Time, Memory & the Stories That Sustain Us

In this meandering, intimate conversation, writer Nneoma and friends explore how time bends—through childhood food memories, dissertation frustrations, and the radical act of washing dishes.

Key Moments:

• Dissertation as Spiritual Practice: Nneoma reframes academic angst: "You need dissatisfaction to create. Annoyance is my muse."

• The Chicken Skin Theory of Time: A vivid memory of trading meat pie crusts with her brother collapses decades—"When details hit, I shrink back to childhood."

• Clock Time vs. Body Time: "Colonial time standardizes, but mind time stretches—like when you’re 8 and summer lasts forever."

• Museums as Cemeteries: "Objects only live in context. Display cases turn sacred things into dead artifacts."

Why It Resonates:
A love letter to nonlinear time—where photos ground us, stories recycle themselves, and healing lives in the soapy water of a sink. "We don’t own our memories, but they sure own us."

Read Full Transcript

Nneoma Immaculata Abba: Hi.

Sheila Chiamaka Chukwulozie: Hi Nneoma my darling girl.

Nneoma: people it's actually recording from the go.

Sheila: yes now. Where would it be recorded from?

Nneoma: I don't know from the stomach maybe

Sheila: from which parts which parts of the body, it’s so nice to have you here

Nneoma: I know

Sheila: almost everything that we do you're like such a go to like yeah. I love it.

Nneoma: I am always thinking about you guys that’s all.

Uzoma: Yes, you've been putting us on and we're just very grateful

Sheila: We are so grateful. Can we do second collection Nneoma?

Nneoma: you guys should just join my research life span and like…

Sheila: But you know we are already in it.

Nneoma: I know I'm actually know, I know.

Sheila: We are in it. How are you guys? Sorry you guys just give me one second

Uzoma: um I will answer, actually Nneoma, should we should we call you Immaculata for the purposes of this call?

Nneoma: Either one. Both of them work, I always introduce myself as both.

Uzoma: Okay

Nneoma: Okay, so I'm currently doing my nails. And I lit a candle and my sister is in the bathroom taking a bath but our bathtub is really weird. Like it's never comfortable. So, she's googling like, what should the that feel like? so there's a very general sense of calm and chill in the house.

Sheila: I think Yeah. Even yesterday, I actually brought diaphragm breathing into someone's life but he was now asking If I'm promiscuous does this affect? I was like, this way you can’t teach niggas things. Because they start asking you questions that have nothing to do with it. How does promiscuity have to do with diaphragm breathing?

Nneoma: Yeah

Sheila: Anyway, that's another podcast join us on. Uzoma how would you introduce yourself to Iris?

Uzoma: I would say. Hi Iris, I'm out here trying to expand what we know, sorry, that's very vague. Like I'm very into the idea of like world building as a practice, right. I would watch maybe like Barbie and friends with iris. Because Barnie be doing that stuff. And like he's, you know, on some imagination.

Sheila: Is it Barnie the world builder?

Uzoma: For real lack imagination is a technology like that's his motor. I don’t remember much about Barney, I feel like I should. Yo Barney

Sheila: I only remember his obsession with celery, and he made me want to… that’s the thing about stories is that stories can make cool things that are not true. Celery does not taste good. And I was game for celery before I tasted it.

Uzoma: Yeah, I vaguely remember celery as well, they were just always doing stuff like with cardboard.

Nneoma: Yeah, always doing stuff together.

Sheila: I remember the cardboard? I remember that Barney was always encouraging people to do things together

Nneoma: Yeah,

Uzoma: yes. that's the energy I'm trying to like be on. So

Sheila: Actually. What piece of media brings you people like, into time the most?

Nneoma: For me is photography.

Sheila: What particular not the medium, the media, something that has been like the product something? Yeah.

Nneoma: If something whether it's digital, whether it's my eyes, or like, you know, like if I'm able to see a frame of something that is an image. I think like one, well, if I think of photography, like in varying aspects of life, or a product of you know, art or creative production, whatever, there's always an interesting, there’s something interesting going on there. That reminds me to pause and sit and pay attention that I like and he may in a more general sense, it's basically we're all like, therapists and like health, mental health, wellness people tell, keep advising me, which is, you know, grounding yourself, like, paying attention to the image in front of you to remind yourself that this thing is out there. This thing is, you are with something, you're not alone, this thing is growing outside you this thing exists to continue to be there. You know, like, that's what image does for me.

Sheila: What's your favorite image that does that for you?

Nneoma: Do I have one? I'll pass on that.

Sheila: Okay. Uzoma, do you have a piece of like, media that brings you back in time that just kind of like, it kind of shows you almost how far you existed on this earth? And does something to time for you?

Uzoma: I don't know. I don't think so. But I also don't think that’s a bad thing. Like the things that do that for me, they're not, they haven't been produced. Like existing in the world already. I just need to tap into that.

Sheila: So like what?

Uzoma: So, what's been doing that for me a lot is like doing the dishes, stuff like that.

Sheila: Oh, I like that.

Uzoma: Feeling the soap? Like, just the fact that I'm standing in front of the sink. That Yeah, so stuff like that. Media actually.

Sheila: It Reminds me of like, my brother just celebrated his birthday. And then he sent me a picture of him eating food. So, I now said you dey chop too much o. He now reminded me like, do you remember when we used to because every Friday, my dad used to have this thing called special dinner because my dad uses to live in a different state. So, he’ll come back on Friday. And then he would buy food from Mr. Biggs. So, we get the chicken and then maybe meat pie or something. So, the next Saturday was, you know that cartoon morning. Like in the morning when it caught? Me? Yes. So, I have to wake up early to watch it will now like keep like a Friday would have saved like maybe cooking and Miss pie, too used to exchange like maybe like for the crust of my meat pie. I collect the skin of his chicken. So specific, and I don't know, it just brings me once I hear a memory so detailed. I like I feel like a child. I feel almost reduced in size. I know the smell of the parlor. I know the like, even the color of time like how I don't know. And I see some pictures. I was sending someone that it was only when I was actually like my third year of college that I realized, oh my god, like black. Like when black and white movies were made. The world was not black on white.

Uzoma: Yeah,

Nneoma: yeah.

Uzoma: Yeah. Um, I feel like there's something there about like, about media and time. Like, my thoughts. As always, my thoughts are still forming as I'm seeing them but like,

Sheila: Uzoma change your name to my thoughts are still forming

Uzoma: I thoughts are forever forming, there's just something there. it's just so interesting. Like, the same thing is not the thing it’s I don't know. My thoughts are still forming.

Nneoma: Thanks. My thoughts are still forming

Sheila: But Nneoma I have a question.

Nneoma: Yeah,

Sheila: What? So, I was reading an essay yesterday. I haven't finished it was talking about how time goes probably goes as we grow older, like when you're older, your experience of time is faster than what you had as a child. And they were talking about the difference between mind time and clock time. I think that was what they called it.

Uzoma: And what of the environment? Outside is it bright? Is it dark?

Nneoma: It is the best, it is Grey. You know that London grey.

Uzoma: Yeah,

Nneoma: that's how grey it is. But it's really nice because that's what I need. Like right now I'm in the middle of writing my dissertation and the sun when it’s out, it’s just very taut. So, it's nice outside.

Uzoma: I had this thing when I was in uni in London

Nneoma: Yeah

Uzoma: I really struggled to do work or just be productive when it was sunny because it felt like a luxury and felt like such a waste to not be frolicking in the sun

Nneoma: Yeah.

Uzoma: So I feel you.

Sheila: I am just chewing silently to make sure that my chews don’t make an appearance on the call.

Uzoma: That's Real. But feel free to chew

Sheila: Anyway, I'll find out how you guys said you are when I relisten. Uzoma go please.

Uzoma: I'm sat on this like balcony terrace with a cup of detox tea. I'm actually… they just said detox tea I'm not sure what kind of detox tea it is, but it’s in this like really beautiful clay cup with a very cute tea set to match

Sheila: detoxifying colonization from your skin

Uzoma: sorry What?

Sheila: Please don’t mind me please go on.

Uzoma: And yeah, I'm happy. I really like terraces.Nneoma 3:24 Yeah

Uzoma: So yeah, I'm just I'm happy …this one is like a bit of both. But like usually they’re like glorify balconies I'll say like balcony without…

Sheila: Balconies without what?

Uzoma: oppression

Sheila: Wow. Please say more.

Uzoma: There's no ceiling, usually.

Nneoma: Oh,

Uzoma: this protrudes from the building but there's no ceiling usually balconies have ceiling.

Sheila: Do you Think ceilings are oppressive?

Uzoma: I'm just like, I want to see the sky you know like I want to look up. that's just me

Sheila: Nneoma how are you?

Nneoma: I was just telling Uzzy that I was calm. I'm chill. I'm generally very dissatisfied, which is how I am when I'm writing my dissertation or writing anything. Like you need to be dissatisfied you to feel like something's annoying you and you're trying to unannoy the thing. I'm good. I'm annoyed. I'm calm. I’m chill.

Sheila: That's so complex. That's so complex and complicated. So, like, basically, you're an academic because you like this unrest and unease.

Nneoma: Yeah, that's what’s happened.

Sheila: Wow. Because it happens to me too.

Nneoma: Yeah.

Sheila: But that's what makes you want to come and move back and do not do that.

Nneoma: Move Back where?

Uzoma: Why are you discouraging her?

Sheila: To Nigeria now

Nneoma: Sorry, move back where?

Sheila: Well, when you tried to come back?

Nneoma: I don't know that… I don't recognize… who? I have no recollection of what you are saying.

Sheila: I am weak. detox your memory detox your experience

Nneoma: It is gone I have no recollection. I was thinking about that just last week, because I've been feeling really good with life in general. And I was like, wow, I almost did not come back. Almost.

Sheila: What? Yeah, what was stopping you from going back to London?

Nneoma: Um, how much I hated like, my program my course. Being in university I was, my life like, where I was, I wasn’t. you know those, the way people talk about the dark night of the soul, you just feel like you literally cannot see beyond like you're so there in the pit of your life. Like, you know, this way fact that if your life had the graph, this is definitely a pit no matter where you go in the future. And I was just like, anything is possible. So why should I choose the one that I already dislike? Like, going back to this place? everything was going to be a bad option anyway? Why, like, you know, choose this one. Yeah, and it was going to be winter, I did not have friends, or I didn't think I had friends here. just didn't seem like a good idea.

Sheila: So, what changed?

Uzoma: Just what I was about to ask.

Nneoma: So, I was talking to one of my friends. And we just came up, this woman who I had researched with, in 2018. She came to my mind, I'm talking about her because we're talking about like, I don't know what we're talking about. I was just like, oh, let me email this woman and tell her you know what I am doing and where I am. Let's see what she has to say. And she was like, I understand what you're saying. I get you and I feel like I can’t sympathize with you because I am. I'm not in your situation can never be, but my father will always say it’s Just the thing that you know, you know or you feel would open, will leave your doors more doors open for you. And for me, I think going back to finish your masters is a thing, but you know, your life best. And I was just like, I actually needed someone to tell me something to do.

Sheila: But didn’t your parents try and tell you things to do? Is it that you didn't want to way, like the form that they were telling you?

Nneoma: Good question. I think it was because I didn't trust my parents with that part of my life. So yeah, I wasn't really giving value to that, so they had things at stake. Like they were paying my school fees. It was an investment, like they wanted returns on their investments. But this was a woman who, you know, she didn't have anything to get from it or anything, just giving me, her 2 cents And I trusted her with this part of my life.

Sheila: Before we go too far, with time because you know how it is with us talking. We are at a next thing we are in like 25 likes, so. I just want us to take a moment and introduce you but we'll have you introduce yourself.

Like how if you were introducing yourself to my one-year-old niece, Iris, who everybody knows I'm obsessed with?

Nneoma: Yes.

Sheila: Cause she’s so cute. How would you introduce yourself to her?

Nneoma: I would tell her my name is Immaculata or Nneoma depending on which one she likes. And generally, all my work, everything I do is an attempt to make stories or solutions that make people feel better, and make people feel like they know themselves a bit more.

Sheila: That's lovely.

Nneoma: Thank you. I've practiced this isn't my first time.

Sheila: I was gonna ask like, did it just come on the spot. Like, I mean, because now that you say it, it also clarifies some things because I think that you even make solutions through stories

Nneoma: Yeah. I think that but like, um, so I've been thinking about a business idea. And the whole time, the only way I've been able to think about it is this is a story. This is the story of the world I want. And it just happens to be a solution like it is a solution and a story at the same time.

Sheila: Yeah, exactly. one thing has at the top of my bed now is stories are sustaining structures.

Nneoma: Mm hm. Yeah. I still think it's in their form, which is you can always retell the story, you know,

Sheila: so like, stories are recyclable.

Nneoma: Yeah. Yeah.

Sheila: That’s actually amusing and like the better told stories are easy to recycle.

Nneoma: Yeah, I'm taking notes I mean

Sheila: oh my god is this where Uzoma gets his thing from?

Uzoma: No that's just me

Sheila: Uzoma is a premium note taker you'll be having conversations and next thing, he’s just quiet and I'm just taking notes.

Uzoma: Yep.

Sheila: Where did you pull out the note taking device from?

Uzoma: It is always present, always on me, take it artist is always present

Nneoma: Yeah. Okay guys so Introduce yourself or Have you done all of that already?

Sheila: Yeah, we've been doing it but maybe I'll try if I was introduced myself to Iris, I would tell her that hey, it’s me. Your Auntie shey shey the baddest bitch in the world full stop.

Uzoma: Is that what she calls you?

Sheila: No, she doesn’t, she doesn’t even call me anything she doesn't... I mean she.

Uzoma: So, you're projecting on Iris?

Sheila: Exactly. I personally used to introduce me as Sheila to like IRA my other nephew, but he just clung to Chiamaka.

Nneoma: Ewo.

Sheila: Obviously, this guy is an Igbo speaking nigga. So, he is like who is Sheila? get thee colonial out of my mouth you. So, I think probably Iris is also gonna call me chiamaka, but I will introduce myself to her also as someone who enjoys providing alternative ways of existing or living. Yeah, to people who are looking for alternative solutions.

Nneoma: Yeah. I 100% see that. Especially I love how you actually put the breathing in because it's something that I feel like you've given me in my life. I mean, I've been gone for like yoga a bunch of times and meditation things and therapy. But I always now think when I think of breathing from, you know, my stomach,

Uzoma: Yeah. Is that one of the ones I sent you? I read it to

Sheila: It's so beautiful. So, by like, let's say that I don't go on into the article. So, what do you think about that distinction, or do you even see any possible distinction between mind time or clock time?

Nneoma: I think yeah, there's definitely I feel like distinction between mind time and clock time, don't know, I've not. I've never sat down to feel like oh, I feel like time is moving differently. Now that I'm older. Then when I'm younger, because there's some pockets of moments, you know, in your everyday life, no matter how old you are that feel really long. And there's some that feel really like snapping. And I don't know if that changes, you know, as you grow older, that I do not know about. But for sure, I can say that clock time moves differently from mind time. clock time is abstract. Mind time you feel it? you are living it. like the tree. Like I also think of the mind of other living organisms, right? They don't move by clock time, even like your body as in multitude of other organisms, they don't move in, they have their own time. And sometimes it's not always five minutes. Not always. It's not. Well, clock time is always you know, three minutes, five minutes, it sets on, like I didn't record so I can’t remember what the science of clock is. But you get what I am saying,

Sheila: Can you imagine that quartz is literally a stone?

Nneoma: Yeah

Sheila: like, just the vibration of this one stone from this rock. Now everybody has to plant into their lives. Like moments that pass by?

Nneoma: Yeah. This is something that we had to like I didn't Okay, I don't know if I've spoken to both of you individually about how I took a class on this, this past was cold turkey semester. So, we like had to study the beginning of like, clock time, when you study the sciences, it's probably studied, like, clock time, standardization of clock time, at different places, and like, also the colonial extension of time, from like Europe, to Africa. And it's so insane. It's really like because lots of conflicts in cases because everybody's mind time is moving differently depending on your occupation. The way your cultural your society is organized, what you prioritize, etc. and set the clock time is actually there. Like, I don't even talk about you.

Sheila: Right,

Uzoma: Yeah, this, my thoughts have formed a bit more about. Um, like, I just feel like there's a connection here between if you think of them as an abstraction of time. Write and like we think of media as well as an abstraction, like how Sheila was saying that the black and white film doesn't like, it's not a direct representation rule is just representing like, there's something to be said about like this, like, the effort you constantly made to abstract, just, like measurable and meaningful. Yeah, like, it's just an interesting thing to observe. And it becomes like, it becomes work is like money as well. Thank you forget, that it’s an abstraction. And you begin to think.

Sheila: Yeah. Did I cut you off?

Uzoma: I was kind of I was done. Okay.

Sheila: I was just saying, I think I just came to the observation almost that like, is it our dependence on these things for like order that actually now corrupts or warps it?

Uzoma: Hmm, that is such an existential question.

Sheila: I swear. That's why it came to my Brain and I had to just spit it out. Because I was like, actually, is it that like, because, let's say like, if we if we get a plant, and we're like, well, okay, it took this plant six months to get to this stage. So, you think the plants are Looking at something like well, it took this human like, I don't know, 30, tectonic secondary chlorophyll branches to, I don't know, to grow their eyebrows out. What's the necessity of looking at something and knowing that it has taken six months to get to this day? Do other creatures have that desire, like, do you think they have that desire to kind of like, notice what has changed? Because in a way, I think that time may also been to notice what has changed? And where does that desire come from to want to notice that something has like, is it that we desire growth so much that we want to like keep our eye on whether it's happening or not happening?

Nneoma: I think there are extremes of it. let’s be extreme exalts us into what we have today as hyper capitalism, by feeling There are also other versions of that desire to engage with the world in a measurable way that have to be that our right to have not necessarily been about this desire for growth and conquering by just doing Yeah, it's very interesting.

Uzoma: Can you see more like what let’s could those motivations be?

Nneoma: There was this essay I was reading by alien. Castile.

Sheila: Oh, yes, I still have to read it.

Nneoma: Is it the museums of inquiry?

Sheila: Yes.

Nneoma: Yeah. That's the one I was just reading last thing I read outside my syllabus

Sheila: Shout out. I live in gusto.

Uzoma: Shout out

Nneoma: Um, but I it, she was basically, she talked about lots of things. But something that stood out to me that's relevant to this conversation now is how like, some people learn? How do I say this now? Some people, like people learn different ways to engage with or tolerate difference, like multiplicity, and diversity and blah, blah, but not every society has had the same like, heritage of like dealing with that. So, like this society or culture that, you know, museums came from. But definitely at that point in time, were about trying to measure to conquer. But then if we think of other places that are, not essentialize other places, but I imagine like places that did not come up with, like, institutions like the museum, right? They were engaging with culture and engaging like other people's differences. And measuring it in terms of like, understanding it, and being able to categorize it in their head. But it wasn't anything for them to feel like, oh, I can't grasp the entirety of it. It's just like, Okay, I know this. And I know that there's going to be more like an infinite multiplicity of it's so that way, they don't try to like, you know,

Sheila: To know it to the end. Know, the bottom.

Nneoma: Yeah. So, they're knowing it and knowing that there's never going to be a bottom while some people are knowing it to get to the end and to get the most and yeah, that's the difference.

Sheila: I had a really good conversation what so what am I saying it was a terrible conversation, I think it was good in the fact, that it illuminated to me how terrible a conversation can be

Nneoma: Wow

Uzoma: That’s mad.

Sheila: Because what this person was talking about was like, we can't know anything. Like we can’t ever say we know anything. So that's why we have to sort of like, always admit, there we’re nothing. But it was really hard for me, because I was thinking, because he was saying at one point, let's say that a human is basically a formula, and a mix of particles and then if we're just a mix of particles, that I'm saying, but if we are a mix of particles, how do we end up at nothing? Because do you think I'm nothing like, aren't particles something. So this morning, when I woke up and I started thinking of the difference between you are nothing and you have nothing, like human being, I think is that kind is that distinction is that thin line between understanding that you may be something but you do not have because to have is almost to own and I know, there's that kind of knowledge that wants to consume a thing it wants to know, to the bottom of it, so that it can say I can operate you, I know all the ways that my phone can work like, I am the master over this person. But if knowing that, like I am a human being, and I also have like, I came into this world having nothing, and I will also leave having nothing, then in the middle of it, I will also continue to just very different times like signatures of having nothing too, even if it's some way maybe it won't be everything, I can't I won't have everything of anything.

Nneoma: Mm hmm

Sheila: Do you guys think that there is a distinction and also just to your point Immaculata before I even forget of museums, I remember talking to Abu Bakar fofana this master indigo Dyer and the biggest thing was saying museums are cemeteries and according to the African culture, he was like in Mali, like everything that is in a museum needs to be alive to actually make sense to us, so when people go there and ponder upon the thing that is dead. And think that it's most alive. When it’s a museum it's actually such an it's a word of what time means because go to those places to experience the thing. You go to the condition where the thing is relevant to actually experience it. But then the question is, should we just admit that we are experiencing different stages of the thing so the person who goes to the festival is experiencing the stage where the thing is born and maybe the person goes to the museum facing the stage where the thing is dead?

Uzoma: I mean I think, would be, again, like so many other questions that we've been asking and have been asked like the problem making the assumption is like, the museum purports itself as the sort of like, authority like and it tries to make it as if like the death stage is the most important stage.

Sheila: Exactly, isn't the only stage at which you can claim to have something? when it is dead? And can't speak for itself

Uzoma: So, so I think this now relates to like the earlier question, of knowing to the bottom? Yes, like, what was that need to claim? You know, like, where does that come from? So, you get what I mean? Like, why can't it just be a thing?

Nneoma: Yeah

Sheila: Like when people say, I can't figure you out. What are you doing trying to check me from afar?

Uzoma: Man. I think that's…

Nneoma: You asked Uzoma,

Sheila: Sorry.

Nneoma: I think we know the answer. Some people just feel that need. And I don't know if they should, it's harmful. I mean, it can have consequences that are disastrous. But we know that some people feel that way.

Uzoma: Yeah

Nneoma: And some cultures, some organizations have been built, some institutions have built to do that.

Uzoma: To do that.

Sheila: On the other hand, because some of the reasons that like even in this process of let's say, archiving igbotics, which I'm calling it, like, old ways of existing igboly in the world. Some even let's say like recipe, hunting, or like planting some people who actually have the most neatly and well-preserved instructions, or manuals, like even talking about Abunakar fofana, we were looking at equipment for weaving, and one of the best books in fact the book that like, key holds the tools for weaving, and like, just spinning the cotton was actually made by German.

Uzoma: Yeah,

Sheila: So yeah, go on Uzoma.

Uzoma: Please finish.

Sheila: Oh, I was saying so in a way. urge, also like to own a thing also makes them very delicate, makes them very careful, and very devoted to like, organizing and displaying a thing in that way

Nneoma: I think it’s always like, I think it can have these consequences, that are disastrous. They're like, if that's now the entirety of the institution of a person’s process, everything can be generative, yeah

Uzoma: Yeah, I feel like I have two questions.

Sheila: Okay.

Uzoma: But I’ll forget one because I struggle to hold on to two thoughts at once. so, the first thing is the question and, because that's also something that, I've been thinking about a lot is that conflict between, the fact that, you know, we're even having this conversation the way we're having it. Like you have your laptop, or whatever, like we're like a beneficiary of that ethos like that. You know? So, it's like, holding is acknowledging that but also acknowledging all the shortcomings of it, and just trying to reconcile those two things, even from a personal point of view, because, I'm asking all these questions, I'm doing this research but I'm still like, how am I doing it? I'm sorry, this was even the other question I had, it's like the access to, we talked about like, oh, it's hard to do research on Igbo culture, blah, blah, blah, there are no materials, blah, blah.

Like, is that the problem? Or is the problem that the way that we know how to do this research, ask these questions are, like, just not accessible to us? Like there are other ways that, just as the thing has been lost the way of knowing thing has also been lost. So, like, we don't really have access to these things anymore, because we don't know how to access them. That's like on one hand, and then what’s the other thing? The points we didn't want to end up at it will come to me, as somebody else is talking.

Nneoma: Say everything you said.

Uzoma: Yeah, it's just, yeah, that's just been like one of the questions. And I was actually speaking to Neema, who we're going to be talking to, um, next week, we had an amazing conversation and like she was talking about…She brought up like somatic meditation as and that just blew my mind. Because, like her whole thing was, and this is just one technology like that you can use to access like certain truths that you're looking for. And like her hope was like the answers you're looking for, right? Are embedded within, like your own body. And you have to be in touch with your body to access them. And I was like, whoa, that was just so crazy. Like, there are no depths. There is no end to this. But it's like, we're in such a corporal and just a mode of being, especially as Western educated people that it is just like, such a break from that, cuz even as you're saying it, I was like hmm are you sure? But my body was responding to it, my mind was being blown, but at the same time I still was like hmmm. So, I don't know, yeah.

Sheila: Yeah. Have you read, I mean, this guy that wrote the body keeps score, I always forget his name.

Uzoma: Yes

Sheila: Thank you. He was talking about the mechanism of using the finger. Like how sometimes people who go through the most trauma will go to therapists, like psychotherapists, and they will be talking with therapists, and therapists will be asking them, also tell me how this, I hear you say, and then they just shut down like, sorry, I don't understand. Like, I don't know what that is, like. It's not as if they're lying, even though they are not revealing the truth, they don't even know that there is a Truth to be told. But then when they now do the finger thing, it's almost like a combination lock. And then a part of their brain just unlocks and the memory comes to them, because sometimes your body has to hide certain memories, because survival is the most important thing, the most important force for most bodies in the world, like, unconscious. So, when you read this, which is this level of consciousness, and you have to like go from survival to thriving, you have to face the loss of that memory. Like you have to, like, bring those memories to confront them. So, you can't go through the same path. Because it's almost like you're becoming a completely new human being learning that like, it's okay. It's like how people, all these films about multiple personalities, how people create new personalities, so that they can protect themselves, or they can’t protect themselves so they have to actually create a different body, like the shape of a person changes how they walk changes how they dress changes, I always tell people that I don't see any healing from a disembodied place. I don't believe that we can at down in our houses, and theorize what we need to heal, which I guess is back to Abubakar fofanas points about, museums being centuries, because like in festivals, you literally have to move through a crowd in moving through a crowd, your body is already acting differently.

Uzoma: Yeah, I have two questions at this point.

Sheila: Please Write them down abeg

Nneoma: The cellphone Decaux book like life changing? Yeah. Uzoma your question

Uzoma: I've been seeing you reference a lot. And I know, I'll be fine. So, my two questions are what do we do with this info? Like, we know the importance of like embodied knowledge and embodied information, and using body as the sight of accessing knowledge, ancestral knowledge in facts like sometimes?

Nneoma: Yeah.

Uzoma: Like, how do we now start using it in our research projects just in our life? And then the second thing is like, in the digital, we are in obviously, digital era blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff. But the digital space can be such a disembodied place as well. Most of the time you're accessing things via a screen. So how can we now also begin to bring this thinking into how we begin to navigate like new places and essentially like new frontiers of like just being.

Nneoma: Uzoma that’s a question for me, right?

Sheila: Yeah, please. I'm actually waiting for you Immaculata

Nneoma: I feel like the first question, I feel like this is Sheila’s Frontier so I'm also open to hearing from you guys like suggestions. But for me, it's practicing listening to your body already, like you get better by doing and the body especially is one place where you have actually like you have to feel it and you have to keep learning how to like You, the more you use your intuition and your body's intuition, the more, you're able to use it. Which is what I'm doing like listening to my body, I'm doing something and I'm asking myself, like checking in with me like my toes, my feet, my leg, my oh my god, my sister is always telling me to release my ass.

Sheila: It’s so important

Nneoma: It's so important. So, if I'm feeling somehow, like, I think I check it, I check in with that, like, oh, I do, like, let me know what's going on when I was there. Is that where we are? And the more I ask this, to recognize the answers, but that's where I am right now my journey of what am I doing this information that embodied knowledge is what like, you know, necessary. The second question was how… I also feel like, it’s not completely, not embodied, because, I feel like, the power of like what we do with our eyes Is essentially where like, Whoa, sorry.

Sheila: Even our fingers

Nneoma: Yeah, and our fingers. Right? I feel like there's a lot to be said about those interfaces? Because maybe, I don't know, you know, all those pictures they write of like the homo computer person? I don't know. I'd say all fingers we call by arms.

Sheila: Right

Nneoma: But yeah. Sheila and Uzoma I want to know, what you guys doing with this?

Sheila: Before you catapult that question back to me, I still need to, I'm very interested. Because, you know, as a photographer.

Nneoma: Yeah

Sheila: Like, you also, you have a device that is quite mechanical, in fact, people might argue that the relevance of the phone right now is in its camera, like when phones are advertising themselves, they advertise almost first what the camera can do, how do you think your practice is more or allows you to be more embodied like versus when you're using the phone as a phone?

Nneoma: Hmm, um, it's really does, I don't know if that’s even because I really, I mean, a photograph. Every time I take a walk, I have to be with my phone, like, I'm using my phone, not as the phone but as like, you know, second eye, the freezing eye, I am using my phone to spend more time. So, like, first of all, it's like, I'm looking right, like the moment to I see an image, I bring on my phone to capture it. But then I'm using my phone as a way of playing with that image that I am seeing, from different angles, just like really enjoying the use of what I am seeing. And it's something that, again, therapists have also asked me to do without even knowing that I'm a photographer, like, when you walk, do you try and pay attention do you try and like spend time with the things you are seeing? that's how the tool works and I don’t know if I was answering your question.

Sheila: So, do you think that your phone, like as a device actually helps you bring more attention to your body?

Nneoma: It does, like in that way in those times, right? But it's like, different parts of my body, not my entire body. It's still the same thing with one part of your body, because in spending that time with that, like that flower, and using my phone to see or engage with that flower in a different way, it’s almost like cooking the flower, like in the way that you can say is the pot helping you, you know, be more embodied? It's helping me bring out a different smell from the food a different experience of that thing and I'm feeling it you know, when I feel the beauty, I'm feeling the pleasure of it in my body.

Sheila: So, do you think that the phone helps you more when you use it as a tool to like take the world rather than as a tool to consume the world do you?

Nneoma: Yeah, there's definitely a difference it’s like one hour spent taking pictures is not the same feeling as one hour spent on Instagram consuming pictures and I think we know this.

Sheila: What’s the difference for you?

Nneoma: Even though I'm staring at my screen, I've actually never thought about this. Like Uzoma, I’m currently forming my thoughts. But I know like just in saying that, like I've had one hour of doing, after taking pictures I always feel replenished. I always feel like I have seen beauty and felt beauty and beauty is something whatever, beauty is just something that feeds me as opposed to like all the hours that I have spent, you know, scrolling through IG and really hitting myself or because also I feel when you go out to explore something, there's an intention of where you're going for, you’re choosing what you want, you're like following your beauty down that path, you're following yourself, right?

Sheila: Yeah.

Nneoma: But When I'm consuming, these things are running to me and like they're taking me places that I'm not choosing to be going to and maybe not need to be seeing these juxtapositions, and they're coming at me.

Sheila: That's what Instagram does

Nneoma: Yeah,

Uzoma: That's like the bane of our existence right now.

Sheila: Uzoma, you wanted to create our app.

Uzoma: For real, I've been on a digital mindfulness wave, I've been thinking about this stuff a lot. I'm even like, Sheila, we’ll talk

Sheila: We’ll talk, we’ll obviously talk.

Uzoma: But this is the challenge that I wanted to throw to your answer to my question Nneoma. That, talking about our eyes and fingers as interfaces, right? I feel like That's fair. But we need to go beyond that. Because our eyes like what do our eyes and fingers become on a platform like Instagram when we are scrolling? Do you understand?

Sheila: it's almost like imagine like, your finger going into the phone. Instagram, and your finger is the thing that drags worlds up or down. Like, the scale of that imagination, as I'm thinking about this is so very different because it's someone's world, but beneath your finger it’s smaller than your finger. And your finger is not the smallest part of your body.

Uzoma: Yeah, honestly, that's, it's like, I think about how sometimes. So, something happened. The last time I was on Instagram, I saw an amazing photo posted by Wami Aluko. And I was like, in the moment, I was like, okay, cool, then I scrolled pass. And then it wasn't until like, I got off, and I was like, brushing my teeth or something. I was like, whoa, that was actually that was incredible. Just that platform, and that space has reduced the beauty of that thing. So, I think a lot about like, yo this person must have spent time because I know, as an image maker myself, I know what goes into this stuff.

Sheila: like, literally just double tap. But like, in the Instagram world, that finger is doing a big thing. But you come out of that finger and you're like, I have the greatest admiration I can give in this world is something that's so small to my body, like what does it even cost me so as also a maker, knowing how easy it is for me to double tap someone, when someone double taps me, that’s it?

Uzoma: As in

Sheila: Is that the effect? So, the end?

Uzoma: So now, even just like, thinking about time, through this lens, right? Again, to what we were saying earlier about abstractions of time, like Instagram time versus real life real human time.

Sheila: I think it has to bay a scale. Because think about it, if we're looking at what Instagram offers, Instagram offers plenty. And for you to have plenty you have to reduce the scale. Like even thinking about for instance because a whale moves so slow because it's so huge so its heart rate is actually, its heart rate is much slower, because it has so many miles to travel.

Nneoma: Yeah

Sheila: What?

Nneoma: I was just saying yeah to travel like I was picturing it, I was seeing it and that that's why embodiment helps because when you also see the time it's like, I cut my finger like is sliding door sliced a chunk of skin away and it got kind of like folded.

Nneoma: Sorry

Sheila: And yeah, thank you. And I was like, you know what, I actually really like watching, wounds heal on my body because I feel like Wolverine but in slow motion. Because I'm like x men are literally human beings, but just accelerated in time.

Nneoma: Yeah

Sheila: Where I need one week to get, I don't know the skill to come together Wolverine needs like one minute after he heals it in one minute. What is he using that extra time to do?

Uzoma: Mm hmm.

Nneoma: We flew, we flew here we flew. We flew from Instagram the scale points

Sheila: Yeah

Nneoma: For me, please connect that.

Sheila: Yeah, I think it's for me. I'm just thinking, when you're trying to reduce the scale of something to then achieve something else like Instagram wanting to like, offer us plenty offer us more, what do we want to do with that more? Now that we've gotten our desire for more, what do we want to do with it?

Nneoma: It's not for us to actually use this for them.

Sheila: I don't want to say that we did not ask because we asked for it. We said yeah, like the MTV is just a gatekeeper. traditional media is just full of a more democratized experience of entertainment, more people.

Nneoma: I'm not saying we did not ask for it but I'm just saying I think that we can't use all of what we’re getting and the value that is being gained from the multitude of what's here is capital, like is the profits of the app you know, we asked for it. But you know, in this extent? I don't know that anybody did.

Uzoma: I don't know that we asked for it like this

Sheila: Uzoma, you said no. So please, expanse on that

Uzoma: Yeah, that was my No, that was my No, sorry that no entered

Sheila: That no entered o, I felt it. You were like not I sir.

Nneoma: Not I

Uzoma: I'm just like, these people really know what they doing? again, it's a question of intention, I think, it's like a road diverge in woods, or whatever. And like the took the, like Nneoma is saying like the more fatal driven, you know, at all costs route, when it could have been the other like democratizing information about democratizing access. It could have been a more, you know, there are other approaches, and maybe on the next podcast, I forgot, NIGGA something

Sheila: Niggas isn’t shit

Uzoma: We'll go into like all the other forms that could have taken, but I feel the foundational question for so many of these, like, other questions that we're now having to ask is like, why? like, why? like, why are you doing this?

Nneoma: Yeah. Why? Cuz it's not inevitable. Honestly, right now, they can always change the direction

Uzoma: Always change.

Nneoma: .. with updates. But why are we still here?

Uzoma: Why are we here?

Sheila: Okay, you guys, why do you think, give yourselves, attempt to answer. why?

Nneoma: My understanding, the why that I know so far is that they do because they need this company to be sustained. And they need users for the company and that’s why yeah,

Uzoma: Can I come in?

Nneoma: Yeah

Uzoma: Can I go a step further, I think my why is, to what we were saying earlier, they've lost, you know, what shall it profit a man to.?

Sheila: Gain the world and lose his soul,

Uzoma: Yes, they've gained the world but they've lost their soul. like they've got caught up in the abstraction that you've created to the point where, the thing that actually matters is now lost. And so, we're all here like, following them in this path. Why did he choose to give up their soul? Because it's like a powerful, it goes to stories, the beginning of full circle moment, like, the story that you've concocted is just so good. It's so powerful, that he forgot.

Sheila: But that’s what we were saying about recyclable stories now. it was so good. It was the one that…. because my question is also this people this, they we’re talking about are they a fractal of their leaders?

Uzoma: Yeah, yeah.

Nneoma: Are they a fractal?

Sheila: Are they sort of like going in the line that majority of users, like, are they making decisions that their users would want them to make? Are we the anomaly or are we the majority of people complaining?

Nneoma: That's another interesting question. I also feel like some people who are making the decisions are not none of us is really understanding the full repercussions of social media and of the internet right now. So even when people are wanting and choosing these things, I don't know that we can, sometimes Yeah, like they're choosing to make more money they're choosing to this but I don't know that they know the full consequences of like maybe they health consequence on people or lives,

Uzoma: yeah,

Nneoma: how much they're trading us how much in wellness and health and like environmental impact for the trading off when they choose to make a certain update for example.

Sheila: So, are we assuming because someone chooses to die? They don't know that they're choosing that death?

Nneoma: They don't know what death feels like. They don't know what's going to happen after they are going to die. But also, even if they know it’s not every time, I'm not saying this is always going to be the case whenever someone chooses to die, they don't know.

Sheila: Yeah

Nneoma: Some people do.

Sheila: Who in this environment do you think is more vulnerable to not knowing yet being the most affected?

Uzoma: I think all of us, right,

Sheila: Like all of us in the world, or three of us here?

Uzoma: All of us who are participating in one way or another. Because to your earlier question, I think the decision makers are fractals of the wider like user base. And the way that we talk about is actually all of us like we've all got caught up in this in this very, very amusing, replicating like, self-sustaining story.

Sheila: Yeah. Even by using it right? By showing up, by just having it's on our phones.

Uzoma: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but then also I was gonna say…

Nneoma: I have a question, does this have to be like one hour because I really want to hear from you guys what you're doing. Like how to, you know, use embodied knowledge.

Sheila: Oh, yeah, you're really that question is really deep.

Nneoma: Yes.

Sheila: Yes, Uzoma you were saying something

Uzoma: Okay, I'll say the thing and then I’ll give my answer. I was just going to expand on what I said earlier in the conversation and what we were saying about these decision makers, and big tech companies, whatever, whether they know the extent, we never know the extent, whoever knows the outcome? like we are not God, but how are you stepping into the scene? How are you like, why? You know,

Sheila: What if God doesn’t even know the outcome? God was made in our image. I love that Kevin Kelly's thing of saying, for him to be able to go back to a church was when he had to say that God, if God is the God of questions, what if what he wants is to be given more questions? To be satisfied with questions? Yeah, we do not know and we can never get to the end. What if he, she, they are creating a condition where like, they too will be like, Ah I didn't know this or wow

Uzoma: I like that cause from young I've struggled with the idea that. So, God knows that like he or she, I mean,

Nneoma: That's what the Bible tells us. Exactly.

Uzoma: But I've always been like, how can you be omniscient, and then you still allow these things to happen to this person, like this child still does or still suffered Like this, Haba how?

Sheila: So basically, we are giving God an out, we're saying God may actually have the opportunity. Like but I didn't know, I actually didn’t know

Uzoma: Actually. Really?

Sheila: Exactly, I think I'm more sympathetic to that idea of God because God is made in our image. And yet it has nothing to do with us, like the way of God is unknown to man. even talking about embodied what you are saying, again, is that for instance, if we're made in the image of God, then that knowledge feels like it lives in my body. It lives in me and sometimes what I'm fed, actually argues with what came as I was born, like what I came with before I was like knowledge through my eyes or through my ears because I was so excited to actually yesterday nice airship, and he was saying that, we are here, for him, we are here as an evolutionary memory. Like it is the fact that we remember so much that our memory has now materialized into our existence.

Uzoma: That sounds like extreme theory on some level that I don’t even fully grasp.

Nneoma: Can I just shout out one essay in this every you know, dories collection? Can we all be feminist; I think is by Brits Bennett. And it's called body and the blood. And he really covers his whole life, trying to like the author it was a personal essay the author struggling with the distance that the church had put to her between like the body and you know, God.

Sheila: Yes, yes.

Nneoma: Wonderful essay

Uzoma: That sounds amazing

Sheila: …. talking about it's called Temple as in relation to your body is the temple of the lord

Right

It's like, what does it mean to keep something holy? Like, you keep something away from the nature of itself? That's how we think. Yeah, what do I do? Because it was like if I mean, it's basically about me learning how to pole dance, but the act of putting my body through learning how to pole dance is so close to sin. But actually, for me, it's making me grow. It's literally stretching my muscles, stretching my tissues. I'm also learning about the ways I don't want to learn and the things I do want to learn. But then all those things I'm still supposed to See, it was so simple. Like even some people I asked to interview about it, were like, I'm not going to, because of my faith. As a Christian, I'm sorry, I'm not going to participate. Because just by saying pole dancing, and Catholicism, it already seems like something blasphemous.

Nneoma: Is my flesh being weak?

Sheila: Yes.

Uzoma: Ah yes

Sheila: And women's bodies being the most likely to be hung on the line of like…

Nneoma: My dear

Sheila: Your body a holy temple. But anyway, Immaculata does that, because I mean, the cons are immense. And time is so there's so many different angles, like I was saying about my injury, it shows me a lot because like, I've left it open. I haven’t used, I mean apart from cleaning that first day, I put it under water, and it's just, it's healing.

Nneoma: No get infection.

Sheila: Okay. I know it's not the first time that I've done it. I was in a motorcycle, and my leg got burnt on the bike. And I actually tried to take a picture of it, like every day, and then every week. And now I look on my leg, and it's gone. I can't see it anymore. I can't see it. So, it's like, time is the Jessica Joe always says that time is the perfect, the easiest form or material of alchemy to miss in any spell.

Nneoma: Yeah. Keep this in every manifestation group, people need to be reminded,

Sheila: Yeah, you have to be reminded of. That’s why I say patience is a virtue, it really is a virtue. Because if all you think is of strong will and strong will and I think that's also what we're seeing by a culture of domination

Uzoma: Yes

Sheila: You already designed what your body is made for, you don't listen to what your body's telling you about what it’s made for what it’s here to do, you don't listen to the mind of your toes or the mind of your knees. you think just at the surface, just your brain, like on the front. Only the is a part with the microphone, but the microphone is the loudest it doesn’t mean that it is saying or it is giving you knew information. It's just giving you the loudest information driving paranoia and anxiety.

Uzoma: That's fire.

Nneoma: Thank you guys

Sheila: On how we're thinking about life. for Uzoma and l, our thing always is trying to get back to the body as the OG digital,

Nneoma: You guys have our interesting ways of like, you know, breaking things into questions, which I always appreciate. Always.

Uzoma: That’s my whole life o

Nneoma: You were born to do that

Sheila: We were actually born to do that

Uzoma: Also shout out body scan meditation as a first step to this thing. Yeah.

Sheila: Shout out to my theatre training

Nneoma: Yeah,

Sheila: Honestly, I could not have been anything else like I would not have been alive if I did not use my body. So, when people sometimes ask me about my major in a way of like, I've had someone ask me, like when I talk and then when I was talking to him, and then he said, don't you sometimes regret that you spent your time in university studying dance

Nneoma: Were you shocked?

Sheila: And I was just like, you don't even understand that all the ways in which you're imagining that I'm smart, comes from studying dance.

Uzoma: I like that you use the word imagination because I was like, trying to frame something. When you said the thing. Question that he asked right, and it's connected to this top-down egocentric Culture of trying to understand to the bottom. Yeah. It really does something to your imagination.

Sheila: Yeah.

Uzoma: Something that I've been dealing with, and I don't know, what your experience is with this Sheila and also you Nneoma with your own research, so we're doing this, we're like asking these questions and are trying to like conceptualize alternative cosmologies or, alternative ways of being and stuff and I keep running into concept. Like, I can't even, my scope is limited, I am aware that my scope is limited. There's little I can do about it because the imagination I have has been shaped by the system

Nneoma: Feeling was seen. I mean, in SEO as well. Yeah, I feel. I feel that

Uzoma: I feel like patience. Patience is always a virtue. I feel like as long as we're on this path, and we're asking these questions like you just like coalesce, I've already seen things coalesce like even just having conversations like this, I've been holding on to the word like percolate a lot.

Nneoma: I love that I love it. I just Yeah, yeah.

Uzoma: All join

Sheila: I love slow cook. There are just some foods You can't rush through.

Uzoma: Yes

Nneoma: You guys made me feel like I could sleep right now. Oh,

Uzoma: Everything acts and reacts right. So let like act like have this conversation now. Like engage like think. But then allow it like let it sit

Nneoma: Yes

Uzoma: Which is what you do teach you in school but hey

Sheila: That's why I like stormzy song where he was like don’t forget to breathe. I like that song a lot

Uzoma: Don’t forget to breathe man

Nneoma: Oh, as we're talking about songs, this one song by, I don’t remember his name now, but the name of the song is literally do what makes you feel good. It's such a nice one. Yeah, just do what make you feel good. And the world will continue to run something dry. The well will continue to run. I don't know, he says but things will continue happening. So just feel good

Sheila: We actually underestimate how important it is to remind people like I was having this conversation somewhere, like a big debate or just about something. Like you just have to choose what you enjoy and do it. And he like brought it up again after we met and was like that's really important. And I was like, well, you've already been doing it. He was just like but it’s nice to hear.

Uzoma: Facts. No. Same. I relate

Nneoma: Name is Terrell Himes and songs called feel good. Yeah, always.

Sheila: Thank you. Thank you for leaving us with our beautiful song recommendation.

Nneoma: Thank you, guys, too for the time.

Sheila: Thank you so much for the time, Immaculata, it was lovely, wonderful speaking with you as always.

Uzoma: Yes. This was a river of a conversation.

Sheila: It was actually a river. Hopefully mungo Park doesn’t come and discover it, that’s the name of another podcast fuck mungo park

Uzoma: Fuck mungo pack

Sheila: FMP

Nneoma: Please let me know when that one is happening.

Uzoma: I can’t stand that guy.

Sheila: Maybe mungo park is not as bad as the people that forced him to be the person

Uzoma: Do you understand. Maybe he was just chilling and they were like You, you discovered that river abi? Oh my god.

Sheila: Anyway, have a wonderful evening guy. This has been lovely. Bye kisses.

Nneoma: Bye

Uzoma: Bye

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