What is at the Centre of Your World? #1

By Piper Delilah / February 2025

A Conversation with Laurie Bertram

Laurie Bertam is a twenty-four year old trained actor and chef. Currently london based, photography, poetry and music fill the gaps in his ever expressive style. Lauries creative endeavours include combining epic sound and imagry to create ‘undeniable feelings of vulnerabilty and emotion, kind of like when you hear an organ in an empty church.’

Piper: So Laurie, what is at the centre of your world?

Laurie: I think at the moment, the centre of my world is the conservation of energy and feeling and emotion. Which sounds quite negative, but I think it’s about building on the foundation that I think I have been laying for myself over the past few years.

Piper: Foundation in what sense?

Laurie: Being in London, being in a creative environment where it’s down to me at the end of the day, to do what I want to do. I don’t have to do this, could work at Tesco. I could… I  mean there is no problem with Tesco… Tesco is great! But you know what I mean. Creatives choose this life, it’s discipline, and it’s accountability. Accountability should be at the centre of my world. That’s my 2025 mantra, is to be more accountable for everything in my life. Just kind of be aware of what I am doing, rather than just doing it. Well, I am a very impulsive person. I think my impulse can sometimes stray off the path of what’s helpful. I’m just a vibe… I’m a vibe merchant…

Piper: A vibe merchant… I like that, that’s good. Second question, why write?

Laurie: Truly I think, although it’s a little cringe, it’s that male taboo of not being able to actually express yourself. Despite the fact I am a drama student, despite the fact I have sung my entire life, despite the fact my mother is a dancer, music and creativity have flowed through the house from an early age. I still feel that publicly, socially, saying how you feel as a guy, just doesn’t fly in a lot of places truly.

Piper: To add to that, why photograph?

Laurie: I love capturing moments that I see beauty in. Quite a lot of my photographs don’t necessarily have the structure or kind of general checklist that some people look for in a ‘good photo.’ But I’ve been told, and I’d like to think my photographs capture a quite specific moment. Which is obviously the point of a photograph, it’s a snapshot of a singular moment, a singular second. But I’d like to think that even despite capturing such a brief moment, there’s always quite a good story behind each of my photographs.

Piper: It’s like, I always think when I am writing I should stop giving a fuck about what anyone thinks of my work because this is what I think about it. However, it’s difficult to get around that when you are trying to monetize.

Laurie: Yeh… this has been a project in the making for a while realistically, but then moving to Bread & Butter, and having people who will be like Go on then? Do it?’Then why not. There’s nothing to lose, other than a little first-hand embarrassment in the moment, which will pass.

Piper: That passes, I think the more you do the more you learn, and everyone is fairly self-absorbed by their own lives, granted. Even if in one moment you do feel embarrassed, Oh my.. whatever…

Laurie: … and are the other people in the room feeling that embarrassment, probably not.

Piper: If every time you walked into a room a song played, what song would it be?

Laurie: … ‘No, No, No’ by Dawn Pen would be high on my list. That’s a song that has truly been the heartbeat of my childhood I would say. It’s just a great tune, the beginning is so good, the first eight to ten bars. It’s a great entrance song.

Piper: Say you had all your photographs at risk of burning in a fire and you could only save one, which one would it be?

Laurie: It’s a close between one of five people walking along the beach perfectly silhouetted against the beach and the sky. Also one of my parents kissing each other in Africa.

Piper: I saw that one in the zine… I think you paired it with the Frog poem. It was the picture that caught my eye, then thought ‘AHH the poem!’ It’s comedy and tragedy in this endearing and silly way, I liked it a lot.

Laurie: Thank you.

Piper: Say someone gave you a box of all the things you’d ever lost and never found, what would you look for first?

Laurie: Realistically, my red DSi.

Piper: Really! I love that.

Laurie: It got stolen when I was about fourteen. There’s some epic voice notes, games galore. It was all in an old Cath Kidston wash bag with like 25 games. But I would also look for jewellery I’ve lost, I’ve lost some that I really treasured. But equally made my peace quite quickly with that, cause if you know its not coming back, you know hopefully someone else is…

Piper: … looking after it.

Laurie: … is wearing it with some provenance, at least I’d like to think.

Piper: Next question, Where do you get your kicks?

Laurie: I would say I like people who don’t care too much about looking ugly, looking gross, feeling gross. I quite… in fact, I really like that kind of human grossness that I think a lot of us shy away from in this day and age of freshly shaven perfection. When actually, some of the most beautiful human beings I know are rough around the edges..

Piper: … they have their idiosyncrasies.

Laurie: … for real! There’s so much beauty in ugliness, you just have to lean into it, we are all gross really. We are glorified apes, that have somehow managed to build buildings and build phones and write poems. I kind of always wanted to be an anthropologist or an archaeologist, or something to do with the human journey. It’s so fascinating to think, why we have become what we are now…

Piper: …Like how your sat in this room, recording something on a phone…

Laurie: I’ve got a tattoo on my arm, of a Scandinavian like sun symbol that someone has scratched into a cave painting like seven thousand years ago or something. And now its on my arm.

Piper: … thats mad.

Laurie: And I was just thinking about that caveman. Just scratching what he genuinely reverred as this like god-like symbol - of protection and heat and warmth and safety that fire or the sun brings. And… I bet he didn’t think it would end up on…

Piper: … on some guys arm, seven thousand years later.

Laurie: On some wannabe, trendy, east London, poet-photographer… kind of jokes.

Piper: What is something you hope people notice about you when they first meet you?

Laurie: I think all the way through school, and growing up into an adult, man… which i would say I am on the brink of realistically. I am getting there. My frontal lobe is almost developed. I think just, I would want people to see my softness, I am six-foot-five, a big bumbling idiot sometimes. But i would like to think that, my kind of care and compassion can be seen quite quickly.

Piper: I think so definitely, I feel like when I first met you I thought, ‘Ah Laurie is really sweet!’ Thats all my questions Laurie, thankyou so much.

Laurie: Thankyou too.