“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Navigating Chaos and embracing it, that is what I am currently doing this episode. Fresh on the heels of my very own chaos state. So it’s super relevant for me! I won’t bore you with personal details as we all have our cups filled with chaos and life. The part I want to focus on is how to exist during this moment as well as how to move past this period into a better place.
Chaos, it rears it’s ugly darkness at unexpected moments in our lives. But if we look at life it is a series of unexpected moments if you think about it. I am currently in a chaos state of my own as I make this very podcast. Yet, instead of dwelling on the minutia of what brought on this chaos state or being strangled by fear I want to approach it head on. I want to run straight into it's face so I can tackle it and move on. This pesky chaos mode can infiltrate our lives having the potential to destroy our creative selves. We can get too entangled in the mess and the empty unknown darkness of chaos. The unknown tangles of disorder and worry of chaos can strike fear in the hearts of many.
I want to take a different approach because honestly fear is boring and I’m tired of feeling scared in life. Instead I’d like to think from a more mythological standpoint and see how chaos is a beginning, a birth stage into something else. What this new birth will bring that I don’t know yet but embracing that part of the chaos helps me move forward in a more poetic positive direction. So I follow along side chaos eventually taking the lead.
I was sleeping before and woke to anxious feelings caused by the chaos mess that has entered my life. Yes, life often times is a series of chaos events that can flare up on different levels without warning. We deal with it every day we are alive. Chaos is a catalyst for change. Right now The house is dark, it’s 2:30 am and I am awake sitting in a dark room with my chaos trying to embrace it. Trying to help push through this birth of a new life phase. So I am writing and thinking how to navigate chaos. How do I stay on track with my art during such dark moments?
It makes me think back to When I was 23 years old. I was in my senior year at college in Art school at parsons and I had one more semester to go before graduating. That's when the rug and my whole world got pulled out from under me. Without any warning life changed in an instant. Without going into crazy detail everything from that chapter of my life came to an end. I lost my home as well many personal artifacts that got thrown out during a quick moving phase. I was uprooted practically overnight. Fortune shined on me. The immense kindness of people in my life who helped become a beacon and see me through this Chaos darkness. By offering a place for me to live while I finished my schooling and sorted out my life they were a light in the darkness. It was a messy beginning, a brand new phase of my life that was emerging. It was full of uncertainty and so many heavy emotions but a chaos birth filled with pain and newness all the same.
We often get hurled into living our lives by chaos. If you don’t live your life, chaos will eventually for sure show up and live it for you. Throwing you in to a dark mess state of chaos which is always a harbinger of change. My point bringing up this past moment is to point out that during all this chaos I was hyper creative. By taking solace in my art as the real world had turned so chaotic. Creating my own visual universe, I was able to control and create order. I created a place where i can find peace or release from all the pain I was carrying around.
“Chaos was the law of nature; order was the dream of man."
- Henry Adams
From chaos comes order, so they say. I agree with this to some degree. In regard to experience and the chaos that arises. How we move past it or even embrace it to help carry us to the next place we need to be can help create order from chaos. I personally don't function in a physically messy environment. Messes depress me and halt my personal progress. I like having an organized structured environment. Designated places for my paints and brushes and so on and so forth.
A chaotic environment can hinder my ability to move forward as swiftly as I can. So In regard to spaces I prefer a tidy space. You know the saying "clear desk clear mind". I like having this safe space to go, to sort out my life chaos messes, what ever that may be from career to health to daily life frustrations. Taking refuge here helps me slow down and dissect what is happening and let's me figure out how can I best progress.
Now chaos in the actual creative process can be a welcome guest. Say I run out of a paint color or a material how can I adjust to complete my work? How can being flexible and adjusting help me grow? By experimenting with new materials allowing for discovery to take place growth happens. This chaos birth of new beginnings can happen with our art as we embrace new unknown materials facing our obstacles head on with open hearts.
Chaos is the darkness and creation is the light. We enter each new piece, new idea, & concept all starting in darkness. An idea sparks a light it glows and grows out this darkness. A new beginning is born into the light out of the darkness. From The darkness of chaos creativity comes.
Like for instance, in my sleepless slumber I stumble into the darkness. I wandered into a room to sit where I type into the glow of my phone and just like that this podcast episode was born.
"Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish."
Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Chaos is the cousin of hitting rock bottom in my mind. There is a moment of freedom when you realize you have to start over or shift into a new non chaotic state. I am entering a new phase and perhaps you are too sorting and facing your own chaos birth. Instead of getting twisted up, tangled in chaos knots, lets try to glide along and breath deep and full and take each day as a challenge. Pushing this chaos birth out into the open and away as we enter into our next phase, our new beginning.
I’ll leave you with this final quote that I found some solace in during the darkness of my nights, it is by Terence McKenna.
“The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.
It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down - sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray.
At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing.
But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward.”
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