The Chaos Preservation

Notes on surviving improvement, the violence of being understood, and what happens when you refuse to let them bore holes in your vision

The purple-orange-green of actual life.

The Macaroni Incident

Mrs. Davidson holds my art project like evidence. Second grade. The macaroni are dyed wrong—purple next to orange next to green. Colors that “don’t go together,” colors that “hurt to look at,” colors that make perfect sense to me.

“Let me help you fix this,” she says, already reaching for the “right” colors. The safe colors. The colors that go together like good children in neat rows.

“But I like it,” I say.

“You’ll like it better when it’s correct,” she says.

There’s an old Taoist story I wouldn’t hear for thirty years but was already living. About gods who meet in the realm of Chaos and decide to improve him. Give him eyes to see properly, ears to hear correctly, a mouth to speak appropriately. Seven holes in seven days. On the seventh day, Chaos dies.

Mrs. Davidson is boring the first hole. Teaching me that my eyes don’t see correctly. That purple-orange-green is chaos, and chaos needs fixing.

I let her fix it. Learn to make macaroni art in appropriate colors. Learn that the first rule of making anything is making it wrong, and the second rule is letting someone who knows better fix it.

The Buddha Crime

Sophomore year. High school ceramics. The assignment: make a pot.

I make a Buddha instead. Sitting, serene, hands folded in dhyana mudra, though I don’t know that term yet. Just know the shape feels necessary. More necessary than pots.

Mr. Klein holds it like contraband. “The assignment was a pot.”

“It holds space,” I say.

“It doesn’t hold water,” he says.

F. Failed ceramics because I made something that holds suffering instead of soup. Failed because I couldn’t follow simple instructions. Failed because when they gave me clay, I made god instead of dinnerware.

My mother at parent-teacher conference: “She has so much potential, if she’d just apply herself correctly.”

Correctly. Always correctly. As if there’s one way to apply yourself, like makeup, like a job application, like a tourniquet to stop the bleeding of everything original trying to escape.

The Documentary Years

Film school. Finally, I think. Finally a place where vision matters more than rules.

Professor Hammond pulls me aside after screening my first project—seventeen minutes about the homeless camps under the freeway, the cities within the city, the people who’ve been improved right off the edge of the world.

“You’re talented,” he says. “But this is career suicide.”

He shows me the successful alumni. They make car commercials that feel like liberation. Pharmaceutical ads that look like love. They bore beautiful holes in people’s wallets, their resistance, their ability to see what’s being sold.

“With your eye, you could be making six figures at an agency within two years.”

My eye. Like it’s detachable. Like it’s a tool that could be aimed at anything—AIDS or Acuras, teen overdoses or tourism campaigns—and the choice is simply about which pays better.

“I want to make documentaries,” I say.

“About depressing things no one wants to see?”

“About real things everyone pretends aren’t happening.”

He sighs. Writes down the names of three commercial production companies. “When you’re ready to be serious about your career.”

The Authentic Voice Workshop

Graduate school. Still trying. Still believing there’s a place where chaos is allowed.

The workshop leader, successful documentarian, award-winner, arbiter of authentic voices: “Your work lacks focus. You’re trying to say everything at once.”

But everything happens at once. Poverty and beauty, suffering and grace, purple next to orange next to green. That’s what’s real. That’s what I’m documenting.

“Pick a lane,” she says. “Pick an issue. Pick a perspective. Pick a side.”

Pick. Like life is a menu. Like stories come in single servings. Like the mess of being human can be plated appropriately, garnished correctly, served at the right temperature.

She shows us her award-winning film. It has one story, one villain, one solution. It has seven perfect apertures for understanding. It wins things. It changes nothing.

The Grant Application Murders

“Your proposed documentary about elderly artists dying in poverty is too depressing.”

“Your vision for exploring youth addiction lacks hope.”

“Your treatment about AIDS caregivers needs more uplift.”

Every rejection is the same: Your chaos needs shaping. Your vision needs adjusting. Your truth needs improving until it’s palatable, fundable, digestible.

I learn to write applications that lie. “Ultimately uplifting story of triumph...” “Inspiring journey of overcoming...” “Heartwarming exploration of human resilience...”

Learn to bore fake holes in my proposals. Learn to pretend my documentaries will make people feel better about feeling bad, instead of what they actually do: make people feel the correct amount of horrible about horrible things.

What My Mother Kept

She calls. She’s cleaning the garage. She’s found my old art.

“Remember this?” she says, sending photos. The “corrected” macaroni art. The pots I made after failing with Buddha. The commercial spec scripts I wrote to prove I could be serious.

All of it proper. All of it correct. All of it dead.

“You were so talented,” she says. Past tense. Like talent is something that dies when you stop applying it correctly.

She doesn’t have the Buddha. Doesn’t have the first documentary, the one about my best friend who died of AIDS while everyone pretended it wasn’t happening. Doesn’t have the real things. Only the improvements.

“I kept all the good stuff,” she says.

The good stuff. The stuff with proper holes. The stuff that makes sense. The stuff that doesn’t clash, doesn’t disturb, doesn’t document the world as it actually is: purple-orange-green, dying-living-dying, beautiful-terrible-beautiful.

The Client Meeting

I take commercial work to pay for documentaries. They want a video about their nonprofit. “Inspiring but not heavy. Real but not too real. Honest but not uncomfortable.”

I show them the truth: their clients suffering beautifully, surviving messily, living in full chaos.

“Can we maybe... soften this?” Soften. Like truth is a fabric that’s too rough. “Maybe fewer shots of actual poverty? More shots of hope?”

Hope. They want me to document hope while people are dying of reality. Want me to bore holes in the truth until light gets in, but not too much light, not the kind that shows what’s actually there.

I make two versions. The real one for me. The one with seven perfect apertures for them. They love the lie. Fund the lie. Share the lie widely.

The real one sits on my hard drive like a Buddha that holds suffering instead of water.

The Festival Circuit

My documentary about teenage addiction gets into a festival. Small one. The kind where truth sometimes accidentally gets through.

The programmer pulls me aside: “It’s powerful, but... have you considered adding more context about recovery resources? Maybe ending with success stories? The audience needs hope.”

The audience needs hope like Chaos needed eyes. The audience needs hope like I needed to learn appropriate colors. The audience needs hope like another hole to breathe through when they’re already drowning.

The film is about kids dying. Actually dying. Not metaphorically dying. Not potentially dying. Currently, presently, in-real-time dying.

“Without hope, what’s the point?” he asks.

The point is they’re dying. The point is to see them dying. The point is to stop pretending purple and orange don’t exist next to each other just because it’s uncomfortable to look at.

I add sixty seconds of resources at the end. A hole. An aperture. A way for the audience to escape the suffocation of reality.

It wins best documentary.

I feel nothing.

What Gets Made Instead

Pharmaceutical companies need patient stories. Tech companies need diversity videos. Nonprofits need donor appeals.

I make them. I bore the holes they require. Seven apertures in every story: problem, awakening, struggle, breakthrough, transformation, gratitude, call-to-action.

Every real story gets improved to death. Every chaos gets organized. Every purple-orange-green gets separated into appropriate color stories.

The AIDS patient becomes an inspiration. The homeless veteran becomes a success story. The addicted teenager becomes a cautionary tale with a redemptive arc.

I cash the checks. Use the money to make real things no one will fund. Document chaos without apertures. Create Buddhas instead of pots.

The Teaching Moment

I guest lecture sometimes. Film schools. Documentary programs. Rooms full of young people who still have purple-orange-green vision.

“The industry will try to improve your vision,” I tell them. “They’ll call it development, mentorship, professional growth. What they mean is: bore holes until you see what sells.”

A student raises her hand: “But how do we make a living?”

How do we make a living. Not how do we make art. Not how do we tell truth. How do we make a living, as if living and making are the same thing, as if you can’t be fully alive while financially dying.

“You make two versions,” I say. “The one with holes and the one without. You feed the gods their improved version. You keep the chaos for yourself.”

They look at me like I’m bitter. Like I’m broken. Like I’m what happens when you don’t let them bore the right holes at the right time.

Maybe I am.

Or maybe I’m what survives.

The Real Work

My hard drives are full of Buddhas. Documentaries about:

• The nurse who held thirty-seven AIDS patients as they died, who can describe the exact weight of a body giving up

• The teenager who overdosed twice, survived, overdosed again, didn’t

• The tent cities that rebuild themselves nightly, governments of the ungoverned

• The elderly artist painting masterpieces in a storage unit she lives in illegally

• The purple-orange-green of actual life

• None of them have hope. None of them have uplift. None of them have the seven apertures required for funding, distribution, screening, existing in the world that only wants improved versions of itself.

But they have something else. They have wholeness. They have chaos refusing to be organized. They have truth that doesn’t care if you can digest it.

They have what Mrs. Davidson tried to fix in second grade: colors that shouldn’t exist together but do.

The Diagnosis

“Your work is too dark,” they say. “Your vision is too scattered,” they say. “Your stories lack resolution,” they say.

Like darkness is a disease. Like scatter is a symptom. Like resolution is the only cure for the terminal condition of being alive.

They want to bore therapeutic holes. Want to add light and focus and endings that make sense. Want to improve my documentaries until they document nothing but the proper way to see improperly.

A producer offers to “shepherd” my latest project. Shepherd. Like my film is a sheep that’s wandered off. Like it needs to be guided back to the flock of appropriate stories.

“We’ll just reshape the narrative slightly. Make it more accessible.”

Accessible. Like truth is a building that needs ramps. Like reality requires special accommodations. Like people can’t be trusted to navigate chaos without handrails.

“What if it’s not supposed to be accessible?” I ask.

She looks at me like I’ve suggested making films in no language, for no audience, about nothing.

Maybe I have.

What Chaos Makes

I’m finishing a documentary right now. About the woman who makes art from her daughter’s suicide notes. About the purple-orange-green of grief that doesn’t resolve, recover, transform into anything useful.

No one will fund it. No one will distribute it. No one will watch it without looking for the holes where hope should be, the apertures where healing should enter, the places where it should make sense.

But I’m making it anyway. With the money from lying about pharmaceutical miracles. With the equipment bought by boring proper holes in proper stories. With the vision that Mrs. Davidson tried to correct in second grade but couldn’t quite kill.

Because this is what I learned from that Taoist story: Chaos didn’t die from the holes. Chaos died from agreeing the holes were necessary. From letting Fuss and Fret convince him that kindness meant improvement, that gratitude meant transformation, that love meant becoming comprehensible.

But what if Chaos had said no? What if Chaos had said: I am already complete. I see without eyes, hear without ears, speak without a mouth. I am purple-orange-green. I am Buddhas instead of pots. I am documentaries about things that don’t get better.

What if that’s the real kindness? Not letting them improve you to death. Not boring holes in everything that refuses to make sense. Not pretending chaos needs organizing.

In the Edit Room

Three in the morning. Just me and twenty-seven hours of footage that won’t resolve into anything fundable.

The woman on screen is laughing about her daughter’s death. Then crying. Then making art from the suicide note. Then burning the art. Then making new art from the ashes. Purple-orange-green. Buddha instead of pot. Chaos refusing to be improved.

This will never sell. Never screen. Never win anything. Never make me successful in any way that can be measured by the gods of improvement.

But it’s real. It’s whole. It’s what actually happens when you don’t bore holes in the truth.

My phone buzzes. My mother, sending another article: “How to Make Documentaries That Actually Sell.”

I delete it without reading. Return to the footage. To the woman making impossible art from impossible loss. To the purple-orange-green of actual human experience.

To the chaos that survives every attempt at improvement.

To the Buddhas that hold suffering better than any pot holds water.

To the vision they tried to correct but couldn’t quite kill.

Still making documentaries about things nobody wants to see, because somebody has to look at what’s actually there. Somebody has to refuse the holes. Somebody has to document the chaos before they improve it to death.

Mrs. Davidson was wrong. The colors do go together. All of them. Especially the ones that hurt to look at.

That’s what makes them true.

The Successful Students

I know where they are now, the kids who learned the lesson.

Janine, who painted beautiful landscapes in appropriate colors, runs a marketing firm that sells opioids as liberation. Douglas, who made perfect pots exactly as specified, designs systems for optimizing unemployment denials. Shelley, who wrote uplifting documentaries about overcoming adversity, produces reality shows where poverty is entertainment.

They learned. They survived. They bore the right holes at the right times.

They run things now.

Every institution is shaped like their pots - functional, correct, holding exactly what it’s supposed to hold and nothing else. Every story is colored like their macaroni art - safe combinations that don’t disturb, don’t clash, don’t make anyone question why purple and orange aren’t supposed to touch.

They make six figures. Seven figures. Eight figures boring holes in the rest of us.

The Democracy of Properly Bored Holes

The senator on screen, explaining why we can’t have healthcare, went to Yale. Learned to make proper arguments with proper apertures. Learned that chaos is inefficient, that purple-orange-green is unmarketable, that Buddhas are not practical solutions.

The CEO destroying the watershed for quarterly profits went to Wharton. Learned that everything unimproved is an opportunity, that wholeness is leaving money on the table, that chaos is just another word for undeveloped resources.

The news anchor explaining why the homeless camps have to go went to Columbia Journalism. Learned to tell stories with seven apertures: who, what, when, where, why, how, and what it means for property values. Never learned to ask: what if they’re supposed to be there? What if the camps are the documentation, the purple-orange-green truth about how we live now?

They all made the right pots. Used the right colors. Told the right stories.

Now they decide which documentaries get funded (the ones with hope), which art gets displayed (the ones with proper colors), which voices get heard (the ones with the right apertures).

The Children of Chaos

But here’s what Mrs. Davidson didn’t know, what Mr. Klein couldn’t see, what Professor Hammond never figured out:

Some of us kept making Buddhas in secret.

The nurse I documented, who held the dying when no one else would - she was a purple-orange-green kid too. Failed art for refusing to draw inside the lines. Now she draws outside every line, holding chaos in her arms eight hours a day.

The tent city architect, building homes from nothing - he failed shop class for making “impractical” structures. Now his impractical structures house hundreds.

The woman making art from suicide notes - she was told her colors were “too much.” Now she makes too-much-ness into memorials for those who couldn’t survive the improvement.

We’re everywhere, the uncorrected ones. The documentarians recording what isn’t supposed to exist. The nurses holding who isn’t supposed to be saved. The artists making from what isn’t supposed to be beautiful.

We didn’t get improved to death. We got improved to resistance.

The Cost Accounting

Calculate the real price:

Every properly bored hole is a truth that can’t be told. Every correct pot is a Buddha that didn’t get born. Every appropriate color combination is a reality that can’t be seen.

My classmate Tommaso, who painted his family in real colors - bruise-purple father, gin-orange mother, trying-to-disappear-green himself. They made him repaint it in healthy pink tones. He killed himself senior year. The obituary said he was “troubled,” not that he was the only one painting the truth.

Roberta, who tried to document factory farms in film school, got redirected to food commercials. Makes beautiful lies about happy cows now. Sends me emails at 3 AM sometimes: “Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we’d been allowed to tell the truth?”

Marty, who made ceramic figures of his depression, was told to make functional items instead. He’s functional now. Properly medicated. Properly employed. Properly hollowed out. Seven perfect apertures for experiencing acceptable life.

The world is run by people who learned to bore the right holes. The rest of us are either dead, drunk, or documenting.

The Parallel Economy

We’ve built something else, those of us who refused the improvements.

There’s a network. Informal. Invisible to those who only see through proper apertures. We fund each other’s Buddhas. Screen each other’s unmarketable truths. Trade purple for orange for green, knowing they all go together.

I get an email: “I have $500 from a commercial lie. Who’s making something real?”

A text: “My gallery is closed Sundays. Want to screen your unbearable documentary?”

A call: “I’m teaching a workshop. Come tell them about the two-version strategy. Help them survive.”

We’re the underground railroad for chaos. The speakeasy for inappropriate colors. The samizdat for documentaries that document what actually is.

The woman whose daughter killed herself sends me footage: her daughter’s last year, real and terrible and purple-orange-green. “No one will fund this,” she says. “I know,” I say. We make it anyway. Screen it in living rooms. Share it hand to hand. Let it exist without apertures, without hope, without improvement.

The Chaos Preservation Society

My newest student comes to office hours. Has that look - the one that says they’ve just been told their vision needs correction.

“They say my work is too angry,” she says.

She’s documenting police violence. Of course it’s angry. Anger is the appropriate color for murder. But appropriate isn’t the same as acceptable.

“Make two versions,” I tell her. “The one that gets you graduated, and the one that gets you free.”

She looks at me like I looked at Professor Hammond. Like I’m surrendering. Like I’m teaching her to bore holes in herself.

“The real version,” I continue, “send it to me. I know people.”

I give her the network. The secret galleries. The underground screens. The people who fund Buddhas, not pots.

“But how do I make a living?” she asks.

The eternal question. The hole they bore in all of us: how do you survive in a world that only pays for lies?

“You lie beautifully,” I say. “You make their versions so perfect they never suspect you’re documenting their crimes in the real version. You use their money to fund your truth. You survive long enough to outlast them.”

What Chaos Remembers

Before the first hole, before the first improvement, before Fuss and Fret arrived with their terrible kindness - Chaos was complete.

Didn’t need eyes because it saw everything simultaneously. Didn’t need ears because it heard all frequencies at once. Didn’t need a mouth because it spoke in colors that shouldn’t exist together but do.

This is what they took from us in second grade, in sophomore ceramics, in film school, in every grant rejection: the memory of wholeness. The knowledge that purple-orange-green is the actual color of life.

But bodies remember what minds are taught to forget. Hands remember how to make Buddhas even while making pots. Eyes remember how to see chaos even through proper apertures. Hearts remember how to hold suffering even when they’re supposed to hold water.

We remember. All of us who got improved but didn’t die. We remember that the world isn’t supposed to make sense, isn’t supposed to have seven holes, isn’t supposed to resolve into hope.

The Revolution of Refusing Improvement

It’s happening now. Quiet. Invisible to those who only see through proper apertures.

Every authentic documentary that gets made despite no funding. Every Buddha that gets sculpted instead of pots. Every purple-orange-green truth that gets told. Each one is a refusal. Each one is resistance. Each one is Chaos saying: I don’t need your holes.

The kids who colored appropriately run the world, yes. But the world is dying of appropriateness. Dying of proper holes. Dying of stories that resolve, colors that match, pots that only hold what they’re supposed to hold.

And meanwhile, in basements and borrowed spaces, in hard drives and hidden galleries, we’re documenting the actual collapse. The purple bruises. The orange flames. The green decay. The whole chaotic truth of it.

Not with hope. Not with solutions. Not with seven proper apertures for understanding.

Just with witness. Just with refusal to improve reality into something digestible. Just with the terrible kindness of showing what is.

The Last Documentary

I’m making one final film. About all of us. The purple-orange-green kids who survived the improvement.

No one will fund it. It has no hope. It offers no solutions. It doesn’t even have proper structure - just chaos talking to chaos about the violence of being given apertures.

But I’m making it anyway. With forty years of commercial lies funding forty years of documenting truth. With every Buddha that got thrown away for not being a pot. With every color that wasn’t supposed to exist but does.

It’s about Mrs. Davidson, probably dead now, who thought she was helping when she taught me my eyes were wrong.

It’s about the kids who learned the lesson and now bore holes in everything they touch.

It’s about the ones who didn’t learn, couldn’t learn, refused to learn, and how we’re the only ones documenting the collapse.

It’s about Chaos, and how he should have refused dinner with the gods.

The Inheritance

Tomorrow I teach another workshop. Tell another room full of young documentarians about the two-version strategy. Watch them realize they’ll have to choose: make pots or make Buddhas, use proper colors or use real ones, bore holes or preserve chaos.

Some will choose success. Learn to make beautiful lies. Get hired by the gods of improvement. Run things. Bore holes in the next generation.

But some - the ones with purple-orange-green already in their eyes - will choose truth. Will document what shouldn’t exist but does. Will make Buddhas that hold suffering instead of water. Will preserve the chaos that is the actual shape of being alive.

To them I leave this: my hard drives full of undistributable truth. My network of chaos-preservers. My forty years of evidence that you can survive the improvement if you remember:

You don’t need seven holes to be complete. You don’t need proper colors to see truly. You don’t need to make pots to make meaning.

The world is run by those who accepted the improvements. But it’s documented by those who refused them. And in the end, when everything properly bored collapses, only the documentation of chaos will remain.

Purple next to orange next to green. Buddhas instead of pots. Truth instead of hope. Chaos, preserved despite every attempt to improve it to death.

Mrs. Davidson was wrong. The colors do go together. They’ve always gone together. We’re the only ones with eyes anarchic enough to see it.

And we’re not going to stop seeing it just because it makes the world uncomfortable.

That’s not an improvement. That’s survival.

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Chuang Tzu’s Fuss & Fret (translated by Arthur Waley) as found in Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China.

Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god of the Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god of the Centre. Chaos treated them very handsomely, and they discussed together what they could do to repay his kindness. They had noticed that, whereas everyone else has seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and so on, Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes in him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day Chaos died.

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Image ©2025 Gael MacLean