4 minute read
Where words fail, music speaks to The Last Skeptik
EDITOR’S LETTER
Definitely, there’s a whimsical feel and joy in the small things in the 2nd edition of Hopezine, a tiny zine brought to you with love from a little village in Staffordshire, to give all people feeling low or suicidal hope for a brighter future. In the first few pages there’s a nod to the therapeutic benefits of music. Whether you decide to have a go and write your own for self-soothing like our cover star The Last Skeptik. Or sit back and let a new soundscape wash over you like writer Divya Moda who found her anxieties were swept away listening to upcoming musician Liam Phelan’s new EP. And if you can’t find hope in music, it can be found in the small wonders outlined in author Graham Morgan’s story of how he finds light amid suicidal thoughts. I seek hope myself this month and found it looking for a new mirror for the cottage where Hopezine is made.
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So it is this month I urge you to find your own small glimmer of hope in what makes you feel good, in what soothes and delights you. And if you’re still struggling after some thought, I invite you to try and seek some happy among these pages designed and written to give good vibes to all...
Erica x
Issue 2. January 2020
Editor:
Erica Crompton erica@hopezine.com Hopezine.com
Layout Design:
Claire Eagles-Burrows KeeleSU Print & Copy Shop W: keelesu.com/printshop
Cover credits:
Picture by Cesar Tresca Styled by Edwin Europe
Photography credits:
Hugh Irvine
Contributors:
Corin Liall Douieb, AKA The Last Skeptik Divya Modha Liam Phelan Graham Morgan Hugh Irvine
With special thanks:
Lesley Whittaker Staffordshire County Council Stoke City Council Kate Verity Vicky Rowley Sara Buckley Daniel Lyttleton
CONTENTS
Where words fail, music speaks to The Last Skeptik...............................Page 3
In this edition of Hopezine, the rapper relays how different genres of song have helped with his anxiety, self-harm and depression
‘Turn on, tune in and cop out’......................................................................Page 5
Divya Modha takes us on a melodic journey through the musician Liam Phelan’s new EP
It’s a Wonderful Life!....................................................................................... Page 7
Author Graham Morgan tells of his life and small wonders that help keep him sane and breathe much love into his life
Hopezine’s Editor Erica Crompton speaks of continuing a family tradition to keep life full of surprises in her short, real-life story, The Bevelled Edge Mirror
A MUSICAL NOTE
by Corin Liall Douieb AKA The Last Skeptik
Making and listening to music has helped me in so many different ways during my life. From the big sledgehammer traumas to the underlying buzz of anxiety that I sometimes struggle to successfully manage.
Ever since I was little, music has been the granter of permissions for me to feel emotions. Sometimes I struggle in a quiet room to cry or be in my own skin, or process pain, but music (in any form, including film soundtracks) somehow makes the guilt of feeling depressed go away and transports me into a hyper real land where I’m allowed to let it all out.
When I first had trouble and had to leave school age 14 I channelled everything in to my simmering love for the power songs had over me, and fully followed my passion for writing. That intense loneliness and sadness I felt, the self-harm both physically and mentally I endured, it was lessened and de-knotted by writing lyrics and music.
Still today, I’ll go for weeks where I struggle to make anything at all because I’m not quite ready to face the truth head on. I recently finished writing my new album entirely inspired by the grief experience after a break up, and in exactly the same way it helped me at 14, it has done the same now. I almost don’t have a choice but to write it down. Whilst not in the same suicidal state that maybe I had been in my younger years, I was at my wits end, with my health anxiety. My spiral thinking and panic attacks were at their worst.
Listening to the songs I had made were a stronger version of me telling me at my lowest ebb that I could do this. That these things have happened before, and they will happen again, and I’ve always survived. Sometimes teaching yourself to self-soothe is the most powerful tool you can give yourself.
By no means am I a master at this - and even as I write this, waiting for the album to be released, I am yet again at arm’s length with my creativity, high in anxiety and not able to face the mirror that is music. It’s these moments I reach for the emergency playlists I make, something to guide me to when I’m stronger.
Through the years I’d sometimes forgotten the reason why I create and get bogged down with sales or promoting or not getting the success I dreamt of, then I try and remind myself that creation is the most helpful therapy I’ve ever had, and that even if no one likes anything I make, it has already served its purpose. And I’ve already won.
The Last Skeptik’s new album ‘See You In The Next Life’ is out now.
