Chaos is a Condition
Reflections from Retreat
PHOTO BY JESS DRAWHORN
It’s been a minute since we checked in with you all! As we reflect on our retreat, Loam Co-Editor Kate shares a few thoughts on creating with change.
Our July break from Substack wasn’t intentional, but life got in the way! Both Kailea and I moved, and we’ve had a lot of work to take care of in our day-to-day lives.
All to say, I’m eager to share some of what we’ve been tending to, including a few reflections on chaos, retreat, and reimagining.
I’ve actually been wanting to write to you all for some time. But I just couldn’t get my ideas in order. After returning from our 2023 sabbatical, Kailea and I made a commitment to be discerning with what we share. Your attention is precious. Our time is, too. So we want to publish when it matters, or when it moves us—even if the pace of “production” is slower and uneven.
Every time I sit down to write, however, I find myself returning to the same tired threads: that the world is overwhelming, I’m ashamed of failing to keep pace, and most days despair is too close to home.
This Substack isn’t solely a space for polished essays—I think there’s a place for pieces like this one (half-formed, emergent, explanatory) as well. And, I want to shift out of certain storylines. When I shared an earlier draft of this essay with Kailea, she noted that it said much of the same thing as I’ve said before. It got me thinking about what it takes to nurture new narratives. Although I believe in multiplicity—in the irreducible entanglement of beauty and brutality, possibility and pain—I don’t always live into this truth. Like most everyone striving to make it through this era of emergency, I struggle to stay strong in the face of chaos. For much of this summer, I’ve been in an ebb: easily overwhelmed, self-absorbed, anxious. It’s impacted how I show up for the people and projects I care about.
But I want something else for myself, and our community. Although it’s critical to honor and act on our despair, it’s necessary to give the sublime space too. Because every now and then, however hard and heartbreaking the world is, a portal opens.
Recently, I was listening to a conversation between adrienne maree brown and Malkia Devich-Cyril on community organizing and power building. Early in the interview, Malkia reflects on sustaining solidarity through polycrisis. Says Devich-Cyril:
“As Prentis [Hemphill] reminded us a few days ago,1 chaos don’t have to be bad. Chaos don’t have to be a threat. Chaos is simply the conditions. And our job is to analyze the conditions [...] and to then make moves based on an accurate understanding of the conditions and an assessment of our power.”
Chaos is simply the conditions.
Once I got home, I rewound the interview just so I could hear that again. Because when I am consumed by justifiable rage, I often forget that the chaos within and surrounding is a condition. And the work isn’t necessarily to make it “easier” to weather the chaos. It’s to conspire with chaos.
As I was sitting with this idea, the latest PLANTCRAFT missive landed in my inbox. In Amirio Freeman’s conversation with artist Aaron McIntosh on forging queer kinship with kudzu, Amirio invites us to consider what it means to “make chaos our co-rider.” Writes Amirio:
“That’s an idea I’ve been [...] thinking about how to live into since hearing a lecture given by ‘artist, trickster, educator, jíbare and wakeworker’ brontë velez a few weeks ago.
During their talk, brontë insisted on renegotiating our imperative to work against the overlapping crises of our times by considering how these crises can be something we work with. [...] How do we practice ‘disaster companionship versus disaster preparedness?’”
As Freeman and Devich-Cyril remind us, the world right now—unbearable, in process, miraculous, collapsing— is remaking us. And if we are to stay in contact, we need to practice radical strategies and storylines. What is beautiful and alive, right now? What is ours to shape? What does it look like to conspire with (to breathe with/be with) chaos?
These are big questions, and I definitely don’t have any answers (Not today, or maybe ever). But as we work through these considerations as a collective, I want to name just one of the small shifts that have been supporting us in conspiring with chaos.
Earlier this Spring, Loam signed off of social media. Since then, tending to Loam has felt juicier, and truer. IG wasn’t serving the work, and it’s been a gift to reconnect with our “why.”
Space from social media has also made me reflect on what we owe each other. More often than not, social media incentivizes soul baring and real time reflections on current events. Although these energies can, and do, have a critical role within our movements, I’m not so sure if the pull to share so much with so many strangers strengthens my sense of strategy. Also, Loam is not a news room: we don’t have the bandwidth or budget to meaningfully respond to everything. So I’m trying to figure out what to share with my in-person collaborators, and what to share with our online community. Determining systems for sharing isn’t just about sustaining connection, it’s also about preserving focus: I don’t want to compromise my capacity to show up for on-the-ground movements.
Clarifying my roles and responsibilities as a culture worker is pushing me to reimagine my relationship to art as well. So much of the process of creation is unseen. Any work of art—from an audio interview to an herbal remedy to a community mural—is rooted in days (if not weeks or years) of unseen, and likely unpaid, work. It takes a lot of love, patience, trust, resilience, research, and reflection to create. Knowing that, how do we better honor the invisible labor of art making? How do we communicate change? How do we build a creative community that holds space for us to experiment, make mistakes, rest, reach out?
The world is changing. Whatever constructs kept us afloat likely won’t make it through this next draft. We are going to need new ways of keeping one another close even when so much is falling apart. And I think one way to practice that is by relearning to honor the invisible, unarticulated, unexpressed, unphotographed, undocumented process.
Chaos is simply the conditions. What then?
In the coming weeks, we will be sharing a conversation with Counterstream Media as well as updates on our newest print project. Although this summer has been full of growing pains, it’s also been beautiful as we allow the chaos of real life to seed ideas for the work. Even with so much in flux, we continue to feel excited and grateful to be in conversation with this ever expanding community.
Because more and more, when Kailea and I envision the work of Loam, we are moved to share as much about the miraculous as the muddiness. We want to be truthful to the times we are in.
I haven’t yet figured out what work from Prentis that they are referencing! So if you do know, please share the original source. And if you haven’t yet, read What It Takes to Heal by Prentis Hemphill. It’s such a beautiful, necessary, and life-giving work.