Upwards Spiral

As a mental phenomenon, the notion of spiraling is entrenched in dialogues of pathology, chaos, and regression. The cultural precedence of the “downward spiral” stands as a monument to this, in its suggestion of a decline into a psychological space that eclipses the boundaries of human sight—a blind spot, if you will. It implies a delusion of foresight; we see someone along the path of the spiral’s trajectory, potentially even able to trace their entry point, but we have to infer their pattern's end. This is because the spiral’s grooves offer only partial indication as to its final destination, which could conceivably continue on in perpetuity…

FKA twigs via Instagram

Ultimately, however, a spiral does have to reach its conclusion, real or imagined, in a state other than where it began, or else it would be a cycle, even if deviating incrementally so. As such, in abstraction, it seems that we assign a level of structural integrity to the symbol; there is ostensibly a method to the madness. Its nonlinear, segmented form is thus highly suitable ground for the verbiage of our inner journeying, providing a linguistic proxy (as well as an actual discernible mold) to discuss the commencement and trajectories of our lives’ unwinding, however entropic they may be. Whether fueling narratives of self-destruction or self-renewal, the spiral quite clearly then chronicles change, making it a most appropriate motif for a species whose prolonged existence has been contingent upon adaptability.

And, in the face of obsolescence, a symbol it certainly has been, the fractal seeming to have seen itself on an uptick as of late in its interpolation into the joinery of things. It charts our capacity for growth, and it is perhaps due to this very property within itself—its malleability to imprint on matter, down to the dual helix of our DNA structure, the essence of our being—that its rendering in human artifice appears both so pronounced and so profound. For the spiral is never truly tethered to any substantive medium; its vortex can easily emit a centripetal force in any environment, bringing along an encirclement of entrails that emanate from this core wherever it just so happens to take root, categorically unshackled from the boundaries presupposed by its vessel: the material form. More than the translation of an appliqué onto a surface, the spiral churns itself into the very fabric of the subject it inhabits, manipulated within the composition of its frame. Thus, although it might seem to operate in defiance of the odds, upon closer reflection, the spiral’s weaving actually emerges in service of them.

Sólveig Hansdóttir’s Spiral Tailoring technique (Images courtesy of Fraeulein Magazine, SÓL HANSDÓTTIR, taken by ANNA MAGGÝ)

Equally, what might be all too swiftly perceived as a resurgence is, in fact, only a continuation. To put it plainly, the spiral simply is, and has long persisted in being so; it is us who have time and again co-opted it as a rune or sought to make sense of it, imbuing it with mystique and urgency ever since its rise to prominence in Celtic culture as a petroglyph denoting harmony. For instance, take the recent metric success of Instagram account ‘@endless_spiral’, a comprehensive visual search engine for the coil in all its contortions. While it is an artifact of our current interconnected monoculture, the profile documents a diverse array of the spiral’s winding configurations, embedded within all manner of living and non-living entities, irrespective of cultural and temporal contiguities. Each post serves as an aesthetic inquest—a puzzle ripe for completion—because the spiral foregoes closure by design. It suggests yet obscures, and I believe that it is precisely for this quality that it has endured through ancient modes of thought and still appeals to contemporary fascination: its ineffability precludes our cognitive sense-making faculties, engendering a sort of central enigma that transgresses our minds’ need for resolution—and so we are compelled to impose our own.

Yet, despite the spiral’s artistic allure and the semantic symbolism we enrich it with, its omnipresence surpasses human invention. Language, after all, is a construct meaningful to us and us only, while—as the advancement of our knowledge has revealed—the spiral is a universal predicate, written in the negligible intricacies of our bodily extremities as much as finding monumental cosmic resonance in stabilizing the matter of our stars. Some then say we are accordingly attuned to it because it falls within the scala naturae (the natural order of things), to which we possess an inbuilt affiliation for by way of our evolutionary history (spent mostly immersed in nature, rid of the macabre machinations of modernity that have since threatened our mortality). By extension, spirals engage our curiosity because we are so inclined toward them, harnessing an intrinsic base preference for them that has been shaped by this all-encompassing “biophilia.”

At its most terminal, our interconnectedness may lead us, however, to anthropomorphize an essence within the spiral that it should not necessarily prompt, because, again, in actuality, it merely subsists. It is rather a matter of perspective that we stamp upon it, or our imagined position along its axis, as well as the resource-limited constraints of our rationality, that appraise qualities of motion, outreach, or progression from it. Though flawed, it is not like these attributions are unfounded either; the spiral may be inert, but it does contain a logarithmic self-similar formula that creates an illusion of movement, as if turning inward, as it dwindles at a proportionally equivalent rate in on itself. Hence, much as its universality in all things must be purposive at a practical level, or it would not be so prevalent, this particular trick-of-the-eye mathematical characteristic has derived functional and inspired solutions to human problems. As designer Sólveig Hansdóttir puts it in an interview with Fräulein Magazine, who uses the spiral shape to scaffold her pieces, “It doesn’t make much sense but at the end it clicked, sort of… This technique was developed from an almost academic research [...] The spiral tailoring, for me, represented the unknown because it is such an irrational form. It just came through my research, as this question was obsessively stuck in my mind, like a spiral that keeps on spiraling and spiraling…”

Iris van Herpen, Spring 2017 collection via Vogue

If its contours speak to such an obsessive quality within us, then I conclude that the spiral will continue to weave new mythologies in the cultural zeitgeist, spearheading a new canon. Indeed, I believe that this has already begun, with the spiral forming the central Lovecraftian antagonist of perhaps Junji Ito’s most famous manga collection, Uzumaki. Its art often seen embroidered into mass-manufactured Nike apparel, attesting to its popularity, Ito evokes the abject; across vignettes that mirror the infernal rings of the spiral itself, we plunge headfirst into disturbance, which I feel best epitomizes the sentiment of “the downward spiral” itself (as aforementioned, albeit now entering the realm of speculative fiction). In a world uncharacteristically plagued by the spiral, you cannot hide from it, and you certainly cannot escape—the spiral is, and what it is, is a descent. “Downward” captures its trajectory but also conveys a sense of passivity; it implies something inevitably forthcoming, out of our locus of control. Yet, in our reality, the spiral is thankfully not a supernatural goliath; it is a symbol laden with dual connotations of madness, yes, but also, majesty. If we are to attach meaning to the spiral, to offer a more constructive outlook, I therefore propose a positivist alternative: “the upwards spiral”. Retooled, this signifies a self-willed, autonomous ascent—one that I feel best captures the marvel of the spiral’s sublime intervention in human affairs.