Loam Return

We often speak of rebirth. Skip ahead to emergence, bloom, becoming. However, before any beginning worth trusting, there is decay. Decay is framed as loss: rotting, weakening, decline. Moral decay. Urban decay. Environmental decay. Tooth decay. A word burdened with damage.

Underneath these human judgments, decay is simply a process, an unmaking of a whole back to basic components. The gradual release of form back into substance. It works at a sluggish pace, asking us to slow down, too. Decay is not an event in time, it is constantly happening and it is never done. Without decomposition, there is only accumulation without renewal: systems choking on their own residues. Because of death you are alive today.

Listen to the pedagogy of decay.