Popcorn Trail [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Late at night, standing on the platform awaiting the train to take us home, the moon and clouds gave us a spectacular show. I knew that the moon was a waxing gibbous and realized that, although I’d known and used the word since I was young, I had no idea what the word “gibbous” actually meant. It sounds like something related to gibbons, small apes that swing through trees. Is the moon gibbous because it swings through the sky? No! The moon is gibbous because it is greater than a semi-circle yet less than a circle. Gibbous describes the shape! Bulbous. Convex. Protruding.

Yesterday I unrolled many small canvases and pinned them to the wall in my studio. They are like a small flame I’ve kept for alive for over 35 years. They refer back to a large odd shaped canvas I stapled to the deck of my apartment on a sunny day, overlooking Hollywood. I had a very limited paint supply, a few cans of paint used for animation (computer animation was not yet possible so artists painted images on cells with acrylic paints), grey, blue, and white. I had a small jar of cadmium red. I taped a few housepainting brushes to long sticks and made myself a promise to “have fun and not think too much.” And I did. I had fun. I didn’t think too much. I played. In those few short hours, I painted the single piece that would influence my work for the rest of my life. I knew it was special. It was pure. It sold before I could adequately document it (remember the age before the ease of digital cameras?). It sold before I had the opportunity to install it in a gallery and show it.

I call the many small canvases my “narrative paintings”. They are a popcorn trail that I dropped as I wandered into the forest of my artistry. Some of the pieces are studied and lifeless. Some are playful and shallow. Some are raw and heart-full. I tacked them all to the wall to guide me back to the original impulse, that moment of artistic purity.

I am gibbous though, at this age, I am no longer waxing. I am greater than a semi-circle but have not yet completed my full life circle. In my time on earth I have been what Kerri calls a “strider”, someone trying-too-hard to climb the ladder of success. I have pursued my artistry like it was a wild animal, setting traps to capture what I could not easily understand. I have finally learned, or have lived long enough to realize, that I am and have always been what I chase. No traps necessary.

I follow the popcorn trail back to what I experienced that day in Los Angeles: the simple joy of being alive. A conscious moment enthusiastically expressed through a little grey, blue and white paint, punctuated with some surprise cadmium red.

IN THE NIGHT on the album THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY © 1998 Kerri Sherwood

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE MOON AND CLOUDS

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See It All [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

“It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom

More and more we are visiting local nurseries and garden centers. I am captivated by the colors and shapes of flowers and plants. Earlier this year, while shopping for specific herbs and plants for the garden, I saw through a different set of eyes. Consumer eyes. Now that our garden is planted and growing, our visits are different. They are not about shopping but about lingering. We wander. We allow ourselves to be pulled. Kerri takes photographs. The narrow focus of a consumer is much different than the open focus of an appreciator; artist eyes. It fills me up to see what is there beyond what I think is there.

Nelson Mandela said, “Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.” This from a man who spent 27 years in prison for resisting a brutal apartheid government. He understood to his bones the relationship of truth to freedom. Freedom is not possible if it’s based on a lie. Lies imprison. As we are now learning, to sustain a foundation of lies it is necessary to suppress freedoms. It is necessary to subdue and distort the truth.

Our divisions, just as the divisions of apartheid in South Africa, are based in lies. There is no truth to division based on the color of skin. It is manufactured, legislated. There is not an invasion of immigrants at our southern border. No one is eating dogs and cats. It is made-up, a hate-lever to those who would control and exploit their way to dominance. Concocted hatred is a worn-out colonialist’s tool. Mandela also said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.”

People can be tricked into hatred, and if they can be tricked, they are also capable of opening their eyes to the truth.

Seeing through they eyes of truth is different than seeing through eyes dedicated to lies. Eyes that seek truth desire to open, to see everything. All the colors and shapes. Diversity. Interconnection. Artist’s eyes.

The other eyes, the eyes of apartheid, the eyes of ICE, the eyes of current Republicans – are necessarily narrow. They see only what they want to see. They refuse to see beyond what they think. And, more to the point, in order to sustain the lie they need to bully all eyes to see as they see – or at least to pretend.

Pathological lies inevitably become an inescapable web, catching the spider as well as the prey. We are watching it happen in real time with the Epstein files. The liar is caught in his web of lies and so he deflects by contriving division, by escalating his lies.

Narrowing eyes eventually close and see only darkness. We are watching it happen in real time with the Republican Congress fleeing Washington D.C. to escape having to see the truth. All of it.

Truth is found by learning, by opening eyes and hearts to see all colors and shapes as they are, not as we want them to be. I am reminded of key lesson that leadership mentor, Eliav Zakay, taught his students: “Leaders shine light into dark corners.” It is the truth that liberates. It is the truth that sets us free.

read Kerri’s blog about CONEFLOWERS

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The Door [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” ~ Joseph Campbell

We leaned an old door against the garage. The towel rack serves as an excellent perch for birds. Initially, we entertained the idea of hanging a basket of flowers from the rack but abandoned the idea. As time and weather peel back the layers and reveal the door’s history, we are delighted that we left well-enough alone. The door is beautiful and needs no adornment.

I am rereading The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell’s masterwork introducing us to the idea of a monomyth: the story-pattern found universally in folklore, myths, religious narratives…across cultures. The human journey. This time through I am slow-reading the book, taking in only a few pages a day – or sometimes if it strikes me I linger on a single paragraph. In this phase of my life I am less interested in consuming information and more wanting to savor what I read. I am not trying to “get there” or to “achieve” or ascend the heights of knowledge mountains. I am in favor of strolling and appreciating.

Sitting on the step of the deck, watching Dogga explore the crab grass, I realized that we placed the door directly opposite of Barney the piano. And, because my mind is savoring mythic journeys I was amused at the creation of our unintentional sculpture. Music is Kerri’s bliss. Since she fell and broke both of her wrists the door has been mostly closed. Recently she cleaned out her studio. It feels good in there! There’s light and space and new energy. Occasionally, spontaneously, she will run in and play for a few minutes. Dogga and I exchange a knowing look: the muse is calling.

There was certainly a departure from the known. There have been challenges – more than I care to count. Like Barney and the door, the old world collapses, layers peel away, revealing history long unattended. In the collapse the purest form emerges and finds new light. Though the journey is not yet complete, I am witness to her transformation.

We placed an old door opposite of Barney. Where once there was only a wall, I have faith that this door will open. She will return to the land of the known, and as the monomyth foretells, she will bring with her a boon, a special gift gained from her arduous journey.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DOOR


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Reach For What Is Good [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Inundated as we are in the political darkness, we made an effort to steep our minds and hearts in the positive and seek the affirmation of the light. So, we went to the arts. We spent a few minutes with James Taylor’s Shower The People (listen through to the end when Arnold McCuller sings a back-up vocal that will make you smile-weep) and we bumbled into a duet of You Can Close Your Eyes that James Taylor sings with his son Henry. Heart opening.

I spent some time reading and rereading Horatio’s latest poem, The Real Work. It’s brilliant and a reminder to seek what we love every single day of our time on this earth. His poem was good medicine for what has recently ailed me.

“Never, never, never give up.” These words by Winston Churchill hang in Kerri’s studio. We’ve both been witness to too many gifted artists give up, lay down their brushes, close the lid on their piano, step off the stage. An artist’s life can be a very hard road so a reminder taped to the wall is sometimes the only thing that brings you back to the studio the next day. Never give up.

These days the quote rings loud-and-true with the meaning it was originally intended to carry. The quote is a shortened version of what Churchill said in a speech in 1941 as Britain stood its ground against the Nazis. Today, everyday Americans stand their ground against the attempted fascist takeover of our democracy. As Kerri said last week on the trail, “It’s like a depraved checkmate.” The supreme court, the republican congress, the department of justice…are all in the pocket of the tyrant-wannabe. Loyalty to the man has overtaken loyalty to the Constitution. The last line of defense is a citizenry who refuses to give up on democracy.

Anne Lamott wrote a piece for the Washington Post on the 4th of July. It provided her reasons to celebrate in this time of national shame. “This Friday, my friends and I will celebrate the land that embraces political marches and rallies, the ones so far and those still to come. This is “We the people,” and that is the ultimate and most profound aspect of America. We are going to keep showing up and talking about what needs to be done and what is possible right now.”

The power of the people is the power of the imagination. The power of the arts is to access the heart and ignite the power of the imagination. What we’ve witnessed these many months is an assault on the imagination of democracy, a lie-pact of the mean-spirited and dimwitted, those who lack the courage and conviction – and imagination – of “We the people”.

As we keep showing up and showing up and showing up it is vital to fill our heart-tanks with the words of writers like Anne Lamott, the heart-opening music of musicians like James Taylor and Bruce Springsteen…to intentionally and regularly drink from the sources of light that fire the imagination and help us do more than resist the dark but reach for what is good and right and possible.

read Kerri’s blogpost about NEVER GIVE UP

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A Poet’s Revelation [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Some enlightened poet/scientist named this little flower Shooting Star. The flower evoked for the scientist streaks of light arcing across the night sky. The scientist must have had a profound experience one night, gazing into the stars when, suddenly, the stars seemed to go haywire, zipping across the sky.

My first ever meteor shower happened while I was a teenager. I was in the mountains. I lay in a meadow with my friends and watched the heavens dance. It made me understand how so many cultures on this earth believe that shooting stars are either souls returning to the earth to be reborn or the souls of the recently deceased leaping into the other world. Souls in transition leaving a brilliant, momentary trace of light behind them.

Still other cultures believe that shooting stars are messages from the gods. Affirmations.

The message I received from my night in the mountain meadow watching the stars arc across the sky? I am infinitesimally small in this vast universe. And, I am intimately connected to everything. It’s a poet’s revelation.

The scientist who named the flower Shooting Star must have had the exact same realization.

[Bonus hope: A poet’s thought in a world of oppression in which we are connected to everything]

I Look At The World ~ Langston Hughes

I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!

I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that’s in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.

Blueprint For My Soul on the album The Best So Far © 1996/9 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s albums – borne of her poet’s revelation – are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about SHOOTING STARS

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Follow The Lines [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

“In the art world, lines are a fundamental element used to create a wide variety of effects. They can define shapes, create movement, guide the viewer’s eye…” ~A-I Overview to my inquiry about lines in art

I confess that I am having a hard time. I’m in the middle of a mini-moral crisis.

I’ve written this blog since 2010. I set out to write about positive things, affirmations and stories of the best of us. At the time I began writing I was traveling around the nation, working with incredible people everywhere I went, so I had a bucketful of stories to share, celebrating the best of the human spirit. Kerri and I began writing our Melange 382 weeks ago. We had so much art and music in our folios and files and we wanted to bring them into the light of day. Sharing the best of us – another way of celebrating the human spirit.

After all of these years I enjoy a small but enormously appreciated (by me) audience.

Lately, I am aware, that my daily writing and my focus is not about celebrating the best of us but has almost exclusively become about ringing an alarm against the worst of us. I am sometimes snarky. I am mostly horrified at how dulled we as a nation have become to the outrageous. I am alarmed at our normalization of the monstrous, the disappearance of Congress, the collapse of the system of checks and balances.

Each day I have a chat with myself about staying focused on the positive but I am lately finding that to be naive to the point of dangerous; it is akin to sticking my head in the sand or plugging my ears so I hear no evil.

Each day, more and more people are being swept off our streets. Each day, they are denied due process. This morning I’ve been reading – and verifying – accounts about the unnecessary death of a Haitian woman in one of our many overcrowded detention centers. The conditions are appalling. She is not the first. She will not be the last. Her crime: trying to escape abject poverty and enter the land of the free and the home of the brave.

90% of the people – human beings – are being held without due process in privately run detention centers that are by many accounts no better than concentration camps. Think about it: “privately run” means that they are detention-for-profit; the more people swept up and crammed into these camps the more money they make. Inhumanity with a profit incentive.

Which brings me to my moral crisis. I am both a visual and theatre artist. I know how to create movement that guides a viewer’s eye. I know how to make an audience see in a story what I want them to see. I also know how to prevent them from seeing what I don’t want them to see. It’s akin to the magician’s trick. Create a distraction so the mechanics of the trick go unnoticed. Our national media are masters of distraction. They make rather than report news.

We-the-people are being distracted. We are being pitted against each other so we do not look at the magic trick that is making our rights – and the rights of others – disappear. We are not supposed to see what is happening in the detention centers – we are not supposed to know how our taxes are being used, what we are paying for, what we are creating: a police state.

Follow the lines. It is not so hard to see what we are not supposed to see. It’s ugly. A president ignoring the law, exploiting brutal immigration sweeps to incite violence, manufacture an “insurrection” in order to turn the military against citizens. The suspension of elections will surely follow. The sweeps will include voices of opposition.

It is morally irresponsible to look the other way. It’s morally reprehensible to say, “There’s nothing we can do about it,” or “I didn’t vote for this,” or “I had no idea what was happening,” or “This doesn’t impact me.” It is fundamentally immoral to pretend that this is something that we “Can’t talk about.” It is depraved to roll along as if the current course of this nation is anything other than ethically bankrupt. People are dying, being held without due process in deplorable circumstances. And we-the-people are paying for it. We don’t like where the lines lead so we change the channel. We look the other way or swallow whole-cloth the media spin.

What is my responsibility to write? To paint? To draw? How can I celebrate the human spirit, the best of us, when the leaders of the nation are every day grinning at, applauding and investing in brutality, taking delight in human misery? And our tax dollars are making it possible.

a detail of Weeping Man.

read Kerri’s blogpost about LINES

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

“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.

Fistful of Dandelions © 1999 Kerri Sherwood

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DANDELION

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

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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With Abandon [David’s blog on KS Friday]

It was my favorite paradox-quote of the week: “The discipline is free association,” he said. Horatio was describing his daily Wordle addiction and extended it to a metaphor for deeper art processes. Horatio is a poet, a writer, a painter, a filmmaker…Like all artists, he understands the necessity of left-brain discipline: technique and function. Color theory. Story structure. Yet, the ultimate discipline, the doorway to flow, is through the right-brain and requires the exercise of letting go of the left-brain-everything-you-think-you-know.

My teachers in theatre school often said on opening night, “Now, all you need do is let go and trust your work.” Let go of listening to yourself. Let go of your internal editor. Let go of self-judgement. Let go of your need to control. Open your heart. Dance the dance without inhibition. Dance the dance with abandon.

Leave your big ole brain behind.

The discipline of free association. It is a practice with layers. Like all life-practices it has no end; it has nothing at all to do with achievement. It’s a discipline like mindfulness is a discipline (a misnomer: mindfulness should be called sense-fullness). The practice becomes a way of living.

Approaching the park she stopped suddenly. I learned early in our life together that walks with Kerri are exercises in seeing. She sees a world that is mostly invisible to me because I am most often lost in my thoughts. She allows her eyes to roam without presupposition. Now, when she stops, before she shows me her photograph, I play the game of trying to see what grabbed her attention, what captured her eye. Inevitably, I am surprised by what she shows me. Her open focus is receptive. She doesn’t predict. She doesn’t seek. She responds. She sees composition beyond what she thinks-is-there. A tree. The lake. A strip of green.

She illuminates for me the extraordinary in the ordinary.

“How did you see that?” I ask.

She shrugs and says, “I don’t know. It was right there.”

To free associate one needs first to be free of preconception. To step on the stage, having done all the work and still be able to say, “Let’s see what happens.”

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREE

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A Refresher [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Jim E guided us – actors and directors – through an exercise he called The Spirit of Play. He was a master teacher. Afterward I made copious notes so I, too, might lead others to their spirit of play.

Through my time in the theatre I guided many groups through the sequence. Later, in the corporate world, finally understanding the essence beyond the progression of steps, I led lawyers, business folk, teachers, coaches, consultants…through variations of Jim’s original workshop, all meant to bring people back to themselves, back to their spirit of play. It was my north star, “People just want to play,” I assured my doubtful collaborators.

Play is an umbrella big enough to safely contain the serious stuff. The serious stuff by itself is too small a container to allow for play. The inspiration-well will always run dry if play is banished from consideration. Unfettered imagination, freedom of exploration and expression, so natural as a child, is shackled when the spirit of play is burdened by a purpose called win or lose.

I recently reminded myself that cloud gazing feels good and requires no other purpose for doing it.

Clearly needing a refresher for my own spirit of play, I went into the studio, pulled out eight canvases, mixed a bucket of paint, grabbed several big tools, scrapers and rags, and to the tunes of Jerry’s jazz band, I spattered, pulled, rolled, scraped, smeared. No thought was allowed, not goal was considered. Nothing serious was entertained. I dropped my very-important-role of “artist” and laughed and laughed.

KDot & DDot See An Owl, 24″x48″, acrylic

read Kerri’s blogpost about CLOUDS

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