June | 2020 | The Direction of Intention

Look Out [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on June 16, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

bcat in the window romper room copy

I was one of those teachers who encouraged my students to stare out of the window. Visiting administrators occasionally admonished me for allowing my students to “daydream.” Imagination, I would explain, requires much more expanse than a classroom can provide. Looking out the window let the imagination-horses run free. At graduation, I would remind the administrator, they would almost certainly endorse the graduates to follow their dreams so facilitating the pursuit of dreaming was, perhaps, the most useful skill they may ever acquire. Besides, keeping noses perpetually focused on the grindstone can be a great dream killer.

Mike wrote that Shakespeare penned King Lear while in quarantine for the Black Plague. “Any takers?” he challenged. What do you do when you can’t really go out and play? My bet is that good William stared out of his window between ink dips and parchment scratching. I’m finding, as we move deeper into our home stay, that I am repelled by electronic things that fill my time. Things that pull my focus down and in. I find that I want to stare out of the window. I want to go out and walk.

There are plays I want to write. There are paintings I want to paint. There are the necessities of life banging at my door (where will the next work come from?) Uncertainty surrounds us. I know there is no point in fretting; fretting and worry are inverse forms of imagination. Hornets buzzing inside the head because they haven’t enough space to become horses and run free. The best thing to do when your head is full of hornets? Find a good window and dream.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE MAGIC MIRROR

pax

Filed under: Creativity, Metaphor, Possibility, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: black plague, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, daydream, dream, imagination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, king lear, pandemic, shakespeare | Leave a comment »

Gather Around The Fire [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 15, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

An unseasonably cool June evening. We sat around the fire. At social distance and wearing masks. Friends. “It’s so odd,” we said more than once. Eyes and assumed smiles. Muffled laughter. “I’ll never again take for granted a hug or being able to sit close together around the table,” she said. “It’s the little things that I miss.”

Fire is elemental. Water. Air. Earth. And, sometimes, Spirit though I think the 5th is always implicit. Friendship is elemental and spirit-full. Especially when the world is off center. It is a forge for strength and determination. Our friends, so generous, feed air into the fire. Support. Encouragement.

As we talked through face coverings about our newest daily obstacles, I wondered how hard it must have been to communicate across distance with smoke signals. Measured fire. Kerri said, “My mask is slipping again! There must be something wrong with my face.” We laughed and made up problems with her nose.

So much fire on the streets across the land! Transformation is afoot! Creative fire is out of the barn and teasing the status quo. This hot fire illuminates. It smacks of a ritual fire and, if properly honored and tended, can set us on a new path. Dark corners revealed and more than simply acknowledged, truly addressed.

Prometheus stole fire from the gods to spark life into his new creatures. To ignite breath. Humans, made from earth and water. Four elements, come together. He was punished for his transgression. The spark lit an entire forest fire of humanity and creative potential. Beings capable of looking at the elements within themselves, at asking each other in magical moments, “How can we be better?”

All of this wonder and wandering on an unseasonably cool summer evening. Meeting with friends across a fire. A sip of wine. In earnest, we ask the question of each other, through our masks and across our distance, “How can we be better?”

read Kerri’s blog post about KEEP THE FIRE BURNING

creatures of prometheus

Filed under: Awakening, Creativity, Energy, Gratitude, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Possibility, Uncategorized | Tagged: 4 elements, 5 elements, air, breath, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, determination, earth, elements, fire, forge, friendship, illumination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, masks, prometheus, smoke signals, social distancing, spirit, strength, transformation, water | Leave a comment »

Pop Your Bubble [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 12, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

every breath copy

There is a sad mantra in the not-for-profit world: people don’t give money, time, or attention to “causes” until the cause impacts them personally. It has to be personal – it has to be MY son-with-cancer or MY daughter-who-was-shot-at-school or MY community-that-has-no-grocery-store in order for us to care beyond the superficial. In other words, it is someone else’s problem until it knocks on MY door.

The word “cause” provides some cover – it keeps the cancer at arm’s length. It abstracts and sanitizes. The word “poll” does the same thing. Throughout this pandemic we’ve actually reduced the reality of the virus to a number that indicates personal belief, which has nothing to do with the virus and everything to do with whether or not it has penetrated your personal bubble. To date, there are over 2 million bubbles impacted and, of those, 113,000 deaths. That is 113,000 people who, on New Year’s Day 2020, had every reason to believe they’d see 2021. Their belief number sits solidly at 100%. Their family’s belief number is way up there, too.

Masks have become a split symbol – or perhaps better stated, a symbol of our split. Wearing a mask is meant, as we all know, to protect others. It is not a measure of personal protection which is perhaps why it is so messy an issue here in these United States. We’ve somehow managed to transmogrify a gesture of protecting our neighbors into an assault on individual rights. It is not merely a consistent problem, it is a national pattern. The pattern plays itself with great symphonic insanity every time we have another mass shooting and can do no more than offer condolences to the dead. It is the river that runs beneath the richest and most innovative nation on earth and its inability to provide affordable (or any) health care to its citizens. We keep ourselves brilliantly schizophrenic by insisting that this abundant creative citizenry is only capable of considering two choices. EITHER individual rights OR what’s best for the community! BOTH/AND is nowhere to be found. “We” is the word we run from.

This morning Kerri read an article about a server going back to work at a restaurant. She does not feel safe. Her customers are solidly in their bubbles caring only for their dining experience and not their server’s health. Our daughter supplements her life by bar tending and serving. Kerri cried. It’s personal.

She chose her song for this week’s melange in that moment. EVERY BREATH. And, ironically, it is found on the album AS IT IS. The present condition. Every breathe; as it is. It reads like the I-Ching: The air you breathe. The air I breathe. No difference.

One bubble. And, like it or not, believe it or not, we all inhabit it.

EVERY BREATH is on the album AS IT IS. Find it on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about EVERY BREATH

helping hands

every breath/as it is ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood

helping hands ©️ 2011 david robinson

Filed under: Awakening, KS Friday, Language, Pattern, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: AS IT IS, belief, Both/And, breath, bubble, cause, community rights, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, every breath, individual rights, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pattern, personal truth, piano composition, poll, split symbol, symbol | Leave a comment »

Doubt It [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 11, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

AtTheDoor13 jpeg copy 2

In our vast catalogue of projects-that-went-nowhere is a single panel cartoon proposal we called At The Door. A dog and a cat at the door. One wants to go out and explore the world. The other is content to stay forever inside in a known and predictable world. One dreams of adventure, the other dreams of lunch. The progressive instinct meets the conservative impulse.

Because it was largely existential and mostly not funny, we were certain that it would never gain traction. We developed it anyway. Why?

One of the great mysteries of an artist’s life is the Riddle Of Attraction. Why are some pieces popular and others are not? The crux of the riddle is this: what I consider my best work usually collects dust on the shelf while the pieces that I think inferior fly out the door. Kerri and I write everyday. We have a ritual call-and-response when we write something that we feel is meaningful or has real depth. I’ll say, “That’s a really good post.” She’ll reply, “That means no one will read it.” And, inevitably, it is true. The maddening moment comes when we post work that feels lacking and it is read widely across the globe.

There can be only one logical explanation: we must be the worst judges of our own artistic expression. We must have an inverted relationship with what has value and what does not when it comes to our own pieces. It must be true that artists are the last to objectively see their work. It’s a terrifying notion; if I think it is awful, it must be good. If I think it is good, it must be a delusion.

And so, we happily wrote and drew a cartoon with a dog and a cat at the door. Both critters looking out on the big world, one pulled to it while the other is repelled. It seemed like a bad idea so it just might have been good!

read Kerri’s blog post about AT THE DOOR

nap with dogdog & babycat

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: art, artist, artistry, at the door, cartoon, cat, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dog, dog and cat, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, value | Leave a comment »

Love Your Language [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 10, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

love greater than fear copy

You know the old joke: two priests are having an argument so they take their debate to the Pope. The first priest writes to the Pope and asks if it is okay to smoke while praying and the Pope answers “No!” The second priest writes and asks the question this way: is it okay to pray while smoking? The Pope responds, “Of course!”

Language matters. In our current world, inundated as we are with marketers and media – language packed with agenda – it seems we are especially dulled to the power of a few words [or the exclusion of a few details] to shape our actions and opinions. We are easily led. Easily divided. Easily provoked to Facebook frenzy.

The way we frame questions determines the possibilities we see or the possibilities we do not see. That is why it is a mistake for us to frame the questions of our troubled times as either/or questions. To defund the police or not defund the police? Fear or faith? Us or them? Liberal or conservative? Which is it?

None of the questions we face are simplistic. None can be addressed – or should be approached – with black and white thinking. We’ll only see the poles and miss the million shades of gray in-between.

Leaders that divide-to-rule are especially fond of a rhetoric featuring only two options. They play angel/devil games: there are angels and there are devils and since everyone thinks they are the angel, it is an automatic role assignment to anyone with an opposing point of view. It doesn’t matter what side you are on, the agenda is division so mission accomplished! Language matters.

I’ve heard it said that the opposite of love is not hate. It is fear. Fear splits even the greatest hearts and minds like so much kindling. It creates enmity within and, therefore, enmity without. It reduces and makes the complex things – like listening to others – impossible. It demands that meaning be made before the experience is had – and so it is a rally of made-up monsters.

So, the opposite of fear? It creates goodwill. Within and, therefore, without. It unites. It embraces and expands and includes. It makes no assumptions. It listens. It ultimately surrounds fear and makes meaning after having the experience and, in that way, relieves the troubled mind of its monsters. It has the capacity to hold a full spectrum of color and options (sometimes known as possibilities). It knows that there is more to this universe than angels and devils can allow. And so, just to be clear in my use of language: the opposite of fear has no opposites. That’s precisely what makes it much harder to grasp than fear. Fear is easy to achieve. Love is an ongoing relationship and has no end.

Language matters. The genius of our system, as it was once imagined, was to allow for opposing points of view to come together in an action called “compromise.” It was designed with complexity in mind. It was intended to pull all perspectives toward a common center, a middle way. An idealist might call that – a common center – something akin to love.

read Kerri’s blog post about LOVE>Fear

prayer of opposites

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Language, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: assumptions, black and white, complexity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, Either/Or, exclusion, fear, inclusion, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, language matters, love, meaning making, opposites, possibilities, power of language, simplistic thinking | Leave a comment »

Expect The Magic [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on June 9, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

pando copy It reads like a quirky children’s book. One day the frog appeared in our little pond. It was fully grown. This was no pollywog-becoming-a-frog, it did not originate in our pond. It sprang forth fully frogged.

Kerri named it Pando for the year of the pandemic. I thought it sounded like a Commedia character but it seemed to like its name so it stuck. Pando feasted on the local cuisine. It sat still and let Kerri pet it on the head. It had a deep basso voice.

Truth be told, Pando was not our first frog visitation. Most years since we dug our little pond, fully mature frogs one day appear. Once we had twins. Where do they come from? We speculate endlessly, making up stories of adventure or wrong frog turns that somehow lead to our backyard. Apparently, Mr Toad’s wild ride passes through our pond. Mostly, they’ve become for us a sign of hope, of good things coming or an affirmation of good things already here.

Most of our frog visitors check in for a season. Pando was different. A few days after he appeared, Kerri went out to check on him and he was gone. Vanished. But, on the stone path that leads to the pond, she found a copper Jefferson nickel.

“Look what Pando left us,” she said, showing me the nickel, “He isn’t there anymore.”

Clearly it must be a talisman. It must have magic powers. What else could it be? A frog with a deep bass voice mysteriously appears. The frog just as mysteriously disappears but leaves behind a strange coin that betrays its inner alloy. It must be magic! Or, I suppose it could just be the story we want to tell.

It is, after all, what I love about us: we like to tell stories that include surprises, the impossible, and magical happenings. Life is better like that, when we allow ourselves to entertain the full spectrum of vibrant color. In any case, we can’t wait to discover what the frog magic brings.

read Kerri’s blog post about PANDO

Filed under: Possibility, Story, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: appearance, copper nickel, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, frog, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mr. Toad's Wild Ride, pandemic, Pando, talisman | Leave a comment »

Become More [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 8, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

what now bcat copy

“Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse.” ~ Heraclitus

It’s funny how the smallest thing can set a mind off in a different direction entirely. For instance, it seems the entire nation is asking “What now?” Some are asking the question filled with hope. Some are asking it filled with fear. I had some thoughts to share about what now and before I began to write, I checked my email. There was a note from my mother.

She found him this morning standing on the patio weeping. He couldn’t see the water coming from the sprinkler. He wanted to help her take care of the yard but simply could not see. My father has the double challenge of going blind while also slipping into dementia. He’s pretty far along in both. She wrote that “she is amazed that he is not perpetually angry.” Instead of being angry, he is unbearably kind. He just wants to help. He cries, not because he cannot see, he cries because he cannot see the water. He can’t remember what to do. He cannot help and, somewhere in his increasing darkness, he knows my mother needs his help .

Kerri believes that people don’t change over time, they simply become more of who they’ve been all along. Age reveals our character. I can only hope, as I age, that the character revealed as my control drops away, is as beautiful as my father’s. He is kind. He is kind. He is kind. Each day he steps further into the darkness and he is kind.

What now?

read Kerri’s blog post about WHAT NOW?

held in grace: rest now

Filed under: Gratitude, Heroes, Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Uncategorized | Tagged: aging, blindness, change, character, control, dad, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dementia, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness | 2 Comments »

Face Them [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 5, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

hope copy

The dream was vivid. I was being chased by a pack of very large demons. Terrified, I was becoming exhausted when I saw a door into a warehouse. I quickly jumped through the door, looking for a place to hide. To my chagrin, the warehouse was empty. Swept clean. No walls. A vast, open and exposed floor. The demons came through the door behind me. There was no other door. No way out. My only option was to turn and face them. So, I did.

They rushed me. But, to my surprise, as I stood my ground, facing them, as they raced snarling toward me, they began to shrink. The closer they came, the smaller they got. By the time they reached me they were no larger than ants. They had no power over me at all.

All along, all I needed to do was stop running from them. All I ever needed to do was to turn and face them. To see what they were, not what I feared they were.

This dream – so many years ago – helped me understand hope – a word that is both a verb and a noun, a thing and an action. A wish and a want. Hope, like happiness, ensues. It is not found up front, it follows. It is meaning that becomes available when a choice is made.

This nation, running so long from its demons, is once again, standing in a vast empty warehouse. There is no place to hide. When we recognize that all we can do is turn and face our demons, our racially divided path, the inequity-demons plaguing us may grow smaller. They may lose their power over us entirely.

The choice to stop running and turn. The choice to face the demons. In that moment, hope will arise.

HOPE on the album THIS SEASON is available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about HOPE

held in grace series: pray now

Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Language, Metaphor, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: choice, choices, courage, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, demons, dreams, fear, hope, inequality, inequity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meaning, meaning making, racial divide | Leave a comment »

Don’t Go Home [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 4, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

House on Fire. 2004-ish. Watercolor. And, yes, I was all over copying Guernica.

“The continual retreat from the discomfort of authentic racial engagement in a culture infused with racial disparity limits the ability to form authentic connections across racial lines, and results in a perpetual cycle that works to hold racism in place.” ~ Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility

I confess to rewriting this post. What I wrote initially was pedantic and preachy. So, this is a second go-round.

We’ve been hearing this question much in these past days: why don’t things ever change? Here’s an answer I learned in school: a society is a living system and, like all living things, it will fight to the death when threatened with change. Why we can’t seem to “solve” our problem with racial disparity and the dehumanization of black people? It’s built into our system. The system, a complex and living thing, will fight to the death to keep the injustice securely in place.

That’s a heady answer and somewhat hopeless. Its abstraction makes it a safe and somewhat antiseptic response.

I lived in Los Angeles in 1992. My apartment was in the hills so I had a good vantage point to watch the rioting and the city burn. When it felt too unsafe, I fled the city. I had a safe place to go.

A few years later, working with a school district, the head of the Black Student Union asked me to come in and work with her students. MLK day was fast approaching and the students, preparing presentations for the day, were in rebellion. They were mad. They didn’t want to read speeches about peace and justice when those ideals were nowhere on their horizon. I thought it was my job to help them give voice to what they wanted to say. It was my first conscious lesson in my white-blindness. The frightened parents of the students descended. I’ll never forget the mother and father that pulled me aside, saying to me, “You don’t understand. If they say what they want to say they’ll be killed.” Their terror was real. They had to teach their children a lesson that was the opposite of what my parents taught me.

To call it a problem is to reduce it to the level of mechanics. It is to pretend (or hope) that a few changes in the law or better policing will do the trick. To treat it like a problem guarantees that we’ll recreate it. This is not a problem, this is a pattern. It is a cycle. It is a relationship.

The pattern is currently in our faces. The pattern is not only the death of another black person. The pattern is also what white America chooses to do – or not do- with the knowledge of it. What is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves that makes it possible to stand in the fire with people of color during the protests but walk-on once the fire subsides? It is simply this: I get to go home. I get to drive out of LA when things feel too unsafe. I have someplace to go. I get to go home when the officer is prosecuted or a law is changed or a commission empaneled, dust off my hands, and say that I did my part.

Why don’t things ever change?

I was stunned when those parents pulled me aside. At first, I couldn’t believe that they were going to silence their children when their children had something so important to say. It made my head spin. And then I went home. And then I realized that they couldn’t go home. There was no place in this “living system” where they were safe. That was what they were trying to tell me. It was what Martin Luther King was trying to tell us. It is what the protesters in the streets today are trying to get us to see/admit/realize. We are watching a living system built on racial division and inequality fight to the death because change is knocking.

What if we realized that we cannot simply go home and forget about it?

read Kerri’s blog post about HOUSE ON FIRE

detail of Weeping Man

Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Identity, Language, Seeing, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: black, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dehumanization, House On Fire, identity, inequality, inequity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pattern, racism, Robin DiAngelo, system, white, white fragility | Leave a comment »

Check The Acorn [on VERY Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

voter freud copy

Apparently Sigmund Freud has a dangerous and ill-intended descendant named Voter. Splashed all over the conservative Henny Penny is a frenzied warning: watch out for Voter Freud! He is running rampant! Threatening the nation! Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, and the entire cast of hysterics-with-microphones are gathering other like-minded fowl to amplify the message of a would-be king. Voter Freud is on the loose and if not stopped, he will corrupt your Drakey Lakey!

This is why I adore stories. Even the simplest folk tale has the ominous capacity to reveal us to ourselves. And, if we are wise, we listen to what they might teach us. Variations of the Chicken Little story have been around for centuries.

Times have changed but human nature is surprisingly consistent. Henny Penny was hit on the head by an acorn and thought the sky was falling. Hysterical, she decides to sound the alarm of imminent disaster and clucks away to tell the king before it is too late. Along the way she whips other unquestioning fowl into a panic and they join in her frantic chorus. Depending upon the ending – there are many – but mostly, she and her gaggle are eaten – each and everyone – by the fox [I take pause here for a moment of reflection so the uncanny closeness of the story to our times might sink in].

The multiple screeching voices currently re-enacting the Henny Penny story did not intend to invent Sigmund’s evil descendant. It is only through the magic of spelling errors that voter fraud donned the villainous persona of Voter Freud. And, I confess, I love the character!

All good stories have a moral and that is true for the tale of Henny Penny: traditionally, the moral is to not be a “chicken” but to have courage. Hysterical chickens get eaten by Foxes. The current moral-of-the-story might go something like this: be wary of acorns dropped on your noggin. It is not a falling sky. It is a set up. A modicum of research will spare the entire hen house of yet another hysterical outburst. In the United States of America, voter fraud is very rare. The current fox guarding the hen house would like all the fowl to cluck with fear of Voter Freud. The purpose, of course, is to make it harder for many citizens to vote. Or, stated another way: keeping the chickens hysterical serves the fox; voters exercising their right to vote does not.

Voter Freud is made up. So is voter fraud.

read Kerri’s blog post on Voter Freud