Hello reading companions,
Warm seasonal changes are unfurling in the form of leaves and buds and blooms, but death still lingers in the shadows. It sounds morbid, I know, but thanks to the validation of writers like Susan Cain, Deborah Levy, Joan Didion and Tim Winton, I’m embracing the learnings of being happily melancholy.
Sometimes it prompts me to think about the death of productivity — forced to invite idleness in. It can be found in conversations with a child, about life cycles when tiny hearts stop beating. It lingers during the death of relationships, when seasons oscillate at odds or when we outgrow jobs, places or people that once fit perfectly. Other times it’s about confronting our mortality and the brutal paradoxes of the human condition. Unlike the wise rituals of sorry business in First Nations communities, individualist and capitalist societies are less accustomed to the fullness of our existence — it makes us rather clumsy in the face of change. Which is odd, seeing as change is the only constant.
I was listening to a deeply thoughtful conversation with Charlotte Wood recently and her take on why we need books with subtext and messages that don’t strain for attention. Her latest novel (Booker Prize shortlisted!) Stone Yard Devotional speaks to the notion that ‘knowing too much can be dangerous’ and the time it takes to be ‘courageously foolish’. It’s about the power of quiet.
It’s the same kind of soothing sentiment that hides in Nick Cave’s quiet corner of the internet. Camaraderie in the shape of questions, and learnings that are less answers, and more tangential thoughts. From speaking our mind, to the utility of suffering, Cave calls it communal vulnerability.
In workshops and focus groups, I like to teach negative capability. Consider it an organised form of doing nothing. Coined by John Keats, ‘negative capability’ is a dimension of human experience whereby a person is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries or doubts. When our subconscious is hard at work—whispering and sense-making—we have to honour that process by shielding it from ever-present distractions.
Growing fascination with mycelium comes at a time when we’re experiencing severe trauma and death in humanity. In this way, fungi is helping to challenge our perceptions of life and death as binary. Instead, decomposition is about decay, whereby death gives life to something new. I don’t think the mycelium fixation is much of a coincidence, as we start to look outside ourselves for ideas about how to survive transformative times.
Similarly, the language that adrienne maree brown uses in emergent strategy facilitation emulates natural processes, honouring life and death as necessary partners. By noticing patterns and evolution in nature, their tools help return people to cyclical work, and being in ‘right relationship with change’.
Which brings me to an offering: the idea that decomposition (death) helps us disassemble, rebuild, and replenish (live). The following reflective practice tool is intended to be versatile, so keep it for your own field notes, or take it to your working groups to start a restorative conversation.
Stay curious, stay tender.
Reflective Practice
In the most simple form, these are journal prompts. As reflective practice tools, the questions offer vocabulary to normalise the cyclical nature of our lives. Consider what you are moving through, and reflect on what you might let go of (decompose*), grow (seed*), adapt (murmuration*) and scale (fractals*).
Decompose: Notice what elements need help to be transformed. What behaviours, relationships or actions are no longer working? What might you need to let go of?
Seed: Notice what helps form connections. What should be continued? What behaviours, ideas or actions help you to grow?
Murmuration: Think about things that encourage synchronicity. When can you form shared habits or effort? (i.e. equal partnership around choices or actions)
Fractals: Think about what behaviours or actions that occur at small-scale, that help set patterns at large. What qualities would you like to see in a whole system?
*Brown, A.M. (2017), Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press.
Readings and other things
Poetry offers wonderful contemplation, so here is another Pádraig Ó Tuama reading from Poetry Unbound. David Wagoner’s Lost will take you into nature — the best kind of negative capability.
Humility, frustration, grief, yearning; they visit us all. Discover the big life questions similar to your own, but with a sense of commonality and togetherness: The Red Hand Files by Nick Cave.
I must admit, I have to gently segue into my negative capability states, and Dreamy by Commonground helps that soft landing. It’s the ancient practice of oral storytelling, beautifully composed for easy listening.
Books I return to for iterative thinking and the power of quiet: The Chronology of Water by Lydia Yuknavitch, Bittersweet by Susain Cain, and Cloudstreet by Tim Winton.
Considering field work?
For contributions and editorial that distills research for everyday reading, I invite you to connect — let’s explore the possibility of sense-making, together.
Email: hello@samantharoche.com
Website: samantharoche.com
Instagram: @anthropologyfieldnotes
Fellow reader, I see you, and your curiosity for tenderness. Let this be the beginning of a conversation and consider passing on a Field Notes article.