November | 2021 | The Direction of Intention

Follow The Twine [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 18, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

[Day #2 of no image upload capacity so, for the melange image, see Kerri’s post or visit the Melange]

Follow the thick neon pink twine, winding through the park, and you’ll eventually come to a giant ball of string. I delighted in the thought that an enormous barn-sized Kitty, had recently been at play. Across the park giant flowers towered into the blue sky. Strolling beneath the stems and petals gave us an ant’s perspective.

Imagination. It’s working all of the time. And, sometimes it takes a giant ball of pink neon twine to make it visible. When we look forward to an event or dread a meeting, we are in full imagination. What else? When we desire a certain future or run fast from an opportunity, we are deep in our imagination. Kerri’s toes curl every time she drives under the train trestle while a train passes overhead: she imagines disaster.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard in my life, from students or clients or friends, who’ve said, “I don’t have a good imagination.” The greatest figment of imagination is the notion that there are greater or lesser degrees of imagination. Sense making, personal story, idea generation, brainstorming, hypothesis checking, retirement planning…are all processes of imagination. We sense the world and then story it and the story always begins with the generation of an image. To be human is to be a wild. imaginer.

I’m privy these days to many thought models and process maps. I’ve spent the past 48 hours in a deep conceptual exercise. Emerging from my office at night I squint at Kerri and say, “My brain is tired.” The lovely paradox about the models and maps and conceptual paths is that they are not real. A map of the city is not the city. A model for product development is not product development, it is a map at best, a place to locate the imagination. The imagination uses itself to discover itself.

And, therein lives the paradox: imagination is as much about “discover” as it is about “invent.” We imagine our future so we can walk toward what we already see. As every artist knows, the canvas tells you where to go, the character tells the writer where the story turns. We discover ourselves in our imagination. Follow the pink twine far enough and you’ll eventually come to a giant ball of string.

read Kerri’s blog post about PINK NEON

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, brainstorming, Chicago Botanical Gardens, conceptual, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discover, future, idea, imagination, invent, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, maps, models, past, senses, story, story. sense making, storying, storytelling, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Decide To Learn [Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on November 17, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

[No image today. My technology is having a rough morning]

I spent my day yesterday thinking about lines of perception. I’ve known for a long time that where a focus is placed will largely determine the dynamic reality, the movement, that is created. For instance, a focus on opposition will always produce a chaotic, explosive pattern. The moving energy locks up, tension builds, explosion. Repeat again and again. Focus on the relationships, the spaces between, and the movement, the energy, will harmonize around a common center. The behavior of a system is visible if you know where to look.

Points. Spaces between. Analytics or Synthesis? Break it into parts or look at the whole. Is it a particle or a wave? Both/And.

Tom used to say, “Teaching is a relationship.” It’s not about the material-to-be-covered. It’s never about the test. It’s always about the spaces between. Learning, at its best, is not about coverage. It’s about incorporation. It’s about meaning made from relevant experience. Experiences made relevant.

Every action has an intention, even if the intention is to stir the pot, to see what happens.

A few blocks from our home, outside the courthouse, protestors face each other across a perceptual dividing line. The energy is locking up. Tension is building. Last year a boy, too young to legally order a beer in a bar, legally brought a big gun to a protest. His mom brought him to the protest, big gun and all. He killed two people and maimed a third just a block or two from where he now stands trial. In the year since, he has been made a symbol, a well-financed icon of those who desire a dividing line. The pressure builds, just as the system demands. We await the explosion. It will be here, a few blocks away, or elsewhere, but it is coming just as the system requires.

There’s a less understood truism when the focus is placed on the points & oppositions: the tension builds and the explosion happens again and again because no one ever learns. It’s a repetitive pattern that perhaps feels like progress but is actually an eddy. Empty movement.

The only way out of the eddy is to attend to the relationships, to turn the focus to the spaces between.

read Kerri’s blog post about DIVIDING LINES

Filed under: Edges, Education, Flawed Wednesday, Pattern, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, learning, pattern, perception, points, relationship, story, studio melange, systems, systems. theory, teaching, tension, the melange, the space between, trial | Leave a comment »

Go To The Shoe Room [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 16, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I managed the theatre conservatory at PCPA Theaterfest, I occasionally gave backstage tours. It was great fun because the favorite stop on the tour – on every tour I gave – was the shoe room. Visitors always enjoyed standing on the stage, they were impressed with the scene and costume shop, they delighted to watch the prop master at work, but the moment we entered the shoe room, they were transcendent. Wide-eyed and giggling, pulling period shoes from the shelves to show their companions, it was as if they’d entered a candy store. The magic was released through the shoes.

The shoes, I suspect, harkened back to a time of dress-up. Childhood. The shoes touched their spirit of play. They beckoned to be worn and, as any actor knows, the shoes will inform how a character moves. The sooner you don the shoes, the sooner you will “find” the character. The shoe room was a portal to possible-other-lives.

I am more enamored by sketches than I am by final drafts. I delight in watching master craftsmen and craftswomen work. Theatre artists do not create illusions, they provide access to other worlds, unknown paths. They invite us to the shoe room to try on another life, even for a moment. The process, to me, is more beautiful than the performance.

As we walked the paths of the Botanical Gardens, the technicians were preparing for the festival of lights. Walkie-talkies crackled. Connections were checked. Battery packs were carefully placed. Multi-colored light strands ran like rivers up the trunks of trees. E-candles on armatures floated in the waterways. Magic was in the making. During the daylight, the entire expanse of the Garden is backstage – exposed wires and explicit design. At night, the mechanics will fade behind the light curtain. Backstage will become fore-stage. The light will invite us into another world. The light will touch the spirit of play.

I have always believed that people, lurking behind those serious faces, really just want to play. It’s the reason I kicked off my shoes every time I entered a room to do a facilitation. Lose your shoes and it’s no longer a serious affair. Play threatens. Play is suddenly a real possibility. The spirit of play cracks even the most harden entrenchment. Play necessitates collaboration and sharing. Pirates and Princesses need mates and parrots and knights in order for the world to be complete. Lawyers will take off their ties and wear them as headbands when the shoes come off and the serious topics are approached in socks and bare toes.

I recently – as we all have – been privy to an endless contentious debate about what this nation needs to do to get back on track. I believe it is not so complicated. We can carry on our oh-so-serious-division, but the single rule should be that no one can open their mouth – politician, pundit, and pedestrian alike – before first taking off their shoes.

read Kerri’s blog post about LIGHT STRANDS

Filed under: Art, Business, Creativity, Identity, Metaphor, Play, Possibility, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: aarp, artistry, artists, backstage, Chicago Botanical Gardens, childhood, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, illusion, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, painter, pcpa theaterfest, performer, play, shoe room, shoes, spirit of play, stage, story, studio melange, the melange, theatre, two artists, Two Artists Tuesday, writer | Leave a comment »

See The Dance [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on November 15, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.” ~Lao Tzu

We had a hard time choosing the prompt for this day. Traditionally, on Monday, we use a quote, something we’ve heard or come across in the week prior. We had plenty of thought-provoking quotes and appropriate images from which to choose. A few would have inspired rants. We also had a few ready to go that would have required more time than we have this morning to do the thought justice. They were heart-thoughts. And, so, we sat and stared at our screens. We pulled the original choice just before we published our picks for the week. “Let’s wait on this one,” Kerri said, “I feel like I want to give it more time.”

More time. Yes. In a few weeks time, we will cross the four year mark of our Melange. Five days a week. Four years. It’s a significant body of writing. At least to us.

When Kerri offered this image as an option, she said, “Maybe we should write about silence.” The mums bow their head. It is the end of their season. The flower drops and dies but the plant lives on, readying itself through the cold winter for a blossom resurrection in the spring. The buds will appear to be new life and we will celebrate them as a new beginning. The plant will smile at our surface-worship. Life did not disappear with the drooping blossom.

The phone rang last night in the early evening. It was my mom calling, just to chat. We talked of our disbelief that my dad, Columbus, was gone. We talked of her exhaustion and need to be still, like the mum in winter. We talked of the emergence of new friends and, someday, the discovery of a new purpose. All in good time. Good time. She is heroic walking through this chapter of her good time. When energy turns to the root, when it moves to an internal focus, it necessarily feels lonely.

Some things cannot be rushed. Most things, those with the greatest import, cannot be pushed. They must be lived. Experienced. The blossom droops and drops. The plant knows just what to do. It is winter and energy must go to the root – that is precisely why the blossom dropped. The plant is not separate from the season. It’s a dance that only seems to be a movement with two but, in truth, is the motion of one, a push-me-pull-you. The inner focus, hibernation, once recharged, will, someday soon, feel the sun and turn its attention outward. New buds are certain to answer the call.

read Kerri’s blog post about MUMS

Filed under: Energy, Family, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Possibility, Seeing | Tagged: a dance, aarp, artists, blossoms, buds, columbus, composer, cycles, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, death, focus, hibernation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lao tzu, life, life cycles, lonely, painter, recharge, rejuvenation, root, seasons, silence, spring, story, studio melange, the melange, winter | Leave a comment »

Move Beyond The Bucket [on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on November 13, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

The proper term is “deferred maintenance.” We have a leak under the bathroom sink and, rather than fix it, a bucket works just fine. When 20 comes over to dog-sit, he knows just what to do and where to go with the post-it note-reminder: empty the bucket.

Deferred maintenance is a habit developed in lean years. Weigh the cost of repair versus the potential for greater damage. Can you eat and fix the chimney? If yes, proceed to tuck-point. If no, look the other way. If the potential for greater damage outweighs the cost of repair but there’s no funds to do the repair, a duct tape solution always arises. Strange calculus. Weird math. Mother of invention.

We generally tag-team the “let’s see what happens” approach to thunks in the car. Today, I panic at the sound and she votes for ignoring it. Tomorrow, she panics and I ask, “What sound?” When she listens intently, she squeezes her eyebrows together and cocks her head. It’s adorable.

What have I learned in our tag team approach to car maintenance? She has better ears. When her ears perk up – and then stay up, when she cannot move beyond eyebrow-squeeze-and-head-cock, it’s time to move beyond the bucket solution; deferred maintenance will leave us standing on the side of the road.

read Kerri’s blog post about THUNK-THUNK-THUNK

Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: aarp, artistry, bucket solutions, car maintenance, car repair, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, deferred maintenance, home repair, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lean times, mother of invention, necessity, old car, old vehicle, painter, second chances, story, studio melange, the melange, two artists | Leave a comment »

Know The Moment [on KS Friday]

Posted on November 12, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“A work needs to relax toward finality. It cannot be pushed, it cannot be worried, it cannot be analyzed to completion. Pushing against the natural rhythms of creation will just churn up the waters. Clarity comes only when the waters settle and the air clears.” ~Kent Nerburn, Dancing With The Gods

Because I tend to speak in metaphors in a world enamored with goals, what I say often, at first, goes unheard. Skip is stewarding an amazing creation and has, from my perspective, just passed a significant milestone. I told him that, in working with many playwrights and painters and actors, there is an initial phase in every creative process in which the creator works for form. It’s like the tide going out, dumping everything down on the page to gather and find the story-form. Then, in a beautifully mysterious moment, the tide turns and finding form is no longer the intention. Clarity becomes the aim. Skip is a listener. Metaphors tossed into an analytic frame generally seem out of place or perhaps arrive too early to the party. But I’ve learned they are seeds that, when planted, begin to work their way up through the crusty soil.

John Guare said that a writer has to write ten bad pages to arrive at a single good page. The ten bad pages are the search for form. Reducing ten into an essence of one is the work of clarity. The phases, the exhale for form and the inhale of clarity, are two different yet interrelated energies.

When I am working on a canvas I might evolve the image for days. Sketching, painting, wiping, adjusting, wiping, sketching, painting. The search for form. Adding and subtracting. Moving the composition, tilting the symmetry. And then, something clicks and I know. The painting is formed and now the pursuit is to hold its hand and bring it into the light. Inhale.

Because my father recently passed, followed hard upon by my dear Ruby, I have been reviewing much of my life. Roger used to say that the first 30 years of life were about trying to become something and then, one day, you realize that you are that thing you were trying to become. The rest is learning how to be it. Searching for form. And then, clarifying. I think Roger was half-right. Becoming and being are cycles, not arrivals.

The cycles of my life are explicit. I enter into worlds that I know nothing about – either by accident or invitation. That I know nothing about the world is precisely why I’m invited in – or bumble in. I see it. I bring it metaphors. It is uncomfortable to not-know so I learn about the world as an outsider. It helps me see more clearly. I know the moment when form turns toward clarity. I see when the process roils into an eddy. I understand how to free stuck energy. I’m a midwife to creative process, a guide across unseen bridges.

We stood in the November sun admiring the giant flowers against the blue sky. I loved the idea that I was experiencing an ant’s view. These past many years I have been looking for the new form. Pushing. What was I? What am I now? And, in a beautifully mysterious moment, I realized that the tide was at long last coming in.

read Kerri’s blog post about GIANT FLOWERS

find Kerri’s music on iTunes or streaming on Pandora

Filed under: Art, Creativity, entrepreneur, Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor, Possibility, Seeing | Tagged: aarp, artistic process, artistry, Chicago Botanical Gardens, composer, creative process, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, eddy, John Guare, Kent Nerburn, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, life review, metaphor, painter, reflection, story, studio melange, the melange, tides | Leave a comment »

Walk With Samuel [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 11, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.” ~ Samuel Beckett, Endgame

When is something finished? Beckett wrote Waiting For Godot in 1953; characters waiting for what will never arrive. A finish. A completion. Beckett’s life spanned both wars-to-end-all-wars, Korea, Vietnam. He wrote about humanity’s dedication to nonsense. His work has been called bleak and dark. His work is shelved with the canon of The Theatre of the Absurd. And, yet, given the news of the day, these days, who doesn’t feel as if they are living in a Beckett play?

What is often missed in his absurdist plays is the beautiful human capacity to keep walking, to keep trying. Waiting and walking through tragedy, mostly of our own making, with unwavering hope. We story ourselves with nobility even when wrapping ourselves in a lie. We make rules and laws that apply to some but not to all and then we set about to justify the inequality. Money and morality are not the same thing though there’s plenty of storytelling meant to have us believe that wealth only flows to the worthy.

Art is not supposed to make sense because life doesn’t make sense. We make sense of life through the stories we concoct. Emperor’s buried with thousands of statues to keep them company in the afterlife, an artist painting the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel, gods and angels and saints. How many people died building the great pyramids, tomb for a pharaoh? Who would possibly spend their life in abject poverty smearing color on canvas? Van Gogh. A legion of others not known. Are we better for it? I cried the day the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, 6th century statues that I had not seen in person and was likely to never see. Were my tears more or less absurd than the Taliban’s animosity toward carved stone?

Matters of the heart. When are they finished? Where do they begin?

It was a gorgeous day, perhaps the last warm day of the season. We met our pals at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Throughout the gardens, preparations were being made for the annual holiday light exhibit. A tree of shiny stars. Giant flowers. Faux candles floating in the waterway. Strings of colored lights were being placed along the walkways. Even during the light of day it was impressive.

In this time of transition, many of the gardens were being prepped for the winter, the pathways were packed with people cooing at the wave of the grasses, the shape of the trees in the Japanese garden. I was gobsmacked by the color of the moss on trees, the shock of red leaves against vivid green. No matter which direction I looked, someone, some special gardener and designer, had crafted beauty. They knew that their work would stop me in my tracks and allow me to whisper, “Unbelievable.”

Winding our way back to the Visitor’s Center, I told Brad that, seeing so many people out enjoying the gardens, excited to walk in beauty, filled me with hope.

To walk in beauty. Dollars and cents can’t reach the reason. Data can’t touch the impulse. There is so much light in this theatre of the absurd. Beckett knew it, writing about the stories we tell, the relationships we create, waiting for something – a beauty – that by definition, will never arrive because we are surrounded by it each and every day.

read Kerri’s blog post about RED SCULPTURE

www.davidrobinsoncreative.com

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor, Seeing, Story | Tagged: aarp, absurd, afterlife, artistry, beauty, begin, Buddhas of Bamiyan, Chicago Botanical Gardens, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, end, Endgame, equality, funerary art, heart, hope, humanity, inequality, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, light exhibit, light show, pyramids, Samuel Beckett, sculpture, Sistine Chapel, story, storying, storytelling, studio melange, Taliban, the melange, Theatre of the Absurd, tragi-comedy, van gogh, Waiting for Godot | Leave a comment »

Reboot [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on November 10, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m not going to lie. Yesterday was textured and difficult. Because our internet connection was spotty – and because our work depends upon a reliable connection – we called our provider to upgrade our service. And, rather than an easy upgrade, we lost our service altogether. And, as I write, almost a full day later, in a world brimming with messages of fast-and-easy, we are still in the internet no-fly zone. After eleven hours, a full five hours on the phone, a trip to the store to get new equipment, ethernet tests on everything but my heart, after a series of pleasant but not-very-helpful service representatives, after the fifteenth (not a joke) suggestion that we “reboot one more time just to see,”we gave up for the night.

Giving up looked like this: “The problem is on our end,” a pleasant tech offered when there was still light in the sky. “There’s a ticket and our engineers are working on it.” Later, much later, after being passed to two of the engineers-that-were-working-on-it, we heard that they had no idea what the problem was. “We could try to reboot one more time,” he said. “Just to see.”

Kerri looked at me, exhausted, and said, “I can’t do it. Not again.” A battle to be waged another day.

Surrender. I’ve learned this lesson again and again in my life. Sometimes it is best to give over. It is best to stop pushing. Sometimes, there is no solution. Time and a bit of sleep, a new day, will bring another point of view. What was impossible yesterday will resolve today.

In surrender, we sat in the quiet night and talked of our day. The quiet. Nothing dinging or binging or pulling at our attention, nothing notifying us of another message. Nothing trying to keep us hooked for the sake of being hooked. The static was gone. The incessant, “Look at me,” of news apps and Facebook and Instagram and… Life as perpetual “Breaking News.” Within the constant pull, the only thing breaking is our focus. We sat and enjoyed a moment when nothing was breaking.

For a moment during the madness, I looked out the window of my office. The day before yesterday the leaves on our tree were still green. It’s late in the season. Yesterday, in a seeming flash, they were vibrant color. They changed overnight. I was taken, as I always am, by the recognition that the best way to learn color is to go outside, take a walk in nature. See. If there is ever a question about, “Does this color work with that color?” – go outside. Look around. The answer is right there. Crimson and dusty grey. A bit of sage green. Charcoal. Polka dots are not a human invention. The patterns are there, too. Texture. See it.

This morning, while we await the visit from our tech who-will-fix-everything, we’ll go outside. We might play in the leaves. We’ll certainly enjoy the moment without the bings and pings and tech-sounds of made-up-importance. We’ll kneel and coo over the polka dots and salmon pink, the electric yellow and revel in the rare simple moments that a good surrender brings.

[*a hefty thank you to Matt the technician who just spent hours sorting out and fixing what ailed our internet. This post is proof positive that we are, at long last, out of the internet-no-fly zone]

read Kerri’s blogpost about POLKA DOTS

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Random, Seeing | Tagged: aarp, artistry, artists, color, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fall color, Flawed Wednesday, give over, internet, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, nature, seeing, service, service representatives, spectrum, story, studio melange, surrender, technicians, the melange, work from home | Leave a comment »

Move Toward Wholeness [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 9, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I look at the bowl of green tomatoes, each plucked from the vine before we pulled the plants from their pots, still moving toward red ripeness, I think of Joe. He was fond of saying, “Life moves in the direction of wholeness.” It’s important to note that his fond phrase included nothing about outcomes. Joe was particular and knew that life is movement and not arrival.

I am revisiting the word ‘rehearsal’ these days only this version of rehearsal is not on the stage with creative minds. It is over Zoom with decidedly analytical minds. Actors in rehearsal halls move through a process of exploration that leads to specific choices. The goal, if there is one, is to embody a state of moving presence within a story. The analytic mind comes with a template overlay that is placed atop the experience before it actually occurs. The language reveals all: content items. Telemetry. The mathematics of movement. Rehearsal is predicated on precision.

As I’ve probably written ad nauseam, these minds are not in opposition. They are complimentary. Freedom of artistic expression comes from years of study of technique. The path to mastery winds through repetition and constraint. Saying more with less comes after a lifetime of saying less with more. The creative mind is one step closer to the senses. The analytic mind applies language, gives voice, to the experience.

Many years ago I participated in a workshop with an actor/director of Noh Theatre. The process was strict, exacting. The movements precise. There was no room for error. We, the participants in the workshop, knew we’d never achieve proficiency since it takes years and years of rehearsal to perform even the simplest of symbolic gestures. No one sings opera in a day. We did our best and failed and failed and failed. That was the point. That is always the point. Each failure is actually an exercise of muscle memory. The body learns. The mind is impatient. Rehearsal is rarely about the mind, despite what the mind insists. At the end of the day, our workshop leader gave a short demonstration of his art form. His ease of movement, born from years of repetition within constraint, was breathtaking. He was free.

Many years later I was helping John in his wood shop. He was a master wood worker. I watched him look over his lumber, preparing to build a cabinet. He ran his hand over the wood, feeling his way into his project. “Ah,” he said, laying his hand on a piece of cherry wood. “This is it.” John was like the Noh actor.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “it just feels right.” Then he smiled and added, “Plus, I’ve built a lot of crap.”

Life, moving toward wholeness.

read Kerri’s blog post about TOMATOES

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Education, entrepreneur, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: analytic mind, art, artist, artistry, creative mind, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, exploration, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, language, Noh, precision, rehearsal, story, studio melange, the melange, wholeness | Leave a comment »

Coalesce [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on November 8, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Rich used to tell me that, “People don’t change until the pain of the change is less than the pain of staying the same.” At the time, I thought his mantra was cynical; pain either way. Now, I think it is spot-on.

Discord is the essential ingredient for initiating any creative process. Explorers look at the horizon with a deep need to find-out what’s beyond. Their curiosity outstrips their comfort. Curiosity and comfort. Change and stay-the-same. There’s a tug-of-war in every decision that’s worth making.

Creative tension is a dynamic pull between two poles. Do I add a brushstroke or is the painting finished? This morning I came across a well-known quote by Leonardo da Vinci: Art is never finished, only abandoned. Pain either way. Finishing a work of art is akin to dropping the rope in the creative tug-of-war.

When I was wearing my corporate-consultant-hat, almost daily I repeated a lesson relative to Little Red Riding Hood: without the Wolf there is no story. Too often we try to eliminate our Wolf. We are inundated with messages trumpeting the notion that happiness (or good process) arrives in the absence of discord. It does not. Happiness avails itself when the necessity of the Wolf is understood as the fuel of the story.

People thrive when challenged. We create challenges when we don’t have them. Understanding the role of the Wolf transforms Rich’s mantra into something far less pain-full. The heart yearns. The brain fears. The yearning and the fear will coalesce into some action that may or may not be recognized as a choice. Which is the Wolf? The yearning? The fear? Either way, another day is lived. The story is created.

read Kerri’s blog post about UNCOMFORTABLE