Notes from analog to digital
I’ve been sitting with a few things this month—ideas, sentences, moments that didn’t leave when the days moved on. They stayed, quietly insisting.
A still from Riz Ahmed's British English Hamlet
I listened, twice, to Riz Ahmed speaking about Hamlet and the line to be or not to be. Not as performance, but as recognition. He spoke about storytelling as something people lean into when the world stops feeling fair—something communal, something that belongs to all of us.
What stayed with me was the idea that stories don’t rescue us from difficulty. They sit with us inside it. In some quiet way, they love us back.
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Going analog a lot more: the motto for 2026
I was surprised by how deeply the idea of analog stayed with me. Writing about it opened something—so much so that I noticed how easily that kind of attention can make people uncomfortable.
I don’t think it’s the subject that unsettles them. I think it’s the act of staying with a feeling long enough to name it.
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Dare Bologun's mix for NTS radio features a lot of rare Nigerian regional music
I’ve been listening to a set by Dare Balogun on NTS Radio, built entirely from rare African recordings—music that lived on analog tapes, sung in local traditions, meant for weddings, celebrations, radio airwaves. Songs that were never intended to travel, never digitised, never shared with the outside world.
Discovering each track felt like being let into something private and generous. Every song arrived like a hug of unbridled joy—unselfconscious, communal, alive.
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Showing up on the mat day after day taught me something simple and difficult—that the growth that leads to change often lives inside the discomfort we spend so much time avoiding.
There were days when nothing else went as planned. But I realised I had something to anchor me that didn’t depend on other people. It lived inside me. After two months of consistency, I could feel it physically—something shifting, neurons firing, a quiet recalibration underway.
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We’re growing in ways that feel tangible. Next year, some of the work will move out of the studio and into shared physical spaces.
I find myself excited by the idea of making together—of mending, embellishing, learning by hand, and spending time as congruent beings rather than spectators. It feels like a natural extension of everything we’ve been holding quietly until now.
I’m learning that paying attention is its own form of care—for objects, for stories, for the lives we’re trying to live with intention.
Until next time,
Kareena