Creating Amidst Chaos
The revolutionary act of art
Think about this for a moment…
Through the simple act of creation, we bring forth an energy into the world ~ a birth of sorts. Bloody and painful, or, like a clear channel from the heavens. Each birth is different.
Today, the world is a strange, joy-filled, beautiful and heart crushingly terrible place.
How is it for you?
What calls to be birthed today?
Do you dare to name or give shape to your experience of now?
In times of inner conflict and outer chaos, when the world is heavy, complex and there seems little point in your tinkering, I offer this:
Art in chaos is an act of service.
Through the bringing forth of meaning and ideas, we attempt to make sense of our experience. We can’t fix how we feel, and we are often hopeless in the face of things we feel we can’t control.
What can we do?
We can create ~ be it small, be it humble, be it just that little bit stupid.
This is your lens.
These are your words.
Your stories
your moments
~ frozen in time.
Nina Simone said, “The artist’s duty is to reflect the times.”
These times ~ by God, they need a mirror held up to themselves.
Just remember, in times that you doubt the effort of creation to be worthy.
Your voice, your experience, is the experience of the world.
In my last letter, I shared a piece on death and collective suffering. I wasn’t sure if it was timely, or how it would be received ~ but it was true for me.
I shared it despite the nerves. The energy of creating something felt good after quite a long drought in sharing things here.
A few hours later, I got a message from a woman who had just lost a family member. “Thank you,” she said. The piece had been a reflection of sorts ~ it gave words and space to something she was grappling with in that very moment.
And in that exchange, I knew why I had been compelled to share it.
So the lesson is this:
create ~
despite, and in service to
~ yourself and each other.
Paint that shitty little still life.
Sketch that rambling street.
Write that fumble of words that fall out of your brain at 4:33am.
Reflect your inner and outer world. If not for yourself, then for someone who might just need it today or even a long time from now.
Who’s to know what’s in store.
But in the meantime let’s make it worthwhile.
All we can offer is ourselves.
And our art is *nothing but* a reflection of exactly that.
Your words evoke the raw necessity of art — not as decoration or escape, but as response and resistance. In the face of complexity, sorrow, and absurdity, creation is a small but defiant act of order, meaning, and beauty. It’s not about grandiosity, but presence. To create anything — a sketch, a sentence, a whisper of melody — is to say: I am here. I witness. I feel. I speak.