Art | The Direction of Intention

Row

Posted on February 17, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes the way forward is akin to rowing a boat: facing backward is the only way to get proper leverage. Today, to stir my pot, to get some leverage and new energy, I revisited three books that I wrote but never published (or limply offered to a tiny audience). It was a revelation. It’s as if the man who wrote those books in the past meant for me to read them today. The man who wrote them was not ready or clear enough to birth them. The man who read them today knows just what to do (including rewrite some odd bits). Here is the introduction to the first of the three books:

I’ve generally stepped in every pothole, tripped over every opportunity, broken the family dishes, and made every mistake a person can make. I feel fortunate to be alive. I used to try and hide the mess behind a veneer of “knowing.” Eventually I realized that in order to find what I was seeking I had to stop pretending that I knew what I was doing. I didn’t. I now recognize that the more I learn, the less I know. Life is not about knowing stuff. Life is vibrant when engaging with the un-known. Seeking is messy business. Being human is messy business. To pretend otherwise is…well, to pretend.

One day, while exhausting myself pretending, I realized that I was telling myself a story of fear. I realized that I was the only person invested in my fear story. I realized that I’d cast all the other people in my story as dangerous characters. I believed that if they really knew me they’d shame me. I realized that I was the only person in my story feeling pain, frustration and exhaustion. So, why was I telling myself this story? This was not the story that I wanted my life to tell. That day I began changing my story.

At some point, each of us comes face-to-face with the story of our lives. When we do, we have the choice to retreat further into hiding or to take off the mask, turn around, and walk toward the thing we fear the most. This is to seek the bear.

Every human being who has walked the face of the earth has come to the same crossroad; those that faced their bear left behind clues about how to do it. They left us messages about how best to stop hiding, how to turn and walk toward fear, what to do when it is time to stand in front of the bear’s cave and how to welcome the encounter. The clues and messages are found in the stories they left for us. The stories are maps for navigating our inner geography.

Our ancestors understood that stories are a participation sport. Our lives are mirrored in the tale of adventure. We know what to do in our personal story because we identify with the heroine/hero in the story. Their journey of transformation is a guide to our journey of transformation. Their follies and foibles give coherence and direction to our messy passage. Their death and rebirth is a map for our death and rebirth. Their story is a call for us to step more fully into our adventure-story.

As is true in all life-lessons, it’s a perfect loop. I’m back where I started (apparently) only with new eyes and a few more years of experience. Order from chaos, chaos from order, I suspect we are all, one way or another, rowing in a perfect circle.

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Filed under: Art, Story, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: ancestors, choice, crossroads, direction, fear, guide, identity, inner geography, map, rebirth, story, storymap, transformation | Leave a comment »

Live According To Your Necessity

Posted on February 14, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative

a detail of a painting I did in honor of Dawson’s arrival on earth

“Depending upon the lens you look through, I have been a miserable failure at everything I’ve ever done,” I said. Arnie protested but we both knew it was, to a certain extent, true. And, since our conversation I have been gazing through that certain lens and feeling my failure acutely.

This lens is not new to me. I visit it each year as my birthday rolls around. It is a lens that most artists visit from time to time. To their peril. Recently, Chris, one of the most talented and hardworking actors I know, told me that now that he is far down the road of his career, no longer a beginner, he has surrendered the idea, imperative or illusion of economic success. “I work because I have to,” he said. It makes no sense and is impossible to explain to someone who does not have “that” impossible intrinsic driver. The incentives are internal. The rewards are internal. The achievements are mastery landmarks and not monetary rewards. It looks like insanity through the lens of a profit/loss, money=morality society.

When I look through the failure lens I’ve learned I need to visit Rainier Maria Rilke. I need to seek the advice of a master. “Nobody can counsel you or help you. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would die if it were denied you to write. This above all – ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And, if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity;….”

…closer in

My life is built upon this necessity. No amount of comparing it to others is useful. No other lens is healthy. Since moving to Kenosha from Seattle, I am fond of telling people that in my move I committed economic suicide. That is a statement made looking through the wrong lens. Here is the truth: Since my move I have published my book, The Seer. I produced and performed in what I thought was the greatest heart-project of my life, The Lost Boy. It played to sold out houses and fulfilled a decade long journey and commitment to Tom. Two months later I did what I now think was the the greatest heart-project of my life when I illustrated and Kerri and I published Beaky’s books, The Shayne Trilogy. Beaky had an author’s reading a mere two weeks before her passing. Last year I authored drew and submitted with Kerri over 25 cartoon proposals to syndicates. We are completing work on our next play, The Road Trip. And, in the middle of it all, I’ve done arguably the best paintings of my life. I am meeting my question with a simple and strong “I must.”

What is failure? What is success? They are lenses and they matter not.

I am living and building my life “according to this necessity.”

The whole painting.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Edges, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: art, artist, artistry, Beaky's Books, davidrobinsoncreative.com, failure, lens, mastery, Rainier Maria Rilke, success, The Lost Boy | 2 Comments »

FIND ENDURING TRUTHS

Posted on January 31, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative

a detail of an unnamed painting

Skip is in NYC and spent some time at MOMA and The Guggenheim. He sent a cascade of photographs of the great paintings he encountered. I thanked him for the uplift, the reminder of what is enduring and true in this time of post-truth-politics. He wrote, “Trying to fill my head with art and beauty and not full of fears and lies.”

My dear friend came to visit. We have generally stood on opposite sides of the political aisle though have always been able to discuss our differing points of view. We’ve always been capable, at least for a moment, to stand in each other’s shoes and identify common ground. During this latest visit, the other’s shoes were nowhere to be found. I told him that our conversations were like the particle-wave duality: he is looking at the political world and seeing a particle and I am looking at the same world but can only see a wave. Common ground was nowhere to be found. We learned that our friendship is much greater and more enduring than our politics. We went to a play, filled our heads with art that inspired intense conversation. It turns out that there was plenty of common ground available when peering at our world through a rich art-lens. Perhaps our leaders need a better grasp of the power and purpose of art.

I’m experimenting with my meditation drawings. A detail from a work-in-progress

Kerri asked me if I wanted to see something beautiful and I said, “YES!” She was standing in the kitchen looking out the window through binoculars. “It’s the fox,” she said, handing me the binoculars. About a hundred yards away, nestled into a pile of leaves, the fox was soaking in the sun. While this world seems so out of joint, teeming with discord, I found great solace on this cold winter day watching a fox curl up for a nap in a rare sliver of sun. It filled my heart with beauty and the comfort of an enduring cycle.

I’ve always appreciated the work of Neil Postman. His writing was a North Star for me when I was sailing the choppy waters of education and corporate dysfunction. Today I think he was a prophet. A few months ago I reread portions of his book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, published in 1984. This morning, after reading the news, I shook my head and read again the Forward of his book:

“…Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

another detail

As I find myself drowning in a sea of irrelevance (post truth, alternative fact, crowd size infatuations), I am, like Skip, reaching into the one place where I have always found unshakable truth. When so many are working so hard to fill our minds with fear and fable, a walk through a museum can be salve for the soul. Time in the studio can be a re-grounding in truth, reorienting to the solid realities beyond those smoky deceptions fed to us as fact. It seems to me that intentionally filling our heads and hearts with beauty (not to escape but to feed on substance rather than ingesting so much sugar) is healthy and necessary in an effort not to become like the thing we resist.

Skip and I are not the only ones. George Orwell’s 1984 is selling like hot cakes. Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World deserves a serious look. When truth is hard to find amidst the ranting fiction, sometimes we must turn to fiction (art) to find the enduring truths.

art prints/bags/cards/pillows/cool stuff

Kerri told me that the orchestration in this piece, Bridge, is perfect for this post: Orwellian, a bridge between truth and untruth.

BRIDGE on ITunes: Kerri Sherwood track 15 on AS IT IS

BRIDGEBRBRBSave

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Do Anything Else

Posted on December 10, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative

It occurs to me now that all along I’ve been asking irrelevant questions. Or, perhaps framing my questions too narrowly. For instance, years ago I went to graduate school to study systems because I wanted to follow a question that reached deep into my life and identity as an artist: can a mythology be rekindled once it has died? Art, after all, is one of the primary life-keepers of a culture’s story and the beating heart of the story is its mythology. And, according to all indicators, our mythology is mostly dead [as Joseph Campbell said, for evidence of our mythological demise, all you need to do is look at the news]. So, the younger version of myself wanted to understand the purpose of my life as an artist if, indeed, I was in service to a dead mythology. Heady questions, yes? Relevant questions?

In the early 1990’s I was invited to a photographer’s studio to see the “newest thing” in photography. The photographer had a new “program” called Photoshop. Before my eyes he “photoshopped” me into a picture, a place I’d never before visited. Today, all of this seems commonplace. Now, any 5 year old can manipulate an image but at the time a photograph stood for proof that something had actually happened. A photograph could not lie. It was evidence of truth. That day, standing in the photographer’s studio, I realized that the old reliable anchors for truth no longer existed. What was our anchor?

The truly significant events in our lives rarely come in with a roar.

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about fake news – as if this was a new phenomenon. It brings to my mind a terrific book written in 1985 by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death. Here’s bit from the first page:

“Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”

I suppose fake news refers to something wholly concocted but I’d argue that when news agencies pander and promote themselves to conservative or liberal viewpoints, when ratings drive content, it’s all fake news. News with an agenda is…not news. It is, however, dangerous to a democracy and no longer free (as in free press, a cornerstone of our democracy). Historically, newspapers have always had a point of view but there was some attention paid to what was printed as news. Opinion was confined to an editorial page. When the line between true and concocted is blurred, when a populace cannot discern between entertainment and substance, it no longer has the capacity to make sound (read, “informed”) judgments. Worse, it is gullible, gossip-eaten and infinitely manipulate-able. It is, as Neil Postman wrote, entertaining itself to death.

I recently wrote about the absence of recognizable communal anchors (mythology) and the dangers of a community with nothing but the soft soil of belief and opinion as its driver. Is planting a personal-truth flag and defending its territory all that is left to us?

What else can we do? Now, there’s a relevant, open-ended question! Roger once told me that he would never be able to understand suicide. He said something like, “In that moment, rather than take your own life, why not do anything else? Why not make any other choice?” Another relevant question!

What else can we do? In the face of our own entertainment-driven suicide, why not do anything else? Turn off the blather, go outside, meet your neighbor, tell stories of your children or your ancestors. If common ground can’t be found it can certainly be created. Inhabit something bigger than opinion. It’s less entertaining but certainly more useful. Great art – no matter the form- lives in those bigger fields.

MAKE ME AN INSTRUMENT OF PEACE – GIFTS

to kickstart your peace, listen to this:

for PEACE on iTunes, go here (track 5 on the album AS IT IS)

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Filed under: Art, Metaphor, Story, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: Amusing Ourselves to Death, artist, belief, common ground, conflicting information, evidence of truth, fake news, Kerri Sherwood, kerrisherwood.com, life purpose, mythology, Neil Postman, questioning, relevance, true, truth | Leave a comment »

Listen To Randi

Posted on December 2, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative

a detail from my latest painting-in-progress

Randi is wise. Though, like all truly wise souls, she is completely unaware of her wisdom. She knows that she takes great delight in learning new things. She knows that her curiosity is boundless. She knows beyond the platitude of the sentiment that each new day is an opportunity to renew. Each new day is a step into unknown territory and, for Randi, there is no sense in taking timid steps. There is no sense in trying to make the day fit into a preconceived “normal.” There is no sense in watching the dance. Dance!

She squeals with pleasure when she hears a word used beautifully. “I am a lover of words!” she exclaims. She knows that words are powerful and when used beautifully will define beautiful experiences. She uses her words to define life beautifully. And, because she understands the power of words – and the brevity of life, she also understands the imperative of telling others what they mean to her. She has no problem expressing love.

another detail

We took a rare opportunity to see her, swinging north to Buffalo after traveling to Boston to celebrate Thanksgiving with Craig and Dan. At dinner, we talked of new relationships and new work and new phases of life. We talked of the necessity of creating balance amidst the tug and push of this fast moving life-river. Randi smiled, “I once heard someone speak about attempting to balance life and they said something that changed how I see it. They said that when yearning to balance the many aspects of our lives it is most often not balance we seek! It’s integration! Rather than try to bring all these separate pieces of life into a balancing act, why not integrate them into a unified whole!” She clapped her hands as if having the revelation all over again. “It’s integration, wholeness that we desire!”

Wholeness is another word for presence, and presence is the goal of the performers’ art. Quinn, another wise person, used to tell me that all spiritual teachings speak of finding the middle way, the path between poles or opposites. “Zealots miss the point!” he’d say. Life is not found in the extremes, in the separations, in the fragmented, or the isolationist’s dream. Those are aims of the controller. The rule bound. The real balancing comes in the letting go. As Randi reminded us, it is found in the integration, the middle way, the whole.

the whole painting as of 12.1.16

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Filed under: Art, Heroes, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: balance, integration, language, middle way, presence, separation and unity, wholeness, wisedom, words matter | 1 Comment »

Let Life Come Through

Posted on November 1, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative

a sketch: Dancing At Crab Meadow

Kerri works on her “un-cantata.” She plays a short section from a piece and it captures my attention. I put down my pencil, close my eyes, and listen. I am inking a cartoon, preparing a proposal. It is mechanical work, rote. I have learned to use this stage of the process as a kind of pay-attention-exercise. It is only tedious if I slip into the illusion that I’ve drawn this line before; I have not, just as I have not lived this moment before.

Artistry is often like laying bricks. Repetition is rarely sexy but beautiful creations come from it. I know that in my repetition I am “putting the lines in my body,” building muscle memory.

I have not heard Kerri play this piece and I find myself savoring it. I love it when she plays. The first time she played for me I was stunned into silence. “Something came through you,” I tell her. “It was enormous.” I often tell her the story of the first time I heard her play. I tell her the story so she will play more. I tell her because I know that music wants to come through her like images want to come through me. “You have to go to the piano,” I say. “Let it come through you.” She responds, “Let’s take a walk.” And we walk. Life comes through.

Neither of us spends as much time in the studio as we ought. Our walks, however, are extraordinary.

We went to a funeral on Saturday. We will attend another funeral tomorrow. There have been many, many in the past few years. I suspect that we are of the age that funerals become common. I have been paying attention to the eulogies with some fascination. They have become life-giving or at least revealing of what actually gives life (and what does not). In the many eulogies I’ve heard, the lives recounted, I’ve yet to hear about the big house, the luxury car that was bought, the clothes or jewelry that the deceased strove to possess. I never hear about the accumulations, the stuff or achievements. I hear warm stories of relationship. I hear of family dinners, trips to the lake, walks in the woods, laughter and lessons. I hear stories of life’s repetitions, the holiday feasts, the coffee sitting, the small moments, the messy moments that amount to time spent together. The walks.

Life comes through.

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, Story, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: artist, artistry, family, Kerri Sherwood, life, life giving, moments, relationship, repetition | 1 Comment »

Learn To Question

Posted on September 27, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative

My best place for asking questions

20 (aka John) tells me that his coworker, Amy, aged 22, will have answered all of life’s questions within the next three years. He assures me that she will share her answers when she has them. “We just need to hang on for another three years,” he quips, “…and it’ll all make sense!”

The admitting nurse at the surgery center feels like a threshold guardian. She said, “People who pass through here learn just how little they actually control in life. Surgery is humbling. I’m here when their illusion of control bursts. That moment is hard.” She was quiet for a moment and added, “What gets me is all these people in the world who think they have all the answers – and they think their answer has to be the answer for everybody. All these rules made up by all these people who think they have the right answer for everybody! That’s why people are killing people everywhere.”

“It sounds like more people ought to have surgery!” I tease.

“You got that right,” she said, handing me my gown, hairnet and blue booties. “Put one of these on and you realize how little control you actually have; in this place none of your answers matter and none of your rules apply!”

It should be a mantra for educators and the only argument necessary to dismantle a test-driven system: Life is always found in the direction of the question. At best, answers are relative – and the best answers, if understood, are simply doors to more questions. Learn to question.

The best art follows the same mantra. It steps into big questions, wanders into unknowns and complexities. It tests and tries, explores and experiments. It leads us to explode our answers and like a good trickster does not allow us to hold our gods too tightly. It begs us to question.

“Shall we tell Amy that there are no answers?” I ask 20.

“Nah. Why spoil the surprise.”

From the archives. This one often calls to me

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Education, The Direction of Intention | Tagged: Answers, art, artist, artistry, complexity, control, education, educators, mantra, questions, Rules, seeking, Surgery, Trickster, unknown | Leave a comment »

Let Go

Posted on July 6, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative

Dog-Dog three years ago

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog is now three years old. His birthday is July 4th so he believes all the ruckus and fireworks are for him. Of course, we do not dissuade him from his delusion. Country-wide festivities seem appropriate for the birth of any creature. It is a miracle no matter how you story it and ought to be outrageously celebrated.

Marilyn invited us to her family picnic. It was a riot of volleyball and bag toss, not to mention the best cheeseburger I’ve ever eaten. It was a great time! We sat at the table for elders. In the midst of feeling honored to be included at the grown-up table (I feel like I ought to be seated with the kids at the card table), I was shocked to realize that I was sitting with my peers. I am now of a certain age…. Some delusions pop themselves.

On Sunday at the holiday carnival as we watched the Pier Pups distance jump into a pool, Brad and I had one of those broad and deep conversations that keep me thinking for days. Among many things, we rolled around the idea of what it means to achieve, what it means to be successful. I’ve discovered, as my teachers told me I would, that ideas of success and fulfillment are different at each stage of life. Now, I’m successful if I’m quiet inside, if I do not let one of these too-fast-days slip by unappreciated. Some delusions are shed like too-much armor.

There is the moment that the unbeatable knight is knocked off his horse, the moment when Sisyphus, so strong, knowing and independent, doesn’t know what to do and his only recourse is to ask for help. His life depends upon it. To gain all, so the stories remind me, we must first lose it all. Like them, each time I think I have control of my destiny, I am summarily reminded of my delusion. Control is nothing more than just another story. Let go.

My greatest teachers in one pix

This morning, talking about all that has happened in three years, my wife looked at me through the steam of her coffee and said, “Time just keeps moving. You’d think it would slow down or take a vacation every once in a while.”