Evidenced by the names Charles Darwin wrote in his notebooks when confronted with the birds and beasts of South America, by Richard Feynman's memory of his father telling him naming deepened knowledge, and the sweeping rhythm with which Ta-Nehisi Coates shouted his "name was a nation"; our process of naming creates calm significance.

Language is a means of understanding and reconciling ourselves with that which is not us.

Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019) harmonizes with this chorus when she prescribes naming as a tonic to chaos.

I have been told that there are two human responses to the perception of chaos: naming and violence. When the chaos is simply the unknown, the naming can be accomplished effortlessly - a new species, star, formula, equation, prognosis. There is also mapping, charting, or devising proper nouns for unnamed or stripped-of-names geography, landscape, or population. When chaos resists, either by reforming itself or by rebelling against imposed order, violence is understood to be the most frequent response and the most rational when confronting the unknown, the catastrophic, the wild, wanton, or incorrigible.

If naming is a means by which we throw our mantel of knowledge over the unknowable, what is violence?

There is an explosive moment in Sidney Lumet's film 12 Angry Men when the heat of the New York summer and a wave of nauseating bigotry converge as an incendiary to ignite the small room that is the entire field of the film.

Lee J. Cobb's hot anger explodes against Henry Fonda's cool rationality. "12 Angry Men was about one thing: listening," said Lumet.

12 Angry Men is a film of twelve jurors deciding the fate of a non-white defendant accused of murdering his father. (Patricide is a chaotic incident if there ever was one; all jurors were male, presumably some fathers.)

All but one juror proposes swift retribution through a guilty verdict. The hold-out, played by Henry Fonda, suggests they take the time to discuss the matter, that the matter matters.   "This is a film where tension comes from personality conflict, dialogue and body language, not action; where the defendant has been glimpsed only in a single brief shot; where logic, emotion and prejudice struggle to control the field. It is a masterpiece of stylized realism--the style coming in the way the photography and editing comment on the bare bones of the content." wrote film legend Roger Ebert in his review of the film. Read review.

"12 Angry Men was about one thing: listening." wrote Lumet in Making Movies, his clear, resonating guide to one of our most beloved art forms. To the chaos of the situation and the growing chaos of the room itself (both internal and external forms of chaos), Fonda consistently promotes a rational dialogue predicated on listening to one another.

He promotes stillness. It is a purity of being echoed by Pema Chödrön's landmark book on embracing pain and chaos and by Joy Harjo as an antidote to panic, and it is the answer to chaos and anger proffered by Morrison.

There is, however, a third response to chaos, which I have not heard about, which is stillness. Such stillness can be passivity and dumbfoundedness; it can be paralytic fear. But it can also be art. Those writers plying their craft near or far from the throne of raw power, military power, empire building, and counting houses, and writers who construct meaning in the face of chaos must be nurtured and protected. And it is right that other writers initiate such protection. And it is imperative not only to save the besieged writers but to save ourselves. The thought leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, and essayists' questions challenging authority never being posed.

"The Lace-Maker," Caspar Netsher, 1662.  A study of domestic diligence. A soft light falls on her back, a resting broom, and simple dress. Learn more.

Art as the flower of non-movement, stillness as loam for art, is it possible?

I've spoken to many artist friends who have described their work as meditative (thank you, Genevieve)—the brush flow and movement of their arms, hands, and feet. Symbiotic stillness moving through time is lit by something within.

Kafka graffiti in Prague, Czech Republic. Kafka’s Investigations of a Dog asks profound questions of social alienation – specifically, how can knowledge connect or separate us? Photograph by Peter Fosberg.

But as Morrison reminds us, art is not only in the making but in its appreciation and protection.

Certain kinds of trauma visited on people are in so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.

A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.

Self-Portrait of David Wojnarowicz, 1983-1984. Acrylic and collaged paper on gelatin silver print. "I see myself seeing death," wrote the artist in Close to the Knives. Courtesy of Whitney Gallery of Art.

"Stillness is what lies in awe," wrote Morrison, "In meditation, stillness also lies in passivity and dumbfoundedness."

Compliment Morrison's emphatic plea for art as a human necessity in The Source of Self-Regard with her outstanding collection of thought on how fear creates the capacity to "other," how we face and imagine our legacy in this world, or turn to Ursula Le Guin on naming as a means of communion and Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh's pain-mending wisdom on anger.