June | 2025 | The Direction of Intention

A Closer Look [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on June 6, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ~ Thomas Merton

A closer look at the dandelion reveals a fractal. Each level a repeat of the same or similar pattern at a progressively smaller scale.

Listen to your inner monologue. It is the story that you tell yourself about yourself. Listen to the stories in the news or racing across your social media screen. They are the stories that society is telling itself about itself. Any good novelist or playwright will tell you that conflict is the motor of story. Note: conflict need not be violent. Longing is a conflict. Unrequited love is a conflict. A search for meaning is a conflict. A closer look at humanity reveals a fractal. Each level a repeat of the same or similar pattern at a progressively smaller scale.

Robert Olen Butler defined story this way: “When a yearning meets an obstacle.” I believe words matter. I have always appreciated Robert Olen Butler’s definition of story because it does not use the word “conflict”. It is the fractal of the human experience.

The Buddhists teach that desire is the cause of suffering. I giggle every time I consider that marketing is essentially the creation of desire so it follows that it is the engine of suffering. The peace found in possession is fleeting. My Buddhist cartoon: retail therapy is but a single stop on a continuous cycle of suffering. If I was a teacher of story-writing I’d send my students to the outlet mall to study shoppers. My bet is that they’d eventually recognize themselves in the shoppers; then they’d have something essential to write about.

Picasso said, “Every painting is a self-portrait.” His sentiment is a fractal. We watch movies to see ourselves. We attend concerts to transcend ourselves – to lose and then find ourselves in the music.

A closer look at us reveals a fractal. We are both the yearning and the obstacle. A repeat of the same or similar pattern no matter the level or the scale.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DANDELION

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Story | Tagged: art, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fistful of dandelions, fractal, heart's desire, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, longing, pablo picasso, pattern, Robert Olen Butller, story, studio melange, suffering, the melange, Thomas Merton, yearning | 8 Comments »

Either Way [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 5, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

At this time of year, sleeping as we do with the window open, I have the impression that the birds sing the sun to rise. In the evening, they sing it to rest beneath the horizon. What happens between those two songs is always a surprise.

I recently read a quote by Aldous Huxley that struck a deep chord: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly, child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly, even though you’re feeling deeply…”

Dogga has been a great teacher. He is highly sensitive, keenly keyed into us. He feels everything I feel, we feel. If we start to take ourselves too seriously, he runs for his safe haven in the bathroom. At first his retreat to the safety of the bathroom brought us up short. It was like being slapped into consciousness. “We’re upsetting the dog.” We’d breathe, step back and change our tone. We’d lighten up. He’s become a barometer of whether or not we’re taking ourselves too seriously and we’ve learned to lighten up before he feels the need to retreat.

It’s possible: walking lightly through life can be learned.

“Look at the color of the sky!” she said, aiming her camera.

“It’s a Colorado sky,” I mused. The blue was intense against the new spring-green leaves.

We were slow-walking on one of our favorite trails, talking about the past decade, the seeming-forced peeling back of layers, the necessity of letting go of grievances and disappointments when she suddenly pulled her camera from her pocket. “Look at the color of the sky!” I smiled: evidence of not taking anything – especially ourselves – too seriously.

“So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly…”

It’s an ongoing life lesson. Feeling deeply need not be weighty. Especially now. There are, indeed, quicksands all around us, sucking at our feet. It’s always an option to disappear into the muck of fear and despair. As we have learned – and continue to learn – hopelessness is a heavy load. As is resentment. Regret is a guaranteed back-breaker. Denial is the heaviest bag of all. Our nation is currently learning this lesson.

The surprise between the birdsong? We can walk with the light astonishment of the new day or we can drag along yesterday’s heavy baggage. It’s our path, it’s our choice, either way.

[I just finished writing this post when Guitar Jim sent this gorgeous song by Darrell Scott. Serendipity, the song says it better than I ever will]:

read Kerri’s blogpost about TREES AND SKY

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Filed under: Awakening, DR Thursday, Metaphor | Tagged: A Crooked Road, aldus huxley, artistry, consciousness, Darrell Scott, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, happiness, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life lessons, lighten up, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

On The Mystery Trail [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 4, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s no secret that we watch hiking videos before turning out the light for the night. There’s something comforting about people unplugging from the national nonsense and thru-hiking The Pacific Crest Trail. There’s something reassuring about people reducing their needs to the simple basics only to discover that the real essential – as important as food – is companionship. Giving and receiving support. There’s genuine kindness to be found on the trail that is not found in our current national story.

Last night we veered off trail and clicked on a story about Bigfoot encounters. Beyond the curious tales, a few of which sounded more extraterrestrial than large-furry-creature, I was struck by the process each person went through to make sense of their encounter. In the absence of a sense-socket-to-plug-into, they defaulted to something recognizable: a religious explanation or contact with an other-world-alien, Hollywood style. One man has spent years searching for others who had a similar experience or for someone who might help him understand what he saw. He admitted that his story sounded insane – and, previous to his encounter, he said, “Had I heard someone tell a similar tale, I’d have rolled my eyes. Not anymore,” adding, “It opened me,” he said.

People do not easily stand alone in the unknown. It is not comfortable. Not-knowing is more doable with company.

Listening to their stories I recognized that the unknown, like life on the trail, has a way of stripping us back to basics. When all of the layers of our mind-armor – our “knowing” – are peeled away, we do the most human thing possible: we reach for others. Even if slamming the door on the encounter is the initial response, the second action is to reach. To corroborate or to find comfort. To have companionship on the mystery trail.

This morning we sat in bed sipping coffee and told the unexplainable stories from our lives. Our coming-together-story is full of the impossible-to-understand. Sometimes we ascribe it to chance and sometimes to kismet. Good guiding angels or happenstance, either way, for us, it is a kind of miracle.

Hamlet always jumps to my mind when I dance on the edge of these delicious questions of guidance or fate or coincidence: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet sees the ghost of his father and asks: “Be thou a spirit of health or a goblin damned?” Is this ghost from heaven or sent from hell? The rest of the play is a detective story, a young Hamlet trying to answer his question, trying to make sense of his ghost encounter. He pretends madness in order to investigate, to find the truth of what he has seen.

Ultimately, like all of us, Hamlet finds peace, not because he finds an answer, but because he makes peace with life as an unanswerable question. “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow…”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SUN AND CLOUD

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Filed under: Emergence, Flawed Wednesday, Identity | Tagged: artistry, Bigfoot, coincidence, comfort, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fate, Guidance, Hamlet, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, kismet, PCT, story, studio melange, support, the melange, unknown | 1 Comment »

The Fire That Sustains [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on June 3, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s funny what a photo invokes. A contrail and the sun:

When he was young Beethoven wrote a ballet called The Creatures of Prometheus. It is too big for modern ballet companies to produce and symphonies have a difficult time adding it to their program because – well – it’s a ballet and the music needs something to tie it together. I had the great good fortune to develop a story based on original program notes and perform The Creatures of Prometheus with The Portland Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Yaki Bergman, in 2008.

It is a story of the creation of human beings. It is the story of jealous Zeus forcing the newly created humans to accept him as their god rather than their true creator, Prometheus. Zeus is an irrational bully. The other gods on Olympus go along with his brutality because they, like the humans, fear him. Apollo the sun god, the god of reason and light, despises Zeus and plants the seed of reason in the creatures in the hope that, one day, they would awaken to their true nature, they would recognize the old god Prometheus as their true creator.

At the height of the Black Lives Matter protests Yaki contacted me and asked me to rewrite the script to make it relevant to the events of the day. We were to perform the new piece, entitled The Last of the Old Gods, in the spring of 2023. There was a contract snag delay. Yaki was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and passed before we could perform it. I grieve him. He was a great artist with a big vision and even bigger laughter.

Art is meant to carry the conscience of a community. It is meant to express and explore the values of society. And, since society is mostly blind to itself, It is meant to be a mirror, a mechanism for people to see themselves. Yes, it needs to entertain but entertainment is the warmth that draws the community to the hearth fire. Art is the fire that sustains.

It is enough to say that we are currently living in a time of a false bully who would-be god. He must lie and fearmonger to achieve his desire, just like Zeus in the ballet. In re-reading both of my versions of the script I was struck how they are now more relevant than when I wrote them. The Last of the Old Gods will live in my files. It will, I hope, someday, find its light-of-day.

Here is a segment of text from The Last of the Old Gods, the final bit of story that leads into the musical Finale:

“In an instant, Apollo sent a tiny spark, a thread of sun that wove through the spell of Thalia’s masks, that opened a possibility of release. A chance at remembering. As the creatures circled each other in their dance, one reaching, the other rejecting, like a drowning man, one pressing the other down to elevate itself, Apollo whispered into their souls a possibility, a pathway home.

His thread of sun ignited the seed Prometheus planted.

If someday, they could turn and face their fear, see through the false division, let go of the lust for power and belief in dominance and division, if one day these creatures could take a chance and reach toward the other, it might remember itself. Thalia’s masks would fall. The seesaw game would collapse. And the creatures’ natural iridescence would be restored.

It might, someday, look in the eyes of the other, and remember itself. Whole. Prometheus’ touch would finally reach them. The last old god, Prometheus, and his creation would be free.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SUN AND CONTRAIL

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Metaphor, Story, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: art, artistry, beethoven, black lives matter, community, conscience, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, entertainment, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, performance, reflection, story, studio melange, the melange, Yaki Bergman | 1 Comment »

Put It To Good Use [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 2, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Sanity is madness put to good uses, waking life is a dream controlled.” ~ George Santayana, The Elements of Poetry

I wish – oh, how I wish – we could awaken from this nightmare. Democracy dies by gaslight, by demonization, by unbridled lies, by a Me-Me-Me philosophy. By Republican insanity (inanity?): madness put to ill use. Cowardice two-stepping in a righteous cowboy costume.

Viktor Frankel wrote: “The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is.” Could there be a better definition of sanity?

We are witness to a national nightmare. It is the tug of war of dueling realities. One, madness put to good use, is called Democracy. It is a dream meant to serve “liberty and justice for all”. To uplift. Equally.

The other reality is discriminatory, exploitation of the many for the profit of the few. It is madness put to toxic use. White nationalism in a self-righteous-wrapper. It is in-sanity. Un-hinged. Ab-normal. To abuse others for personal gain. In-humane.

We fly the flag upside down as a signal of distress. I imagined the bumper sticker was placed upside down to reinforce the point. Stay Weird. The current purveyors of authoritarian insanity intend to hammer us into compliance. To silence the voices of opposition (goodness). They attack judges while freeing criminals; they would have us believe that the rule of law is criminal so that the criminal might lawlessly rule. They would have us behave, stay quiet. Look down or bury our heads in the sand. Goosestep.

There has never been a better time – or more necessary time – to stay weird, to put our mad-ness to good use. To speak up. To act out. Surround and protect the judges: the last line of defense against the authoritarian takeover. To bellow to our AWOL Congress: WHERE ARE YOU? And to make sure they feel the impact of their inaction, their abdication of responsibility. Their betrayal of oath.

Our mythos is full of symbols like Paul Revere and The Boston Tea Party: people giving of themselves to serve a greater cause. The love of others. In our dream of democracy, we know exactly how to deal with an out-of-control wanna-be king. We fly the flag upside-down. We put lanterns in church steeples. We toss money-hoarding and unfair taxation into the harbor. There has never been a more important time to stay weird, to focus our madness and put it to good use – for each other.

read Kerri’s blogpost about STAYING WEIRD