Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself
Miles Davis
Welcome. I’m Carlo Navato, 50% Londoner, 50% Neapolitan.
I’m fuelled by insatiable curiosity and forever on the look-out for the next connection and the next possibility. Growing up in a household with an English mother and an Italian father set the scene early for an environment predicated on opposites. My childhood, mostly feral and spent outdoors, was built on adventure, exploration and seeing things a bit differently. Life on an edge-land council estate in the 1970’s, showed me time and again that it was possible to create great things from nothing. We were frugal, experimental, and creative.
From a young age it seemed instinctual to me that the tension between opposites was at the heart of creativity. So boisterous tree climber and studious reader, maker of bows and arrows to shoot with and maker of cakes to please with. Lover of art, lover of science.
I’m a collector of things including new experiences, new juxtapositions and new intuitions. I studied building and real estate in my 20’s, wine and design in my 30’s, photography in my 40’s and performance coaching and Zen in my 50’s.
I’m impatient, adaptable, and resilient and find that resourcefulness is our greatest resource. I value craftsmanship and I’ve learned that cheap is expensive.
I believe in the essence of not knowing, and the wisdom of holding uncertainty lightly. I’m never happier than hanging out with open-minded mavericks in wild places.
Most of all I like to make spaces: physically through my development company, creatively through photography, writing and experiments in connection, and professionally through consulting, coaching, and advising in leadership transformation and change.
I’ve recently given up worrying so much about being found out.
Find out who you are and do it on purpose
Dolly Parton
Brian Eno has this lovely idea that children learn through play and adults play through art. Art is just our way of continuing to play through acting on our imagination. This freedom to act on our imagination is increasingly being driven out of our structured world. But it sits at the heart of creativity, and it loosens boundaries and invites possibility.
And everywhere we look there are overwhelming choices, and relentless pressures to accumulate. Back in a simpler time, Aristotle said “For the more limited, if adequate, is preferable.” I’ve come to believe that. Excellence is achieved not when everything that can be added has been, but when everything superfluous has been taken away.
So, this site is an experiment in playfulness and in seeing whether less can be more. It is a collaboration with the designer Jo Briggs and the plan is for 1196 weekly offerings. There will only ever be the two most current pieces live at any one time. There’ll be words, images, sounds, conversations. The archive will be preserved annually and re-presented in analogue form as a series of physical things, and books.
I hope you find something to enjoy. Thank you for coming along.
48 / 1196
The return journey
Carlo Navato
4 . May . 2025
Read Look Listen
I want to say something about nostalgia.
Nostalgia continually gets a bad rap and I’m not happy about it. Nostalgia isn’t about living in the past. It’s not, as it’s too often dismissively accused of being, mere sentimentality, but rather a powerful reclamation of the spiritual journey we’ve been on. Whether that journey is through a life well lived or a life of too much suffering. Slings and arrows, outrageous fortune, all that poetic stuff the bard wrote about in the Dane’s soliloquies.
Here’s the thing – when we embrace nostalgia, it orients us in this chaotic world, reminding us who we truly are. The Greeks understood this when they designed the word to embody that tender but painful ache for home – “nostos” – the return journey, “algos” – the sweet pain of remembrance.
In gentle moments, nostalgia arrives like evening light through knackered old wooden windows, that sacred longing to come home, not so much to a place perhaps, but rather to our real selves. Our real selves in all their complex multitudes.
Nostalgia is the soul’s compass, bathing our memories in amber warmth, preserving what matters most. Childhood lullabies, eating sprats on my mum’s lap, Mary, Mungo and Midge, green cotton parkas with fake fur collars. Showaddywaddy, spangles, pacers and sherbet fountains. Mrs Drabble, stories at Hayes Primary under the old oak tree in summer, buying records from Woolies with a fiver pocket money.
Nostalgia reminds us we are never truly lost. When we close our eyes and find ourselves beside childhood streams, or eating warm boiled potatoes and green salad in Granny’s kitchen, we discover not just what was, but what remains eternal within us.
A little part of me will always be in Christchurch, endless summers on the river with Suzy and Sara, Friars Cliff beach at 8am with mum and Aldo, tea with the retired folk in their beach huts with floral swimming hats. It’s why I unashamedly bought this little memory a few weeks ago. Look at that gorgeous saturated colour. All naff and 1970’s but rich in meaning.
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