girlhood, I’ll love it: The Virgin Suicides, of course - any of Sofia’s work; Drop Dead Gorgeous; Girl Interrupted; The Craft; or my other total pleasure The Love Witch - it’s just as much their stories as the world you live in for those couple of hours whilst you watch. The world of girls and their stories. 

Charlotte: I’m interested to know how you believe the visual aesthetics of a film can influence the mood or atmosphere of a song during the writing process? 

Honey: I would say - it’s all in how the film makes you feel. If it’s a particularly beautiful film emotionally and visually, it could get you to the same place emotionally in order to write a beautiful song. Film also puts you into another world, which is really useful when thinking of new perspectives in song writing - when you really relate to a character and their story, you might find that their words and story puts something into words you’ve been struggling to say for yourself.

Charlotte: And what is the most rewarding part of the songwriting process for you? Is it the initial spark of an idea, the act of writing, or hearing the final recording come to life? Honey: For me, the most rewarding part is usually when the melody for the chorus starts to form. Because if that’s a melody I want to hum, that just seems to form itself - that’s when I know I’ve “found” the song. Although it can take me a while to get there, it’s like the rest of it unfolds from that moment and all the ideas start to flow. There’s also a moment, if I’m working on production before I’ve written any lyrics, where a certain atmosphere starts to build and I know I’ve tapped into something. I’ve written this new song called Lick The Stars, and I’m working on it with Elliott (who I created Go With The Flow with); and the second I knew I loved it was when I started working with this beautifully haunting dulcimer sound. It had such a mysterious quality to it that I could immediately see the rest of the song unfold. The way we built out the rest of the song, that dulcimer started to take a back seat, but it was the starting point for the colour, the tone of the song. I love when that happens.

Charlotte: I noticed you’ve shared the work of Louise Glück and Mahmoud Darwish, both prestigious poets that clearly seem to inspire you. Do you like to write your own poetry? Or perhaps have any other creative mediums you enjoy exploring? Honey: Louise Glück in particular has been an influence for me - Under Taurus of course being directly inspired by her poem of the same name. Whether she would have appreciated that had she ever seen it… I don’t know! And of course Mahmoud Darwish, one of many brilliant Palestinian writers who seem to be able to transmute such pain into such beauty. Something I can’t help but admire and be in total awe. As for writing my own poetry, it’s rare that I do and it’s only ever for myself. If I’m collecting couplets or images, they tend to find themselves in songs. Rather than other forms of writing, my non-musical creative pursuits tend to be more crafty. I’m not very good at it but I love making my own candles.

Charlotte: It’s certainly the time of year to begin honing in on our own creative, peaceful rituals. As we find ourselves nearing the end of this year, I’m wondering if you have any resolutions, both personally and professionally, that you hope to achieve by this time next year? 

Honey: I have resolutions, but I have resolutions all the time. I actually don’t believe that new year is a good time to try and set an intention and stick to it. Unless New Year’s Day falls on a particularly potent new moon I try and just see it as a nice bank holiday. Otherwise, it tends to bum me out! (I tend to experience birthdays the same way unfortunately - too much pressure!) Luckily, New Year’s Day is just one of many for us - we can set new intentions on every new moon; every birthday; in March when the astrological year starts… we can start over any day.

Interview conducted & written by Charlotte India Howard

To listen to Honey’s latest album, ‘Dreamgirl’, click here

Follow Honey Gentry on Instagram

[loveinpassingpress]

This Just In

let me melt in your mouth, or don’t

my bids for you were never the bother

nearer the cry for help of the red ribbon that cascades beneath the stiff bodies of news anchors

as they avoid eye contact with their subtext

10 dead in a house fire, no survivors

car crash on the sea to sky, traffic stalled

22 year old student shot on the skytrain

25 year old girl looks in a mirror and doesn’t comprehend the stranger that’s imposed itself there

a full acquisition

later, we’ll talk about the fire

Poetry by Jessica Daly

To see more of Jessica's work, find her here

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City Above Clouds, A Poem by Jaclyn Bethany

a city above clouds

rising high above a new altar of life

a slice of before

the beginning of after

a white cold air

melting into heat

a shadow in the shape of a woman, a virgin

her fingers ripe as pearls

her gaze

stone-like, frozen in passing time

your broken city, alive once more

a hand, an eye

a golden road

in the palm of her

of you

of me

- Jaclyn Bethany

To see more of Jaclyn's work, visit here

Photography by Diana Patient

[loveinpassingpress]

The Fish, A Personal Essay

There was a study done once where they discovered fish were becoming hermaphroditic from ingesting our selfish waste, all the prescription pills we can no longer bother with. I feel that way sometimes, poison slumping into my innocent environment, unapologetically morphing into something I no longer know.

Imagine you woke up in the blue-green algae one day after your Adderall-Wellbutrin-Xanax-Klonopin cocktail and you were a woman. Now imagine that woman was me and you take those things anyways. Imagine you are more intelligent than a brain dead halibut and you ruin your stomach lining.

Existential price tag aside, you’re her now, and there’s no opportunity for reversal. There is no respite for unthinking trawl like you. You can still swim, sure, and your gills release carbon dioxide all the same, they exchange gasses, you blink into forlorn pollution that suffocates your home but it’s never really the same, is it? It’s like you’ve been abducted, your body returned scorned and changed, and it is never your own again.

You friends recognize you, but they don’t, not really. They see you but they do not comprehend you. They may say, hey, Bill seems different lately, but I’m sure it’s nothing. It really is nothing. You’re still you. You hold their conversations and you hunt minnows in low tide together, you rest on the sand below, you have comradery and swim in schools as one. Only you know something has changed.

One day, another fish may fall in love with you. Perhaps a jawless, cartilaginous young thing. You love her and she loves you. Eventually, once you’ve established your eternal happiness together, you may confide in her about your condition. But how? How do you take the one you love aside and explain to them that you were once one thing, and now you can never return? Now you can never be the same again? They would have liked you better as the old thing. The future thing is one of malice and regret. Maybe you choose not to tell. Maybe you allow it to fester, to grow human sized holes between you. Maybe you’re better off.

One day, you get very sick. Perhaps it was the human drug cocktail, the carelessness from above. Either way, you’re ill, but not deathly. The illness doesn’t bring the severity required for relief - you just feel wrong. The gelatin mechanisms of your body are no longer free flowing. Your gills periodically forget to reduce toxins, and just when you think they never will again, they let out the slightest amount. You’re allowed a moment of relief before your horror continues.

Your lover is agonizingly slow to realize. Your friends are otherwise absorbed. You’re officially no longer you. The you that once navigated the same environment and lived the same life as the current you has more or less died. You wouldn’t be surprised to see their rainbow colored corpse disposing of itself and surrendering to the sandy ground, whatever microscopic parasites lie below. You look down at it often, just to check.

Piece written by Jessica Daly

Artwork by Faye WeiWei

[artfilmfan]

RIP Anne Wiazemsky :(

[loveinpassingpress]

Sunsets, a poem

The sun always sets

Covered by clouds

After the storm

You might not see it

It may go unnoticed

It may look the same as the day before

It might not be beautiful

But the sun always sets

And it always rises.

Written by Carina Wilthil

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"Le Rêve", A Collection of Works by Chechu Álava

Born into the town of Piedras Blancas, in Asturias, Spain, Chechu Álava's life as a contemporary female, Spanish artist could be considered one of true, artistical magic.

Now residing in Paris, her collection of soft, pastel oil paintings undoubtedly grows by the day. Having studied for a BA in Fine Arts at the University of Salamanca, and also at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam during 1995, Chechu's dedication to the arts has truly manifested itself into an unparalled prophecy of soft pastel beauty.

Álava's dream-like approach to both her still life work and portraiture is one of the many captivating charms of her art. Delicate and bewitching, works such as 'Lee Miller's kiss' seem almost poetic in a way.

Ambushed in my writing

you are singing a poem.

Captivate of your sweet voice

engraved in my memory...

Alejandra Pizarnik

Having first discovered and been influenced by the works of Ana Mendieta, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman and Marina Abramović at a younger age, Chechu's paintings certainly hint at such influences, yet take on a life of their own...

To view more of Chechu's work, visit her website here.

Alternatively, you can follow her Instagram.

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Disturbing The Peace Of An Unhealed Heart

The human mind is capable of so many incredible things, such as the way we’re able to rewire the certain parts of ourselves that exist only as a way to hurt us.

It was a month ago that I found myself coming into consciousness of these rewired, soundless thoughts running throughout my own mind. Ones that weren't plagued with the mental images of memories shared with him that I'd dreamt up in light of his absence from my life, but not yet my heart. It was September, and I felt my life was beginning to not only look different, but feel different, too. As though I were in a phase of ending metaphorical chapters in my life just to begin new ones with more peace and stability than I'd ever known before.

In a piece I wrote a few months ago, titled ‘Falling out of love from a distance’, I mentioned that I'd learnt trying to blindly seek something that doesn't exist will only ever hurt you more. Of course, I've loved and lost enough humans on this earth many times to know this is true, but it seems that what I clearly had forgotten, is just how easily a broken heart can be drawn back to what hurt it in the first place.

~

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard of a well-known belief that our minds are capable of sending invisible waves of energy to those that we think about - and now, I think I believe it. In fact, I think I've even decided that him and I must be living proof of this psychological voodoo. That's why, when he walked back into my life on what began as just another insignificant September night, I realised I'd almost subconsciously been anticipating it since the very moment he'd last left.

"It's taken this whole time for me to realise that I'm never going to get what you gave me" he began.

"...I really should've treated you better, and I don't know why I didn't..."

"...nobody is like you, and I took it for granted".

I’d like to think that he's ignorantly unaware of what he's doing. Unaware of the pain his silent departures and insincere returns to and from my life inflict upon me. I'd also like to think there's a reason for all of the complicated, one-sided love this relationship has left me subject to, and that one day we'll finally be able to move past these gratuitous standstills of love. That one day we'll stop letting all of the insignificant complications manifest themselves into months of silence and hostility.

I’ve let myself believe all of the pain he puts me through must mean something, which seems to have played a significant role in my self-taught tendency to continue loving and trusting him when he tells me that he's ready to love me the way I deserve to be loved - despite all of the times these promises have ended in tears as he, yet again, proves himself to be wrong, and me, hopelessly naïve.

Most frustratingly of all, if I had just listened to all of the internal, rewiring of voices that I’d learnt to tune out, I possibly would have realised that my letting him back in is just an invitation for him to love and leave me again. If I had just listened to what I already knew, I also would have saved myself the inevitable end of us, for the third time. Instead, mid-September, October and the beginning of November were spent refamiliarising myself with his existence as we both fell back into our usual, well-rehearsed routine of him averting from any kind of honest conversation about what it is that he really wants, whilst I learn to make peace with the likelihood that I’ll only ever know what it feels like to take up such a small piece of his mind.

This time around he only stayed for a short while, and I knew as I watched him from across the table dance around every silence - every chance to apologise for his abrupt absence from my life, that he had no true intention of doing any of what he was promising me. I knew that he wouldn’t treat me better than he had in the past, because just like the past - he is still unaware of what it is that he had.

The past few months have taught me how to live without him, and I think I’ve grown comfortable in the peace that this time spent alone has brought me. I also think that it’s this peace that finally allowed me to follow the instincts that have, for the past seven months, been trying to let me know that it’s time to leave.

“Sorry I’ve been a little bit all over the place the past week…I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that I cannot be friends with someone I used to really love…and I’m also aware that things are probably going to end badly and you’re going to throw me to the side again…”

“…so I think it’s best if we don’t keep talking, because I don’t want you to hurt me again…”

“…You don’t need to reply to this message and it’ll probably hurt me less if you don’t…”

“…I’m sure you understand why I have to look out for myself.”

This time, I didn’t even hesitate to send my message. I think each day that’s spent in peace is helping shift my love for him, into a love for what it is that I’m yet to know.

And I hope to give myself this love that I’ve been chasing for so long - this love that was beginning to bud within me three months ago, amid the peace his absence brought to my life.

[santoclitoris]

[loveinpassingpress]

“The World Is Moved By Love”: A Love Letter to Greta Bellamacina

Photo courtesy of Greta Bellamacina

Known for her honest and often gracefully cutting words, Greta Bellamacina is a 31-year-old actress, poet and filmmaker from London, United Kingdom. I remember first stumbling across her poetry after a mid-July trip to Guildford last year, and upon reading her latest poetry book, “Tomorrows Woman”, I’ve found her beautifully sincere approach to poetry has both evoked my imagination and (metaphorically) held the weight of my literature-captivated heart.

“The world is moved by love. It is set free by it…”

Some of Greta’s previously published books before the birth of ‘Tomorrows Woman’ include, ‘Smear’, a vivid, powerful anthology of poems by and for young women, giving voice to a new generation of international poets, with themes of feminism, empowerment, resilience, confidence, and integrity”. Like magic, ‘Smear’ seems to cradle the unsettled rage and unapologetic beliefs rooted deep within every young girl and women, and it’s a book I find myself coming back to time and time again.

Alongside all of her personal endeavours into poetry and literature, Greta also works within the shadows of New River Press - a Fitzrovia, London-based poetry publishing house founded by both herself and her husband, fellow poet and also artist & sculptor, Robert Montgomery. New River Press publishes the work of young poets and aims to truly hear them. The establishment of this publishing house seems to be undoubtedly playing a significant part in the shifting of current societal attitudes towards poetry in a modern world, whilst also cultivating a coven of young girls that are all carrying the weight of an incurable desire to turn everything they touch into magic.

“…a peace body saviour

a radio siren promise

spangling to a teenage dream made of clay

flowering and cracking in the wound of the living

It moves an ink tree supersonic

bluer always and more real, turning like alchemy

rained up oval alive —

a villa of calligraphy squares.

Horses

a small salvation army of conquest dust —…”

“a surrendered mystical chest

watching arms in hands…”

“…interlocking hearts like netted curtains.

The marketplace in tomorrow’s new dawn,

travelling bells found inside Lazarus

a butterfly in abandoned heaven.

We exist in the waterside a clasp of mercury mother

fist-full and ageless.

It feeds you just as it leaves you

it makes you believe just as it shows you

the writing of the cold wind

on the gates of heaven.”

The World is Moved by Love - Greta Bellamacina

Read more of Greta’s poetry here

[jordansfilmjournal]

faceless, nameless

[loveinpassingpress]

Emotional Unavailability Is Making Dating Difficult

July, early evening. Sprawled out on top of one another at the end of my bed, he takes a breath and looks at me as I wrap myself around him, sinking into the exhilarating foreignness that comes only from the touch of an unfamiliar body.

“I really like you.”

I could tell he was slightly unsure of his own forwardness, but his vulnerability felt almost infectious, so much so that before I even have a moment to consider the weight of his words, I was already saying them back to him.

“…I really like you too.” I replied before leaning in to kiss him - closing my eyes, accepting my fate.

We’d first started talking just a few weeks prior to our impromptu afternoon spent together in my bedroom. Listening to FIP Radio, we joked about how small the city is, and just how close in proximity we’d been living from each other for the past year or so.

“Not to sound too forward, but do you think your friends will like me?” he asked abruptly, almost diffidently.

I knew it was a strange question to ask considering he didn’t really know me at all, but in that moment I found every part of myself wanting to believe that perhaps his bold remarks indicating he saw some sort of future together really were as sincere as he was suggesting. Allowing myself to find comfort in the idea that perhaps I’d finally stumbled across someone that could see the potential in me. Someone that wasn’t willing to let me slip away, having only just caught me.

“He’s really nice, I actually think he’s the nicest person I’ve ever dated” I told my housemate Ellie just a few days later. Sat in the garden, watching her change in and out of the airy summer dresses and maxi skirts she was selling on Vinted - it felt nice to have someone to share all of my schmaltzy optimism with. Having made the decision to take some time away from dating at the start of the year, it’d been a long time since I’d had someone to gush over with my friends, and I wasn’t until then that I started to remember just how much I’d missed it.

“He looks like the love child of both of your exes” Ellie teased as she scrolled through the various photos and prompts on his Hinge profile from my phone. She wasn’t wrong - in fact, my very particular taste in men has kind of become a running joke between my friends and I at this point. Warm brown eyes, dark, velutinous hair and tattoos that are often justified by some sort of funny backstory seems to have become my go-to when it comes to the type of men I recklessly lose myself to.

“He’s not like them though” I tell Ellie, half-hoping I’d not only convince her, but also myself.

I used to think that everything would fall into place when I found the right person. That all feelings of inadequacy and trepidation would slip away in the company of someone new, but I’m starting to realise that’s not really how life works - that it’s never that straightforward. I thought if I took some time away from dating I’d forget about all of the loss my past relationships once left me subject to. That, like magic, I’d no longer slip back into the familiar routine of shrinking myself to appease to a man who doesn’t really want me at all. I told myself I’d do things differently next time. That I’d be spontaneous and self-assured. The kind of girl that didn’t come with any kind of emotional baggage (a term I really hate), but instead just a handful of past relationships that had ended mutually, on good terms.

I tried to be this kind of girl around him. I kept him at a distance, pretended that the idea of intimacy doesn’t have a tendency of causing me to spiral into a pit of anxiety, and tried desperately not to let past insecurities arise within me, but, before I knew it, this fake façade and the metaphorical walls I’d built up around me began to collapse in on themselves. Laying beside him, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t thinking about how much I’d missed this kind of intimacy, the familiarity of someone else I’m still not able to shake. To be honest, I’m not sure any of my facade was very believable to begin with. Stumbling over my words and trying desperately to fill empty silences, it must have been pretty obvious I liked him, though it wasn’t long before this feeling manifested itself into the all-too-familiar fear that he was only going to lose interest, if he hadn’t already.

Please don’t be like the others, please, please don’t hurt me seemed to be the only coherent thought on my mind in his presence. Like a premonition I just couldn’t shake, I felt as though I’d already endured the ending of us before we’d even had a beginning. This certainty that he was only pursuing me under false pretences very quickly began to take over my every thought until suddenly the idea of him didn’t feel safe at all - so much so that when we were sat on the beach together a few days later and he asked me what it was that I was looking for, I lied and told him I wasn’t really sure.

There’s a particular quote in ‘The Power of Letting Go’, a book I read a couple of years ago that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. In it the author, John Purkiss, writes -

“The problem is that when we identify with the past, we keep on thinking about it, which makes it very hard to change anything. Everything keeps happening the way it always has, even when we think we really want to change, our past just keeps predicting our future.”

He could be my future, but when I look at him all I can see is my past. It’s in each of his mannerisms - each one a painful reminder of the people and things I’ve already lost. And I want to believe that maybe this time It’ll be different, that perhaps opening up and giving myself permission to be vulnerable will resolve all of these unsettled fears of intimacy, but if I’m being honest, I know I’m incapable of giving any of these parts of myself to anyone right now.

I don’t want to keep burdening myself with thoughts of what could have been and I’m so tired of my past predicting my future, but I know that I’m going to be okay, and that one day, no matter how long it may be, someone new will ask me what it is that I’m looking for, and I hope that when they do I won’t even have to think twice.

[loveinpassingpress]

Art, Divinity & A Return To Still Life Painting with Isobel Jones

After graduating from Brighton University with a BA in Sculpture, Isobel decided to return to producing work as a painter. At the moment she’s exploring ways to shift the focus in still life painting - enjoying focusing on forgotten corners in rooms, shadows on ceilings, and distorting plants. Recently she has been reducing the amount of detail in her work and has been working towards a more abstract approach to her art.

'Contemplating Love' by Isobel Jones

Charlotte: Could you talk a little bit about how you first came to find your love for painting and how your creative process has evolved over time?

Isobel: I’ve been painting since I was a child and was encouraged by my parents and school teachers to keep going. I was taken to a lot of art galleries and my dad would sit with me and we’d paint still lives together. He loves the impressionists and Bloomsbury group artists so my style started to look like that. He always told me to ‘never use black’ but instead mix any other colour in its darkest form. He would encourage me to mix colours myself from primary colours and I think because of this I became very interested in the subtlety of colour. My mum loves David Hockney and his bold use of colours so this was another influence. I was very much learning at this stage rather than expressing, copying Van Gogh’s and things. At university I had a kind of ‘dark night of the soul’ . I went to study sculpture and was struggling with mental health. So I didn’t paint for 3 years. Once I had left university I went on a search for my child self again. Over time I became interested in altered states of perception and spirituality.

“Feeling a beautiful alive energy in everything drew me to painting again. I wanted to capture the love and divinity I could feel in plants and the universe and share it with everyone.”

‘Light on a bed in Jim Ede's house’ by Isobel Jones

Charlotte: You’ve had some of your work in exhibitions recently - could you tell me about some of these, and how it feels to have your work out there on display?

Isobel: Yes I’ve had a couple of exhibitions in Brighton, the last one was The Sights and Sounds Club exhibition. Myself and the rest of the arts collective held a show in an abandoned New Look building near Churchill square. It was all very chaotic and because of COVID regulations we had to shut it down. It’s hard in Brighton to get your work out in a space, there isn’t really any good exhibition spaces here despite there being so many artists. It’s a real problem, I love to share my work with people. The paintings are a celebration of life so it’s great to have them up and to be able to bring people together to celebrate our sacred time on earth. It’s also very nice to be part of such a wonderful group of artists and communicate with them through paint. Ella Russell, Nina Winder-Lind and I are currently talking about having an exhibition. They are both very inspiring artists and musicians so I am very much looking forward to that.

Charlotte: And do you draw any inspiration from any other creative mediums? Poetry, literature etc?

Isobel: There are some fantastic books. I mostly read philosophy and psychology. But music is a huge inspiration too, like spiritual jazz. Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler - they all get it. Improvised music is a massive inspiration to me as I like to think of artists as mediums for the divine. I recently came across an amazing album by synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani too, which has an amazing reading of Charles Baudelaire’s poem Flowers of Evil alongside modular synth weirdness. So, I bought Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire and that was a very inspiring read.

“Eastern philosophy, psychology and altered states of perception loosely informs all my work. And I am also one fifth of the band Wax Machine, in which I play the flute and sing. My interest in music has been increasingly important to me recently.”

Charlotte: Both as an artist and personally, what do you hope to achieve over the next year?

Isobel: I want to play as much as possible! Paint, and make music, and celebrate the beauty of existence. I also play the flute in a band, Wax Machine, so I hope to continue touring with them and make more albums. For my paintings I want to try and explore reducing detail in order to get closer to the essence of a subject. I’m also excited about the prospect of doing exhibitions and collaborating with other artists.

To see more of Isobel’s work, visit her Instagram here

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The Art of Songwriting & Creative Ingenuity with Mali McGrath

Encompassing an almost siren-like vivacity to her work as both a musician and painter, it’s undeniable that Mali McGrath’s handful of creative gifts and visionary state of mind make her such a breath of fresh air to the creative femme community. Her work, both vocal and visual, seem to evoke feelings of both joy and pain, perhaps because she herself admits to finding inspiration within her own suffering. “Heartbreak is one of the things that cracked me back open” Mali recalls. “…Following heartbreak, my artworks became much more personal, I started singing every day again, began writing songs. It felt like I had so much emotion to hold that it had to be put somewhere and creative ideas began to unfold more naturally than ever…”

Charlotte: So, could you just begin by introducing yourself and giving a little backstory as to how your creative journey began?

Mali: I am an artist, primarily a painter, and also a musician, singer, a songwriter. I currently also work for an independent jewellery business, assisting everything from designing to making pieces. I have also recently facilitated my first women’s circle, which incorporated some singing, and I am working to grow this endeavour of space-holding and leading healing spaces into one of my multiple lines of work.

My creative journey has been life long. Music from around the world was always playing in my childhood home, books overflowing off the shelves of every room. I spent most of my time as a child drawing and writing stories but was also wildly confident in singing, dancing and performing. My teenage years stamped out all of the spirit of my inner child. I wouldn’t sing to nearly anyone, even friends and family. I always kept making art and writing but without such a sense of freeness.

Charlotte: Seeing as you seem to identify strongly and are recognised for your work as both a musician and artist, I’m interested to know which creative medium you personally feel most drawn to?

Mali: Visual art, my paintings, definitely lie within more of a personal comfort zone. It is perhaps where I feel more knowledgeable and confident. I have maybe resonated with being an artist for longer, my whole life even, whereas writing my own music began around four years ago. But that said, music has grown to probably be my primary outlet. I sing every day, songs are constantly flowing out of me, writing music doesn’t depend on my energy levels or good mood or focus, it feels like something that happens no matter how I am. Singing, my own songs in particular, is where I feel most free. I feel like my art and music and various other creative mediums are an ecosystem and, even if I am creating vastly different things in each, they do thrive best when I give time and energy to both. They’re also heavily woven within my personal mythologies and a sense of magical realism and storytelling, so they are very much intrinsically linked and can share imagery, symbolism and sometimes storylines.

Charlotte: Could you tell me about where you drew inspiration from when writing your two latest singles, Out Of A Flowerhead and The Sea Monsters Daughter?

Mali: Out Of A Flowerhead began as a poem but grew into a song and it feels like this psychedelic earthly ode to a really conscious, reflective stage in heartbreak and healing. It is inspired by nature, ritual, reflection, abundance and consumption. The cord cutting reference relates to ancient witchcraft but also involves word-play on later themes of death and birth cycles. The symbols of fruit and flowers also link to this sense of dying and re-birthing as well as representing abundance and the idea of this all-consuming person eating their way through all the beauty and fruitfulness in your life and world.

The symbolism in this song links closely to my art, in which ripe or seeping fruit and the heads and petals of flowers are recurring symbols. They are so ingrained in my world of storytelling and image making that it is hard to root back to how they became so significant, but this song is definitely a perfect example of the poetry I continuously find within certain symbols such as these.

…The Sea Monster’s Daughter is completely inspired by dreams and mythology. It tells the story of a real dream I had. I am deeply inspired by the profoundness in folklore surrounding mermaids and the sea and, whilst the song focuses more on real people, ultimately the sea represents a separation of worlds, a threshold. There is a parallel with dreams also being thresholds and a separate realm or world. I read a lot of folk stories as well as listening to some extremely old traditional folk music from here and around the world, so I think my understanding of mythical folkloric archetypes and ideas has been absorbed greatly from these and inevitably surfaces in my own storytelling.

Charlotte: So as a lyricist and musician, do you find it important to tell a story through your music? If so, does that part of the song writing process come naturally to you?

Mali: Yes it definitely comes naturally. I think I find it important to express my emotions through song writing, to capture feelings and experiences, so stories lend themselves well to this and organically emerge. Equally, the influence of mythology, folk-story and folk music certainly inspire my musical expression to follow a similar form. My songwriting process ranges in the way it takes place. It is very occasionally that I think of something I’d like to write about and intentionally sit down to try to shape it into a song. More often than not, I simply feel overcome with a need to express and this drives me to write or to sing and, in these moments, the best things tend to flow out, the most detailed stories are written. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I am present or consciously creating, and I describe this process as channeling. It is as if I open my self up and stories and songs just come through me.

Charlotte: Growing up, do you feel literature played any significant role in your love for songwriting? Were there any books or stories that you remember feeling drawn to or inspired by?

Mali: Absolutely. I have always been drawn to folk stories, and myths, anything surrounding the mystical or magical as well as the emotional. I also spent a lot of my childhood at poetry readings as my Dad is a poet. They would usually be late in the evening or night so, when I was really young I would often curl up to sleep there, listening to the poets read. I think this definitely had a subconscious but huge influence on me and the way I write.

Charlotte: And finally, I’m curious to know if you could name any artists or specific art pieces that you feel inspired by?

Mali: Some artists I adore are Naudline Pierre, Sara Anstis, Marit Benthe Norheim, Carol Rama, Ana Mendieta and Kiki Smith. I am also very drawn to the symbolist painters who focused on the occult as well goddess folk art and Indian miniatures. A specific art piece that I feel continually inspired by is Kiki Smith’s ‘Sky’. It even inspired a song lyric of mine and I just find it so beautiful and awe-inspiring. The illustrations of the classic Rider Waite Smith tarot deck also inspire me greatly. Every aspect of each image is a symbol, steeped in meaning and significance and I love that level of detail. Tarot imagery has informed a lot in my artistic practice.

Listen to Mali’s latest singles, “Out Of A Flowerhead” & “The Sea Monsters Daughter”

Follow Mali’s Instagram here