Future – HOW TO BE;

KATIE; gracious;

**“It is a story of grace that I have been saved again and again. “**

The final part of Katie’s interview touches on everything from her fear to her hopes for the future. We discuss how becoming a parent changes every aspect of life as well as relentless optimism and its place in the modern world. Katie never held back and was ready for every question and this is a very special, and meaningful, interview. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Katie’s pronouns are “she/her”.

What is your biggest fear? How do you prevent that from taking over?

[long pause] I don’t have many things [that I am scared of] which is amazing. The people pleasing thing is something which plays on my mind in terms of the fear aspect. I constantly think I have done something wrong or that I haven’t done enough. How do I prevent it? I have to talk it through. I talk with Robbie a lot and, this might be a sweeping statement but, I think a man thing is to be able to compartmentalise: thinking like “they will be them, you will be you. Move on, don’t stress”. Sometimes I need Robbie to tell me that I have been brilliant and the fact I am second guessing myself is a people pleasing thing but there isn’t truth in it. As with most overthinking anxiety based habits in our brain, they are usually ‘us’ based: they are things we have imagined in our head almost. You don’t want somebody to say “it’s all in your head, buck up” but it’s nice to hear from someone else that you have done all you can. Sometimes you need someone who is able to put things in perspective because they are outside of the situation. I just don’t want to upset someone accidentally. I need to talk about it but sometimes I will get there myself. But sometimes it’s just about me coming on period! Hormones do random things to my emotions.

What is something you really want to do that you’re not doing? Why aren’t you doing it? What can you put into place to achieve it?

All the things that I want to do over the next year I am putting in place now. I am talking to live agents now, putting together a tech rider, putting a new setlist together and working towards that. I am potentially looking at making new merch. I love fashion! All I wear is big, baggy t-shirts with patterns on so why don’t I have any merch? I don’t know. I have got in touch with a female graphic designer who will make a new logo for me and incorporate that onto tie-dye t-shirts. A big personal goal at some point is to become a mum and I am not doing that just yet. Why not? Because I love my job. I am not admitting that when I do that I won’t be able to pursue songwriting anymore because I will be able to but I know it will change things. I don’t want to be naive in the fact that having kids changes everything in your life. My darling husband has had crazy success and just signed to a major label and now his, and my, future has changed massively. That affects us having kids because that could mean I am the stay at home mum. And, let me stress, that is no lesser in any way. It’s just different than what I had originally thought. I understand that when you have kids your thought processes change: it might be that I never want to leave them and I might want to leave songwriting behind. The children might fulfil me more. But then also, I might miss songwriting still and want it to evolve into something else. That need for work will still always be a passion of mine.

What type of outlook on life do you have? Where do you think that comes from?

Relentless optimism. Everyone has always told me that my entire life. I think optimism can also equal naivety and, in the past, that has led me to bad situations. It made me hold onto bad situations longer than I needed to. My optimism might be to the detriment of myself sometimes but it does mean I can almost sail through life because nothing feels bad. For that, I am grateful. You are easily pleased. Somebody could bring me an oat milk flat white and a chocolate bar and that’s my day made. A lot of people argue the nature vs nurture thing but I feel I was born with this. My sisters are different to me. They both have a fraction of optimism but I have the most. Some of it comes from my parents but I do think I was born with it. I’m not sure where it stemmed from. I have always been like it and it’s strange. There is something about nature rather than nurture.

What book/album/film/artist has changed your life? What did you take from that?

The bible. It comes into my life day after day and has done for my whole life. I read it most days. It is an unchanging book which has been present since day dot. It’s not everything that I live my life by but it is a huge factor. Scripture has changed the way I think; the way I live; the way I am towards other people; the way I am as a person; how I cope; how I learn; how I work; how I love. The bible has changed everything for me.

What song should we listen to whilst reading this about you?

“Top Of The World” by Kimbra. It’s very feminist and powerful. It is proclaiming out loud what you are good at. That’s what that means to me.

Name five beautiful things in life. Tell me why you think they are beautiful.

Little babies. New, pure, innocent, unjaded, bitterless kids. They are beautiful because of that. They are untouched by the things of the world. They are what they are and they cannot be anything else because nobody has taught them how to lie yet. They bring their full selves to you, even before they can talk, and I love it. Their smile is pure joy.
Music is beautiful. My whole life is built around this. No matter what country I am in, what culture I am experiencing, no matter how you identify – music is the common ground. You will always be able to understand music together. Music is music and is always inspiring. You can communicate anything through music.
The earth. Flipping heck! When I want to see God’s beauty, that is what I do. I go out and see it. We need hope right now but seeing buds and flowers, as hippie as it is, there is something about connecting with the human spirit when you see something burst forth from what looks dead. You can see a whole reflection of the sky in a lake and that is untouched by man. That is one of the biggest things.
I see a lot of beauty in love. I mean affection. When I walk along the street and you see a child holding someone’s hand, and I recognise that need for affection: when I see my husband’s neck full of whiskers: when I pat my mum on the back because she is unpacking. Physical love is very beautiful. The closeness you get from physicality is beautiful.
I want to say food! When I cook meals, I go to the nth degree to present them beautifully. It sounds stupid but I get so much pleasure from laying things out beautifully. With cooking, there is colour, taste, and smell which makes it more than two dimensional beauty.

If you could sum up your life so far in one word, what would it be and why?

Grace.
I have made some seriously bad decisions in my life. When I look back on them, they could’ve so easily changed the course of my life to a bad path. To a path where, ultimately, I would be unhappy and unfulfilled. Somehow, even though and despite these bad decisions, I have ended up with my perfect life. The prominent feeling in my head is gratitude. I have been shown so much grace no matter what. It is a story of grace that I have been saved again and again.

What do you think the meaning of your life is?

To love. In whatever form that is. I want to love everyone around me to the best of my ability. I want to support, encourage and enthuse them. I want to love people back to life. I want to love alongside. I want to love moving forward. I want to love whilst stuck in the mud. I want to love whilst things morph. I want to love evolution.

After talking through everything, what have you learnt about yourself and your life? What do you feel the need to reflect on?

I am aware that, during this, every time you have asked me to tell you something good about myself, I have always book ended it with something bad. That is interesting because I like to have a balanced and sober judgement of myself and I want to see the same thing from two different angles. It makes me understand other people well and accept that. I might be able to see something bad but I think “yeah they are like this too, though, and that’s great”. Clearly I do that a lot with myself too. I don’t always need to put the negative spin on it too: for myself, I could just say what I am good at. I need to be invested in the truth of what I am.

My open letter to Katie will go live tomorrow.

You can follow Katie Sky on her YouTube channel, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook page. She also has a huge catalogue of songs available on Spotify and Apple Music.

STU; resilient;

**“Whatever makes you different can be your superpower.”**

In these final eight questions, Stu and I discussed the other parts of him: from fears to aspirations; outlooks to the meaning of his life. Stu never held back with anything and laid his cards bare on the table which made for some incredible answers.

It’s been a joy to talk to Stu like this and I hope you have all taken something from it.

Stu’s pronouns are “he/him”.

What is your biggest fear? How do you prevent this from taking over?

My biggest fear is loneliness. Being an only child, weirdly I am one of those people who doesn’t like their own company. I do stupid shit when I am on my own because my brain does a wobble. To end up being really lonely would be a nightmare. That is a fear of mine. My friends tell me to do things on my own (which I have done but they’re rubbish) because I do like to have people around me all the time – maybe in a co-dependant way but hopefully not. When I used to live on my own I found that really difficult. I prevent that by hitting people up to make plans but the older you get you realise that people don’t want to meet up in the week because of work. God forbid they get to bed after 10pm! Then the weekend comes and people want to chill out because they’ve had a tough week. You can end up scrambling for things to do or people to meet up with. Luckily enough, I live with Alessio so I always have company and I also have this dickhead [cat]. I didn’t have siblings to play with growing up and it did make me jealous of people who had that. Whenever I had friends round, I was always the person that said “Stay for tea! Play another game! A few more hours!” because I didn’t want to be on my own by the end of the evening.

What is something you really want to do/start that you aren’t doing? Why aren’t you doing it? What can you put into place to achieve it?

Not a lot. I’ve always wanted to do a YouTube channel and now I’ve started it. I’ve always wanted to draw or make a comic book but never got around to it because of the confidence thing. “There are better artists out there. What the fuck are you doing? Why are you putting pen to paper when people can do this better than you?” That instantly stops me doing things. The thing that is stopping me is literally my brain. I need to start drawing for fun again. Just doodle. I can always think of other things to do instead though. Last year, I wanted to do a drawing of each drag artist I know. I started with Ruby [Rawbone] and never did another. I had the wrong paper so bought a new pad but never started again. I used the paper to make little notes to send to people instead!

What type of outlook on life do you have? Are you naturally positive? Where do you think that comes from?

I have a fairly pessimistic outlook on life and that comes from the depressive side of my brain. That’s the most honest answer you’ll get from me. Part of my brain tries to say it’s realistic. I try to look for the best in people and think the best about them but in situations to do with me, I am always pessimistic. A pessimist is never disappointed as they say.

What book/album/film/artist has changed your life? What did you take from it?

I can whittle this down to two things.
From an early age, I have always read comics. I understood myself more when I started to read X-Men comics. The X-Men are an allegory for minorities, as we know. I was growing up and not understanding anything about my sexuality (because it was the 80s and 90s with Section 28) in a small town, you just hear and see things on TV and know that whatever you are is “wrong”. This is a comic I was reading where people were born different and they used that to celebrate themselves and help people. I was always reading Batman, Iron Man, Catwoman and they all wore masks. None of the X-Men did that except Wolverine. These people were out and proud. They had codenames but used their real names too. They were superheroes that didn’t mind seeing being seen and were proud to be different. Even Nightcrawler who had blue skin and looked like a monster! Everyone was afraid of him but he was really nice and religious… and didn’t wear a mask. He let people see him. Given that, I hid in the closet for so many years and I probably shouldn’t have. I still read that comic. It’s nice that that was being seen and they were in the public eye. It gave me an outlook of a) don’t judge a book by it’s cover and b) whatever makes you different can be your superpower.
Second thing is obviously Garbage [band]. My mum always said she was worried I wouldn’t get into music because I was so into art and comics. She thought videogames would be my thing but she loves music. When I hit my teens, all I wanted to do was listen to music I went from pop to rave and everything that was around in the 90s: the weird hip-hop swing grunge. I latched onto that. I was the only one that gave a shit about NME, Melody Maker, Kerrang. Other people cared about what the Spice Girls were up to. In the 90s, indie rock was given the biggest platform it has ever been given. Female fronted bands had a massive surge in that time. It was huge – even that was in Smash Hits and on Top of the Pops. I enjoyed that part of it. These rebellious women were there and my brain instantly saw them as a woman in a man’s world doing something which men usually do [play rock music]. They were front and centre. They felt like me: not fitting in but not minding and doing my own thing, For some reason, Garbage came along. I heard “Vow” on the Evening Sessions and I remember having this massive stereo and the song started and, as soon as it kicked in and I listened to the lyrics, it kind of floored me. I sat on my ass to listen to the song. A few weeks later, they turned up on TV and from that moment there was something about it. These weird samples and hip-hop beats but it was rock and heavy and didn’t sound like BritPop. I saw the band and she was so striking. So beautiful but not conventionally so. The rest of the band looked like weird old men. I responded to that because they were freaks. I liked it. I saw an interview with Shirley and she was so forthright and very outspoken. Then that was it. I thought “this is what I’m into”.

What song should we listen to whilst reading about you?

Something by Garbage. I dunno though. I’d say either “Queer” by Garbage (for obvious reasons) or my favourite song is “Push It”.

Name five beautiful things in life. Tell me why you think they are beautiful.

Music. The reason why is because the same song can mean completely different things to completely different people. It can create some beautiful memories that can help you out. You do a lot of healing with music – not like panpipes – but you can stuff to people’s lives with music.

Random acts of kindness that happen between strangers. I quite like that. I like to do something nice in the moment. You might never see them again but you’ve had a moment where you’ve helped them out for no other reason than you’re another reason and I should help you. I find that beautiful but the way we are now is mistrusting and it doesn’t happen often. People don’t want their actions to be misconstrued and that’s a shame.

Connecting at the end of a night. I have so many memories of being with all my friends in a circle after a gig or club night and we would all be singing at each other at the top of our voices. Having that connection is really beautiful and something I always remember.

Support. I mean all types of support. It might mean nothing to one person but means something to someone else. Not necessarily being supportive, not like “I’m always there for you” but I have people on Facebook who never come to my shows or live near me but, for algorithms sake, they will share an event of mine. It helps with reach and that kind of support is beautiful. There are some people I haven’t seen since school but it’s that little “I’ve got you” wink can mean a lot to someone. It’s really strange that we don’t all do it. It doesn’t take a lot to support someone. It doesn’t have to be monetary either! It can be showing up or a recommendation or sending a playlist. Everything creates ripples in my head.

Purple is beautiful.

If you could sum up your life so far in one word, what would it be and why?

Long! [laughs] and Wide! No. There isn’t one word but it would be doing a little bit of everything.
My thing is that, for years, I have tried to do so many different things. People might see that as a lack of focus but I am always looking for new things which I want to give a go and see where it takes me. Everything in my life has led onto something else. I met a guy at a job who wanted to go to gigs but didn’t have anyone to go with so I started going with him. We started a Facebook group where we reviewed the shows and then a magazine reached out to us to write articles for them but we had to take down the group on Facebook because we were taking all of their traffic. They didn’t say it in those express words but they wanted us. It reached a point where I could pick and choose what I wanted to go to because I was so reliable. That ended up with me going to BeachBreak festival to review for them. I got given free swag and backstage access which was amazing. I ended up blagging my way into various interviews and I met everyone on the bill: Friendly Fires, LadyHawke and shit loads of people. The pinnacle was Dizzee Rascal. I realised I didn’t mind doing that or being on camera and that got me into managing a band. I managed them for a little bit. Through managing a band, I started putting on my own gigs so we did the whole thing ourselves. I did it all: marketing; posters; social media. Through that, I realised I enjoyed putting on events which led into me doing makeup for Halloween gigs and then I wanted to be a special effects makeup artist. Then I did bits and bobs for magazines which, years later, fed into Punka. Everything felt random with me trying everything but it’s all followed on. For the past ten-fifteen years, I’ve done it all and it’s all paid off with Punka.

What do you think the meaning of your life is?

I don’t think we do know. I don’t think anyone’s life has to have meaning. It’s what you do with it that should matter. The legacy you leave. If you’re a bit of a shit in your life, that’s what you’ll be remembered for. If I’m only remembered for Punka, then I don’t mind that. Asking big questions like this is all good but it’s the little things you do which make bigger ripples in life which affects other people. Not being a dick is what I’m here for. I’m just trying to put a bit of positivity out.

After talking through all of this, what have you learnt about yourself or your life? What do you feel the need to reflect on?

I’ve learnt that I talk a lot. I love a natter.
I’ve got a long way to go in the way I see myself in terms of my confidence in myself and my abilities. That’s my problem. This week has been a really good example. In my interview, I outlined my strengths and weaknesses. My weakness is that I can do whatever I put my mind to – anyone can – but the problem is my brain letting me do it. It’s that imposter syndrome. I’ve been at Punka and you have been like “look at this! You have created this!” but I can’t cope. It’s like something else happens. [Ed: “But it’s not because you have made that happen!”] Yeah, I know but my brain won’t let me think that! In the last year of Punka, I started getting up at the end of the show to say a few words and that has helped with a lot of confidence. That has spiralled into me being confident enough to do a music show and go live on Twitch which then gave me confidence to do a YouTube channel. I work on my confidence with all of these things but it doesn’t stop it from being a thing.

My open letter to Stu will go live tomorrow.

You can catch Stu on his Instagram page or his YouTube channel.
Punka, his queer night, can be found on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.