What can artists do amid climate chaos?

I can make myself become quiet and do the work, I can carve a calm place within myself and remember to bring beauty back into this world. I can stand firmly on the Earth and remember that she has never stopped loving me, I can gather fine earth into my fingers and tell her I finally remember, that all I was ever meant to do was find my soul song and sing it back to her.

 

I can walk lightly and be gentle with myself and others around me, i can walk in wonder and bring hints and hues of the land back into the cold and anaesthetised spaces around us and crumble the boundaries and walls we have built up around our psyches. I can move with the soft cycles of letting in and letting go and unshackle from meta-narratives of ceaseless productivity, I can learn to be quiet in a room by myself and count my blessings. I can create beauty around me, all with the silent words of a natural world so achingly perfect that has been offered to me and offer it back in endless gratitude and joy and creativity. This is as Mary Oliver says is the work, of quietly, joyfully, steadfastly, endlessly loving the world and speaking, making and honouring her beauty.