I was in Milan for a couple of days this week for Salone del Mobile. Pretty much for nuja, if I'm being honest — a whole bunch of meetings that made the whole trip worth it before I'd even seen a single installation. The design and inspiration were the bonus. Which, I think, is a very specific kind of adult joy :)
Yasmine & Abdel 🤍
One of the evenings, I was out with Yasmine and Abdel — gorgeous souls from Dubai — sitting in Brera, doing exactly what you should be doing in Milan. Aperol. Good pasta. Long conversations. Completely comfortable. Zero plans.
At some point, I remembered this bar from the night before. Not fancy. Not aggressively cool or slick in that way Milan can sometimes be, and Dubai generally is. Just a big underground tunnel, all red, live music, rustic in the best, most organic way. The kind of place you end up in by accident and then think about for days (case in point). I'd had such a good time there that I obviously needed other people to experience it too.
So I looked it up on Maps.
160 metres away.
Which, in theory, is nothing. A two-minute walk. In practice, when you're already warm and fed and mid-drink and mid-laugh, it's just enough distance to not bother.
We (mostly they) did the thing where you weigh it up without saying you're weighing it up. And then I did the thing where you slightly oversell a place because you've already decided that’s where everyone will go.
"I promise it's worth it."
They were gracious about it. We paid, got up, walked the 160 metres.
Tiny entrance. At least a couple of hundred people spilling out in the street. A queue that looked more chaotic than it was. You get your drinks upstairs and then wait for space to open downstairs. In that moment of waiting, it was the kind of setup where you could very reasonably say actually, never mind, and go back to where you were.
We didn't.
We went downstairs and there was one singer. No big production. English songs, Italian tunes, the whole room completely locked in with joy, without anyone having organised it that way. Nobody enjoying just for their stories or followers. Just a genuinely brilliant night, already in progress.
We stayed for a long time. Barely drank. Just lived it in.
And at some point, I thought about how close we came to not being there. And not because it was far or complicated. Just because we were already comfortable, and comfortable can be so very convincing.
160 metres. That's the whole gap.
I'm not going to stretch and force fit this into something it isn't. But I will say, that night, and a few other brilliant moments in life I can think of, happened because someone said yes to a very small amount of inconvenience at exactly the right moment.
A lot of times, the good things are not out of reach; they're just a two-minute walk and the tiniest leap of faith away.
M.
M’s Currents
A small thing I loved this week: no structure or theme, just sharing some favourites.
Visual: My third time in Milan, and even though it wasn’t on the very packed itinerary, I made sure I walked to the stunning Duomo and video-called Mihir (husband person). Because, amore.
xx
Manuja
Not for everyone. Never was.
