// while i was there. Which, in cosmic terms, was barely
The universe has been at this for 14 billion Lears. The creation of every star, every black hole, every ocean, every confused sea creature and every person, has been one long process of the universe figuring out how to look at itself.
I showed up somewhere near the end of that process with a camera from 1976 and 36 frames of film. This feels significant. It is probably not.
Every second that passes is gone eternally. I find this both beautiful and slightly inconvenient.
These are the glimpses
// Calle mambo
Barcelona is nobody’s city. I grew up there and still can’t quite claim it. But the pine trees in the sun and the sound of the ocean: those parts remember me.
We also walked part of the Camí de Ronda. Which is how we ended up on the cliffs between Lloret de Mar and Sant Feliu de Guíxols.
The cliffs are beautiful and, depending on your relationship with heights, mildly terrifying. Sophie has no such relationship. She is Norwegian. The hotels we booked after our walks of 28 kilometers had White Lotus energy. We fit right in.
Back in Barcelona we went to a concert. Calle Mambo. 5000 listeners on Spotify, including some family, a few loyal strangers, and four people from Amsterdam who had been waiting for this since they found them on a Tuesday afternoon. The singer had absolutely no interest in being calm about any of it.
// ubuntu
I visited kenya in january 2026 with my camera and 36 frames and whatever I thought I knew about the world. Kenya has been quietly existing for 570 million years, long before anyone had anything to worry about. At some point, without asking permission, ‘it’ simply includes you in all of it. This is, it turns out, non-negotiable. Your problems are still there. They just become very small and very far away. Most people call that healing. Kenya calls it Tuesday.
Ubuntu is a Nguni Bantu word. It means, roughly, I am because we are. The idea that a person is only a person through other people. That you don’t exist in isolation. That the self is, at its core, a collective project.
// Eddie izzard left a book in foyles
I found a signed Eddie Izzard book in a London bookstore once. Nobody warned me that was going to happen. That the universe was planning on winking at me – as i’m a great admirer of Eddie. I bought the signed copy immediately and asked no further questions. Eddie Izzard built an entire career on being gloriously, unapologetically himself. Some of us are still working on that.
I have an undefined love for London. It just quietly leaves things for you to find. Alan Watts also grew up just a few miles from here. That explains a lot.
// we meant to leave earlier
Somewhere on a small field, in a temporary city that will be completely dismantled by Monday, I fall in love with my friends all over again.
The music does something to the brain that neuroscientists are probably still arguing about. By Sunday you are measurably a different person than you were on Friday.
