Born Angus Fairbairn, Alabaster DePlume is a spoken word poet and saxophonist based in London and Manchester. In 2015 he began doing an improv jazz series called Peach at London’s Total Refreshment Centre, putting out an album of the same name. In 2020 he released To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1, named after two men he assisted as a mental health support worker, followed in 2022 by the critically acclaimed Gold. DePlume’s new album, Come With Fierce Grace, is released on International Anthem on 8 September. This month he plays We Out Here festival, Green Man and Stowaway; he tours in November.
1. Book
When I love a book I give my copy to another person, so I don’t have any copies of Jeanette Winterson. I recently gave this book to a friend. It’s about making aspects of a creative person’s life that are useful for connecting people available to those who don’t have a creative career and don’t believe they can. And I love that. Where I work on healing, I want the tools to be useful to everyone. There’s a humility about Kae – they’re very open in their criticism of themselves, and have a great, earnest way of communicating that I really admire.
2. Theatre
Oklahoma!, Wyndham’s, London
Because of various things about my personality type, people assume I go to the theatre a lot: I do not, and I certainly don’t go to musicals. But I ran into Anoushka Lucas – who is excellent, and is doing her own show called Elephant at the Bush theatre – and she said she was playing in Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma!. It’s really dark: blood on people’s faces while they’re singing about belonging to a land. I was left watching a cheery dance with a hollow feeling and felt, just for a moment, what it might be like to be a woman while the men around you destroy one another and themselves.
3. Art
Malak Mattar at Garden Court Chambers, London
Malak Mattar is an amazing Palestinian artist who started painting during the 51-day siege on Gaza in 2014. But her paintings are not about feeling miserable: they’re bright, bold and alive, with a graceful humanity. Her work is not hidden behind artifice; it’s clear. There is a bravery to it, putting things truly. My friend pointed out that the people who put this [private] event on are lawyers, some of them working on refugee law, and I admire that about it as well: you can just make art, and it doesn’t have to be part of the art industry for it to be a great thing.
4. Martial art
Jiujitsu
It sets my heart free to go and do jiujitsu. Some people think that doing martial arts is about sublimating your negative emotions. We don’t mind people thinking that, but that’s not what it is, in my experience. It’s more about becoming intimate with my limitations, accepting myself. I go to a community-run session in Highbury that costs £8, and it’s changed everything. I’ve got a different connection with my body since I started doing this: I want it to be well, so that I can do my jiujitsu. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done for my state of mind.
5. YouTube
Thich Nhat Hanh
We lost Thich Nhat Hanh recently: he was a Buddhist monk and the founder of Plum Village, a monastic community in south-west France. He has influenced me in an immense way. I found his YouTube videos so helpful, especially the one on letting go. He is teaching me to meet with my feelings, to meet with my pain. He says: “Hello, my little pain. I know you are there. I am home to take care of you.” I know some of you, readers, are suffering. If you are suffering, I send you to Thich Nhat Hanh.
6. Music
Armenia is under attack from Azerbaijan, but you can visit and hang out in the wonderful capital, Yerevan. I went there to meet a friend and we went riding on horses nearby. There’s some brilliant Armenian folk music on NTS radio, which has been collected by Lucia Kagramanyan. Shepherd’s Song, by Artak Asatryan, has a lyrical, wistful feeling of yearning with dignity, which is a great combination. It’s like a voice from another world: you feel the space it comes from and you can feel the distance, but it is nonetheless strangely, eerily familiar.
