Spring is Chaos
"Make some art and you will feel better."
“Spring is chaos” it says in an unsaved Word document on my laptop. Unsaved yes, because I like to tempt the gods. One day it practically feels like summer and the next, there’s a downpour—the constant back and forth between extremes. I personally find myself oscillating between the delights (the trilliums, the cherry blossoms, the first bracken fern emerging) and the void (the uprooting, the precarity, the dread).
Chaos is, of course, all around us, how we exist in the world. “Chaos theory reminds us that even the smallest particle change can disrupt a projected outcome,” writes Willow Defebaugh. “The sensitivity of all chaotic systems means that we can never fully predict the trajectories they will take.”
Knowing that the chaotic tumultuousness is part of the natural cycle doesn’t ensure that it’s easy to handle or face however. In fact, sometimes I find myself annoyed by the all the things that I know to be true, but still feel burdened by, and all those lessons that keep repeating themselves (yes yes, everything is uncertain, everything changes, etc. etc.).
The up and down, the ebb and flow, the erratic pendulum: sometimes we just hold on and hope for the best.
This month has been, well… without spending too much time trying to find some better, more poetic word: difficult. Or as
wrote this past week “teetering on the edge.” I know others feel this way too. Everyone I talk to right now seems to be in some state of transition, change, struggle, deep exhaustion, or at the very least, some extreme form of ennui. Maybe that’s just spring, or maybe it’s something else (my immediate thought: capitalism/culture of individualism/all the systemic issues, but this is an essay for another day).It is of course many things, but it feels heightened in this seasonal moment.
I’m often on the search for the lesson, the takeaway, the little spark of something that becomes a lifeline in the harder moments. But a spark that isn’t just a dose of the superficial and the saccharine. A spark that makes it through the darkness, much like the crackle of lightning in the midst of a storm, or the way that a dandelion pushes itself up through the concrete.
What I want is the little inkling of life, of movement, of flow. The thing to offer up a little jolt.
The stinging on your fingertips from spring nettles. The thrill of biting into an edible plant that you’ve foraged for the first time, your brain on high alert even though all your knowledgeable friends and the guidebooks have assured you that yes, you can in fact eat that thing.
The energy that’s in those the moments that feel alive, imbued with something grander, an unseen force. The way the trillium pokes its way up between the sword fern fronds. How the grass is covered in purple scilla, like a magical wildflower blanket. The robin taking a bath in the muddy puddle of water, the black-capped chickadee searching in the planter boxes for any remnants of last year’s plants.
It’s the hope with which you buy the cilantro starts at the farm store on a bright and sunny day, and tell yourself that yes, you can plant them and simply hope that it doesn’t freeze again. They look so fragile there in the rain, but they’re hanging on.
It’s the seal that returns and the three eagles that fly overhead, so low that you can hear their wings flapping.
These are all the crackles. Little moments of refresh amongst the chaos.
The particular frenetic spring energy that I have been feeling as of late has meant that I’ve had a very hard time coming to my visual art practice. Again, I know that it would be good, but I just can’t seem to muster the energy.
This week however I did start taking some of the things that I had written in my notebook, or that friends had said to me, and writing them down underneath a blob of watercolor. For no reason other than the fact that taking them entirely out of context brings in some of that light.
A little bit of levity.
A little crackle.
As I made these, the work of David Shrigley came to mind. If you’re new to his work,
did an excellent piece on him. Shrigley is very good at combining words and graphics to elicit feelings. He has a particular knack for humor, like this fish, and visually capturing emotions you didn’t even know that you were feeling, like a tornado of nonsense.“Living in a chaotic world, in scary times, it’s great and joyous to have our dread reflected in art, yet also transformed into hilarity,” wrote Jonathan Jones in a piece about Shrigley in 2022, which I think is a pretty great summation of why we need art.
Maybe that’s what the chaos asks for: a little bit of levity.
Or as Shrigley says (in red and hot pink, obviously): “make some art and you will feel better.”
It’s yet another repeating lesson, but he’s right.
-Anna
Unfurling: A (Digital) Creative Retreat for Spring
Are you also feeling a little bit of this chaotic spring energy? Then maybe you want to take part in UNFURLING, a digital creative retreat for spring taking place right here in Creative Fuel April 3-7, 2024. There will be daily prompts and reflections, and I’m adding in a fun analog component with printable PDFs.
UNFURLING is an offering for paid subscribers, so if you’re not one already and you want to take part, all you have to do is upgrade your subscription.
“But I’ve also learnt that there are just so many things I want to do that aren’t cleaning, because cleaning takes so much time, precious, slippery, running-through-your-fingers time, when I could be reading about American butter sculpting in the late 19th century. Or doing shibori dyeing workshops, or getting better at making faces from air-dry clay. Or earning some money.” -
on art and cleaning (or lack thereof)If you need a little more daily sparkle/crackle/levity in your life, I highly recommend
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Chaos finely define my tiny world right now. "Make some art and you will feel better." Anna, thank you for your pencil and watercolor messages, this beautiful piece and the ability to brighten even the dark day I'm having here on the east coast. 🩷 now to make some art out of chaos
This arrived at just the right time. Also two cheers to printable PDFs😊