Latest / The Creative Life: Art, Writing, Music & Creative Living / Filming Stop-Motion with Volcanic Ash: Finding Beauty in Destruction | The Creative Life
Transcript
- I held a pinch of grey dust from a volcano in my palm, and for the first time in months, my hands stopped shaking. It wasn’t magic, exactly, but it was heavy with the kind of truth that usually burns. You know how I’ve been talking lately about the mess of making? About how we’re so obsessed with the shiny final image that we forget to touch the raw materials? Well, last week, I decided to stop looking at screens and start looking at dirt. Specifically, volcanic ash. I know, it sounds dramatic. Or perhaps just a bit dangerous. But there is something profoundly grounding about holding the remnants of an explosion in your hand. I ordered a small vial online—ethically sourced, I promise, not from some active crater I’m too terrified to visit—and when it arrived, the box smelled like rain on hot stone. I opened it carefully, afraid the wind might steal it away. The texture was fine, almost like flour, but darker. Heavier. It settled into the creases of my fingerprints, staining them with a pale, ghostly grey. I sat at my kitchen table, which is also my desk, and I just watched it. I didn’t try to make anything yet. I just let myself be present with this thing that was once part of a mountain, now reduced to powder by fire and pressure. It made me think about how much of our creative energy feels like that ash. We go through these intense, fiery experiences—breakups, job losses, moments of sheer panic—and then we’re left with this residue. What do we do with it? Do we sweep it up and pretend it never happened? Or do we pick it up, grain by grain, and see if it can build something new? So, I started moving things. Just tiny shifts. I placed a single grain of ash on a piece of black cardstock and took a photo. Then I moved it a millimeter to the left and took another photo. And another. And another. This is stop-motion animation, or at least, a very basic version of it. It’s a technique where you take individual photos of objects and play them back in sequence to create the illusion of movement. It’s tedious. It’s slow. It requires a patience that most of us have forgotten how to cultivate. In a world where we can watch a whole movie in ten minutes on our phones, taking three hundred photos to create five seconds of movement feels almost rebellious. But that slowness is the point. When I’m clicking that shutter, one frame at a time, my mind has nowhere else to go. I can’t worry about tomorrow’s email or yesterday’s mistake. I can only focus on the distance between the ash and the edge of the frame. Let’s look closer. That’s what I tell myself. Look closer at the shift. Look closer at the light. There’s a rhythm to it, like breathing. In. Click. Out. Click. In. Click. It’s meditative in a way that scrolling isn’t. Scrolling pulls you apart; this pushes you together. You become one with the object, the camera, the light. You are anchored in the physical reality of the moment. And honestly, after weeks of feeling scattered and anxious, that anchor felt like a lifeline. As I worked, I started to notice the quality of the ash itself. Under the macro lens of my phone camera, it wasn’t just grey dust. It was a landscape. Jagged shards, smooth spheres, twisted fibers. Each particle had a unique shape, formed by the specific conditions of its birth. Some were sharp enough to catch the light and sparkle like diamonds. Others were dull and matte, absorbing the shadows. It made me wonder about the stories trapped in those shapes. Where did this ash come from? Was it from Hawaii? From Iceland? From a volcano that erupted thousands of years ago and was collected by someone who believed in the beauty of destruction? I found myself treating each grain with reverence. I wasn’t just moving dirt; I was choreographing history. This is what I mean when I talk about the dignity of manual labor in art. When you work with your hands, you enter into a conversation with the material. The material talks back. It resists. It yields. It surprises you. Sometimes, a clump of ash would stick together, defying my plan to spread it out evenly. Instead of getting frustrated, I leaned into it. I let the clump become a mountain in my tiny animated world. I learned to ask, 'What’s the texture of that?' Not just physically, but emotionally. What does this resistance feel like? Is it anger? Is it fear? Is it just stubbornness? By naming it, I could work with it instead of against it. The animation became less about controlling the ash and more about listening to it. Now, I need to be honest with you. The first hour of this process was terrible. I’m not going to lie to you and say it was easy. My hands cramped. The lighting kept changing as the sun moved across the sky. I accidentally knocked over the tripod twice. The resulting frames were jittery and uneven. It was messy. It was frustrating. It was, in every sense of the word, unfinished. And that’s okay. It’s okay to be unfinished. We live in a culture that demands polish, that demands we skip straight to the highlight reel. But the magic happens in the ugly middle. The part where you’re covered in dust, tired, and wondering why you ever started. For me, the turning point came when I stopped trying to make it perfect and started trying to make it true. I accepted the jitter. I accepted the uneven lighting. I let the imperfections show. Because here’s the thing about volcanic ash—it’s imperfect. It’s chaotic. It’s the result of forces beyond human control. Trying to force it into a neat, predictable pattern felt like a violation. So I let it be wild. I let it dance erratically. I let it swirl like smoke. And suddenly, the animation felt alive. It didn’t look like a technical exercise anymore; it looked like a memory. It looked like a feeling. And that’s what I want for you, too. I want you to give yourself permission to be messy. To allow your work to be jagged and uneven. Because perfection is static. It’s dead. But imperfection? Imperfection breathes. It moves. It grows. When I finally rendered the video—the compilation of those three hundred photos into a five-second clip—I watched it on loop. A swirl of grey dust, rising and falling, dancing in the light. It was simple. It was quiet. But it was powerful. It reminded me that creation doesn’t always have to be loud. It doesn’t always have to be grand. Sometimes, it’s just about paying attention. About noticing the small movements that others might overlook. I think about all the things in our lives that feel like ash right now. The grief, the uncertainty, the failure. We tend to want to blow them away. We want to clear the air and start fresh. But what if we stayed? What if we picked up those grains and started to move them? What if we treated our pain not as trash to be discarded, but as material to be used? This isn’t to romanticize suffering. No, suffering sucks. It’s hard. It hurts. But within that hurt, there is often a strange, fertile potential. A chance to see the world differently. To find beauty in the broken places. I don’t know if this ash will ever be part of a professional project. Probably not. It’s too small, too fragile. But it’s mine. And it reminds me that I can create something beautiful from something destructive. That I can find order in chaos. That I can make peace with the fire. So, here is my invitation to you this week. I don’t expect you to go buy volcanic ash. Although, if you find some, please send me a sample. I’d love to see it. But I do invite you to find your own 'ash.' Find something small, seemingly insignificant, or even unpleasant, and play with it. Take a photo of the crack in your sidewalk. Move a leaf around on your windowsill. Stir your coffee slowly and watch the vortex form. Engage with the physical world in a deliberate, mindful way. Slow down. Pay attention. Notice the texture. Notice the light. Notice the movement. You don’t have to make a masterpiece. You don’t have to share it with anyone. You just have to be present with it. Let it teach you something about patience. About resilience. About the beauty of the mundane. And if you get stuck, if you feel frustrated, remember: it’s okay to be unfinished. Remember that the mess is part of the process. The mess is where the magic hides. I’ll be doing my own little ash animations this weekend. I’m thinking of adding a second color. Maybe some red, to represent the heat. Or maybe just white, for the snow that falls after the eruption. Whatever comes next, I’ll be watching closely. And I hope you will too. Keep creating. Keep playing. And keep looking closer. Take care of yourselves, friends. I’ll see you in the next one. Keep your hands dirty and your hearts open.