Your Name - WE HAD OTHER WORDS

WE HAD OTHER WORDS

12 Songs About the Things Men Couldn't Say

1932 • 2026

Twelve fictional lives.

Twelve different permissions.

A song cycle about the changing social cost of ordinary words:

he

him

partner

husband

we

FROM COMPULSORY CODING

TOWARD GREATER POSSIBILITIES FOR DIRECT LANGUAGE.

PROJECT HERO

WE HAD OTHER WORDS

12 Songs About the Things Men Couldn't Say

1932 • 2026

Twelve fictional lives.

Twelve permissions.

One changing question.

What happens to love

when language is more dangerous than desire?

LISTEN IN SEQUENCE

EXPLORE THE TWELVE LIVES

A twelve song concept album tracing the changing social cost of ordinary words between men across almost a century of British queer history.

WATCH / LISTEN

PLAY THE COMPLETE 12 TRACK CYCLE

1932 • 1937 • 1944 • 1958 • 1967

• 1972

• 1978

• 1986

• 1992

• 2001

• 2015

• 2026

PROJECT STATEMENT

WE HAD OTHER WORDS begins with a man who can barely permit himself to look at another man.

It ends ninety four years later with another man able to say:

“I loved him in daylight.”

Between those two moments are twelve different fictional lives.

A cinema seat.

A measuring tape.

Two knocks through a wall.

A coat on a chair.

A church threshold.

An address inside a shoe.

A private social room.

A printing press.

An empty chair.

A cassette.

A family dinner.

Two coffee mugs.

The album does not argue that history travelled neatly from oppression into freedom.

Law changes.

Language changes.

Rooms change.

Bodies remember older dangers.

Privacy can be protective or imposed.

Visibility can be liberating or unethical.

Community can offer belonging while retaining hierarchy.

Memory can preserve without granting unlimited access.

What changes across the twelve songs is something narrower and perhaps more intimate:

the amount of translation required.

WE HAD OTHER WORDS moves from compulsory coding toward greater possibilities for direct language.

Its final achievement is not spectacular.

It is grammatical.

Emotional.

Ordinary.

THE CENTRAL QUESTION

WHAT HAPPENS TO LOVE

WHEN LANGUAGE IS MORE DANGEROUS

THAN DESIRE?

And what changes when the danger moves,

but the body still remembers?

TRACKS / CHAPTERS0

01 • 1932 • THE PICTURE CHANGES • LOOKING

02 • 1937 • ANOTHER FITTING, THEN • TOUCH

03 • 1944 • THE WALL KNOCKS TWICE • SIGNAL

04 • 1958 • YOUR COAT ON MY CHAIR • HOME

05 • 1967 • THE MAN OUTSIDE THE CHURCH •CONSCIENCE

06 • 1972 • THE ADDRESS INSIDE MY SHOE • MOVEMENT

07 • 1978 • EVERYONE KNOWS THE KNOCK • BELONGING

08 • 1986 • SAY IT WITH THE DOOR OPEN • PUBLIC LANGUAGE

09 • 1992 • YOUR CHAIR IS EMPTY • GRIEF

10 • 2001 • WE LEFT THE LIGHTS ON • MEMORY

11 • 2015 • DINNER STAYS THE SAME • ORDINARY RECOGNITION

12 • 2026 • I LOVED HIM IN DAYLIGHT • DIRECT LOVE

HISTORICAL OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT

HISTORY AT HUMAN SCALE

The project does not use famous historical protagonists as its primary lens.

Instead, it asks what history does to ordinary grammar.

“He.”

“Him.”

“Friend.”

“Partner.”

“Husband.”

“We.”

None of these words is inherently historical.

Their historical significance depends on who may say them, where, when, to whom and with what possible consequence.

The songs therefore measure social change through ordinary behaviour rather than legislation alone.

SONIC WORLD

HISTORICAL GHOST • CONTEMPORARY BODY

Each track carries the acoustic memory of its year without becoming a period reconstruction.

The cinema projector of 1932.

Cloth and tailor's shears in 1937.

Radio air and divided rooms in 1944.

A kettle and visitor knocks in 1958.

A harmonium and kneeler in 1967.

Rail rhythm in 1972.

Dub space and communal rhythm in 1978.

Printing mechanics in 1986.

An unanswered metal chair in 1992.

Cassette playback in 2001.

Ceramic plates in 2015.

Two coffee mugs in 2026.

The historical world changes.

The production remains contemporary.

VISUAL WORLD

DARKNESS → ROOM → THRESHOLD → STREET → COMMUNITY → DAYLIGHT

KEY OBJECTS / MOTIFS

CINEMA SEAT

MEASURING TAPE

WALL

COAT

CHURCH DOOR

FOLDED ADDRESS

KNOCK

PRINTING PRESS

EMPTY CHAIR

CASSETTE

PLATE

COFFEE MUG

RESEARCH

LAW + LIVED EXPERIENCE

LANGUAGE + NAMING

WORK + CLASS

FAITH + SHAME

MIGRATION + COMMUNITY

RACE + BELONGING

VISIBILITY + CONSENT

HIV/AIDS + GRIEF

QUEER ARCHIVES

MARRIAGE + NORMALISATION

AGEING + RESIDUAL VIGILANCE

These are fictional lives.

The historical conditions surrounding them are researched.

GALLERY

VIEW ALL

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

SELECTED LYRICS

THE WORDS THAT BECAME POSSIBLE

FILMS

12 TRACK FILMS

ALBUM TRAILER

HISTORICAL CONTEXT SHORTS

OBJECT STUDIES

THE TWO HIT MOTIF

PRODUCTION NOTES

The album uses three recurring formal systems.

THE TWO HIT MOTIF

A pair of sounds changes meaning across ninety four years.

THE UNRESOLVED INTERVAL

A semitone repeatedly approaches resolution without fully arriving until the final track.

BREATH

Early breaths precede words that cannot quite be said.

The final breath precedes:

“I loved him in daylight.”

And this time the sentence follows.

CREDITS

RELATED PROJECT

The wider historical project examines concealment as atmosphere.

WE HAD OTHER WORDS moves closer:

into twelve rooms,

twelve bodies

and twelve changing acts of speech.

NEXT PROJECT

WHO TAUGHT LOVE ITS NAME?

A Philosophical Electro Cabaret in Twelve Questions

History changes the words.

Now the questions turn toward love itself.

Selected work

THE INDISCREET HISTORY OF A DISCREET LOVE

What happens to love when it cannot be named?

A 39 track multimedia project transforming more than two thousand years of queer memory, concealment and same sex desire into sound, atmosphere, performance and image.

PRIDE • VELVET • AFTER DARK

WE HAD OTHER WORDS

12 Songs About the Things Men Couldn't Say

1932 • 2026

Twelve fictional lives.

Twelve different permissions.

A song cycle about the changing social cost of ordinary words:

him

partner

husband

FROM COMPULSORY CODING

TOWARD GREATER POSSIBILITIES FOR DIRECT LANGUAGE.

WHO TAUGHT LOVE ITS NAME?

A Philosophical Electro Cabaret in Twelve Questions

Twelve songs ask what happens when love encounters definition, possession, shame, evidence, ageing, rejection, courage and mortality.

Before anybody decided what love was permitted to look like, did love already know?

THE QUESTIONS THAT SURVIVED US

Twelve questions.

No final certainty.

A philosophical song cycle travelling from existence to selfhood, other minds, identity, agency, memory, authenticity, love, meaning, suffering and mortality.

The final question is not:

What can we know?

It is:

What can we still choose when certainty never arrives?

Name of project

Name of video

Get in touch at [email address]