What is at the Centre of Your World? #9

By Piper Delilah / July 2025

A Conversation with Charlie Hills

Charlie Hills is a writer, photographer, and publisher based in London. In print, he co-edits Agapius newspaper and publishes works under NewLdnPress. His work has an emphasis on a study of ontology and strives to find sincerity in the human condition.

(Recorded outside a cafe in Islington with blue chairs and tables, coffes and matchas.)

Piper: My first question, what is at the center of your world?

Charlie: What is the center of my world? I suppose it's the relentless pursuit of trying to make something that I'm happy with. And that's not so much dedicated to work or output, but it's trying to make a series of events a life well lived. Trying to take relatively innocuous moments, whether it be an incident, a conversation, an output of something creative or non-creative, and making it work together and feel congruent and building something… building an existence or, you know, developing an existence that feels necessary and that has purpose.

Piper: Okay. Do you think saying... I'm finding my words here. So you're saying it's more to do with life. I mean, I'm picking up from things that I know about you. It's to do with life and art, but intertwining them. It's kind of what we were discussing the other week about world building.

Charlie: Yeah. It's the entire thing, top to bottom, because if you... make something or if you do something it all… it all you know, comes from you. Whether it's a shared act or whether it's an isolated act, it comes from you and you are part of it and therefore in turn it's part of you. There's nothing you can do to escape that and I think a lot of people spend a lot of their time trying to avoid that and trying to get away from that and going well no it's this is something different this is but it's… It is you in essence and intertwining every kind of composite element of life, everything that you do, everything that you see into one kind of material form, whether it's consciousness or something physical, is really important at least it's really important to me. Because I didn't do that for a long time I viewed everything as incredibly isolated and singular yeah and…

Piper: They weren't tied together…

Charlie: Nothing was tied together and then I realized oh everything is completely tied together and to fight against that is… just is gonna hold everything back and you're not gonna enjoy things. And if you don't enjoy things what have you got.

Piper: Yeah, it's kind of like if you're looking at all different projects or different aspects of your life and you're seeing them as separate entities, when actually, when you work with them all harmoniously in symbiosis, it's like, oh, wow, this is so much easier now. It makes so much more sense.

Charlie: Yeah.

Piper: It's sort of the element of... I don't know, leaning into your idiosyncrasy. This is what I say to everybody. Your idiosyncrasy of who you are as a character, it’s the thing that will get you from here, I'm pointing low, and getting you there, up to the top. That's what I've been banging into everybody's brains.

Charlie: But bringing things, not even high to low, but bringing things to the same level. Equalising. The same way that I treat the newspaper or a publication, it's the same way that I treat my cat, you know?

Piper: Yeah, yeah, I like that.

Charlie: You know, they're completely together. You know, how you act in one is how you should act in the other. Don't deny yourself the right to yourself, I think.

Piper: Okay, so what do you feel like you're in this… I'm going to use the term world-building again… When you're building this harmonious flow of life where you're weaving through everything as one, what do you feel like your idiosyncrasy is as an individual? It's probably quite a hard question to see from the inside.

Charlie: Yeah, I suppose it's difficult to reflect on because it's something that's done, I suppose, with intuition. You always make the choices that feel right. Often you don't, and then you have to retroactively go back and work around that. So I suppose, I guess, almost the question is what defines intuition or what defines my intuition. And I don't really know at the moment. I think it's being as honest as possible in both, you know, great promise but also abject failure at the same time. That's the idiosyncrasy, is that everything you know that has happened unto me, whether it be good or bad, defines this intuition for everything. It sets the tone for, you know, a sort of conversation or a relationship or a working partnership, you know, anything. And I think that intuition is kind of the pursuit of something that feels sincere, and I think what that means to me is letting go of perfectionism, because it's very easy to insist upon something to its ultimate conclusion, and there is a way that something should be, and there is a way that an interaction should happen… But actually, I don't know what that should be. And I don't think any of us know what that should be. I don’t think we should know what it should be. We should let ourselves be surprised. And that surprise and that kind of unknowing of what that intuition is kind of leads to something... It leads to a better, more sympatico existence.

Piper: Yeah. It's very ironic. All these words that you've been saying have literally been kind of my life for the past three days. Everything has been about, like, honesty.

Charlie: Yes.

Piper: And I tend to not say things when I want to say them because I'm worried about how people will react. And I'm, like, trying to control the people's emotional outcome of the situation. And I’ve sort of realized the reason I’m getting so many blocks in my life is because I’m just not saying what I want to say when I want to say it. And I’m kind of pussyfooting around people, and at the end of the day, you're never going to be able to control the outcome of things, so like, just do everything with sincerity and honesty and vulnerability. It's like I was on the phone to my friend yesterday and we had a very open, honest conversation about, kind of our friendship and having liked each other and all these things and I've had this epiphany… I used to think ambiguity was the coolest thing for the past five years. I was like, oh my God, ambiguity is so beautiful. But actually, I've now realized ambiguity is very beautiful, but like it's not good. It can be very toxic. And actually, after this conversation yesterday, where we were so honest and open, I was like, being honest is really sexy. Like there's something about it that just felt... Mature is not the word. It just felt wholesome and right. I mean, we were very stern with each other, but it just felt so much more fun than ambiguity and I never thought I'd be in that place to say that.

Charlie: Ambiguity comes at the behest of actually feeling things. It allows you to give yourself a scapegoat. And it's not necessarily a conscious thing, I don't think. I think a lot of us, and I think you're quite right in the sense that we grow up, I suppose, in a creative or non-creative world, that to be mysterious is to be cool. And it's a very profound thing to be vague and oblique and strange… That doesn't actually get you anywhere at all. Because you look back and you can't find yourself in what you've done or who you've been. You only find this kind of idea of what you should be. And that doesn't really mean anything at all. I think humans are inherently a very stupid and silly species, when all things considered. But one thing we're very amazing at is recognizing authenticity. And we can feel it when someone is being insincere. We can feel it when someone is holding themselves back or lying to themselves or lying to you, not out of malice, but out of a kind of necessity to protect themselves. And when you realize that it's much cooler and also sexier to be earnest and upfront, then you unlock so much more. There's this, I may be misquoting, but there's this passage in Alice in Wonderland where it's like, I think it's towards the end, where the Mad Hatter's saying to Alice, he's like, you've lost all of your muchness. Yeah, that's the one.

Piper: That's my favourite quote from that book. He goes, you've lost your muchness.

Charlie: That's something that I read when I was young, and I didn't really understand it. But then a lot of people at various points feel like, you're a lot man, yeah, you're a lot there's a lot going on there and I realized Oh but that's not… that doesn't have to be a bad thing, you know, because if you lose yourmuchness then you aren't yourself and you aren't… You have become autonomous, you know? And it's the thing that kind of makes what you do and who you are and what you are with others and for yourself… idiosyncratic, like you were saying. It's the fact that your publication works the way it does because it's you, putting what you think it should be into it and using your experiences and your community to form something that is entirely yours. It's like when someone's making an art piece and they want to explore a very kind of grand concept related to something, that's kind of almost your criteria to them. I’m like, but you have such a very unique set of experiences. Use those, you know, use materials from your homeland, from your village or whatever it is. Use people that you... not relate to, but use people that you feel that you identify with. Use those things that you have collected to form something. And that is kind of the pursuit of authenticity. Because you're recognizing, but also giving credence to, yourself and your own existence.

Piper: I think it's kind of for so long… So I used to write a lot of… It's funny, my whole piece for next week is about this thing of coming full circle with writing. I first started writing… I used to write about my own life a lot because I was writing letters, and I started writing like a book about this whole situation that's going on in my life. And then I was like oh I'm only writing this stuff because it's easy to write because I don't have to think about coming up with like other worlds. And then I was at Uni studying literature and writing and I was writing short stories. I love the short story form because I think I've said to you, they're like anecdotes. And then I kind of fell into writing this book of short stories, and there was like a turning point where I was saying to someone, all I keep writing about is death, all these short stories end in some kind of like… it's in like a death-oriented sphere. And I was like, I need to stop doing it. And they were like, why? I was like, because it's not the way I want it to go. They were like, yeah, but that's the way it wants to go. Why are you fighting it?So I went, okay, I'm just going to lean into it and roll with it. And as soon as I made that decision, the whole thing blossomed and opened up. And I kind of, now, it's like a still ongoing work, but I'm not putting too much pressure on it because I feel like a lot of the stories... still need to interact with my life as I live it. And so when I read it back now, and you can see people feel it when they read it, there are certain aspects to it. Like there's one story about, I think it's the second story, is about a mum and she's very, very ill and she's going to die. And her kids don't know because they don't want to tell them. So they come home and they think that her new hobby is to stay in bed. That's what the parents tell them. And it's all about her basically becoming obsessed with this robin that sits on her windowsill because she thinks it's her dad. I actually have a lot of bird stuff in of my work and I didn't see it until a long time after. And it's probably… I actually told it to a friend once outside a pub and explained it. And he started crying. I was like, that, what? But, you know, I take these elements and the whole reason that like the mum says, oh, you know, it's my new hobby, is my mum's mum died when she was 12. And my mum didn't know that her mum was sick she just thought her new hobby was to stay in bed. One day she came home from school and there was a post-it on the side of the table saying I've taken mum to hospital, I'll be back later and when her dad came home later, He was like Your mum's not here anymore. And my mum had no idea that her mum was ever ill, and I think it's that kind of like aspect, it's kind of taking these things that feel so close to me and imbuing them in the work. Whereas you could be like, oh, that's fictional and that's made up. A lot of it is. But in all of my stories, so much of me is in it that if you knew me and you'd read it, you'd understand exactly where things came from. But it kind of feels like, I know that nobody else could then write that book or write that text. It kind of, again, leaning into your own experiences but merging them with the fictional world has been a very interesting process.

Charlie: Yeah, I mean, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Everything you do, you impart some of yourself into it. Don't fight it, feel it.

Piper: Yeah, exactly.

Charlie: That's the general logic, I think. I find kind of a similar thing when I write... poetry or an article or whatever it is… It's you always feel this kind of expectation of like, I should be writing more, you should be doing more of this, I should be doing more of that. But then, when you try to force it, it doesn't come out in the right way. You might get something, but you might get kind of stuck on the kind of quizzical aspects of something and not… have a breakthrough that you're trying to have. But when the kind of like mode of being is right, then it will just happen, it's like it does just happen, it'll yeah it'll work. That's… whenever I write something, there will be a line or a word or a pair of words that'll sit in my brain or sit on a note on my phone, and I’ll be thinking about it non-stop, and then it will just kind of appear. When I wrote that poem in there, The American Dream one, I think at the time I was listening to the Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody, which is a very beautiful song, it's a great song, and something about it just kind of put the first line in my head, and then I started writing. And then the song finished, so I put it back to the start, and I did that 30 times over until it was done. I didn't really go back and edit anything, and there are probably a couple of words I would change now. But I don't want to. I like the unedited stuff. Because it existed at that point where I was like, I need to listen to Unchained Melody 30 times to get this done, otherwise it won't happen, and this is where this is, and this is the universe in which it has happened. So I can't go back and change it, but I also can't recreate that as well. I can't put that song on again and write the same piece, or write something different. It's not the key to an entire stream of things, but it's definitely the entrance point to an isolated kind of incident, I suppose.

Piper: That's very cool. I very much believe... I mean, I think I've said this to you, I very much believe in not editing. There are moments where you do edit, don't get me wrong, but it's this idea of, like, when you... If you write something over a period of days, it's different, but I try to write everything in one moment if I'm doing that piece. Because it's like, whatever's coming out at that time is coming out from a... You probably know the feeling. It doesn't feel like you're doing it. It feels kind of like you're tuning into something.

Charlie: Yeah, that's what... It's funny, that's what Bob Dylan said when he talks about his kind of grand period of writing in the late 50s, 60s, and kind of going into the early 70s before he got very religious. He was like, I didn't write those songs. It was a higher being speaking to me, not in a spiritual way, but in kind of like that felt like a necessity, and it just happened. I didn't write Tangled Up in Blue. It just came to me. And that's so bizarre because you're like you are one of the greatest visionary talents of all time in terms of writing and composition, but you don't feel like it's yours, you feel like it's something that is part of a consciousness. That's very bizarre to me. But I kind of see where he's coming from in the sense of like, what it has just materialized.

Piper: I think it's like I picked this up a lot in Henry Miller's like first couple of books, he does this very interesting thing he talks about, how he sits at his typewriter and say he'd say something in French like, um okay I’m here give it to me now like I’m open, and that's how he'd write his best things. It's very interesting when you read his books, it's sort of like, it's not that anybody could have written those things… It's just that I feel like Henry Miller was the right channel for those things to be written. That's why he was sort of chosen in a spiritual way. But when you read his books, you find it's sort of like a pattern, which I don't even think maybe he realized was ever there. I'm not sure. But it's usually every third of the book, there's like this mad rambling that goes on. And it blends into what he's saying, but it kind of comes out of nowhere at the same time, but still all makes sense. And it's got sort of like these rambling philosophical essays, and there's always three, sometimes four, but there's usually three, and they go in thirds. And you can tell when you read it that it hasn't happened like… consciously it's just blended into the writing. But you almost feel this moment where you feel like he's sat there writing and you can almost like feel the drop of the ideas as you're reading it, of like, oh that's a moment that he's written in one whole stream of, like, tipping and tapping. And you can kind of view the moment where it falls into him, and that it's not really his idea. They are his ideas, but he's acting as a channel from something else to bring them in. It's very interesting if you pick up on it and they happen, like, clockwork, but it's unstructured. It's very interesting.

Charlie: Yeah, but that's the point where everything starts to make sense. That's the point where you go, oh, this is why he's my favourite author. Because... That's the kind of authentic thing that we're all looking for. That's the moment of like, whatever, fluff and kind of literary prowess that you put around something, you can only shield it so much from the fact that at the center, that is the thing that's making you relate to the work. That is the thing that's kind of keeping you going, that's your kind of point of interest, because you can feel it, it's picking up on that human ability to recognize sincerity. It's not a bookmarked thing; we haven't put a header here saying this is where the truth starts. But it's a feeling, and you can feel it in a dead man's writing.

Piper: Yeah, that's very true.

Charlie: Which is very bizarre.

Piper: When it comes to, like, writing mediums, I guess, what is your favourite? Because, as far as I know, you do poetry, you write articles. I assume you probably write some prose as well. Maybe fictional, yeah? What's your favourite kind of format to write in?

Charlie: Yeah, format. I think for the last year it's been poetry. I've written all sorts of formats all throughout my life. For about five or six years, I was a sketch comedian.

Piper: Oh, really?

Charlie: Yes. I had a friend in high school, and we started writing some bits together. And we were aged... 12, I think, when we started. And I don't know who allowed us to book out theatres at the age of 12, but they did. So we would write two hours’ worth of material. I suppose the closest thing would probably be Python, but it wasn't a conscious thing at the time. And we would block out the whole show. We would hire the theatre. We would have musical bits and pieces. A full two-hour thing. And we would do it. And we would sell tickets. And people would come. 150 people every time. And we'd have a really good time doing it. And that's the moment. I'd been writing before that. And I'd written lots after that. But that was the first moment where I went... Oh, this feels very natural.

Piper: Fun. Okay, very cool.

Charlie: Because that is something that, it's the same as like having the first line for a poem or the first couple of words for a bit of prose or whatever it is, or having a kind of nascent idea. Yeah. It's that moment of having a joke or a gag or a voice or a character or a relationship between characters, and then writing around that. And it comes from that. And when I would sit down to write something like that, it's kind of difficult because you're writing something to be performed. You're not writing a play for people to buy and then put on. It's like I'm writing for me and a friend whom I know very well. I know what he does and I know what I do. So I'm writing for that subconsciously. And I know what it's going to be used for, but it just happened. And it would just, line by line, it would just kind of appear.

Piper: That's so fun.

Charlie: And that was the first moment that I went, okay, there's something here. And I would always just follow it. And I was never concerned about... what other people would find really amusing. I was just trying to make him laugh.

Piper: Yeah. Oh, that's very sweet.

Charlie: I would do most of the writing, and then he would come in and he would change bits. We would work together and bring it together. And sometimes he would write bits solo. We were always just trying to make each other laugh. And that's what worked. Stuff that we'd write that we thought people would really like, kind of on a more commercial level, is a little bit more kind of down the line. Didn't really seem to track because it wasn't authentic, but also we weren't making ourselves cry, laughing while doing it. So writing for that was kind of the point; that's the format, it's a play. It's not one kind of style of writing, the format is writing for the self and that I think poetry has been a very good conduit for me for that over the years, because I'm writing based on a moment and you know, it's something that I'm like, I don't know if anyone's gonna get this, I don't know if it's palatable, I don't know if it's good in any capacity at all, but it's happening, so I'm just gonna go along with it. And then sometimes you get proven right and vindicated, and sometimes it falls flat, and that's okay.

Piper: How do you feel about if people... Say you wrote a piece and someone came to you and goes, I don't think that was actually that good? Because I found it unique. It was such an interesting experience for me because I went into Uni at 21, having been like, I think I'm pretty decent at writing. I'm not great, but I'm getting there. And I got into Uni and I felt like... I was like, oh, I'm going to absorb everything that they tell me. And by the third year, I kind of sat there and I was like, I actually disagree with every single thing you're telling me. There were moments where I agreed with some things, but the way in which they went about... The tutors were lovely and I adore them. But it kind of gave me a perspective that flipped all my ideas on their head. Like the thing from when I went into Uni, it was very much like you spend 70% of your time editing your work. I'm now on the other side of Uni, and I don’t even edit my work. And it sort of gave me this matter of perspective that enabled me to become very concrete in my own ideas and how I write. But it was very interesting, where you know people would sit there and tell you things or their opinions, and you just sit there in your head and go, well, I don't fucking agree. Like there was this time where… this with it was somebody else's work… I don't know the girl's name, it's really annoying because it was brilliant, it's probably the best piece of writing I've read in the whole of Uni from any student. She was very quiet. She sat in the corner of the room. Not many people came to that week's workshop, but I read her poem beforehand, and it was about this guy in his kitchen thinking that the rats in the kitchen are trying to kill him. And you're like, you're reading it, going, oh, the rats are trying to kill this guy. And then he says this comment about, now I understand how my dad felt with the gnomes in the garden. And you come to realize that he's schizophrenic. But it's not said openly. The short story, I think it was, yeah, it was a short story. It was hilarious. I laughed about the whole thing. Got into class and we were discussing it, and I put up my hand and I said, whoever wrote this, it was absolutely hilarious. Like, well done. And the tutor goes, Piper, I don't think it was meant to be funny. It was quite a serious poem. And in that moment, I saw the girl across the room and she sort of like looked at me and smiled. And in that moment, I knew it was her work because she was looking at me like, you got it. No one else in the room understood it. And it was sort of this moment of like, the tutor or someone that you feel is above you, may have this opinion, but actually, on a level, I was like, I kind of got it like nobody else did. And it was completely misinterpreted, and that was... But that was the moment where I was like, trust your own judgment. Stop listening to all these outside voices. Trust how you feel and you think about it. It's kind of the intuition thing as well.

Charlie: Definitely.

Piper: But yeah, my question was, how do you kind of feel? I kind of overtook that. But how do you feel when people critique your writing?

Charlie: No, thank you for the story. That was really nice. I think I do get that sometimes. I suppose... When I feel like something is good or when I'm very happy with it, which isn't that often at all. Then I'll be like, okay, I don't care what you've got to say. I'm very happy with this. But a lot of the time, when someone will say, oh, I don't quite like this one or I don't think this is very good. It's not so much a, oh, okay, this is bad, I'm resolved to it. It's more of a, what's holding you back from enjoying it? Kind of thing, for me. Because I think everything I write is quite, it's definitely always very specialist to me. It's like, if you're thinking about my time at St. Martin's, it was always this thing of like, it's writing about creative process, which is a very strange thing to do because you're writing about physical work. It's very, very bizarre. And there was always this… this is the way you've got to write your portfolio or your report or whatever. I was like, I don't really want to write it that way. And I am very aware that my grades are going to suffer because of it. But I'm more than okay with that because I don't want to do that. I don't have the capacity to do that. It's an integrity thing, but it's also... It's intuition and it's integrity. It's two at the same time. I suppose they both inform each other. So based on that, I think everything I write is very much... this is exactly what I want to write and this is the way that I want to do it. Maybe it's not the right thing for everybody, and that's okay because, you know, you didn't find the Jim Jarmusch movie very funny, but your friend found it hilarious.

Piper: Yeah, subjectivity.

Charlie: But it's the exact same film, you know, it's completely subjective, and I think that also goes for writing, it goes for any medium as well. There's... there's no… the metrics for good and bad are really strange, so that's why when someone's… It's almost not even a thing, no one can be a bad writer, is what I always feel like. Because it's about finding your authorial voice, and when you write the learn to write the way you think, feel, and speak, then you can become a great writer by whatever metrics you want to define it by. So when someone's like Oh, I don't like this or I don't get this or that it's more of a why? I'd really love to understand why not because I'm going to go and change all of those things that you've raised, but because it means that I can reflect on my own work in a perspective that isn't my own and will probably, you know, embody some of those elements subconsciously and things way down the line.

Piper: Yeah, I think also my question to ask is, when you put out work, do you feel self-conscious about it?

Charlie: It's a very difficult one because on one hand, I'm often very like... nonplussed or indifferent on everything I put out. As when something is yours and you've made it, you will always highlight the mistakes and you will never look at the fact that you have made something and that is a feat in itself, whatever it is you'll always go, yeah but I don't really like the quality of the print there, I don't know that image could have been better here, this could have been better here, this word could have been this. So it's not so much a kind of like I'm very happy with this, I'm not very happy with this. I'm just kind of very indifferent, I think.

Piper: Yeah, I'm very similar.

Charlie: And I don't really have a... It's impostor syndrome a lot of the time, I think, as well. Because I've always made things just out of a necessity to do them. People ask me, like, how do you do these things that you want to do this, that? I'm like, well, you just do it. You can. You have the physical capacity to, whoever you are, teach yourself, go do it. So by virtue of that, there is always this element of impostor syndrome where I'm like, this is shit.

Piper: Yeah. I think it's like, I had a big turning point like six months ago, where I sat there and I looked at what I'd done in my life and I thought, the reason that I haven't done a lot is because I haven't just done it? And I was very self-conscious putting, even starting, The Fools Press.  I was like what people are going to think of me? And then I was like, actually trying is the least embarrassing thing… like if you try, that's not embarrassing that's the coolest thing ever. And I think… where was I going with this. Oh, I came to realise I naturally act on a wavelength now. If I have an idea, I just sit and do it straight away. Like the short films I was doing on my Instagram, I had all the footage. Two o'clock in the morning, I was like, I should make this into a film. Sat there till 5am and did it. And then I put it out the next day. And, you know, Elska and Xan found it hilarious. They watched it like 30 times because it was so interesting to see their life from that angle with subtitles and things. And it was this element where someone said to me after that, they were like, Oh, it's so cool that you just did it. And I was like, what do you mean? I don't understand. And then I realized the way I used to operate and how I'd have these ideas and just sit on them and not do anything about them.

Charlie: To try and get it perfect or to wait for the elements to align.

Piper: Yeah.

Charlie: But they're never going to be perfect.. Whatever idea you have of the perfect time to do things and the right tools and the right people and the right environment and the right state of mind, it's never going to be perfect. Because the threshold is just going to keep rising because it's an excuse to get away from putting a part of yourself out there. And that's a very difficult thing to reckon with. Someone much smarter and wiser than me said, no one has time for your cleverness and everybody... no one has time for your cleverness and it is selfish to think that other people are thinking about you they're more concerned with themselves.

Piper: Yeah, you know I say to people, when people are having like a bad time in their life or like they're worried about what people think, I say quite frankly, everyone is very self-obsessed…

Charlie: Absolutely.

Piper:…no one actually cares about your life too much don't view it as a negative view it's a positive. You know everyone's very narcissistic, it's fine, though but it's true.

Charlie: You're worried about what shirt or shoes you're wearing and you think, Oh, everybody's going to think I'm an absolute mess. Or this is this, this is that. Everybody is way more concerned with their own insecurities.

Piper: Yeah, exactly.

Charlie: And I think that, that's kind of the most important thing in just doing and making because if you don't do it, it's nay going to be done. And it doesn't matter what people... think of it because they will see elements… they will look for elements of themselves in the work either way. You can't fight that, that is the nature of humanity and that is how we respond to things. So just do it and get it done.

Piper: Yeah, I think also like I’ve just had like a half epiphany of what you've been saying. I'm like thinking about, Okay, well, when’s the perfect time to act on an idea? And it's like… actually when you think about it, the perfect time, if there ever was a perfect time, the right time is when you get the idea.

Charlie: Oh absolutely, because all of the elements that go into like having an idea or  coming up with a concept have already been inside of you. It's just clicked together. All of your organs already exist inside of you. All of these things happen, it's just they present themselves at the right time, and that's kind of the sign of, like, just go do it. I've always, you know, I used to be a lot more of a photographer and a filmmaker. I made lots of music videos, short films, I even shot a wedding once, which was an absolute nightmare, but it was, you know, a favour to a family friend. Which is great because they let me… because they like the films I made they were like I want you to do it like one of your films. Which was amazing. And whenever I would do any of these things I would shoot… I would go home and I would edit straight away. Because it would happen and it would exist in that kind of just doing it. So otherwise you can put it off ad infinitum you know, because you want to realign all of the elements you want to assess this, that, whatever. It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. You're in a set, you're in a feeling, you're in a mode and when I shot this wedding I would I think I did… it must have been like a 20 hour day of filming because it was the very early in the morning, all the way through the night to the next day. The big, the whole thing I got home at like six in the morning, I was exhausted. I was reasonably drunk by this point… I went let's edit the film. So I relived, I think I was up for another 20 hours living the entire day, cutting it back down into this hour-long film. Then I went to sleep and it was done. They were so happy with it and they text me every month when they re-watch it, they're like, this is the coolest thing! And that's great. But I feel like if I had gone to sleep, woke up the next day, done this or that, it probably wouldn't have got done to the level it was done at, and I wouldn't have felt… there's things that would change, but I wouldn't have felt as happy about it as I did.

Piper: Yeah, you kept it self-contained. So, if I were to give you a box of everything you've ever lost tangible or intangible what would you look for first?

Charlie: Two answers. First one, tangible. I had the most amazing... I bought it when I was 13 off of eBay, it was far too big for me. It was this mid-60s camel hair coat. Very long, full body coat, big, weighty, gorgeous, deep, dyed thing. It's beautiful. It's incredible. The whole thing, I bought it for £40 from a bloke in Stoke-on-Trent. He got it on his travels somewhere from an old Berber, I think. And a couple of winters ago, I was looking for it in my mother's loft. And it was not there. And I can't find it. And I don't know where it's gone because I had it when I was 13. It's far too big for me. Now it's the perfect size. I don't know where it is. I can't find it. I'm incredibly sad about it every time the temperature drops below about 5 degrees. That would be the tangible thing. Because I never got to properly wear it the way it was intended to be. Not just because of a memory of it, but because there was a promise there. You know what I mean. It could be used and it would be used daily, you know, it's kind of like almost you know in wind or something like that becomes a limb in a way. It's a protection but it's also a necessity, protection isn't always necessity but in this case it would be. And the fact that I know not to use it and the fact that I know it would be used to an absolute maximum capacity, is always quite damning sometimes. So that would be the tangible thing. And the intangible thing... In my opinion, there is also another element. In my opinion, children do not play with other children anymore. In my opinion, it is right for children to play with other children. However, there is a lack of spontaneity to play the game.

Piper: It's a hard question.

Charlie: No, there's a lot floating around in my mind. So yes, it is a hard question, but also it's a very prompting question that I'm probably going to have to write a lot about later. Probably would look for the... I suppose the loss of innocence. Which is kind of a strange thing. Because... Whilst I think I try to keep as much of the kind of childhood aspects of life alive in myself for as long as possible, I think it's very sad when people lose that in themselves. There is a concrete innocence that you see in young children that you lose by, you know, by the process of being exposed to the realities of the world and humanity. And that is something that I kind of almost quite deeply envy in a way. I noticed it last night actually I was working on something, some writing and at 3 in the morning I was just on Twitter for two hours and couldn't sleep. I was reading all of these things about people being outraged by every kind of political thing in the world and people that are having completely ulterior opinions to me I can never even fathom harbouring. Like these kind of deeply sort of fascist identities that I could never imagine having those ideas about the world. I was just so angry at these people and on behalf of other people and then I got to this point where it's five in the morning and I was like this is a completely isolated bubble. If I delete this app off of my phone, all of these screaming voices will just disappear because I give credence to them. They exist and they have material value. There are so many intricacies and opinions on things that I'm acutely aware of. I feel like I'm so aware and I absorb, one, from a journalistic level, but two, because of some personal thing, this necessity to... understand everybody's opinion on everything and kind of know everything. So I'm like very deeply entrenched in divisions in both British and American geopolitics, all at the same time, completely unnecessary things. I really don't need to have strong opinions on the, you know, the Texas Senator Commission. It's a completely unnecessary governing body that I have no relevance to in my entire life. But I know everything about it for no reason at all. And that is kind of this benchmark of innocence. You know, there is a lack of innocence in giving value to voices like that and to being aware of them and to being affected by them. And I think the loss of innocence, whilst it is completely unavoidable, it is something that I would really love to have back and I don't know how I'm going to get it back.

Piper: I think you can get it back quite easily.

Charlie: I think so. You think so?

Piper: Yeah, the whole reason I called The Fools Press, The Fools Press was because a previous partner of mine said to me a year ago he goes, oh it's so lovely you're so naive and you're so delusional,. He said, hold on to that as much as you can, because he got to the point as a musician where he kind of given up… They’d been going for like 10 years, geniuses the pair of them, the band split up and it was very obvious why it was happening. Because the angels at play wanted him to go solo and I’d known for two years before that. And I think I know that the moment that he decided to give up in that respect, was the moment that if he would have pushed through, it would have jumped. It was very, very obvious. And I think when he said to me, hold on to the naivety for as long as you can, I took that very seriously. So the reason I called it The Fools Press is because I was like, I actually think to be an artist or to... create things in like the creative medium, you have to have this level of like naivety and delusion to you. Where there's all these things going on in the world and you're like, I go on the internet and it’s like this balance between understanding everything that's going on and being aware of it, but then also because then you think, I’m doing this paper right with all these other things going on in the world, is this really that important? And there's a level of naivety, it sounds quite harsh, I think comes with creating in that way. Where, I don't really know how to put it actually.

Charlie:  No, I feel like I know where you're going in the sense that that made me think of the fact that I often do that where I'm like, what is... the purpose behind this. There is, you know, I was speaking to Fran Liebowitz once, which was really cool because she's a great person to speak to. And she told me this anecdote (anecdote, anecdote, anecdote.)That's my non-Scottish side. She told me this anecdote of when maybe sort of 10, 15, 20 years ago, kids would come up to her and say, Fran, I don't know what to do with my life, what would she do? And she'd say, I don't know, do whatever the fuck you want. But now when people ask what they should do, she says, my life is not a noble cause. The noble cause is being a politician, a teacher, you know, an aid worker or something. Do that. Give value. I went, I mean, I didn't even ask you what I should do, but fuck, thank you. And that kind of sent me down this spiral of like, is anything I'm doing worthwhile? What is the point? There is so much anguish everywhere. What material value do I bring? Should I just fuck it all off and go and, you know, build huts for people. Maybe, I don't know. And I seriously was considering it for a long time I was going to stop doing anything creative and I was going to get into like local politics for some stupid fucking reason and then I went, God that's really stupid of me because that's me denying some level of naivety which is ignoring a necessity. It is a lot of people's necessity to do that what Fran described as noble work. But maybe at the moment that is not quite where I'm supposed to be. And that is me denying this naivety. And that's this getting caught up in this kind of very bleak political landscape. And I think doing journalism... is great because it means you can shine a light on that and you can kind of delve into that world a bit and do something you feel is necessary. But also it means that you're all trapped in this world the entire time. I don't particularly want to keep up with every Elon Musk tweet that I feel necessary to for things that I'm writing and researching. You know, it's miserable. It's miserable seeing people descend into fascism day by day, but it's a necessity I feel like for the work I'm doing. So I think I hope you're right in the sense that that innocence can be found again. And I think all of this is a very long way around to say that I value naivety, but I often deny it to myself because I feel like what I'm doing doesn't matter. And I still don't actually know the answers to that, how much or little of it I believe. I'm not sure. And it's something that honestly I am quite scared of because it questions everything. It throws everything into question, right? And it takes everything and then shoves it back in your face. Now you work out what the problem is. And that's a difficult thing to come to terms with because it's one... your place in a larger ecosystem, but two, how you treat yourself.

Piper: That's difficult. I find it very difficult to navigate. I remember the paper that I did was P is for pasta. I sat there and I was like, this is bullshit. I'm doing a paper which is P and doing it as P is for pasta. I shouldn't be doing it, but P is for Palestine, to be frank. Just commenting on what's going on there, but I was like, I don't want to put that burden on... I don't want to put the burden on the writers to enforce them to put themselves in a political situation that they don't want to be. I don't know a huge amount of their beliefs on where they lie. And it's this idea of respecting people as people, but then understanding that people have different opinions.

Charlie: Yeah, but also whose story is it to tell, you know?

Piper: Exactly. So then I was, as like kind of a due diligence, I contacted my friend Moses and said, he's a poet, and I said, would you like to write a piece? He's very pro-Palestine. I was like, would you like to write a piece? Because I kind of got to the point where I was like, I can sit there and look at all the different elements of it. I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist, so I have my own take on everything that's going on, which I don't share very much.

Charlie: Oh yeah, I'm intrigued.

Piper: But the... I sat there and I was like, given everything I'm seeing on social media and in this world, I feel like I'm being naive by not commenting on it. So he wrote this piece for me and it was very heavy on negative vocabulary. Which was fine because those are his beliefs. And I have a friend whose family lives in Israel. And out of respect, I don't agree with her beliefs, but out of respect, I called her and I said, look, I'm putting this piece out. I just wanted to make you aware. If me putting this out doesn't align... with us being friends that is fine but I want to give you the option and the understanding of what I'm doing. And actually I sat with her on the phone and she knows that I don't believe with what she believes in particular situations, but I can see why she feels that way about it. Not that I agree. But what was really interesting is she said to me, which I didn't think she was going to say, she said, you can do what you want, I'm not going to hold you against it. She said, but do you not feel like a lot of this is coming because of misinformation? She said, because my algorithm is feeding things, your algorithm is feeding things. I don't actually believe everything that my algorithm is feeding me. And it was sort of these elements where I thought, actually, me putting out this piece on Instagram, it's adding to the negativity and also the comment that should actually be made is about misinformation. That's the piece that should be written about the things that are going on in Israel and Palestine. It's because you don't have these journalists anymore that are going in there and writing a very full account of what's going on because everything's funded by different things. So... It was kind of this moment where I was like, the piece that should be put out is me writing something about this misinformation. However, it's this take of like... I don't know really where I'm going with this because it was all in my head. But I think you kind of see what I'm saying. It was sort of... But it was this push feeling like what I'm doing is P is for pasta. And given the current political climate, is that really appropriate? And it was this big battle in my head of like, where do I stand with all these different things and my social responsibility? I'm still figuring it out now. It was a big moment for me to kind of navigate that space.

Charlie: It's difficult because there are so many things that can be said about one of the oldest land disputes in history. And I mean, it's not even a land dispute. It's a human rights thing at this point. That's insane. There are people whose job it is to do factual reporting. And they're either very good at it or they're very terrible at it. They're compromised or they're independent. It's kind of a difficult one to tread. I think a lot of that... Nobody really cares what Barry from Staines has to say about, you know, the West Bank. There are people... that are political scientists, that are, you know, geopoliticians, that researches things that do have appropriate, important things to say in regards to, like, physical action. What you believe for yourself is the most important thing, you know. There is... It's difficult because it's on one hand, it's like there is no responsibility on yourself to do anything beyond your political beliefs where you feel like you have to do something larger. But also at the same time, it's like, well, you know, maybe I should be using this voice for this because it's very important to me and also to other people as well. It's kind of a it's a very difficult line to tread. I found some bizarre things… we did an article here on the on the Palestine protest encampments at universities in London that were happening last year, because there were lots lots of encampments. We got a lot of pushback from very loud individuals about that piece. It was a very balanced journalistic thing of reporting on the encampments. I mean, me and my co-author are both, you know, historically pro-Palestinian individuals. But it was a very balanced piece in the sense of reporting on the encampments and that's what we're doing and what people have to say and the context around why they're happening with students at these institutions. But we were stopped at the ICA, the Gallery on the Mall. They removed us from being there because they had a wealthy Israeli donor who complained. So we can't be stocked there. And I've been like accosted in places by a pretty heinous individual who I used to be friends with, who I'm not any longer, who started screaming in my face about writing anti-Israel propaganda. And I was like, this is the most insane thing in the world. I went, well, you know what? There's not really a lot more I can do than this at this point. It's not an ultimatum, but it's kind of like, what more can one do in the face of such... disinformation, misinformation, anger, frustration, you know, what can one do beyond the reasonable expectations of the self?

Piper: It's just, I don't know, it's this whole swinging back to like, where does my social responsibility lie?

Charlie: Donate. Donate, exactly.

Piper: I'm also going to move on to the next question because I'm conscious of time. If every time you walked into a room a song played, what would the song be?

Charlie: Is this, it's already playing and I have arrived and it's the right time to arrive because it's playing, or I have chosen for it to play and I'm walking in like a boxing match?

Piper: No, it's very natural. It's not performative. It's just, if every time you feel yourself walking into a room, a song is playing, even in your head or out loud, and it feels right to you, what song would it be?

Charlie: Probably be Naive Melody by The Talking Heads.

Piper: Oh, nice. Okay, very nice.

Charlie: That's the song that's often playing in my head. Okay. It would either be that or it would be Tulsa Sunday by Lee Hazelwood. Okay. Which is part of something that I'm trying to reckon with musically at the moment that I'm calling, Songs for Ballrooms that are Falling Apart. Imagine like, you know, like the Blackpool Ballrooms. It's all these buildings and you get it in Brighton a lot with those old Regency buildings on that square. These kind of dilapidated, you know, structures of grandeur. That feeling of something kind of beautiful that's sort of falling apart. That's one of those songs that would fit into that category very well. And you would also put Iodine by Leonard Cohen into that category as well. There are quite a few others and that's something I'm trying to work reckon with, that's a feeling that I really like, in a room in a space, it's the idea of a space that I really like. I suppose  The Maldmay Club just over the road would be a good indication of a space like that.

Piper: My next question its song related, it’s such a new question that I've ever asked anybody and I think it's quite great. You know, I am a big romantic, so this is why I like this question. Imagine you're in love with someone and things are going a bit, you know, they're not going well and you're like what the hell's going on and you're kind of like you're not on good terms. If your lover turned up outside your window with a stereo playing a song what song would you want them to be playing?

Charlie: Well, it would be Lover, Lover, Lover by Lemon Cohen. That would be the one. Well, because the chorus is Lover, Lover, Lover, come back to me.

Piper: Okay, on it, on the money.

Charlie: That would be the conventional one, I suppose, by the nature of the song. But also, it's tricky because when he wrote that song, he was... in an active war zone singing to kids from displaced homes and it was one about a romance that was falling apart, but it was also two about the loss of home and the loss of life and community and togetherness. Being deracinated from your place of being where things feel right and where home is… so it works on two levels in that way and it's a very beautiful song for its lyrics. But it's also quite brooding and also reasonably morbid in its instrumentation as well because, as every kind of line of the verse comes in there's this really fat resonating slinky bass sound that's like a pluck. It's bizarre and it's kind of intense. He performed the song on a French TV show with like a 10 piece band behind. It was really intense for such a beautiful song of longing and loss, it's very intense and I feel like that feeling. That would be what I would want it to be.

Piper: Why do you think you are here on this planet? It's kind of more of a personal question rather than a why humans here.

Charlie: Yeah, what is my purpose in a way. I suppose the answer you probably get to this a lot is I don't know. That's the point. Initially. And that is the answer.

Piper: I ask that question sometimes and people think for a long time. And it's not like a trick question because some people can tease things out. But it is the element of like, I don't really know.

Charlie: Yeah, I wouldn't try and tease anything out of that because I don't want to know. I don't want to know. If I know why I'm here, I'm going to be pursuing that. And I'm never going to get... to where I want to be.

Piper: So do you like the element of the unknown?

Charlie: Yes, in the way that I love the gothic genre, because it's defined by the elements of the unknown. There is, I don't know if you ever read it, Mark Fisher's book The Weird and Eerie. He defines through several essays, often connoting to various works of media… He tries to define what the weird and what the eerie is. And it comes down to this idea of the unknown. And there's... He talks about... I wish I had my copy with me. He talks about the weird being something that... They're both from our time. They're both in our kind of peripheral level of existence. And it's the weird being, something that is familiar to us and its familiarity makes it strange… because it is so familiar. And the eerie being something that is kind of beyond our reality, but still within the human consciousness. It's something that we don't quite understand yet. And that idea of the unknown… it's a really great work. You should read it expeditiously. That kind of defines a lot of the unknown for me and I like that. I don't want to know why I'm here. Because I think I’m trying to understand that subconsciously with everything I do. You know everything that I put out in a work context, for example, is out of necessity it just feels like the right thing to do whether it works or not, it's intuition. Everything that I do personally, romantically, interpersonally, whatever it is… it just feels like the right thing to do. It's following that intuition. So if I were to work out why I’m here, what the purpose is, what the meaning of life is, it ruins the magic. Don't let daylight in on magic, right?

Piper: I actually now have one more question, but this is like a very personal thing. You're very very good at eye contact. I said this to Elska when I met you… I'm trying to be more on eye contact, but it's kind of a struggle for me. But you made be very aware of my struggle with it. And I'm just wondering whether you notice that you've got eye contact or if it's something that you've learned or something that you're very natural about or you're unaware of it?

Charlie: I've never thought about it. People say that to me sometimes. I remember I was in some... bar in Paris, I was very drunk, it was four in the morning, and I had no idea what I was saying or what was going on or what I was listening to. But this lady was like, you know, you're very good at eye contact. It's very intense in a good way. And I went, in a French accent, of course, but I'm not going to do that. Oh, okay. I'd never thought of that before. I don't know what that is. I think...

Piper: It's very, it doesn't feel harsh though. It doesn't feel like orchestrated.

Charlie: Sometimes you can speak to someone and they're like, so, tell me more. (Charlie stares ironically and intensely into Piper’s eyes.) And it's kind of off-putting. And it's bizarre. But, you know. What's that really corny phrase? Eyes are the window to the soul or something like that. I suppose that kind of rings true. Not that I'm ever looking for anything in anybody's eyes, but it's like, what else am I going to look at?

Piper: It gives off the impression that you feel very settled within yourself. I think when I am not looking at people in the eye continuously, it's because I'm feeling, like, unsure of myself or different things.

Charlie: Yeah, or you're thinking about something else that's in the back of your brain and it's not at the front, you know. If I'm looking over there, I'm almost looking kind of to the side of your head or at your hair or, like, your shirt, your skirt or your shoes. If I'm looking at your eyes, then I'm kind of looking at that point, the front of your brain, whatever the conscious thought that's happening is. It's that... It's that mode there, that kind of top part there. And that's definitely a subconscious thing, but it means one, that you're listening, but also two, that you're engaging with the listening. It's not a passive thing.

Piper: Very true. It's like I try to… when I talk to people now, I try and sit straight to them. It's like this thing, I very much feel my energy shift. That's why I move my legs back because I feel like I kind of connect in a different way if I'm facing them or not. But I always say to people, when I meet people, I never hug them. I always kind of, well, I try to shake their hand. Because I say when I meet somebody for the first time, I want to be able to look into their eyes and say hello, rather than if I'm hugging them, I'm like, I can't see the person. People always find it quite weird that I shake everybody's hand, so they're kind of like, oh, okay.

Charlie: I like a handshake.

Piper: But I never do it in like... I'll show you. I never do it like... this (shakes Charlies hand in a stern manner) I always kind of do it like this (Shales Charlies hand in Piper’s own manner). It feels softer and it doesn't feel as much.

Charlie: That's interesting because… can we demonstrate… (keeps shaking one another’s hands in different manners) that is very much… there is a connotation to that, that one is quite businessy, but it's not very personal. It's a… this is a defined action. I can draw this, but this is kind of like, I’m meeting you halfway.

Piper: There’s like a sweetness to it.

Charlie: We're meeting in the middle. It's like a hello as opposed to a thank you.

Piper: Very very true. I only realized a couple of weeks ago why I do it. Because I like to look at people in the eyes when I meet them. I also remember people a lot more and I find that people remember me a lot more when I do that… it's like a moment of connection. Like, Oh, I'm a person, you're a person, this is not just a fleeting, hey hi.

Charlie: Well you're very memorable, it works.

Piper: Thank you. I think I'm going to end the interview because my parking's about to run out. Charlie, thankyou very much.