When Confusion Becomes Wisdom: Reflections on Ecological Thinking

On Being Beautifully Lost and Found

Hi fam,

I’ve been on the road with little to no space to write to you. I wrote to Mexico, though, and I wanted to share my reflection on being lost and what that means for me as an artist driven by deep ecology, plus a plethora of music and art that explores entanglement and ecological thinking.

Read while listening to this Lot Radio mix that we played with my homie Eli in celebration of the launch of our label, Future Sound of Nature, an ode to electronic music and nature sounds.

Enjoy.

I feel touched by you, Mexico. As always. Ugly and beautiful. Lost and found simultaneously. Entangled. This is my earth-body work—not art on surfaces but embodied connection with place.

"We are not external observers of Earth and ecological systems but co-producers of these realities." — Ursula Biemann

Adventures require incompleteness. In a world built on separation—"nothing really touches"—to be touched in any form is revolutionary. Even to be wounded, to experience another's gritty reality, is to defy the uncrossable ontological gap. We enter what Pierre Huyghe calls a "non-knowledge zone... not a place of non-understanding, but a place where understanding is not a prerequisite."

We will fetishize each other, yet being touched—to be held, acknowledged—recognizes we exist among others. In a world of separation, this connection is revolutionary.

Even when painful, touching each other is an honor.

If you're always right, always certain, look around—you're probably alone. To be flawed, wounded, wrong, touched imperfectly is to acknowledge we orbit other beings. Beautiful and tragic simultaneously. Our multidimensionality, though painful, grants access to joy and ecstasy.

"I'm interested in a non-knowledge zone... not a place of non-understanding, but a place where understanding is not a prerequisite." — Pierre Huyghe

We sustain ourselves at the expense of others. Notice this. New engagement forms are born not from purity but from invested presence. Here is where our imaginative structures must outpace our analytical ones.

"The imaginative structure has to be more complex than the analytical one. Because with the analytical, you come to an answer. With the imaginative, you come to a question." — Mel Chin

Confusion—from "mingling together"—offers opportunity to see differently. Thinking isn't human-based but ecological, contextual. Confusion isn't emptiness needing to be filled but an invitation to unfamiliar wisdom. Our bodies become vessels for knowing the earth directly, beyond language.

We are almost being, always almost. Sacred hypocrites. Entanglement undermines purity. The notion that aligned intentions create an aligned world has shadows—one being that lostness is a path to being found.

Are we lost? Yes. But lostness and being found are simultaneously entangled. This is the earth speaking through us, the body knowing before the mind can analyze.

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