Answer The Call

Posted on July 24, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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Tonight, for the first time this year, for the first time since I started my wandering, I stretched a new canvas. Actually, to be more specific, I stapled it on the wall. I don’t know what possessed me. It was after midnight and I was closing up shop and suddenly I found myself unfurling a large piece of canvas, covering the wall and the surrounding furniture with plastic, and stretching and stapling the canvas to the wall. It’s a big piece!

Preparing a new canvas is a ritual. It is a commitment to the unknown. It is a dance with the gods of possibility. Preparing the canvas is calling the muses. It is to walk to the leaping off place and call into the void, “I am ready for you,” and to expect an answer. It is an act of surrender, an invitation to battle, a flirtation with a lover, a cry of anticipation, a step into silence. Preparing the canvas is to step through the threshold.

The first coat of gesso tightens the fibers and pulls the canvas tight. I relish this process because it is messy and furious and fast and that was especially true tonight. I was splashing gesso and water onto the newly stretched canvas as if I had no control. I needed to do it. I needed to call into that void. I needed to issue a challenge, “I’m here. Take me.” It had been a long, long time since the last ritual passage.

I recognize this frenzy. In the past it has come when the doors that have been locked tight for months suddenly open and the universe like the light of a full moon pours in. The frenzy is a kind of madness, a response to the moonlight and there are few satisfactions greater than dropping the brush into a bucket after the madness passes and asking myself, “What’s this?”

It is potential. It is the universe standing on the edge of the leaping place calling to me and saying, “I’m ready for you.” And this journey, like all great journeys into art, begins with a smile of recognition and a leap into the unknown.

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Make The Offer

Posted on May 24, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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If you’ve not yet heard Neil Gaiman’s commencement address to the University for the Arts in Philadelphia, take a moment and treat yourself. His message in a nutshell: make good art regardless of what life throws your way. And, by good art, he means your art. Give full expression to your voice. Make your art regardless of what life throws your way.

This morning Kerri sent me a text. She’d just played the music for a funeral. Her message: this ride is short. There’s no time to be afraid. Make your art. Step into life. Love big. Love now. And, back to Neil Gaiman, enjoy your moment. Really enjoy it. That’s how you make good art. The tortured artist image is highly overrated and mostly a lie. Art comes through pain but is never sourced in it.

As Skip and I waited for the ferry last night he recounted a conversation from his day. It was with a young entrepreneur who thought the whole world was waiting impatiently for his idea. Idea thieves lurked around every corner. He was keeping his idea close to his vest. He was suffocating his idea and himself so steeped was he in his assumed importance. I told Skip to share with the young entrepreneur what Quinn once told me: there are several billion people on this planet and you are the only one who gives a damn about what you think.

Life is too short to suffocate your ideas and limit your artistry with assumed importance. The other several billion people are thinking about their voices, not yours. They might compare theirs to yours and perhaps, like you, even copy some of what you chunk out. That’s called inspiration. Make good art. Share it. Enjoy it, regardless of its reception. Its worth has nothing to do with how it is received. Your worth has nothing to do with how you are received.

Make the offer. Make good art.

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Occupy Your Center

Posted on April 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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Robert is a gifted actor, director and teacher. We had a long conversation yesterday about actors and acting. He said that the art of acting is unusual because young actors in training don’t always recognize the necessity of technique. So, for instance, an opera singer would never expect to advance in his or her career unless they had rooted their voice in solid technique. A pianist would not expect to become a concert level musician without a solid technique. As Robert said, “Many young actors believe that if they feel it, if they connect the dots from feeling to feeling then they are acting. “Anyone can emote and call him or her self an actor,” he said, “but acting requires just as solid a technique as any other art form. It’s just not as expected or understood.” Robert recently told a young actor, “It does the audience no good if you feel it but they aren’t invited to participate.” Technique facilitates participation because it frees the artist to be present. The point of any art form is to share, to include, to transport. Artistry is never about the artist. It is always about the relationship.

Today in tai chi Saul-The-Chi-Lantern paired the beginners (me) with the more advanced students. We were doing a simple push hands exercise that I recognized as the technique beneath the practice. I had a revelation that shocked me to the core and inspired me to teach it to every artist that I know. In push hands, the idea is to empty of all resistance, to drop deeply into your center and use your partners force to knock them off center. As the advanced students told me, “The point of the exercise is to fail. Failing is the only way to find your center and empty yourself of opposition.” My revelation was this: opposition (resistance) is the act of giving another person responsibility for your balance. Literally, you invest your balance in their center. It is visceral. My partners easily tossed me off balance because I easily gave away my center every time I resisted them. When I (occasionally) found my center and emptied myself of resistance, I entered a balanced fluid center that shocked me in its potency.

I left tai chi today and went to see a student production of a Shakespeare play. The rivers of my conversation with Robert and my tai chi revelation met as I watched the young actors push and force and resist and reach for feelings. They did not know to include me. Their play was about them, not the story or the opportunity for relationship with me, the audience. Yet, the paradox, the moment of truth came after the play when I listened to their investment in what the audience thought of their work. They gave me their center because they shut me out of their play. Had I cared I could have easily tossed them off balance. As I left the theatre I thought, “Someone needs to teach them how to fail.” In that direction technique is found. In that direction is learning.

I wished the young actors had access to Robert or the advanced students in my tai chi class. If I keep at it in fifteen years or so I might have the capacity to keep my center. The young actors need to pretend that they can do it all now. They are oriented to the test (performing the words with feeling) and not the mastery.

Even though I know the 37 moves that constitute the tai chi form, I am only now capable of beginning. At this age, I am finally capable of understanding the relevance and necessity for solid technique.

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Walk Through The Studio

Posted on April 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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While working on the comic strip and getting the book ready for publication, I’m spending many days alone in my studio. I like the solitude. If I don’t meet someone for coffee or dinner, it is common to be twelve to fourteen hours by myself. I recognize this gift. Most people I know would give anything to have twelve hours of quiet, focused creative time a month. Not long ago I was lucky if I had two hours a week to devote to the right side of my brain. Now, I have to be very intentional to maintain my relationships beyond my project team.

The time by myself has fostered a unique perspective. When I leave the studio, I feel often as if I am watching a movie. It’s as if I can see people enact their dramas. They are not relating, they are performing. They are not listening they are trying to be heard. It seems as if people are performing their idea of who they are. They might as well be scripted! If you consider a pattern of behavior a script then they are, indeed, scripted. So am I.

I usually walk to the studio in the morning and walk home again very at night. Each way takes me roughly an hour because I like to walk slowly and my studio is across town from where I am staying. I like to pay attention to what’s happening around me so I try not to rush to get “there.” The practice is to keep my focus in the process – which is another way of saying to keep my focus in the moment or on the relationship. The practice is to be where I am. I get to see the early morning dramas and the late night dramas. I’ve come to think of my walks as episodes.

Ana-The-Wise once told me that my task in life was to make all the world my studio. I used to think of my studio as the place of my creative action. If I wasn’t in the studio I couldn’t create. She challenged me to flip my assumption. It occurred to me today that I’ve finally flipped my perspective – the world is now my studio. It is ironic that flipping my perspective has opened my eyes to the amazing acts of creation that surround me each day. My relationships are a creation. The way I walk through my life is my creation. What I see is literally my creation (an interpretation is a creative act). There is never a moment that I am not in my studio. Now, the distinction is whether I’m in the populated or secluded variant. Either way, it amazes me.

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Bring It

Posted on April 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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This afternoon I taught a Business of Theatre class at Cornish College for the Arts. The students were seniors in the final weeks of their degree programs. Their assignment was to make project pitches as if we, the class, were granters or investors. My job was to support them to get better at doing project pitches. Through the several pitches, two themes emerged that became the focus of our conversation.

The first theme: rather than pitch their ideas as great, almost all the students justified or somehow diminished their idea. They defended it prior to an attack.They were unconsciously seeking reinforcement or approval of their idea. Or, to be clear, they sought approval as if I was the keeper of worth for their idea. Had I said, “What a stupid idea,” they might have agreed with me. The need for my approval trumped their personal point of view. My approval was more important than their idea.

Theme number two is related to theme number one: they entered the relationship assuming that the granter (me) had all of the power. As pitch makers they cast themselves in an unbalanced, powerless position. They came as supplicants. They assumed that the grant maker held the golden key to open the door to their project/dream. In this play (a pitch is a play) they cast themselves as impotent.

Both themes were unconscious. Both were based on assumptions of lack.

Every artist, if they are to thrive, must reorient at some point in the arc of their career. They must leave behind orientating according to what they might get from the world and reorient according to what they bring to the world.

Grant makers, foundations, investors and auditors have no power over an artist – unless, of course, the artist is oriented in the relationship according to what they might get from the relationship. At best, a granter can support a route. They might open a pathway to fulfilling an idea. There are hundreds of routes. There is one dreamer. The responsibility for manifesting the dream is the dreamers not the granters.

No one need apologize for his or her dream. No one need justify why it is important. It is a dream. It is an idea. It is a desire. No one else need approve; the approval belongs to the dreamer.

The students and I discussed the power of bringing the dream to the world. We played with the perspective shift that happens when artists own the responsibility for their dreams and refuse to define their role as impotent. Bring the dream. Stop seeking your worth in the responses of others. Bring it. The granter will fund it or not and that should have no impact on whether the dream is pursued or not. Bring your best game. Bring it everyday. If you have a dream, create it. There are many routes. Explore them all and in each case pitch your best game.

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Learn The Space Between

Posted on April 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

763. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I just read this phrase in an old notebook. I’m not sure who to attribute it to though it sounds as if it came from Ana-The-Wise: Between the inhale and the exhale there is an empty state. It is from this empty place that we create.

The “space between” has emerged as the theme this week.

A few days ago I had a conversation with a class about the space between actors on a stage. The play is never about the actors or the characters, the play happens in the space between them. It is the space of relationship. It is the place where the verbs express. If the actors are honest, the space between them opens and the audience joins the story. The audience participates. If the actors are pretending, if they are dishonest, the door closes and the audience can only witness the lie.

In Transformational Presence coaching class we also worked with the space between. In this case, it was the gap between what we know and how we live. Alan calls this praxis and has defined praxis as integrating belief and behavior. He writes, “Praxis is closing the gap.” In exploring the gap we worked with the relationship between what we know and how we live. They are not separate concepts but a living relationship. The gap is a dynamic space. It is the space where you will find your fears and stories of limitation. Close your gap and you will discover and transform all the reasons you believed you couldn’t walk your talk. And, just as actors on a stage discover, bringing an honest intention to the space between (relationship) creates movement, openness and flow. Bring dishonesty to the space between and the door closes. Fear takes over. Limits flourish.

The space between is always a relationship. It is never and empty space in the sense that is a void. In meditation it is the door to stillness. Learn the space between your inhale and exhale and you will find a quiet mind; it turns out that your thoughts and breath are as integrated as the rhythms of your heart and lungs. Place your focus outside of yourself, put it on the space between you and the world, and you will find a fertile, vibrant, creative realm ripe with possibilities.

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Look Beyond The Word

Posted on April 6, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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According to my dictionary, an entrepreneur is a risk taking businessperson. This is not much of a definition. The word is French in origin and it meant to undertake. It was a verb. To get out of bed and undertake the tasks of the day makes us all entrepreneurs. Especially these days when risk, according to the dictionary, means that there is a chance something might go wrong. I’ve yet to live a day when everything went right. For instance, last night I opened a jar of curry powder with too much enthusiasm and curry exploded everywhere. I think there is a more appropriate definition of an entrepreneur: someone whose not invested in things going right. In fact, entrepreneurs look for things going wrong because that provides the opportunity necessary for new creation. Entrepreneurs see the world beyond right and wrong. They see opportunity. Risk has nothing to do with it.

An artist, as defined by the dictionary, is a creator of art, a performer, a person with skills or a cunning person. The origin of this word is either French or Latin. We are cautioned in the dictionary not to confuse artist with artisan. An artisan is engaged in a craft. An artist is engaged in a fine art though I can’t find any mention of what distinguishes a craft from a fine art. From the definition of artist, the phrase “cunning person” shouted to me so following the word chain I learned that cunning means crafty and deceitful, clever or cute. So, artisans, unlike artists, must not be deceitful, clever or cute though they are, by definition crafty. In the Venn diagram of artist and artisan, craftiness is the crossover. So, to sum up: artists are cute, crafty, clever and deceitful while creating something fine. Artisans are rough, dull and honest while also crafty. Can one be crafty and dull at the same time? I have a more appropriate definition for artist: someone who lives beyond the abstractions of thought. They engage with what is there, not what they think is there. In other words, someone who has made presence a priority in his or her life is an artist. Artists guide their community to presence.

Words like “risk” or “fine” blind us. They distance us from our potential because we think we need to take risks to be entrepreneurial; we think we need to do something fine to be and artist. Artists and entrepreneurs explore. They engage. They discover. They act first and then make meaning of their experiences. They master their “doing” because they are not invested in win/lose games. They step into the unknown without reservation. Artistry, like entrepreneurship, defines a way of being not something achieved.

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Make Space

Posted on April 2, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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I am cleaning out and clearing space. It is spring and spring-cleaning is normal at this time of year but my impulse to make space is deeper than the cycle of spring. I’m giving stuff away. I just threw away half of my clothes (they needed throwing away) and the other half will soon go to the thrift store.

I’m purging the studio. I installed paintings at Geraldine’s Counter yesterday and Gary, the owner, asked why I had not included prices on the labels. “They are old paintings,” I said, “and I’m in the mood to bargain.” I don’t want the paintings to come back. I need the space for the new creation. I need the space for ideas.

Possibilities require space. Sometimes life stories get over crowded with drama and details. Sometimes our days get too crowded with tasks. Possibilities will never shoulder their way into cramped courters. Why should they? Lack of space is a signal to the universe that you are doing what you want to do. Or, lack of space is a signal to the universe that you are afraid of doing what you want to do; existential hording leaves no room for possibilities to breathe.

Once, I ran a school and I encouraged my students to look out the window. Daydreaming is intensely important for healthy living and a vital creative life. Daydreaming is space creation. I encouraged my students to imagine. I encouraged them to breathe and make space and wander. I encouraged them to explore and discover and uncover. We were constantly cleaning out the building. We were constantly making space for the new. Those lessons are coming home to me again this spring. On my horizon a tsunami of potential is flowing toward me. I know it is coming because I am making space.

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Open The Door

Posted on March 27, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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“The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.” George Sand

The first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is that all of life is suffering. In this context the predicament of the artist is no different than that of a plumber or a president though I’ve yet to find a plumber who considers suffering necessary to his or her vocation. With artists (in the USA) suffering is central to the narrative. It is an expectation and seems to be a prerequisite. Why do artists think they need to suffer or believe that suffering unlocks the door to their artistry? It doesn’t.

Here are some conditions central to unlocking the door to artistry: curiosity, experimentation, exploration, discovery, passion, investigation, play, “What if…?”

We do not easily walk into our shadows. One of the roles of artist is to go where others choose not to go. A walk into the shadow may be uncomfortable but it is equally as liberating. An artist is supposed to see what others cannot and sometimes that is painful. An artist often acts as a bridge between worlds of perception, living on the edge of the village, translating the signs. As the god of transitions and boundaries, Hermes was of this ilk. He was also the protector of poets. Sometimes it is the role of the artist to travel into the netherworlds to retrieve a truth or a lost soul. Orpheus descended into the underworld to reclaim Eurydice. He did not trust so he lost what he most desired. His artistry was a gift of the gods. His suffering was from distrust of the gods’ gift.

At times artistry may be solitary or scary but it is always transforming. Always. An artist rarely “fits” the social norms but continually serves the health and growth of the community. Artists are transformational.

The coaching work I do with artists (myself included) often requires a stroll into this misguided ideal or expectation of suffering. What are the underlying assumptions that make suffering or madness an erroneous precondition for artistry? This is what I know: suffering is what happens when we ignore our innate artistry or smother our essential creative spark. Suffering is not a prerequisite to anything. Suffering is a sign that the artistic door is closed.

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Amplify The Possibilities

Posted on March 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

736. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Vanessa’s business is called Visual Minutes. She draws conversations. She maps discussions. She and a colleague, Amber, mapped the recent Transformational Presence Summit in Vught, Holland that Alan and I facilitated. Her work was gorgeous, informative and inspiring. The dynamic of a group changes when there is an artist working in the room. When a group’s words and thoughts serve as the source of a communal image, something shifts. A loop forms: people visit the image during breaks. They take ownership of what emerges. The images inspire conversations and the conversations show up as images. The resonance amplifies the possibilities.

Over the four days of our summit the mural began to stretch around the room. Soon, we were surrounded by our conversation; the four walls of the conference center were changed by Vanessa’s work; we no longer sat in a generic space but occupied a room specific to us, designed for and by us, a chronicle of our unique wisdom. The art transformed us. We were 35 people from 11 countries made one through our intention and the circle that the art invoked.

Vanessa shared with me a letter written to her from Canadian artist Robert Genn. She thought it might tickle my imagination. He writes about artists as a tribe (a universal tribe). Here are three snippets from the letter worthy of tickling the imagination and also descriptive of Vanessa’s gift to the world:

“The idea that art has the ability to rise above religion, nationality and race is well understood.”

“…I get the idea that art might even be a vehicle for peace. We artists certainly bring a worldview based on respect, observation, play, learning, celebration and mutuality. In the machinations of humanity, these traits must surely hold some value.”

“We dine at a table of many nations. As artists we celebrate our creative joy and toast our mutual humanity. While we all speak with some sort of accent, we do so in the universal language of art. At your table, when you get a chance, please consider raising a glass to our tribe. It is a tribe beyond tribes, and in my heart of hearts I believe our tribe has an illustrious future.”

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