I haven’t known what to write about for ages, but I also haven’t been writing – and that’s the real issue.
The thought of doing something creative is never satisfying. It only ever makes me feel bad feelings. Frustration, overwhelm, hopelessness.
The only way to feel good about creativity is to practise it.
Lying in bed 20 minutes ago wondering what I could possibly write about, since my life is so boring and it’s all so pointless anyway, was not making me happy.
Sitting here in the dark silence of early morning, wrapped in a blanket, with the wifi turned off on my laptop, listening to the tip tap of my fingers on the keys, is making me very happy.
Action > pondering.
Persistence beats perfection.
We can spend hours, days, weeks and months of our lives deciding that we have nothing to say, and that no-one wants to hear from us anyway.
Or we can make something, feel the quiet satisfaction of finishing it and sending it out into the world, and move on to the next thing with a little smile on our faces.
I want that little smile for you today. Thanks for encouraging mine.
You can do it. I believe in you.
Yes, you. Me and this tiny dog are looking at you.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
If you’ve ever wondered how I write a sad song from scratch, I made this for you.
Watch as I take my brand new song “See You Soon” from basic ukulele and humming to a complete song with lyrics, harmonies and a bassline.
“This video about grief and the creative process is lovely.“ (Thank you, Dan!)
“See You Soon” is the first in my new-song-a-month series Par Avion. Music-making experiments sent through the air.
I’m creating a secret, members-only album, sharing a new song on the first of every month with accompanying audiovisual treats, handwritten lyrics and more.
It’s an exciting new way of working for me, and I’d be overjoyed to have you on board.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
A new song sent to you on the first of the month by your Penfriend, with accompanying longform behind the scenes video following soon after.
Take a front row seat for my adventures in sound and songwriting!
A secret album (Par Avion Volume 1) will take shape throughout the year, with physical deliveries posted out at regular intervals to analogue members comprising:
– all tracks so far on CD – Voicemail recording – paper zine of stories, art and photos – paper goods including postcards, bookmarks and stickers
There will even be some live-streaming as I record the new songs, all for members-only.
With “House Of Stories” flapping its wings out in the world and a personally difficult summer in the rear view mirror, it feels like the right time to step up and make as much music as possible. I have so many instruments and production ideas to explore, and I’d love to bring you along with me.
Consider yourself my accountability buddy!
The songs in the Par Avion project may or may not make it onto the next Penfriend album, who knows! Either way they will be part of a growing collection of musical snapshots, and I’m saving a spot for you.
I feel so fortunate to have made albums in such close contact with music lovers since 2010, and I’m always trying to find interesting new ways to stay creative and invite you into the process.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
I’m not going to start complaining about the evils of the internet (after all, we met here!), but after a nice long day of doing what we’re really good at (playing instruments and singing), my friend Carol Hodge and I made this video for you
I love making videos, and feel very fortunate to have this connection with you, but it is kind of strange that we’re supposed to be able to click right into professional presenting mode after playing our hearts out rehearsing in an attic for our upcoming gigs NEXT WEEK and THE WEEK AFTER!
Penfriend’s Emotional Tour-ish Support, accompaniment and stand up comedy double-act-ness from Carol Hodge
Wednesday 17th September MANCHESTER – The Lodge @ The Deaf Institute
Thursday 18th September BRISTOL – Rough Trade
Wednesday 24th September LONDON – The Grace (FKA Upstairs at The Garage)
Thursday 25th September BIRMINGHAM – Hare & Hounds
Carol and I met through the internet too! Ginger Wildheart is almost certainly our first connection, because Carol plays in The Wildhearts and I supported Ginger on tour years ago, and we’ve been talking about doing some shows together for absolutely ages. Thank you, Ginger xxx
When I decided to come out of gig hibernation this year, I knew I wanted Carol on the road with me, and not only because I knew her keyboard and vocal skills would add a layer of glitter to my songs. It’s going to be a huge treat to get to watch her play her own music every night too.
I’m promoting these shows myself – hiring the venues and selling the tickets direct – because promoters only care about streaming numbers. Mine are very low, because I’ve always preferred to share links to my own website with you and will never market someone’s tech company for them when they clearly don’t care if I – or my fellow artists – get to make music another day.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
This is what FIFTEEN YEARS of stubbornness releasing independent albums looks like.
Yes, fifteen years ago this week I released my first album “Disarm” on Bandcamp, completely uninvited by the world at large.
I’d had that dream in mind for about fifteen years – as a teenager I’d started telling people I was going to be a songwriter one day and, as a stubborn person, I kept trying to make it happen. Slowly, slowly, slowly then BOOM, an album finally existed!
Even after I achieved a later dream – setting up my own shop to sell my music and merch – Bandcamp has stayed very special to me.
Today is Bandcamp Day, a now-regular celebration of indie music designed to support artists by waiving platform fees for the day.
In a world where most tech companies are actively trying to make the lives of artists harder (and the experiences of its users worse), Bandcamp continues to support us.
If it wasn’t for them I don’t know how I could have released “Disarm” back in 2010. I’m delighted we’ve both survived this long.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Since 2004 I have been writing for my various blogs (sporadically), my email list (regularly), my member’s only zines (joyfully) and social media (increasingly reluctantly), but I only really started a writing practice in February 2024.
I stumbled across a video about how a 1000 word a day writing practice changed someone’s life. In their case, they credited it with making them a shitload of money, which was not what piqued my interest. As an elder millennial I remain entranced by the infinite possibilities of the internet, and I make my entire income there, but I am not falling for these “passive income” how-to’s.
What got me was the idea of being someone who writes. Not sometimes, but regularly. Everything I make and do is improved by deep thinking, by diving beyond the surface level of things. Writing more equals thinking more.
I started writing a diary aged 12, and have kept one going on and off ever since. I have stacks upon stacks of books filled with my neat, messy, drunk and, briefly, BUBBLE writing. As a teenager I spent my paper round money on the latest edition of Writer’s Magazine (as long as Damon Albarn wasn’t on the cover of anything that week).
Later I kept my eye on a copy editing correspondence course for a long time (remember those?!) but never quite got the money together to go for it. When I went to university, for one year, before finding a band and leaving, I was heading for a degree in Creative Writing, English Literature and French.
Oui. Before I found the band I thought it was way more likely I’d be a novelist one day than a musician.
But here I am, many moons in the future, working full-time as a musician on the internet. And writing is still saving me. Blogging, albeit sporadically, was a big part of that. Writing monthly to my email list has always felt rewarding. Collating pieces of writing in my quarterly zines has been a good way of really committing to something – ink to paper! A bit scary, a bit “who do I think I am to print these words and send them out in the post?!!!”.
Deciding to share writing here every week this year has helped me go deeper. The commitment was important. Not giving myself an out is essential. Letting go of any statistics whatsoever is helpful. I don’t maybe share something on Thursday (with Friday as a backup if something legitimate comes up to delay me). I just do.
Most importantly, I want to. In 2022-2023 I managed a full year of posting a new video to my YouTube channel every week. At one point I explained I was doing it because I wanted to see what kind of videos I’d end up making if I made loads of videos. I can only improve by doing. I can only go deeper if I keep going.
Writing is how I work out what I’m thinking, how I’m feeling, and what to do with it. I am a deep thinker, and I want to give time and space to that. I think that’s something to explore. And so I write.
Do you? Whether it’s writing to share, or writing to help you figure things out, I’d love to know what your approach is. Does it help you like it helps me?
As a songwriter of seven full albums now, I am well versed in lyrics as therapy. The exorcism of a shitty situation into a song that fictionally fixes everything; lyrics to mend the bad times or at least make some sense of them. We want there to be a point to things, don’t we, especially when we’ve been through something rough. Isn’t all of this about trying to make sense of things, trying to find space to be?
Some days it all feels so frivolous. I have a roof over my head and food in the fridge, I have my health and so does the love of my life. My family are doing okay. My elder dog has diabetes and might be losing her sight but she’s happy, and our younger fluffmonster reminds us every day to wag our tails with abandon, leap at that ball with all our gusto and face the day with joy and enthusiasm. What is there to figure out?
Oh, there’s always something.
As I’ve been sharing here, I’ve had a weird year so far. I usually have to factor in some sort of existential crisis when I release an album, but with my Gran passing away four weeks after “House Of Stories” came out and all sorts of other calamities cropping up, it’s been a tough time emotionally.
I’ve always been someone who, in a favourite German phrase, is nah am Wasser gebaut – “built close to the water” i.e. cries easily. I feel things, and I express them. It’s fine. Sensitivity is a superpower, not a weakness.
Writing does help. It’s been a sad, sad summer, but it helps to write it all out. And I only share some of it.
So if you’ve never written your thoughts down on a piece of paper, or into your phone, or on a computer, I highly recommend it.
You’ll probably feel like a dick to start with, squirming at the idea of someone reading your poorly thrown together words. But the point is, no-one’s ever going to read them. Not unless you want them to (and even then, you’d be surprised how few people will read them (AM I RIGHT FELLOW BLOGGERS?!).
You’re not writing for someone else. You’re writing for yourself.
Tell yourself how you’re feeling. See what that’s like.
If nothing else, it might expel some things from your immediate thoughts and leave you with a more focused, energised brain for the rest of the day.
Hey – you might even surprise yourself.
Why not give it a go? Get yourself a nice notebook, scribble out the front page so you don’t feel precious about it and then see what happens.
I believe in you.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy this:
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
In this job of making music nobody ever asked me to, and attempting to sell it on physical formats I’m regularly informed are “dead”, I have spent a fair amount of time in front of a camera.
Sometimes this has been fun. Sometimes this has been agonising. Sometimes I have talked myself out of it for months or years at a time, hiding my body in baggy jogging bottoms and cosy hoodies.
Just because I make albums of music doesn’t mean I am a fashion person, a visual performer or any sort of model. As a child I spent a lot of time at various schools being bullied for being the new girl (we moved a lot) with the “wrong” accent (I say “grass” not “grarse” and I won’t change that for anyone) and the “wrong” clothes (see not being a fashion person).
I grew up with 1990s girl’s magazines peddling “heroin chic”. FHM was a thing. Incredibly talented and interesting women were talked down to on camera for not being skinny. I was taught about a food pyramid with wheat at the bottom. PE lessons were horror shows of favouritism, bleep tests and being forced to shower afterwards with just a thin curtain between my naked body and the nearest bully who wanted to chuck a basketball at my head.
Ugh.
When I was 12, an adult said “you’ve got a big bum like me”. I started wearing sweaters tied at my waist to hide myself.
Helpful!
Chuck in a few unhelpful ex-boyfriends with poor views on body image and you might understand why there have been many times in my life when I have hidden from cameras, even when I was still happy to get on stage and play my songs.
Why oh why must I look “nice” (whatever that means)? Isn’t writing songs and performing them to the best of my ability enough?
Of course, feeling good (as in, healthy) in body helps feeling good in brain. I’ve gymmed on and off for 20 years and have managed to get into really good running routines for long periods of time before letting it all go. And while I admire other artists who somehow have all these amazing garments they look cool in, and budget for constant photo and video shoots, I’m fine with not being a fashion person.
I really don’t know how anyone affords anything these days, and I’ve always just done the best I can with what I have. Filming most of my music videos myself and starting to take my own posh self portraits has helped hugely, both with budget and self-confidence1.
My tripods and my remote shutter button are my besties.
I’m not about to share stats or health tips, but I’d say it’s only in the last 18 months that I’ve learned some key, life-changing things about nutrition and exercise that mean, as I write this, I feel the most okay in my body I ever have done. 18 months ago I started proper weight training2, and 7 weeks ago I started up a thrice-weekly running programme after several years off due to an old injury.
New muscles are showing themselves, I have more energy and being more active means I am less in my head about what I look like. And, I have to say, the most nourishing, nearly 11-year long relationship has played a huge part in helping me move on from all that early programming. Thank you, Tim
Even so, it was quite a test for the old noggin3 last week when I decided it was high time to edit one of the music videos I shot on the German island of Sylt back in March 2024.
I’m very good at filming things and filing the footage on my computer potentially never to be edited, but not usually Actual Music Videos. When I got back from Sylt my late Gran had yet another fall. Then it was past time for me to record my new album “House Of Stories”. Then Gran was in and out of hospital before her last move to a care home this January.
In the calm after the storm of all of that, I’ve been trying to keep up with my schedule of things to make and do, while occasionally catching up on things that have slipped through the net – like the videos from Sylt.
I don’t buy into this idea that everything has to be new all the time. I have seven albums in my back catalogue, and releasing a new one doesn’t make the others turn to dust. I know this because I have a spare room full of vinyl, CDs, lyric books and more – feel free to have a browse here!
There was no question that, at some point, I would edit the music videos from that week away on that special island. But wow, yeah, it took some mental resolve to see myself as I looked before the weight training, the running and the sensible eating. To sit down for hours, pick out the best bits of the footage and make something dreamy and coherent. To go through the behind the scenes adventure vlog stuff as well, to tell the story of why I went to Sylt in the first place, which was to gently but firmly put myself back in front of the camera so I could share my music with some of the best people on the internet. To try and show as much love to myself as I would to any friend or even stranger.
I wish Meta hadn’t ruined the word meta. Because…how very meta.
When I watch videos with other people in them, I am not judging their weight, their makeup or their clothes. If the video is for me, I enjoy it. If it’s not for me, I move right along. I can only hope other people do me and my videos the same courtesy.
We all have stories to tell, we all have value, and our appearance shouldn’t be such a big part of why people stop to listen.
Fair play to anyone who has no qualms about putting their face and body online. That must be very nice for you. To everyone else doing it I say well done for your bravery. It’s not easy, and it is quite a weird thing to do. I want to hear your stories and learn from your experiences, and I will never judge your book by its cover. I know I’m not alone in that.
So please, make the thing. There will always be ridiculous comments coming our way (and they can be very hard to shake), but there are so many generous, kind-hearted and supportive people out there cheering us on.
Let’s keep making our things – for us and for them.
And if you’re a supporter, not a maker, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Okay now. I don’t make YouTube videos about how to make YouTube videos, much less how to make successful videos, because:
1. Ugh
and
2. I clearly don’t have the skillset required (read on for proof)
A few weeks ago, though, I got a surprising email notifying me that I had passed 5,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. This was a goal I had held in my mind for quite a long time, but had set down and backed away from about a year ago when I focused my brain on writing, recording and releasing my new album “House Of Stories”.
During the mush of time that was my May and June 2025 I decided it would be good to get back to making videos, because I love making videos, but any goals I previously had were forgotten.
When I learned that the unboxing video I made as a silly, fun, make-a-video-in-a-day-and-don’t-even-show-my-face project had gained me hundreds of subscribers and, at the time of writing this, 37,146 views, and that my former lofty goal of 5,000 subscribers had been achieved I thought “huh!” and “perhaps I should keep my face out of my videos in future”.
Again, I don’t make videos about making videos BUT, looking at the stats on my most “successful” video by far to date I was amused to see that even with 37,146 views the income from YouTube Adsense was not that exciting. I thought it could be interesting and useful to show the reality of being someone who categorically isn’t “making it” on YouTube, but who isn’t motivated by money or put off by what, to most, would seem to be an abject lack of success on the platform, so is able to have a fun time regardless.
So, I thought I’d make one of those videos about making videos where the channel owner sits and reads out numbers from their analytics page, only instead of reading out big numbers and acting humble, I could read out very small numbers and laugh.
So…I did.
Before making the thumbnail for this video I did a bit of research, as you’re supposed to do, to see what titles and thumbnails work. These are two that I saved as reference:
Note the view counts: 113,000 and 239,000.
“How much YouTube paid me for X subscribers” is a tried and tested video format on the old ‘Tube, so while my motivation for making my version of it was not cynical, I did think it could be fun to bring in thousands if not tens of thousands of new people to my channel. I knew they wouldn’t all be music fans, and even fewer would magically love MY music, so with all this in mind I decided to make my video useful and encouraging to others making videos and not getting the views or money the “passive income!” “side hustle!” bros promise, as well as being something of interest to some of my existing subscribers.
Of course, in the Alanis Morrisette-ist of ironies, MY version of this tried and tested video format has had….
411 views.
Yep. I am absolutely crushing it.
Happily, I truly do believe that numbers are schmumbers1, and I’ll tell you for why.
When I started my Penfriend project in 2020 it was a fresh start in so many ways. I’d felt held back by my previous solo artist name She Makes War for at least four years by that point, spending too much time imagining all the ways that name was stopping people from listening to my music and getting in touch with brilliant opportunities2.
Whether or not that was true (and I do still think it was true), something had to change, so I threw off my self-imposed shackles, kept making basically the same heartfelt indie rock with synthesizers music as before, and dreamed and schemed my way towards Penfriend.
Part of the big idea for the new thing was to stop regretting not working on all the fun ideas I was always coming up with. I’d wanted to make a podcast for eight years by the time I started my series “Attention Engineer”. Video was my creative release from 2002 – on tape! – YEARS before I made my first solo album, but I wasn’t able to keep it up alongside a chaotic life of freelancing, touring and generally trying to keep a roof over my head in my late twenties and early thirties.
I enjoy reminding you that I was vlogging 8 years before Casey Neistat, as if this is relevant to anything in the world (it’s not). But, if only I’d kept going with it, I’d surely have learned so much more, done even more interesting things – or at least had the footage to remind me of some of them, and perhaps built an audience on YouTube.
5 years on from the big Penfriend launch of May 2020 the three words which comprise my old artist name feel like the same sort of jumble of words that comprise many band names, rather than the embarrassing weight they felt like towards the end of 2019. But I don’t for a moment regret sloughing them off, and I would recommend to anyone conjuring up a stage name of any kind to avoid words like, say, WAR, unless you have a very intelligent explanation for it and/or cause to champion. The name that made OH so much sense to me as a 23-year old made 39-year old me roll her eyes right out of her head. And I need the eyes for all the video editing. Obviously.
To conclude: either stop putting off the things you’ve wanted to do forever and just get on with them (even if it’s for 10 minutes a day, or an hour a week, or whatever) OR give yourself the grace to let go of old ideas you had that don’t fit the hopes, dreams and schemes of the you you are today.
For instance, I have a box full of expired camera films that I need to eject from my life now that I’ve fully decided I’m never going to get around to becoming a film photographer. It was a nice dream for about 15 years, now represented by a box of to-me junk sitting in my house. I choose to let this ideas of myself go – while being very bad at actually removing the objects from the house…I’m working on it.
For the things I do decide to spend time on, I focus on the inputs (how many videos I make, how proud I am of them, what I learned), not the outputs (how many people watched, how many pennies Google deigns to send my way, whether random chaps on the internet decide they like or hate me and tell me so).
I still don’t have enough time in the day, week or month to do everything I want, but as long as I’m actively playing whack-a-mole with my fountain of ideas, I feel like I’m doing something useful, and that makes me happy.
I hope you find time to do something that makes you happy today – you deserve it!
These days, working under a far more innocuous and downright FRIENDly name, I still don’t receive these mythical, brilliant opportunities, but I’m far happier. And I make my own things anyway. It’s FINE. ↩︎
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
What are you currently putting off? How can you simplify the process to make a version of your ideal outcome possible?
(I’ll explain the t-shirt modelling photos at the end…)
I had a lovely, nerdy chat with Katie Lee / KJ Lyttleton last week about how I manage my big email list, grown over the past 16 years, and how I keep my Substack subscribers (mostly) separate. Katie writes brilliant books, and brilliant blog posts, and in my opinion the people who read her books would love her blog posts, and vice versa, though maybe I’m just biased because I’ve been in touch with her since Twitter was decent (so, at least 15 years, maybe more like 18 – HOLY SHIT).
So we talked about that sort of thing for a while, and I firmly encouraged her to do nice fun things like make an unboxing video for her novels, which she did1, which nudged me to make an unboxing video for a new instrument that arrived here this week.
It’s been a weird few months here: I released my sixth solo album in April, scheduled in a little energy slump and a holiday and then got myself back up and running again, just in time to see my Gran for one last time before she (very peacefully) died. And then a sort of unravelling took place: a couple of weird, foggy months, and a gradual clearing to the point where I found myself finally able to sit down and do some actual work i.e. stuff that’s on my To Do list not all the other things I’d been packing those foggy months with i.e. gardening, reorganising every room, learning how to use an MPC from scratch, learning synthesis, etc etc.
Before all this – ** she gesticulates wildly ** – I’d planned to get right back into my YouTube-ing post-album release. From first enthusiastically sharing vlogs on the platform in 2007 (filmed on tape so a pause for some appreciative self-applause for actually getting so much edited), my energy and efforts petered out over time to the point where I was only using my channel to upload music videos and the occasional behind the scenes video. And that irked me so much, because I started making videos before I was making my own music, and I ran my own one-woman production company in London as my main freelance hustle for nearly 10 years before DSLRs took over and I decided to take a break and do other things for a bit.
Giving up on making and sharing videos hurt me. It was a big, ongoing regret. And it annoyed the shit out of me whenever I thought about it, because I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. Clearly, I was busy doing other things like making albums and touring alongside trying to stay afloat through freelancing, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and I’ve never been any good at being realistic with time.
When I ended my first solo project She Makes War in 2019 and started planning my next one, Penfriend, I decided it was time to stop regretting. I would make the podcast I’d been thinking about for years, I would make a new YouTube channel, and I would actually put videos up there on a regular basis. And I bloody did it! For ages!
Of course now, blinking into the light as the trails of fog melt around me, I cannot fathom how I managed to make all that stuff.
Time has been acting weird recently, and because I was focusing on making and releasing my album “House Of Stories” – available on vinyl, CD and KiT box set direct from yours truly – from last May to this April, shifting from that single, big, long-term goal to my previous relentless weekly goals would have been quite a jump even if everything else had stayed calm.
Every time I thought about all the video footage that sits unedited on my collection of hard drives, or looked at my ideas list, I felt overwhelmed. I couldn’t imagine ever finishing a video and clicking the “upload” button. I think that’s why I made such a point of writing a blog post every week. I had to prove to myself I could still do things.
On Monday, inspired by talking to Katie and watching her unboxing video, and genuinely excited to unbox a brand new instrument called “Orchid”, I said “fuck it” and turned my camera on. I noodled around with the fun new thing, chucked the footage onto my computer, edited it in a couple of hours and uploaded it.
No overthinking, just action. Sometimes it really is that simple.
And here I am again, writing to you aka getting the fuck on with that as well.
A gentle pat on the back for us both.
Thanks for reading. Now go and do your thing!
Love, Laura xxx
PS the t-shirt modelling photos are another thing I’ve been putting off. Apply basic makeup, stand in garden wearing cool new tee design, take self portrait with phone. Easy. Nope. Not easy. It took me a week to get around to it. But I did it! And now they are for sale here.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
“House Of Stories” gatefold artwork by Jessica Wild, featuring beloved items and stories contributed by 17 beautiful humans x
How not to release an album in 2025:
1. Spend four months building up to release day with thoughtful emails, regular music video premieres and ads (I even did TikTok consistently for the first time!)
2. Release album
3. Fulfil music and merch items to generous fans around the globe
4. Disappear
Four weeks after my sixth solo album and second Penfriend album “House Of Stories” flew off on its beautiful wings around the world, I got the phone call I’d been dreading for the past three years of hospital visits.
Julia, my 95-year old Gran, died in her sleep six days after our last lunch together in her care home bedroom: cheese sandwiches cut into triangles, a Jammie Dodger each plus a bowl of vanilla ice cream for her.
I had long expected it would be bad, but I couldn’t have imagined the particular ways that I would feel her loss in the weeks after that sad call. Someone who was there for my entire life was suddenly gone. The woman who must have celebrated the news of my Mum’s pregnancy, caring about the idea of me even before I entered the world, screaming.
Random thoughts besieged me. I suddenly worried about what would happen to her stories. Nothing was ever written down or recorded. She is un-Google-able. I don’t want this woman to disappear: is that because I’m afraid of doing the same?
She led an extraordinary life: living on the canals, walking beside Tommy the horse as he pulled the boat along the water, feeling proud when her Dad let her steer. Moving into a small house on land in her teen years, looking after her brothers and sisters and then leaving to start her own family. Travelling to Hong Kong, Malaya (as it was known when she was there) and Cyprus with my Grandad. She glowed when she talked about those days, and over the last few years whenever conversation lulled I would ask her to tell me about it all again, and she would smile.
Years ago I suggested making audio recordings of us talking, but she wasn’t really up for it. I wish she’d said yes, but it’s not something to force on someone. Not everything has to last forever, and our stories can live on in the memories of our loved ones. Great in theory, but I suddenly felt the burden of remembering, and knew I would do a poor job, and felt like a failure.
Of my four grandparents, I’ve only ever properly known my grandmothers – they both outlived their husbands by 30+ years, and my Grandad Chris died when I was 9. I was always impressed and admiring of their adventurous natures, strength, toughness and stoicism. I don’t think they met many times, living in different countries with family members strewn far and wide, but I hope they got on well.
I dedicated my 2018 She Makes War album “Brace For Impact” to “my inspiring grandmothers Constance Kidd and Julia Briggs. Thank you for always encouraging adventure”.
My Gran looked pleased when I showed her that. Unfortunately Nana had already passed, but I did get the chance to thank her for everything before she did. And I thanked my Gran, too.
I wrote this song the day after my Nana, Constance, died:
Three weeks ago today I stood up and talked at Gran’s funeral about the butterfly effect: marvelling at how if even one small event had happened differently in her early life, my Mum, me, my sister and brother and their children would not exist.
She always enjoyed telling me about her first fiancé, the one she had to let down when she met my Grandad in a hospital ward and they fell in love. He had yellow fever, she was a nursing auxiliary. It sounds like a scene from a film. She wasn’t mean about anyone, I think she told and retold the tale as an example of trusting your instincts. And when I think of her stories now, I notice for the first time the spaces she left for me to draw my own conclusions, learn my own lessons.
My Gran never had wifi – in the 90’s she called my Mum to warn her that “The Internet” was a dangerous place and we shouldn’t be going on there – so she never shared her thoughts and experiences in the ways I’ve been doing for the past 20 years. As far as I know she never kept a diary either. For my entire childhood she didn’t talk much about her start in life; embarrassed to have left school aged 12 to start work, she often apologised for her handwriting and spelling in the letters we exchanged. I’m glad I was able to encourage more storytelling from her in the last decade at least.
When I chose the name “House Of Stories” for my latest album, I immediately thought of Gran’s house in Runcorn. She moved there in 1991, and as my family unit was so nomadic as I was growing up, it’s the only family home containing childhood memories that I still have physical access to. I vividly remember rollerskating in the back yard after Gran bought my sister and I skates from the car boot sale, redirecting my penpal letters to her address when we went to stay for a few weeks in the summer holidays, cuddling up under fluffy blankets on the sofa.
Later I stayed over on tour a few times; sitting up late one night talking to my tour buddy, we fell silent to watch a spider slowly spin a web from the ceiling right the way down to the floor, inches from my face.
It’s weird the things that stay with you.
Eventually there’s a moment when we realise we’re the grownups now, and we can (try to) have a say in how things are done. It’s tricky in family situations where roles seem set in stone, but I feel good about how I was able to show up for my Gran and my parents in the hard times, and I’m grateful for that last cosy lunch date.
If she knew how much her loss had knocked me sideways, I can just hear what she’d say to me:
“Oh ‘eck, what a fuss.”
But if I’d managed to bounce right back she might have been rather insulted.
“I have so much I want to make all the time, and it’s always frustrating that I can’t make all of it. For a while I haven’t felt able to make any of it. But I’m starting to believe that I might be able to make some of it very soon. And that’s a huge improvement.”
I had such plans for post-album 2025, and I’m going to start making them happen.
PS I’ll write more about this part of the “House Of Stories” project in coming weeks, but 17 beautiful humans contributed meaningful objects and accompanying stories to create the gatefold artwork, and you can read those here: https://penfriend.rocks/basement
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Clubon Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Tap to get your FREE 12-track album + 31-page PDF zine of stories, photographs and artwork here.
My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.
Join The Correspondent’s Club on Patreon to receive a new secret song every month! Choose from quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)
Listen to my first Penfriend album “Exotic Monsters” and browse my back catalogue here.
If you make things too – or want to know more about the creative process – I’m sharing thoughtful weekly essays here on my experiments in art, music and life on Substack (and I won’t be at all offended if you prefer to read my stuff there rather than on this absolutely gorgeous website).
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