How do you order your chaos ? I saw a sign visiting a rural eighteenth century house- Hanbury Hall in Worcestershire. An eighteenth century motto on display declared:  World is Chaos / Creativity is order.

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Creativity to me is a cauldron of ideas bubbling, or a hot spring steaming from a volcanic split in the earth…a string telephone connection to your unconscious.

So how can creativity be order ?

Ahh this is the eighteenth century, the age of Reason, taming chaos with reasonable- ness.

 

 

Artful flower meadow
Artful flower meadow

This is the ‘wild’ meadow that greets you so charmingly as you approach the house. Artfully chosen wild flowers, colour co-ordinated patterns. Why leave it to random natural selection ? So creativity here is taming the wildness of nature, and re-presenting it with concealed and cunning order, so pleasing to the eye. I admit to finding these gardens soothing to be in. So their order speaks to your spirit. Disorder is discomfiting, scary ? At times of emotional upheaval, do you find yourself putting the spoons in straight lines, wiping the kitchen surfaces ? I do.

 

 

Gatehouse to Hanbury Hall
Gatehouse to Hanbury Hall
Careful vistas of nature tamed
Careful vistas of nature tamed – a view from the house. Whichever window you look out of, there’s a choreagraphed vista, so the residents of this seventeenth century house were proofed against encounters with chaos and disorder. Here are some twenty first century gardeners maintaining hedge control. Snipping off all unruly leaves with mathematical precision. I do enjoy stepping into the privileged end of the eighteenth century.                 Meanwhile here in the twenty first century, Jeannette Winterson’s statement – ‘In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance’ speaks of a current sensibility (from ‘The World and Other Stories ) .    About using uncertainty, not knowing as a creative opportunity, if you are prepared to step into void of that space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

hedge taming
hedge taming

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