The Rise and Fall of 2023
In 2022, I met Niamh Harper while making a film called We Are Bleach. A musician, poet, and artist, she was cast as an extra in a party scene set at The Dublin Castle. Niamh quickly became a friend and an inspiration. She told me about The Albion Rooms, the seaside boutique hotel owned by The Libertines, a discovery which became the impetus for me to write a new screenplay called The Weather Just Got Sexy. I wrote the script over the course of the summer, hoping to make it my debut feature as an auteur filmmaker.
We Are Bleach, shot largely at Camden’s iconic Dublin Castle, catapulted me into the North London independent music scene. Just after finishing the shoot, I penned 15 songs with Ian Dench of EMF, the demos for which I had rattling around in my pocket as I was focused on getting my first feature off the ground. At the same time, I found myself singing at open mic nights and going to more and more gigs, not assigning too much meaning to these events, other than thinking that they were tremendously fun.
An open mic at The Dublin Castle, 2022, shot by Alex Overington
Right: Niamh Harper as an extra in We Are Bleach, 2022
With Zachary Goldman, star of Bleach, doing a Q&A after the private premiere of the film at MPC, London, 2022
Niamh, summer of 2022
In September of 2022, my grandmother developed what would be terminal cancer. I spent the next six months with her. My foot was broken for four of them. It was a period of soul searching and limbo, back in NYC, the city where I had grown up, the city I had left behind a decade ago. I was back for much longer than I had expected.
February of 2023. On the way to my grandmother’s funeral, I got what I can only assume was a parting gift from her: an email from Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope screenwriting competition telling me that my screenplay, Hanging Gardens of the Sea and Sky, had made Top 10 in that year’s competition.
My foot was healed, my grandma was no longer with me, there was nothing keeping me in New York. I returned to London in March, trying to get my bearings after a very emotional and confusing period. I was working full time on getting The Weather Just Got Sexy off the ground to shoot, aiming to make it that August. It was an issue of getting the financing and I was prepared to throw myself entirely into doing whatever it took to make this work.
And then, at the end of April, I saw Niamh’s new band, Leftover(s), for the first time at The Victoria in Dalston. Niamh became my entry point into the South London music scene and, as I spent the summer working full time hustling to make a feature film, I simultaneously found myself getting sucked into the South London music scene. This is the story of that journey.
In the coming months, I will take you back in time to all the gigs that changed my life in 2023 through my photos and videos. Watch this space.
With Niamh at The Victoria, Dalston
30 April, 2023
Photos by Jude Dulake
