This was originally published as zine, for the 2024 Hallozeen Zine Swap. I will probably make some more copies at some point, if you’d like one email me and we can work something out. All profits from my zines are currently being used to purchase e-sims for Gaza.




Widow's Peak is a song from Bat For Lashes fourth studio album, The Bride (2016). It tells the story of the titular bride, whose fiance dies in a car crash on the way to their wedding. The album acts as a kind of journey through her grief, and when we get to Widow's Peak, she is at perhaps her darkest and most untethered point. Vocalist and co-writer Natasha Khan delivers Widow's Peak not as a song, but as a spoken word poem; whispered in places and howled in others, against a backdrop of sparkling chimes, rolling guitar and rumbling thunder. It’s the kind of song that you can see as soon as you close your eyes, your head pressed to the cool glass of the bus window to keep yourself from slipping into its depths completely.


what does it mean, the bad things that I've seen?

When I first heard The Bride, I’ll admit I wasn’t all that into it. I discovered Bat for Lashes through her second album, Two Suns, which is also sort of a concept album, but those concepts are strung together by a number of solid bangers, including Daniel, Pearl’s Dream and, my favourite, Glass.

The Bride, however, is much more of a slow burn, with the songs themselves seeming to take a backseat to the story Natasha Khan is trying to tell. There were a few tracks I was initially drawn to, and would return to occasionally over the years since its release; Joe’s Dream, which feels very Twin Peaks in both its imagery and sound, Sunday Love for its driving drum beat and electric cracks of lightning, and Close Encounters because … ghosts. Still, I never spent much time with The Bride as a whole, and let it fall towards the bottom of my favourite BfL albums list. Now, it sits somewhere near the top, second only perhaps to Fur and Gold.

So what changed?


always the villain, never the bride

Earlier this year, I went to see my dear friend George and their incredible musical collaborator Lucas launch their debut poetry album, Mythamorphosis. I had been given a sneak preview of a couple of the tracks (drinking red wine on George’s porch on the eve of Greek Easter), and was very excited to hear the whole thing performed live. And yet I was still not prepared for how enthralling? captivating? all consuming? the whole experience would be.




Not only did they both perform the entire album in full, George took to the stage dressed head to toe in black high priest robes and hat. In the time it had taken me to get a drink from the bar they had transformed, delivering 40 plus mins of non-stop poetry against Lucas’s lush, dynamic soundscapes. I had seen George perform their work a bunch of times before, and had always been impressed with their ability to inhabit the character of Saint George the Poet. But this felt different. They had built a character, yes, but they were also constructing a whole world upon that stage, in real time, and inviting us to spend some time with them in it. 40 minutes felt like 10, and when it ended, I didn’t want to leave.

(Later I found out they’d rented their robes from Naarm costume institution Rose Chongs, which only added to the myth and the magic.)

As I rode the tram back home from Cafe Gummo, listening to Mythamorphosis on my phone, my head pressed to the cool glass of the window, I was reminded of Bat for Lashes and, specifically, Widow’s Peak. The spoken word of it all is the obvious connection, but there was something else that linked my friend and this artist whose work I’d loved for almost a decade in my mind. The ability to build a world with more than just words, with music and costume and delivery. A world that is living and breathing but also leaves space for your audience to enter into it with you, to meet you there. And to have fun while you are doing it. Can you imagine what that must feel like?

I could imagine, but I wanted to know.


so I dig, and find waves

Despite my best efforts to convince people otherwise, I have always enjoyed performing. I was a dance child from the ages of 7 to 17, and would often enter choreographic competitions as well as taking part in every end of year concert. As a teen I joined the high school musicals, and in the last few years I developed a fierce love of karaoke, my signature song being a duet of Bring Me to Life by Evanescence. All of these things scared the shit out of me, to varying degrees, but I still continued to do them, still continue to do some of them. I could say that I felt compelled to, that there was some sort of invisible force dragging me towards the stage. But I don’t think that’s true. No one was forcing me to do any of this. Not my parents, not my teachers, not my friends. I did it because I wanted to. And, after seeing what George could do, I was finally able to admit to myself that I wanted to do it again.

But where to start?


the secret to dreams is to dream up a door

After the Mythamorphosis launch, I started spending a lot more time with The Bride. First, with Widow’s Peak, and then with the album in full. Listening to it again, I was struck by how beautifully the narrative arc was constructed, through the lyrics but also with the music. Songs that I’d dismissed as filler tracks began to take on new meaning - they didn’t need to stand on their own, because they weren’t meant to. It was like I’d taken a step back from the brushstrokes, and could finally see the whole painting. And it was dark, and lush, and strange, dusted in baby blue eyeshadow and backlit in ghostly green. It was the kind of world that I wanted to make, but was struggling to find a way into through my own work.

I kept writing, and listening, trying to build something of my own, something that could stand up to The Bride, to Mythamorphosis. Which was stupid, obviously. I had performed my work before, but nothing like this. I needed to start small, test my comfort levels, get a feel for it.

And so, to get a feel for it, I decided to “cover” Widow’s Peak by Bat for Lashes. I translated the lyrics into a Twine poem, as I might’ve performed it, and then I performed it, and put it up on YouTube. I built a webpage to host it, alongside the song itself and the playable poem I’d made. It’s not the best performance, it’s not even the best webpage. But it’s the closest I can get to making exactly the kind of work I want to make, and that’s not nothing. That’s magic.

If you would like see my cover, you can find it here: http://heyjupiter.neocities.org/widows_peak



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