From the desk of Kirsty Allison

❤️ Beirut

Tarek Atoui (b. 1980, Beirut, Lebanon) is a sound artist based in Paris. He opens Frieze week in London today with a legendary return to the Hyundai Commission in the Tate Turbine Hall.

It took Atoui 7 months of coding to create the live electronic processing of the mechanics which, groundbreakingly, will never repeat over the 6-month installation. An endless soundtrack to our times.

In a series of ceremonial brass trumpets from Uzbekistan, shamanic Korean drumskins made by master mentioned on the recording from the press conference above - heated by lamps used in chicken farms - powered by an industrial network of bamboo pipes which also connect Hyundai windscreen wipers to drum sticks and the series of shengs (Chinese & SE Asian mouth organs) with mics that pick up the ambience of contemporary ancientness - it’s an ideal place to gather, plot up for a day - and BE.

A megalithic marble sounddesk, guitar laid on the floor, fine carving, and subtle precision makes me really want to start performing again. The entire installation, which has steampunk, Heath Robinson-vibes, can be played as an entire instrument by the 45 international visiting composers and musicians, who share Tarek’s vision of performance as research, with free monthly Friday performances, workshops, under the HOLD banner. (Click for full programme.)

Collaborating with Arthur Mamou-Mani to create organic 3D-printed horns with sugar resin and bamboo dust, the generative rolling composition combines air and data modulated from the desk.

Satoshi Kondo, the artistic director of Issey Miyake’s womenswear, worked with Atoui’s studio on 20m-long, white textile hangings which are painted with a black stripe of charcoal conductive paint that transmits a low current to synths, generating bass as they oscillate with wind and humidity.

13 October - 11 April 2027

Howdy, readers. Watchers. Listeners, Sunday. Monday. The days of the week, the months of the seasons, the cosmic words of the wild. All is set in the Northern hemisphere, as winter earth protects itself from the barking nights of snowfall. Slowly, catching breath, to speed up action, for Spring to save us with the flowers, and post-skeleton tree blossom, to hit the marks of the future.

Stars, planets. Poetry. Motion. Moving: forward into the NEW is NOW. I made this film 8-years ago, and found it recently. For your pleasure.

X

BE BRAVE and TAKE THE BEST CARE OUT THERE!

SENT I.M. MARIANNE FAITHFULL

“the best biography of Marianne I ever read” Judy Nylon

If you are a paying subscriber, please drop me a line, and I will be happy to send a free COLD LIPS PRESS publication (2021) about Marianne Faithfull’s life, with artwork from an original commission by Sam Jackson, from the UK shortly, and some available now in Europe.

The limited edition zine features rare photographs, artwork and foreword by myself, interviews with Warren Ellis & more.

Coming back at you very soon: recent interview by Kelli Ali x Martin Eder on a naughty rooftop in London’s Noho.

In the meantime, the cave studio is preparing to record the long-promised Psychomachia audiobook, and release the book digitally. Before the flowers burst their banks, and flood us with their summer scent. 🌸

Dear Readers,

I got what I needed Going for a Burton (that’s an English RAF term from WWII, like we’re going off to die). I’m at the press conference for the biggest show the Design Museum has ever hosted, with 32,000 tickets sold in advance. Much as I'm falling out of love with absorbing myself in the worlds of other people, I ask this most powerful man (who has maintained his independence through an autonomous style that stems from a wonderfully 20th-century cardboard clunkiness) a single question. I extend the invitation to enter his temple and listen to the wisdom of this master world-builder, the creator of Wednesday on Netflix, Mars Attacks!, Edward Scissorhands, and a canon of identity-inspiring creations, by pressing PLAY on the little film I've made reporting on the experience above.

He talks about techniques and emphasises that it's all about mastering these in whatever art we choose to deliver. The first rule of witchcraft is to keep a tidy house, but how we define "tidy" is up to us.

Living in other people’s worlds has been a habit of mine. Art activates, allowing me to find myself sitting opposite Tim Burton who is exceptionally rare. He is unique. He is special. A mega-talented embodiment of the gothic who articulates his critical mind in these onscreen dramas of G-pop's [general population/consumers] relationship with home duties in the sanitised Americana of 50s suburbia. Burton’s drawing descends from growing up in the suburban “Horrorwood” of California’s Burbank where he took an unpretentious revenge upon the superficial. I grew up in the suburbs too.

“Burbank made me want to make monster movies.” I get it.

There he sent his work into art competitions, which led him to be fast-tracked on a sponsorship into the Walt Disney-founded CalArts school where he was enabled to explore his interior world, with confidence, as an obsessional artist. This is his legacy.

“Each [film] leaves it’s emotional scars.”

Engaging with his work is like stepping into alternative, often scary, magical kingdoms. Speaking to Maria McLintock, the curator as she guides us around the show (a true privilege of being a war-torn member of culture press) her Vivienne Westwood skeleton earring swings with the same charm as her knowledge and integrity. “It’s about 60%” of what’s been seen in the World of Tim Burton shows which have shown everywhere from New York’s MOMA to Lafayette Art and Design Center in Shanghai over the past 10 years.

How does it differ to the Labyrinth shows I’ve seen advertised for Madrid? She’s dying to see them: “They’re more immersive,” says the former RIBA editor, whose knowledge of architecture creates the perfect ‘housing’ for a tunnel of Allison in Wonderland to walk through. “People keep on saying this is immersive. It’s not, it’s more of document.”

Whether Burton is a higher-res Edward Gore or an all-new Edgar Allan Poe, a tripped-out Goethe, or a Nick Cave of the Movies, it doesn’t matter in a graveyard. These characters haunt us with their sublimity, ultimately embodying rebellion. Goths are eternal because death is eternal (as far as we know), and death carries powerful imagery: headstones, spiders, skulls. It’s perfect that he pairs with Alexander McQueen, as proper goths canonise the act of not being mainstream cool. They embrace the coffin-cold fact that we’re all going to die, but they do it on their own terms.

Whether gaming is replacing movies or any art form or media is taking over is irrelevant, this is the show which views Burton as an all-seeing artist. This is why the big screen has allowed him to become an unusually family-friendly weirdo, defying the odds. His drawings of characters trap us in the simplicity of fairy tales, where children find solace in extremes. Although this show demonstrates versatility, this is a filmaker exploring the boundaries of victimhood, blurring the internal and external. The peripeteia of turning our wounds into badges of shame, then into medals of honour. It voices a universal truth. Do we walk through the broken vessels that smash to the ground around us, attacked and reacting? We can engage, ignore, sweep our house, or become injured. We all inhabit the houses of others, seeking answers from what has been missing, the art is to feel full of self (not full of oneself) and content in that rather than shamed or unworthy.

Yet, what we allow into our systems (or whatever is present) shapes our journeys. Be it unfiltered water, chemically-sprayed coffee, or the myths of others. I was married to a director, so can tell you they are the gods of their creations, little would get finished without them. We enter the temples of other people through literature, music, gaming, and we choose alt Heavens and Underworlds, immersing ourselves in Utopian fantasies where impossible romanticism reigns. But what we create, we can only create ourselves. Sure we collaborate, as is discussed in the film above. Yet I am here to make an inquiry. I seek escape through the ‘Burtonesque’ existential monochrome, mirroring a cartoon fear of darkness as a companion in the ironic danse macabre to the inevitable: death. I am here because the Burtonesque beats black like my coffee and heart. The gothic lifeblood channels life as an outsider. Yet I wish to belong. The dilemma of being a true rebel yet accepted by those we perceive to be “inside” requires a humble acknowledgment of our shared flaws as we walk towards the grave.

There is no dumbing down or fading out the "black jeans on the beach of life" joke of being here one minute and gone the next. We choose to enjoy the ride, striking a Beetlejuice meets Robert Smith hero’s pose against the paradox of beauty standards which true rebels are able to defy. (I am sure Cathi Unsworth and John Robb’s goth books say much of this, with far more detail.)

Burton discusses ‘the system’ that tells us we aren’t allowed to operate. What do you do? For me, seeking magic in others is a quest to find it within myself. In my worst of times I have had no protection against this. Hail the new witchery, the return to paganism, the need to understand and create order using more ancient traditions than this era of madness where we can see injustice in rising fundamentalism against females (I’m talking about Trump and the decline of western civilisation, mirrored in Jack Nicholson’s presidential performance in Mars Attacks! as we forward-march toward a dumbed-down spectacle the Salem-esque dumbed-down fear states of 'merica) but it’s so basic we can only loveheart a reaction. We are frustratingly disabled to affect geopolitics as we drop our mouths in awe at the online superficiality of the post-Covid 2020s. It's akin to the Wellness Dilemma, where justice is offered as the responsibility of the individual rather than as a responsibility of community management. The Wellness Dilemma is a mirror on consumer rights operating in carelessness for anything other than profit. We are facing serious issues of climate change, wars and over-consumption, walking hand-in-hand with trauma as victimhood flexing in a drama ritual, where space is taken up by injured parties, average accidents competing against violence rites of stabbings parading beneath a lack of societal management of equity. Everyone deserves a voice, and the power to use it, but in what system? Armies of protein-rich gym babies train for a war of healthy positivity against a past generation who self-medicated beneath banners of smiley faces or war-hangovers and first-generation struggles.

I sense this may be one of my last occasions where I need to confront the ghastly aesthetic of a world policed by beauty standards imposed by ‘beauty’ companies in the free-market warzone of brands, houses, offices, and entertainment institutions built to annihilate our financial empowerment. Subtle demands to comply with regimes that layer us with artificial masks of botox and filler that protect us from emotional empathy and the risk of deeper connections. Look at Madonna. Look at Robert Smith. We are symbolic parodies of the flaws of illogical systems in poorly designed worlds, we are perfect in an imperfect world, where it’s challenging to determine if these designs are intentional. In the end, does it matter? Culture is a natural defense system like hitting ouch on instant messaging, to receive an animal vid or guru-shared platitudes that feel (sleepy) hollow against the backdrop of authenticity solved in a world of Wednesday.

Sure, we manage our houses, filling our wells with what serves us, our revenge is to take space. To be nourished physically and metaphysically is essential, but it’s hard to compare these acts as great as the spectacle of the movies, the big screen paintings which allow us to escape. I vow to write more fiction (my most popular posts here). Navigating a landscape where choice is often intertwined with financial empowerment and cultures, we must invent our own, but when they’re symbols of the slavery? O Lord, yes, I would like an electric Mercedes Benz. Manifest!

We must remember we’re in a perpetual negotiation with the structures that seek to confine us, but not relive the horror of living in a world of overconsumption. And forgive ourselves for what we cannot afford.

Our power is how we boundary our responses to outer worlds that govern us. Sometimes that requires sitting in stagnant waters, plunging to the depths of our malnourished wells, and rediscovering our needs. For me, this journey has taken me to an Andalusian mountain, battling with my soul and demons to face the hermetic dawn. I still would like an electric Mercedes Benz. That’s my reaction to the Trauma Scale which operates universally; male, female, trans, everyone is entitled to suffer. Whether it’s rape on a refugee camp to the bullying on social media, or sharing micro-details of foodbank trauma as drama ritual of victimhood, where space is occupied by the injured and the injuring. How is there equality in these rubrics of competing for attention amid societal neglect? What we do with our injuries defines our agency, resilience, and leadership potential, applicable to all teams. We all engage with pain, and there’s a comedic tragedy in empathy, but black and white as Burton’s lens is, it does not patronise with guilt; instead, he explores these wounded vessels with a perception of agency and resilience. Like any creative act, we can criticise rather than celebrate (particularly under a Beschdel lens) but there’s an intimacy which the exposure-driven antics of contemporary pop culture are born from.

“If it inspires you, if it makes kids want to draw, then that’s a thing.”

Resilience is my new tidiness. I want to claim my power with the stories I tell myself, as I know it shapes our realities. We can become interdependent with the worlds which inspire us. This is the point in having successful figures, artists and ideas, rather than just pedestal creations as being better than us. Much of our system amplifies the celebrity culture born from movies, where the industrialisation of the Star Machine creates a Warhol-esque religion of gossip and behaviors, often driven by sociopathic tendencies, glorifying chaos. It’s like any dogma, astrological or otherwise, there is unlikely a single code. How we navigate the complex matrix of media and art as information in this digital age is on us. The lines between success and worthiness blur in a quest for ethical sameness. Burton is an outstanding artist in world where secretly, the weird are celebrated, because the world has gone weird, governed by dull tech bros and cartoon boardrooms with no control on government. Has it ever been different? That is what makes fairy tales eternal and keeps the town criers’ crying. The aspiration to conform, through patronage or substandard revolutionary rebelliousness, leads to feelings of low self-esteem and comparison, dragging us into voids of negative capability. If we harbour a damaging self-fulfilling lack of belief in our own houses, we merely assign our power to others.

“Do it from your heart because you want it, not what it leads to.”

This mantra speaks volumes. We have to own our own shadows, remember not relive, and know gossip or faux-concern of the Other, and what they do or think, rarely serves anyone, merely enabling averageness. We are in a tidal onslaught of individual ‘empowerment’ being exploited to sell things to or from, we owe it to ourselves to heavily police what content/art/entertainment/news/information/people/other is worthy of our short lives. This duality can be a terrifying preoccupation, the management of self-control when most of life can appear to be beyond our control. We are forced to be consumers, indexed by popularity. We have all smiled whilst being f**ked. I’m not getting into a feminist critique here, the self-portraits drawing clowns (on napkins) is a get out of jail card, from this distance. The personal, whatever (although I did enjoy the trooping of the mystery front-rowers backstage after the Q&A, who were they?!). I vow to watch Sophie Koko’s animations. There is so much to consume, to create, but for me, the tensions in myself have been preventative from doing what I need to do for myself, so to hear this God speak, gives palpability to the distractions of explaining the issues of the day being explained as art versus industry, or how the rational coexists with the irrational, or progressive philosophies versus conservative risk aversion. Our biggest challenge is building our own capacity to prove our capability, to hold our own houses strong, and be as fabulous as Edward Scissorhands.

Last day to enter Burton's World: April 21st 2025

https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-world-of-tim-burton

My news:

I’m proud to support one of the stars in my life, Pete Astor, with his THE ATTENDANT project on 21st November. I love the music, with Paul Weller’s bassist and Ian Button on keys, they’re also joined by the voice of fine London talent, Sukie Smith. Pete was one of the first signings to Creation Records (Oasis, Primal Scream, Jesus & Mary Chain), and we last played together when Psychomachia was first published.

It’s a really early show. I’m on by 7, so come early. Tickets are limited and available here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-attendant-tickets-1039379641487

I’m excited to build on what I’ve been doing over the past year, and I won’t keep you long.

I will be using the date to complete the audiobook of Psychomachia, and will be releasing it exclusively to paying subscribers here. I share these words for free to all, in the hope to inspire.

From the desk of Kirsty Allison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Readers,

I got what I needed Going for a Burton (that’s an English RAF term from WWII, like we’re going off to die). I’m at the press conference for the biggest show the Design Museum has ever hosted, with 32,000 tickets sold in advance. Much as I'm falling out of love with absorbing myself in the worlds of other people, I ask this most powerful man (who has maintained his independence through an autonomous style that stems from a wonderfully 20th-century cardboard clunkiness) a single question. I extend the invitation to enter his temple and listen to the wisdom of this master world-builder, the creator of Wednesday on Netflix, Mars Attacks!, Edward Scissorhands, and a canon of identity-inspiring creations, by pressing PLAY on the little film I've made reporting on the experience above.

He talks about techniques and emphasises that it's all about mastering these in whatever art we choose to deliver. The first rule of witchcraft is to keep a tidy house, but how we define "tidy" is up to us.

Living in other people’s worlds has been a habit of mine. Art activates, allowing me to find myself sitting opposite Tim Burton who is exceptionally rare. He is unique. He is special. A mega-talented embodiment of the gothic who articulates his critical mind in these onscreen dramas of G-pop's [general population/consumers] relationship with home duties in the sanitised Americana of 50s suburbia. Burton’s drawing descends from growing up in the suburban “Horrorwood” of California’s Burbank where he took an unpretentious revenge upon the superficial. I grew up in the suburbs too.

“Burbank made me want to make monster movies.” I get it.

There he sent his work into art competitions, which led him to be fast-tracked on a sponsorship into the Walt Disney-founded CalArts school where he was enabled to explore his interior world, with confidence, as an obsessional artist. This is his legacy.

“Each [film] leaves it’s emotional scars.”

Engaging with his work is like stepping into alternative, often scary, magical kingdoms. Speaking to Maria McLintock, the curator as she guides us around the show (a true privilege of being a war-torn member of culture press) her Vivienne Westwood skeleton earring swings with the same charm as her knowledge and integrity. “It’s about 60%” of what’s been seen in the World of Tim Burton shows which have shown everywhere from New York’s MOMA to Lafayette Art and Design Center in Shanghai over the past 10 years.

How does it differ to the Labyrinth shows I’ve seen advertised for Madrid? She’s dying to see them: “They’re more immersive,” says the former RIBA editor, whose knowledge of architecture creates the perfect ‘housing’ for a tunnel of Allison in Wonderland to walk through. “People keep on saying this is immersive. It’s not, it’s more of document.”

Whether Burton is a higher-res Edward Gore or an all-new Edgar Allan Poe, a tripped-out Goethe, or a Nick Cave of the Movies, it doesn’t matter in a graveyard. These characters haunt us with their sublimity, ultimately embodying rebellion. Goths are eternal because death is eternal (as far as we know), and death carries powerful imagery: headstones, spiders, skulls. It’s perfect that he pairs with Alexander McQueen, as proper goths canonise the act of not being mainstream cool. They embrace the coffin-cold fact that we’re all going to die, but they do it on their own terms.

Whether gaming is replacing movies or any art form or media is taking over is irrelevant, this is the show which views Burton as an all-seeing artist. This is why the big screen has allowed him to become an unusually family-friendly weirdo, defying the odds. His drawings of characters trap us in the simplicity of fairy tales, where children find solace in extremes. Although this show demonstrates versatility, this is a filmaker exploring the boundaries of victimhood, blurring the internal and external. The peripeteia of turning our wounds into badges of shame, then into medals of honour. It voices a universal truth. Do we walk through the broken vessels that smash to the ground around us, attacked and reacting? We can engage, ignore, sweep our house, or become injured. We all inhabit the houses of others, seeking answers from what has been missing, the art is to feel full of self (not full of oneself) and content in that rather than shamed or unworthy.

Yet, what we allow into our systems (or whatever is present) shapes our journeys. Be it unfiltered water, chemically-sprayed coffee, or the myths of others. I was married to a director, so can tell you they are the gods of their creations, little would get finished without them. We enter the temples of other people through literature, music, gaming, and we choose alt Heavens and Underworlds, immersing ourselves in Utopian fantasies where impossible romanticism reigns. But what we create, we can only create ourselves. Sure we collaborate, as is discussed in the film above. Yet I am here to make an inquiry. I seek escape through the ‘Burtonesque’ existential monochrome, mirroring a cartoon fear of darkness as a companion in the ironic danse macabre to the inevitable: death. I am here because the Burtonesque beats black like my coffee and heart. The gothic lifeblood channels life as an outsider. Yet I wish to belong. The dilemma of being a true rebel yet accepted by those we perceive to be “inside” requires a humble acknowledgment of our shared flaws as we walk towards the grave.

There is no dumbing down or fading out the "black jeans on the beach of life" joke of being here one minute and gone the next. We choose to enjoy the ride, striking a Beetlejuice meets Robert Smith hero’s pose against the paradox of beauty standards which true rebels are able to defy. (I am sure Cathi Unsworth and John Robb’s goth books say much of this, with far more detail.)

Burton discusses ‘the system’ that tells us we aren’t allowed to operate. What do you do? For me, seeking magic in others is a quest to find it within myself. In my worst of times I have had no protection against this. Hail the new witchery, the return to paganism, the need to understand and create order using more ancient traditions than this era of madness where we can see injustice in rising fundamentalism against females (I’m talking about Trump and the decline of western civilisation, mirrored in Jack Nicholson’s presidential performance in Mars Attacks! as we forward-march toward a dumbed-down spectacle the Salem-esque dumbed-down fear states of 'merica) but it’s so basic we can only loveheart a reaction. We are frustratingly disabled to affect geopolitics as we drop our mouths in awe at the online superficiality of the post-Covid 2020s. It's akin to the Wellness Dilemma, where justice is offered as the responsibility of the individual rather than as a responsibility of community management. The Wellness Dilemma is a mirror on consumer rights operating in carelessness for anything other than profit. We are facing serious issues of climate change, wars and over-consumption, walking hand-in-hand with trauma as victimhood flexing in a drama ritual, where space is taken up by injured parties, average accidents competing against violence rites of stabbings parading beneath a lack of societal management of equity. Everyone deserves a voice, and the power to use it, but in what system? Armies of protein-rich gym babies train for a war of healthy positivity against a past generation who self-medicated beneath banners of smiley faces or war-hangovers and first-generation struggles.

I sense this may be one of my last occasions where I need to confront the ghastly aesthetic of a world policed by beauty standards imposed by ‘beauty’ companies in the free-market warzone of brands, houses, offices, and entertainment institutions built to annihilate our financial empowerment. Subtle demands to comply with regimes that layer us with artificial masks of botox and filler that protect us from emotional empathy and the risk of deeper connections. Look at Madonna. Look at Robert Smith. We are symbolic parodies of the flaws of illogical systems in poorly designed worlds, we are perfect in an imperfect world, where it’s challenging to determine if these designs are intentional. In the end, does it matter? Culture is a natural defense system like hitting ouch on instant messaging, to receive an animal vid or guru-shared platitudes that feel (sleepy) hollow against the backdrop of authenticity solved in a world of Wednesday.

Sure, we manage our houses, filling our wells with what serves us, our revenge is to take space. To be nourished physically and metaphysically is essential, but it’s hard to compare these acts as great as the spectacle of the movies, the big screen paintings which allow us to escape. I vow to write more fiction (my most popular posts here). Navigating a landscape where choice is often intertwined with financial empowerment and cultures, we must invent our own, but when they’re symbols of the slavery? O Lord, yes, I would like an electric Mercedes Benz. Manifest!

We must remember we’re in a perpetual negotiation with the structures that seek to confine us, but not relive the horror of living in a world of overconsumption. And forgive ourselves for what we cannot afford.

Our power is how we boundary our responses to outer worlds that govern us. Sometimes that requires sitting in stagnant waters, plunging to the depths of our malnourished wells, and rediscovering our needs. For me, this journey has taken me to an Andalusian mountain, battling with my soul and demons to face the hermetic dawn. I still would like an electric Mercedes Benz. That’s my reaction to the Trauma Scale which operates universally; male, female, trans, everyone is entitled to suffer. Whether it’s rape on a refugee camp to the bullying on social media, or sharing micro-details of foodbank trauma as drama ritual of victimhood, where space is occupied by the injured and the injuring. How is there equality in these rubrics of competing for attention amid societal neglect? What we do with our injuries defines our agency, resilience, and leadership potential, applicable to all teams. We all engage with pain, and there’s a comedic tragedy in empathy, but black and white as Burton’s lens is, it does not patronise with guilt; instead, he explores these wounded vessels with a perception of agency and resilience. Like any creative act, we can criticise rather than celebrate (particularly under a Beschdel lens) but there’s an intimacy which the exposure-driven antics of contemporary pop culture are born from.

“If it inspires you, if it makes kids want to draw, then that’s a thing.”

Resilience is my new tidiness. I want to claim my power with the stories I tell myself, as I know it shapes our realities. We can become interdependent with the worlds which inspire us. This is the point in having successful figures, artists and ideas, rather than just pedestal creations as being better than us. Much of our system amplifies the celebrity culture born from movies, where the industrialisation of the Star Machine creates a Warhol-esque religion of gossip and behaviors, often driven by sociopathic tendencies, glorifying chaos. It’s like any dogma, astrological or otherwise, there is unlikely a single code. How we navigate the complex matrix of media and art as information in this digital age is on us. The lines between success and worthiness blur in a quest for ethical sameness. Burton is an outstanding artist in world where secretly, the weird are celebrated, because the world has gone weird, governed by dull tech bros and cartoon boardrooms with no control on government. Has it ever been different? That is what makes fairy tales eternal and keeps the town criers’ crying. The aspiration to conform, through patronage or substandard revolutionary rebelliousness, leads to feelings of low self-esteem and comparison, dragging us into voids of negative capability. If we harbour a damaging self-fulfilling lack of belief in our own houses, we merely assign our power to others.

“Do it from your heart because you want it, not what it leads to.”

This mantra speaks volumes. We have to own our own shadows, remember not relive, and know gossip or faux-concern of the Other, and what they do or think, rarely serves anyone, merely enabling averageness. We are in a tidal onslaught of individual ‘empowerment’ being exploited to sell things to or from, we owe it to ourselves to heavily police what content/art/entertainment/news/information/people/other is worthy of our short lives. This duality can be a terrifying preoccupation, the management of self-control when most of life can appear to be beyond our control. We are forced to be consumers, indexed by popularity. We have all smiled whilst being f**ked. I’m not getting into a feminist critique here, the self-portraits drawing clowns (on napkins) is a get out of jail card, from this distance. The personal, whatever (although I did enjoy the trooping of the mystery front-rowers backstage after the Q&A, who were they?!). I vow to watch Sophie Koko’s animations. There is so much to consume, to create, but for me, the tensions in myself have been preventative from doing what I need to do for myself, so to hear this God speak, gives palpability to the distractions of explaining the issues of the day being explained as art versus industry, or how the rational coexists with the irrational, or progressive philosophies versus conservative risk aversion. Our biggest challenge is building our own capacity to prove our capability, to hold our own houses strong, and be as fabulous as Edward Scissorhands.

Last day to enter Burton's World: April 21st 2025

https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-world-of-tim-burton

My news:

I’m proud to support one of the stars in my life, Pete Astor, with his THE ATTENDANT project on 21st November. I love the music, with Paul Weller’s bassist and Ian Button on keys, they’re also joined by the voice of fine London talent, Sukie Smith. Pete was one of the first signings to Creation Records (Oasis, Primal Scream, Jesus & Mary Chain), and we last played together when Psychomachia was first published.

It’s a really early show. I’m on by 7, so come early. Tickets are limited and available here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-attendant-tickets-1039379641487

I’m excited to build on what I’ve been doing over the past year, and I won’t keep you long.

I will be using the date to complete the audiobook of Psychomachia, and will be releasing it exclusively to paying subscribers here. I share these words for free to all, in the hope to inspire.

From the desk of Kirsty Allison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The euthanasia party of Ambit. Celebrating winners of the Annual Ambit Competition for Poems, Stories & Art.

Stuart McPherson (poems, judged by Rebecca Tamás), Paul Currion (stories, judge by Jenni Fagan) and Robert Gillespie (art, judged by Danielle de Picciotto).

Established in 1959, the board opted to close down charity operations in 2023.

The final broadcast, presented by Kirsty Allison.

Please sign up for more at kirstyallison.substack.com

More from us on https://vagrantlovers.bandcamp.com

More from us on https://vagrantlovers.bandcamp.com

Dear ones,

My life is a f**king magazine.

Pages of projects, my life, twixting and twaining.

I’ve grown up in them. You are your experience, and in the same way that you are what you sleep with, you become what you do, I guess.

I wasn’t sure whether to hammer your inboxes daily with micro-content, a la Patti Smith, in the run-up to my biggest news to date (beyond Psychomachia) or to just throw it ALL down here.

Because what I really want to share is our. Beautiful. Single. (You can nab a pre-order of here).

But it feels more honourable to make a cover star award of Geoff Travis, founder of Rough Trade - arguably the most important indie label in the history of the British recording industry.  We met as judges on the Doc n Roll Festival, he memorably said, “I bet you like performing,” as we hustled together for a group shot. He’s right. Just gotta stay away from manifesting drama in one’s personal life, and love you what you do - but like all those Wellness Live Ya Best Life aspirational platitudes - how do you jump off the cliff by a bungy rope if you ain’t stapled in financially?

When I went back to university at 25, bounding in all Educating Rita, like a spring daisy from another nervous breakdown/rehab (again), I did a BA in New Media Journalism and Radio, it taught me to be pretty self-sufficient and DIY, editing across media, coding, I was working in BBC Radio as a researcher by the second year, reporting at celeb parties and on September 11th, before making radio documentaries for 1XTRA, R2, etc. Authenticity has become more and more apparent to my sanity over the years. I’ve taught Media Ethics, Broadcasting, Pop video courses, loads of zine workshops with victims of torture, and minority groups, after school clubs - that sort of thing before getting more and more quasi-academic, and wannabe Doctor, shifting between teaching vocational media work to City & Guilds, B-Tec, undergrads and some Masters (in a particularly sketchy institution).  I’ve also consulted internationally for cash. I’ve become more and more capable over the years, but it also means I am pretty multi-skilled and good at problem solving, but it also prevents me from working to true calling. As life does for most people who have to earn a living.  The reality of being a writer and performer is that without compromise to industry demands, you’re on your own.

Which flips me back to Geoff Travis -  there was a crossover period when I was still trying to lecture and edit Ambit (Ambit won in the end, despite it being a charity, and the money not being as good as teaching, I felt more committed to the responsibility of helming this great institution).

I invited Travis to give a guest lecture when I was leading a class on the Music Industry to American undergrads (employed by the brilliant writer, Heidi Dunbar James).  I was surprised what I knew, despite having written about music since my early days, DJing etc, you may know from PSYCHOMACHIA, which examines  the patriarchal nature of the 90s music industry as fiction, I’ve been around it forever -  before editing Ambit I was the “Off The Floor” editor of the arts on DJMag, but have never felt part of the boys club -  despite knowing so many of the wheeler dealers who have hustled through life making money from music -  we all feel like outsiders sometimes. My DJ moniker took a non-female angle, K-Rocka - a nickname, and it was through doing a series of lectures about the music industry in the UK, I kinda realised that actually I’m likely qualified as much as anyone else -  but the guest lecture from Geoff Travis was landmark - I hope you may have time to listen to this founder of Rough Trade, I’ve added the lecture as a podcast here.  It’s a masterclass in independence. He’s very cool, casually reeling out how he didn’t sign The Stone Roses, and being at one of The Strokes first gigs, and not knowing that one of The Libertines was going to end up a heroin addict. There’s also the pain of board meetings, not really being in it for the money, and the backend of the music industry. It’s solid - thank you to the students of that class for their questions…

Gil and I started sharing our work live in 2018.   He’s what one may call a “professional musician”, his first A&R was John Niven and he’s been signed to major labels and produced John Martyn among others. He was performing with Little Barrie when we met, at a book reading for Tony O’Neill (who also used to work in music, playing keys for my friend Kelli Ali, but also Kenickie, Marc Almond and others. His first book, Digging the Vein was published by Wrecking Ball Press who put my novel out). Gil and I became friends after that signing, and in the maelstrom of our relationship, his band with Little Barrie imploded - as bands do - despite their only single as Pet Weapons being loved and played by Lauren Laverne.

Gil commenced on The Long Road of who am I, why am I, etc.  The important road.

We collaborated before we got together -  co-writing a poem that introduced him at Red Gallery, 15 December 2015.  And by NOLA, 2018, we were making a film for Jeffrey Wengrofsky’s festival in NYC, me writing a poem, chalking it up in the streets, filmed, and Gil then made music to accompany it.  We later showed it at the Liminality show at Gallery46, first performing together there. We then played other galleries, like the Bomb Factory in North London. In Berlin, The Social, Pikes Ibiza.   We’ve now done a couple of tours.

Our friend Martyn Goodace did the Das Wasteland compilation which was our first  release, on vinyl, from Berlin days…

We met Blang! Records boss Joe, who works with Paul and Jules, Beth and La, with his wife, after the first show we did out of lockdown, in Sheffield at Sidney & Matilda, a great venue, supporting Band of Holy Joy. (There’s a documentary about Blang! Records which is worth finding - about antifolk and why they started)

The sound guy at Sidney & Matilda was good, turned me onto local hip-hop poet Otis Mensah - but in the basement, people were conditioned to not stand close to each other and it felt like we were defo sharing air.  By the end of the tour - it was a futile underground party of sweat-filled sardine dancing in venues in Edinburgh and North Shields.  But that first night, it was that kinda romantic dream: a record label coming up to you after a show and showing interest.  Blang! Records were later doing a residency at the Hope n Anchor is Islington and asked us to play.  We filmed the shows for them, and they offered to put out a single.  Initially it was suggested we did it with Pink Eye Club on the flipside, but we played them Rock n Roll Is A Deathwish, after they’d chosen Paradise Burns - that’s what’s coming.  There are 50 lathe-cuts. The artwork’s by the brilliant Bert Gilbert - “northern Marina Abramović” -  who’s showing at the forthcoming Horror show at Somerset House, curated by Jane Pollard and Ian Forsyth (who directed 20000 Days with Nick Cave).  We’ve done a beautiful UV spot bespoke print and they really are limited and beautiful. Bert used Gustave Doré as her main influence on the piece.  A modernised rising of a new enlightenment, we can but dream.

David Erdos has been super-kind in his review of the single in International Times. Comparing us to everyone between early Dylan (the first record I ever DJed was Subterranean Homesick Blues), and my vox being halfway between Wendy James and Siouxie Sioux. (It’s in that link…he’s a genius, love his acting too…)

****

I would like to invite you to our single launch at Rough Trade East on Wednesday -  there are some free tickets, but they are going fast…Jonny Halifax Invocation, Sharon Gal, Savage Pencil, Gil, some poets, we’ll all be celebrating the first look of The War Issue of Ambit, which coincidently is equinox (the end of summer) and World Peace Day. I began talking about this “War issue” of Ambit back in 2020, with a submission that stood out, and went public on it in April. It’s resulted in 50+ international contributors selected by myself and my brilliant co-editors in Beirut, Sarah Chalabi and Zeina Chamseddine of Dongola Books. We launch in Beirut,  supported by British Council Lebanon, 18 November.

There’s so much to say about this issue -  and the magazine does it.  Order here.  It’s a reaction to the spectacle of War we receive in mass media through mainly direct experiences from Poets, Writers, Artists.  For me, it says more than most news orgs.

****

If you sneak onto our Bandcamp - you’ll see the artwork, but as there’s a holiday tomorrow, perhaps I’ll have time to make a lil video.

x. Love n light.

Please come on Wednesday if you can. A few free TICKETS HERE.

Dear ones,

My life is a f**king magazine.

Pages of projects, my life, twixting and twaining.

I’ve grown up in them. You are your experience, and in the same way that you are what you sleep with, you become what you do, I guess.

I wasn’t sure whether to hammer your inboxes daily with micro-content, a la Patti Smith, in the run-up to my biggest news to date (beyond Psychomachia) or to just throw it ALL down here.

Because what I really want to share is our. Beautiful. Single. (You can nab a pre-order of here).

But it feels more honourable to make a cover star award of Geoff Travis, founder of Rough Trade - arguably the most important indie label in the history of the British recording industry.  We met as judges on the Doc n Roll Festival, he memorably said, “I bet you like performing,” as we hustled together for a group shot. He’s right. Just gotta stay away from manifesting drama in one’s personal life, and love you what you do - but like all those Wellness Live Ya Best Life aspirational platitudes - how do you jump off the cliff by a bungy rope if you ain’t stapled in financially?

When I went back to university at 25, bounding in all Educating Rita, like a spring daisy from another nervous breakdown/rehab (again), I did a BA in New Media Journalism and Radio, it taught me to be pretty self-sufficient and DIY, editing across media, coding, I was working in BBC Radio as a researcher by the second year, reporting at celeb parties and on September 11th, before making radio documentaries for 1XTRA, R2, etc. Authenticity has become more and more apparent to my sanity over the years. I’ve taught Media Ethics, Broadcasting, Pop video courses, loads of zine workshops with victims of torture, and minority groups, after school clubs - that sort of thing before getting more and more quasi-academic, and wannabe Doctor, shifting between teaching vocational media work to City & Guilds, B-Tec, undergrads and some Masters (in a particularly sketchy institution).  I’ve also consulted internationally for cash. I’ve become more and more capable over the years, but it also means I am pretty multi-skilled and good at problem solving, but it also prevents me from working to true calling. As life does for most people who have to earn a living.  The reality of being a writer and performer is that without compromise to industry demands, you’re on your own.

Which flips me back to Geoff Travis -  there was a crossover period when I was still trying to lecture and edit Ambit (Ambit won in the end, despite it being a charity, and the money not being as good as teaching, I felt more committed to the responsibility of helming this great institution).

I invited Travis to give a guest lecture when I was leading a class on the Music Industry to American undergrads (employed by the brilliant writer, Heidi Dunbar James).  I was surprised what I knew, despite having written about music since my early days, DJing etc, you may know from PSYCHOMACHIA, which examines  the patriarchal nature of the 90s music industry as fiction, I’ve been around it forever -  before editing Ambit I was the “Off The Floor” editor of the arts on DJMag, but have never felt part of the boys club -  despite knowing so many of the wheeler dealers who have hustled through life making money from music -  we all feel like outsiders sometimes. My DJ moniker took a non-female angle, K-Rocka - a nickname, and it was through doing a series of lectures about the music industry in the UK, I kinda realised that actually I’m likely qualified as much as anyone else -  but the guest lecture from Geoff Travis was landmark - I hope you may have time to listen to this founder of Rough Trade, I’ve added the lecture as a podcast here.  It’s a masterclass in independence. He’s very cool, casually reeling out how he didn’t sign The Stone Roses, and being at one of The Strokes first gigs, and not knowing that one of The Libertines was going to end up a heroin addict. There’s also the pain of board meetings, not really being in it for the money, and the backend of the music industry. It’s solid - thank you to the students of that class for their questions…

Gil and I started sharing our work live in 2018.   He’s what one may call a “professional musician”, his first A&R was John Niven and he’s been signed to major labels and produced John Martyn among others. He was performing with Little Barrie when we met, at a book reading for Tony O’Neill (who also used to work in music, playing keys for my friend Kelli Ali, but also Kenickie, Marc Almond and others. His first book, Digging the Vein was published by Wrecking Ball Press who put my novel out). Gil and I became friends after that signing, and in the maelstrom of our relationship, his band with Little Barrie imploded - as bands do - despite their only single as Pet Weapons being loved and played by Lauren Laverne.

Gil commenced on The Long Road of who am I, why am I, etc.  The important road.

We collaborated before we got together -  co-writing a poem that introduced him at Red Gallery, 15 December 2015.  And by NOLA, 2018, we were making a film for Jeffrey Wengrofsky’s festival in NYC, me writing a poem, chalking it up in the streets, filmed, and Gil then made music to accompany it.  We later showed it at the Liminality show at Gallery46, first performing together there. We then played other galleries, like the Bomb Factory in North London. In Berlin, The Social, Pikes Ibiza.   We’ve now done a couple of tours.

Our friend Martyn Goodace did the Das Wasteland compilation which was our first  release, on vinyl, from Berlin days…

We met Blang! Records boss Joe, who works with Paul and Jules, Beth and La, with his wife, after the first show we did out of lockdown, in Sheffield at Sidney & Matilda, a great venue, supporting Band of Holy Joy. (There’s a documentary about Blang! Records which is worth finding - about antifolk and why they started)

The sound guy at Sidney & Matilda was good, turned me onto local hip-hop poet Otis Mensah - but in the basement, people were conditioned to not stand close to each other and it felt like we were defo sharing air.  By the end of the tour - it was a futile underground party of sweat-filled sardine dancing in venues in Edinburgh and North Shields.  But that first night, it was that kinda romantic dream: a record label coming up to you after a show and showing interest.  Blang! Records were later doing a residency at the Hope n Anchor is Islington and asked us to play.  We filmed the shows for them, and they offered to put out a single.  Initially it was suggested we did it with Pink Eye Club on the flipside, but we played them Rock n Roll Is A Deathwish, after they’d chosen Paradise Burns - that’s what’s coming.  There are 50 lathe-cuts. The artwork’s by the brilliant Bert Gilbert - “northern Marina Abramović” -  who’s showing at the forthcoming Horror show at Somerset House, curated by Jane Pollard and Ian Forsyth (who directed 20000 Days with Nick Cave).  We’ve done a beautiful UV spot bespoke print and they really are limited and beautiful. Bert used Gustave Doré as her main influence on the piece.  A modernised rising of a new enlightenment, we can but dream.

David Erdos has been super-kind in his review of the single in International Times. Comparing us to everyone between early Dylan (the first record I ever DJed was Subterranean Homesick Blues), and my vox being halfway between Wendy James and Siouxie Sioux. (It’s in that link…he’s a genius, love his acting too…)

****

I would like to invite you to our single launch at Rough Trade East on Wednesday -  there are some free tickets, but they are going fast…Jonny Halifax Invocation, Sharon Gal, Savage Pencil, Gil, some poets, we’ll all be celebrating the first look of The War Issue of Ambit, which coincidently is equinox (the end of summer) and World Peace Day. I began talking about this “War issue” of Ambit back in 2020, with a submission that stood out, and went public on it in April. It’s resulted in 50+ international contributors selected by myself and my brilliant co-editors in Beirut, Sarah Chalabi and Zeina Chamseddine of Dongola Books. We launch in Beirut,  supported by British Council Lebanon, 18 November.

There’s so much to say about this issue -  and the magazine does it.  Order here.  It’s a reaction to the spectacle of War we receive in mass media through mainly direct experiences from Poets, Writers, Artists.  For me, it says more than most news orgs.

****

If you sneak onto our Bandcamp - you’ll see the artwork, but as there’s a holiday tomorrow, perhaps I’ll have time to make a lil video.

x. Love n light.

Please come on Wednesday if you can. A few free TICKETS HERE.

1. JASON ATOMIC: ULTIMATE SPINACH, “(BALLAD OF) THE HIP DEATH GODDESS”



2. GIL DE RAY ; PAUL WIBIER “SATAN”



3. TONY HERRINGTON: GUN CLUB, “MOTHER EARTH”



4. HOLLY AMBER, H P LOVERAFT, “MOBIUS TRIP”



5. SAVAGE PENCIL: BLUE OYSTER CULT, “TRANSMANIACON MC”



6. KIRSTY ALLISON: JIM CARROLL, “PEOPLE WHO DIED”



7. REN BLACK: PENETRATION, “LOVER OF OUTRAGE”



8. TONY POTTS: PATTI SMITH GROUP, “RADIO ETHIOPIA/ABYSSINIA”



9. peter hope-evans: BLIND MAMIE FOREHAND, “HONEY IN THE ROCK”



10. SHARON GAL: MELTAOT, FIRST RITE



11. STEPHEN BARRETT : BIG BLACK, “KEROSENE”



12. GAYE BLACK: BEHEXEN, “MOUTH OF LEVIATHAN”



13. MIKE MASTRANGELO: SUICIDE, “GHOST RIDER”



14. BARBARA FROST, ROBERT WYATT, “SHIPBUILDING”



15. AVIVA DAUTCH, THE BEATLES, “HELP!”



16. SHARON GAL: MELTAOT, “SECOND RITE”