Early Spring Dream: From the Lips to the Moon at Cafe Oto
Photos by Jack Batchelor
London can be a cruel mistress. She’s big, competitive, expensive, cold and worst of all, loveless. But on nights like the 21st of March, inside the cozy, iconic Cafe OTO, there’s an opportunity to escape it all for a couple of hours.
From the Lips to the Moon—a collective of multilingual, multi-instrument live improvisations—spearheaded by electronic musician and composer Pouya Ehsaei and performer-writer Tara Fatehi, are putting on another dreamy night of poetry and music. With them are musicians Kenichi Iwasa and Kahlil Ibn Barbara, and poets Belinda Zhawi and Zohab Zee Khan. The catch? They’re all meeting each other for the first time tonight. The entire set I’m about to watch will be improvised, a spur of the moment, and will demand everyone’s full presence—not only the performers’ but the audience’s too.
As I slip through the unassuming alleyways that lead like arteries to the heart of Dalston, I feel like I am leaving London, her pressures, her grip, behind for a couple of hours. I know the music, the poetry and the moment, will transport me to another world. It’s the exact balm a city like this must be counteracted with to not lose your mind.
When I arrive, fifteen minutes to show time, there’s a bustling crowd chatting animatedly outside—it’s a sold-out show, a common occurrence on these nights. I spot some regulars I recognise. I’ve been to a couple of ‘lipstomoon’ shows before, mainly at Reference Point—a library, bookshop and bar in central London—and the community that surrounds them is fiercely committed. Playing Cafe OTO is a first for them, and an exciting one. With shows at the Southbank Centre, the V&A, and multiple international venues, the duo boasts an impressive track record; Cafe OTO is another milestone on their journey and I’m excited to witness them fill the space with their eclectic, experimental energy.
I sit with Danyal and his sister Sophia and settle into my place by the piano. Danyal grabs me a pint and the show promptly commences.
It's the first day of spring
(the new year for many of us)
& in times of genocide
splash of tears, shrapnel & stale bread.
Tara opens the show. She’s dressed in a top made of what looks like crime scene tape that crosses her chest with the word ‘WARNING’ brandished loud and bold in a striking yellow. A red tutu fluffs outwards at her waist and a baggy pair of baby pink sweatpants finish the look. She reads a poem from a small square of blue paper. She’s confident, beautifully expressive, and clearly in control. She guides the audience seamlessly through her poetic landscape which ranges from fishmonger chat at the Canary Wharf market to affecting images of war-ravaged zones. Her range is as big as the urgency with which she performs. To be present is, after all, a challenge to stay sensitive.
everyday life is her main source of inspiration, conversations overheard on a bus, at a café. It’s a reminder that other worlds are all around us.
Pouya steers the musical ship; a ship that stays on stage for the entirety of the performance. He makes beats—fashions the soundscapes that direct the rhythm, tempo and energy of the room. His sounds are at times playful, at others slow and serious—but always ethereal, spacey. Kahlil is playing the cello, Kenichi is playing a range of percussion and wind instruments and the first surprise guest of the evening, Parham Bahadoran, is playing the sorna (an ancient Iranian woodwind instrument). They weave their sounds in and out and around each other, rushing and receding like waves. While the sorna rumbles like something slithering through grass, the cello’s sounds ground Pouya’s beats, bringing them to a more terrestrial plane, bridging the gap between space and earth. Together they’re a tapestry of sounds, a carpet on which to lay and float away.
It’s Nowruz. And the equinox. Spring is in the air. They were strangers before tonight but the sense of coming together, of a controlled chaos is palpable, and indeed, the name of the game when it comes to From the Lips to the Moon. Improvisation demands bodily presence, an activation of the senses, a deep listening that ripples into a series of consecutive calls and responses that start to build paths, roads, landscapes, note by note, word by word, through which the audience walks as if in a dream.
A broken beat
& a fractured cello
a pulse, the dolls swing.
Small dolls hang from the pipes on the stripped back ceiling, sweetly bizarre, somewhere between childish and unsettling, like a trip through wonderland. The dolls go everywhere From the Lips to the Moon go and some in fact have travelled far to be here. One particular doll was picked up at a small local market in Mexico City when the duo went to perform last year. They serve as a visual reference, an anchor for the audience who will recognize the figures from past shows, but also work as an anchor for the newcomer, who will start to understand the tone of the show. Much like the swinging dolls, the blocks upon which they set up their artistic camp are futuristic, colourfully surreal and fantastical—like looking through a kaleidoscope.
From the Lips to the Moon takes its name from a line in a book by Iranian writer Mohammad Reza Safdari, a key figure in Iranian magic realism who was a teacher to both Pouya and Tara. Drawing on a magic realist imagination and language, their mise-en-scène is an immersive cinematic experience. Pouya’s sounds are dreamy, punk and nonconformist. At Reference Point previously, I have seen them collaborate with 2 Digit Visuals who projects moving images created real time in response to their poetry and music. The effect is hallucinogenic. Tara frequently embodies characters, speaks in voices, sings, modulates her pitch, volume, moves her body in myriad ways to fit different characters. Speaking to her afterwards, she tells me that her process draws from people she encounters in her immediate surroundings—that everyday life is her main source of inspiration, conversations overheard on a bus, at a café. It’s a reminder that other worlds are all around us. Escape into fantasy is possible at all times. But of course, politics, war, the news, is all around us too, all too present, all too evident. The poets Zohab followed by Belinda come on, as does the second surprise guest of the night, the poet Nia Fekri.
An orange is an orange is an orange
beat as heartbeat
how do you say peace in Hebrew
whistle
clarinet like drifting down the Nile
like snakes in the summer heat
like running my hands through your hair.
The music carries the rhythm the night
let the music take you, deepen, hang low,
where the fuck is my equality?
Zohab has a keffiyeh hanging from his belt. He looks down on the mic and speaks the truth about Gaza. Belinda’s voice echoes lowly, she repeats “where the fuck is my equality.” Fantasy and science fiction are some of the most effective tools through which to reveal the injustices that plague our current world. Propelled by the abstract, by the sounds and rhythms of the musicians composing in real time, the words act as symbols for the type of world we live in. What rings out, what is familiar is pain, injustice—they are the great equalizers.
the blocks upon which they set up their artistic camp are futuristic, colourfully surreal and fantastical—like looking through a kaleidoscope.
In a world of fantasy, dreams and childlike things, what From the Lips to the Moon offers is an entry into a new subjectivity. To me, that is what all great art promises: a peek into another reality. A road trip, with pit stops at the end of the world — which looks uncannily like the very world we move and think through every day of our lives.
Fantasy and science fiction are some of the most effective tools through which to reveal the injustices that plague our current world
Once the show ends, I hang around, smoke a cigarette with Belinda and Danyal, and slowly float back into the real London night. Of course, I never truly left, I just hopped onto a different frequency, one emitting waves and resonating nonstop all around me at all times. Before leaving, I pick up the guest book, a chunky journal full of drawings, scribbles, thoughts and messages left by different audiences over the past couple of years since From the Lips to the Moon started in 2022. Page after page of responses, affectations, feelings, all produced to the beat of the duo. A sketch of the cellist Kahlil is captioned ‘Spring has Sprung!’ And indeed. London feels warmer, more hospitable, more open to the possibilities of bloom and blossom and radical change. Perhaps London isn’t so cruel after all, perhaps all she demands is you dream bigger.
Catch them at one of their next shows:
24 May at Jamminaround, Dorset
7 June at Shubbak Festival, London
19 June at Turner Contemporary, Margate
27 June at The Rose Hill, Brighton
Find out more on their website.
Pouya Ehsaei is a composer, live electronic musician, and sound designer, and winner of thr Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award. He has released two solo albums, There (2014) & RocRast (2020), and two albums with his band Ariwo. His performances span Royal Albert Hall, Montreux Jazz Festival, Barbican, Womex, Womad, and more, with works featured at Venice Biennale, Contempo Fest, and international theatres, galleries, and cinemas. Website | Instagram
Tara Fatehi is a performer, multidisciplinary artist, and writer, and the first ever artist-in-residence at the UN Archives (Geneva). Tara works with voice, dance, dark humour, mistranslation, multivocality, polyphony, and playfulness. She has performed worldwide at Nottdance, Teatro o Bando, Alkantara, Montpellier Danse, Juli Danse, Edinburgh Horizon Showcase and many more. Her poetry and text are published in multiple languages, including her book Mishandled Archive (LADA, 2020). Website | Instagram
Arcadia Molinas is a writer and the online editor of Worms.
