From the Lips to the Moon Takeover
Hello, Salaam
We are Tara Fatehi and Pouya Ehsaei – two experimental artists from Iran based in London. We co-run From the Lips to the Moon, a surreal music, spoken word and performance project. We’re taking over Worms’ newsletter to tell you about our new album, and the experiment of clashing words into music without knowing where it would land, until it became a diary of moments and feelings shaped by war in the weeks before its release.
Photo by Jemima Yong
POUYA EHSAEI: Yes, you caught us at the wrong time. We don’t know what’s happening anymore and we know that this is intentional. They breed in our confusion and thrive in our division. This body of text is not correct, factual or from a perspective that sees all the angels. This is about our two angels, angles? What does it mean to have an angle when everything is flattened out and we’re all spread out on a paper thin plane of nothingness?
TARA FATEHI: Threnkai ulúsh ve’mora zhai, kithu neralé oshen varu dremkai – things don’t need to make sense for them to make sense. No response to paging … The number you have dialed is not available now … The number you have dialled is not recognised … The number you have dialed … khastast, zellast, khashmgin ast. Brain fog. Fog. Fog. Paralysis. For those who will read this in an unknown future: on 28 February 2026, the US and Israel started a war on Iran, bombed a primary school in Minab and killed 156 civilians including 120 schoolchildren. And that was day one.
P: On the morning of 28th of February, the first thing I saw on my mobile was a message from my sister on WhatsApp.
Pouya, while we still have internet, I wanted to let you know, we’re ok.
I checked the news instantly … It has finally happened. The internet was already out so I couldn’t reach my mum and sister and calling didn’t work either. Ever since I was a child the shadow of war was there. We had become numb to the pressure but it was always there.
All morning, I was also thinking: do we do our live show at Cafe OTO tonight? Is it right to be on stage when you have no idea what’s happening to your loved ones? Can we hold ourselves together?
T: On the morning of 28th February, the first thing I saw was a solidarity message from my friend Alia and a voice message from my sister which ended with ‘internet still works but phone lines are shut down’. The night before I had written something (a poem?) to read at our event on the 28th. It was mostly in Farsi because as we say in Farsi ‘My English wouldn’t come’. It had lines like ‘I wish we didn’t have to wake up to the news of Mr this and that talking about fighter jets this and that’, ‘I wish we hadn’t seen so many corpses’ (thinking of the January massacre in Iran).
P: On my way from the green room to the stage, a friend grabbed me and told me, Khamenei is dead! That moment and news is still surreal to me. Khamenei, the “supreme” leader of Iran who I hated ever since I was a teenager is killed by bombs of a genocidal zionist regime who I hate to my bones with the help of “USA! USA! USA!”. He died in his house, without a trial, a hero in the eyes of many.
Now, 3.45 AM, Tehran, We woke up to the sound of bombs, electricity is gone.
T: Bombs rattle your house, your heart, your nerves. Fighter jets across your neighborhood make you hide in the bathroom where there are no windows. Distance from those you love can crush you. Meanwhile, liberation and human rights are pushed further and further back and collapse somewhere in the horizon, under the weight of fear. Maybe I should ask Gemini to make this text a bit lighter? More fun?
P: What do you call the feeling when your life crumbles before your eyes and you are powerless to stop it? What do you call it if, all your life, you knew this would eventually happen? What is it called when you have watched it happen to others—many of them your friends—only to finally see it happening to you? Whatever it’s called, you’ve seen others find a way to cope. So maybe you can too? Since moving to London, I have lived two lives: one here, and one back home. What happens when one of those lives is under bombardment while the other continues as normal – even, in some ways, enabling the destruction of the first?
There’s something weird, some of the bombings since last night don’t have a sound, it only shakes. It’s like they’re bombing underground.
T: The first two weeks, I was in rehearsals for a new dance project in Denmark: holding hands, hiding tears, keep dancing, collapse, get up. Those I spoke to in Iran didn’t sleep properly for forty nights. Those of us who were far away spent 10, 12, 20 hours a day looking at our phones – checking news updates, messages, and trying to connect. They learned about fighter jets, bombs, precision strike missiles, ballistic missiles, interceptor missiles, air defence, and micro air vehicles – their noises and their shapes. We learned about new calling apps, which for the most part failed. Many sent messages of love, hugs, fear, no words. Some went about their lives, hung out with colleagues in pubs in Farringdon after work, or watched Liverpool vs Tottenham.
And in this chaos Choppers was released – literally about choppers and tanks approaching, about money, war, and consumerism.
I can’t quite tell, maybe it’s a drone. But it felt like a bomber jet.
P: On 28th of March I was playing a late night live set at a club in London. The next morning I found out that a few buildings down from my mum’s house, where I still call home after 18 years of living in the UK, was bombed around the same time as I was playing. In one frame I am playing experimental techno music in the middle of a dancing crowd in Hackney, in the other my mum is running down the stairs because the whole house is shaking. On the phone, she sounded scared, she was shaken. She is the strongest person I have ever known. Before this she only laughed at my stress and worries. She still does! I stress them out.
“And Heavier” was released a few days later ‘that house full of things that get heavier and heavier’ (Tim Etchells).
Waiting for the atomic bomb! It seems they are hitting the roads leading to Tehran so no one can leave. Long story short, Tehran will probably be destroyed tonight. Today Sam sent me a short video clip of my mom and dad.
T: The first time I saw videos of fire near our home in Tehran, something heavy sank from my throat to my knees. The brutalist neighbourhood that was always known for its resistance to earthquakes is not safe from bombs and drones. At other parts of town: rivers of burning oil, towers of fire. My friend, who thinks war is the solution, reminds me to post that there’s no internet in Iran. Hmm, I thought I had.
P: Talking about the socio-political situation in Iran is like playing Twister while you’re drunk. You have to twist and turn to hit all the right spots, somehow staying upright while your whole body shakes, on the verge of collapse.
Old Photo, featuring MA.MOYO was released a few days after Trump threatened to wipe Iranian civilisation out.
T: Things don’t need to make sense for them to make sense. We rest in nonsense and hold on to that feeling that churns our hearts, and maybe nonsense makes sense.
And here we are at this angle—of time, of history and place—looking out … When will the next one fall? Our album is a record of wars, genocide, empires, and ways of confronting them, made with musicians and writers who performed with us in the past 4 years of holding From the Lips to the Moon shows in London and beyond. Expression is the way we exist. Join us via @lipstomoon
From the Lips to the Moon’s album is out 8 May on Akazib Records, followed by a live show and launch on 15 May at Cafe OTO, London.
From the Lips to the Moon album artwork by Farhad Qashqai
Reading Recommendations:
NOISE COMPLAINT poetry collection by From the Lips to the Moon
In times of darkness poetry collection by From the Lips to the Moon
Fantasia poetry collection by Nisha Ramayya
Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Tehran by Roody
