Happy Valentine's Day, with Love
"You deserve a lover who...believes that his embraces are a perfect match with your skin." ―Frida Kahlo
I’d been working on an essay that took far longer to complete than anticipated and ended up sending it last Sunday rather than Thursday as planned, which was particularly poor timing given the day.1 The essay does not just chronicle a year, but reveals how we experience and understand significant moments of cultural change. It’s about more than just time; it’s about the process of metamorphosis—specifically, how moments of cultural, technological, and social upheaval become visible and comprehensible. It examines how we make sense of profound transitions and the moments when multiple systems—technological, cultural, social—are simultaneously recalibrating.
2015 is presented as a kind of crucible or laboratory where future trends are being forged, where old and new coexist in tension. The essay looks at how we narrativise change—how we try to understand transformation by creating stories that connect past, present, and future. Some years are not just sequential moments, but complex ecosystems of possibility. 2015 was not just a year of passing time, but one actively constructing the future—a year where boundaries were dissolving between digital and physical, between past and present, between different modes of cultural expression.
Less about time itself and more about the process of transformation: How do we recognise when a fundamental shift is happening? How do we make sense of moments when everything seems to be simultaneously breaking down and reassembling? It’s one of my favourite pieces yet, and you can read it read it here.
I've always loved Valentine’s Day, undeterred by criticisms of its commercialism or the challenge of dining out on the 14th. After years of navigating busy restaurants on the day itself,