Art | The Direction of Intention

Step Toward Your Dream

Posted on September 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

The opportunity comes when the artist is ready. Horatio made a single pitch to fund his next film and the money came roaring in. “Oh God!” he wrote. “Green light! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear….” Tamara will perform her first public gig. She is an extraordinary musician, prolific, and as she stepped toward her dream, the pesky dream stepped toward her. “Oh!” she wrote, “I know I can do it, but….”

Step toward your dreams and your dreams will step toward you. And when you touch, for the first time, the thrill of contact, like meeting your true love, will always evoke trepidation and doubt. You will shake and say to your self, “I can’t believe it.”

Once, just after I signed a lease for a studio, a friend said, “Uh-oh, now you have to show up!” My great directing mentor, Jim, surprised me when he confessed that before every new rehearsal process, prior to the first read through, he would get sick to his stomach. He told me each time he was certain that he had nothing offer, that he had no idea how to direct a play. Jim directed hundreds of plays and each time was certain he knew nothing.

What impresses me most about artists and seekers of dreams is that they feel this fear and do not turn and run. They feel it and keep walking. Their dream opens its arms and despite their certainty that they will be a disappointing lover, they step into the embrace and offer the world their gifts. We fling around the word “transformation” like we used to toss about the word “paradigm;” it has come to mean something generic. Mark, and Tamara and transforming; they are feeling it, the dream, the step, the doubt, the embrace. Consequently, neither they, nor their dream, will ever be the same.

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: dreams, transformation | 1 Comment »

Get Lost

Posted on September 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Pete is my neighbor and an excellent photographer. And, although he is retired, he is new to the idea that he is and always has been an artist. Last week he stopped me on the street and asked for my help. He said, “I’m stuck. I’m lost. I’m wearing slippery shoes and walking on ice.” We laughed at his analogy explosion. “Seriously,” he said, “You help artists and I need your help.” So, we made a date to talk.

Today was our talk. We sat on the balcony in the afternoon sun; I already knew what Pete was confronting (he was stuck, he was lost, he felt as if he was slipping and sliding on ice), and was not surprised when he said, “I’ve lost my way. I don’t know what I’m doing with my art anymore and the more I try to produce decent work, the worse it gets. I’m scared.” I could see the fear and frustration in his face. What do you do when you feel as if your muse has abandoned you?

I asked Pete if he’d ever in his life experienced any personal growth (what a set up!). “Of course. Too much!” was his reply. I asked him what the process of personal growth felt like; how did it begin? “I felt lost,” he said, smiling, understanding. “And then I felt really lost.” In order to grow, you must first get lost. There must be winter if there is to be spring. You must get lost before you find the new direction. It is natural process and is only made difficult when we resist it.

The resistance we experience is rooted in the notion that we have to be productive all the time. To exclusively focus on the outcome comes at great expense: forfeit of healthy process and the eventual death of artistry. It is unnatural to be productive 24/7, 365 days a year. Feeling fallow is a necessary phase of rejuvenation. Mastery is never outcome focused because, like the cycle of seasons, there is no end: there is good natural process. Fallow time can be deeply satisfying and enormously revivifying when we understand that artistry has nothing to do with outcomes and everything to do with a way of being in the world. Being an artist is not about playing the piano or dancing or painting pictures. It is about presence; it is cultivating your natural capacity to step into the unknown. Of course, stepping into the unknown is simply another way of saying, “Learning to get lost.” Pete laughed hysterically when, at the beginning of our conversation he wrinkled his brow and said, “I’m lost.” And I said, “Oh, thank god! Now you are an artist!”

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Let Go Of “It”

Posted on August 22, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

531. 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’ve started drawing again. Each day, every day, I flip the elastic band off my moleskin sketchbook, open to a new page, and draw. Or scribble. I make marks and circles. I draw mostly from my imagination; sometimes I look at things and sketch what I see as a starting point and then rearrange the elements: I compose. I don’t see much difference between drawing from imagination and infusing my imagination into what I see. They are the same action; the direction is slightly different.

I am no longer interested in “capturing” reality – primarily because I don’t think there is a reality beyond what I perceive. In a sense there is nothing to capture. There is only interpretation. There is only imagination. To be clear: what I call reality is what I perceive; there is stuff out there (and you will waste a lot of breath trying to convince me that “it” is separate from me: I will giggle if you tell me that there is an objective reality) and I assign “it” meaning; simply by assigning a word to “it” I have abstracted “it.” If I describe “it” I have interpreted “it.” If I describe “it,” I no longer see “it;” I see the word that I’ve attached to “it.” So, when drawing “it” why not go with the flow – interpret, compose, imagine. Scribble, scribble, play. Sharpen the pencil and repeat.

The word “it” provides a perfect example: use these two little letters in the proper sequence and all the magnificent motion and moving beauty of the universe is frozen – “it” fixes flow in time: I can convince myself that a verb is a noun, a river is a thing, a person is knowable, all because I squeeze the miracle into two tiny symbols and think I know “it.”

Alan suggested that I do a self-portrait. It has been over a decade since my last serious attempt. He said, “Peer into those eyes for a while before starting and then ask yourself, ‘Who is this person?’” He asked me to draw with my heart and not my head. Alan is wily and that is why I love him so. He knows what I believe and why I draw. He caught me in a net of my own making. How can I now look in the mirror and possibly believe that I can “capture” what I see?

Filed under: Art, Perspective, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Prepare For Surprise

Posted on August 17, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Serendipity and a project brought me back to Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. In rereading it I wonder why I do not read passages from this playful and profound book everyday. Here’s a snippet from passage 44:

“…Artistry can be found anywhere; indeed it can be only be found anywhere. One must be surprised by it. It cannot be looked for. We do not watch artists to see what they do, but watch what persons do and discover the artistry in it.

Artists cannot be trained. One does not become an artist by acquiring certain skills or techniques, though one can use any number of skills and techniques in artistic activity. The creative is found in anyone who is prepared for surprise. Such a person cannot go to school to be an artist, but can only go to school as an artist.

Therefore, poets do not “fit” into society, not because a place is denied them but because they do not take their “places” seriously. They openly see its role as theatrical, its styles as poses, its clothing as costumes, its rule as conventional, its crises as arranged, it’s conflicts performed, and its metaphysics ideological.”

Filed under: Art, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: Finite, Infinite, play | 1 Comment »

Find Yourself Whole

Posted on August 13, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

He asked me, with eyes downcast, “Yes, but when will I believe that I am whole?” We were sitting on the stage of an outdoor theatre. It was a hot summer night after a not-particularly-good-rehearsal. This young man, an actor, came dangerously close to being fully present, alive and available in his scene; he came very close to actually being seen without his armor. It scared him and he fled. I was secretly proud because he was brave and daring to come so close to his power. Now he was fully invested in pummeling himself. Had I a whip, a hair shirt, and a wee bit of salt to offer him he would have gladly added the torture to his self-abuse.

“You will believe that you are whole when you stop investing in the idea that you are broken.” Not a very useful response, but there it is.

A wise old mentor once told me that you can only give an actor one significant note a day. Give them too many things to incorporate and nothing will move forward. Give them the note to chew on and leave them alone to chew. So these are the things I did not say: When you deem that it is alright to be afraid, when you consider it useful to feel what you feel without a need to alter it to service the opinions of others, when you stop beating yourself for trying, when you stop abusing yourself for making strong offers and reward yourself instead, then you might feel whole. Wholeness is not something you attain. It is something you are. Feel it. Broken is a learned behavior, it is the hallmark of a people that reject nature, particularly their own nature; it is a story guaranteed to keep you hiding and, that is the point of the, “I am broken and need fixing” story. The “I am broken” story is a central and necessary in the maintenance of a culture of control. And, above all, I did not tell him that it is a useful thing to struggle with; finding yourself is the whole point of being alive – or perhaps better said: finding yourself whole is the point of being alive. Wrestling with it makes for a good story and great life.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

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Doodle On The Walls

Posted on August 7, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

My dear Sam, poet, photographer and lover of life, is working on a presentation for coaches entitled The Art of Coaching. In preparation he asked a few lovely questions of his artist friends. He asked us not to think but to respond with our first thoughts. His questions were:
• Under what conditions does an artist flourish?
• What do you notice about the environment around you and in you when you are at your best artist self?

Here was my no-thought response:

It is perhaps too simple but this is what I know and experience: the artist in me becomes present (it is all about presence; artistry is not something you do as much as something you are)- there is no past or future, just what is before me (and in me) in that moment and we are not separate: the poem or the painting or the story and I are one fluid thing. The world (my seeing) moves from nouns to verbs, from object focused to process focused. When I am present the environment, my seeing of my environment, comes “alive;” the colors are more intense, the sounds and textures of my space richer and clearer. I guess, in my artist self, there ceases to be a separation between me and my environment, I am not moving through a day, I am in the day. All concepts of “time” disappear. I am the creator, the creating, and the created.

Artists flourish when the emphasis in life is moved from “answer seeking” and placed on “question engagement” – the capacity to explore, engage,…to sit solidly in uncertainty: that is the environment (and I think it is an internal environment) necessary for humans to flourish and fulfill their creative impulse.

Like me, Sam believes that all humans are infinitely creative. He’s dedicated his life to helping people reacquaint themselves with the inner artist that they sent packing too many years ago to remember.
The coaches attending his session are lucky. I’ve encouraged Sam to place boxes of crayons in the hotel as his session might inspire all of those over-serious adults to sit on the floor and doodle on the walls.

[I’m be on the road and taking a break so I’m dipping into the archives and reworking and reposting some of your favorites. I’ll be back at it in the middle of August]

Filed under: Art, Power, Truly Powerful People | 2 Comments »

Give Robert A Hand

Posted on July 21, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Robert is like a circus. When he comes to town I find myself following him around and doing the most unusual and extraordinary things. If you went to his house and asked for a cup of tea you could be certain that he grew the tea, made the cups and saucers, wove the table mats and probably built the table, too. If he didn’t design and build the chair in which you were sitting then he certainly restored it.

Robert reads the rulings written by the Supreme Court, the plays of the great poets, he knows more history, more literature, and more social science than any person I have known. He sews, he constructs, he plumbs, he paints and he does electrics. He is an actor by profession, a jack-of-all-trades by birth. His curiosity is insatiable and he’s consciously nurtured his capacity to follow his questions. To me, Robert is the master of possibility, the muse of “what if….” He turns over rocks to see what’s beneath, he acts before he knows; he designs projects based on what he might learn not upon what he already understands.

He was in town this week preparing for The British American Youth Theatre Festival, an organization he founded and has run for over 20 years. This year, they will perform with giant puppets and he needed help constructing the hands. “How about giving me a hand with puppet hands?” he said when I answered the phone. “Of course!” I said. Robert knows I jump at every chance to play in his field of projects.

“Do you know anything about making puppet hands?” he sang.

“No. Nothing.” I replied.

“Perfect! I’ll see you at 10!” he said, hanging up the phone.

Robert reminds me that this upside-down, fear-crazed, you-have-to-know-before-you-act world is unnatural. The most extraordinary thing about Robert is that he is ordinary. He simply does not invest in the idea of limitations.

Filed under: Art, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: possibility | 4 Comments »

See Like Merlin

Posted on July 17, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Every morning for the past five days, the blue-grey heron has fished in the same spot. It is as if he watches for me, too. I imagine him thinking, “That guy walks the same path every morning.” The foghorn is the sound track behind our mutual spying. The fog gives the heron the mystique of appearing from nowhere. “Magic,” I think as he emerges from Avalon. “Merlin in a heron shape.”

And, indeed, each day that the heron served as my portal guardian I have experienced enchantment. One day I called to visit Aboriginal art that brought tears to my eyes and a new vision to my heart. I learned what it truly means to dream. One day I entered the nether world of Chihuly and the museum designed to honor his imagination; it took my breath away with whimsy and color. On another day I met a hundred new people who left the comfortable patterns of their lives to wander the studios of artists. Brave hearts.

On a day I will never forget, I rolled up my pants and walked into the Sound to a sandbar 50 feet from the shore. “So, this is what Merlin sees!” My feet were cold, the fish were safe. “Yes, silly! This is what it feels like.” I heard a voice whisper on the wind and I understood what it is to see like a magician.

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Set Foot On The Stage

Posted on July 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

When John was in college he was rehearsing a play. It was late, perhaps midnight, and the director wanted to do more work. The student-actors complained. The director asked them to follow him. He led them across campus to the medical school and pointed to the med students visible through the windows, hard at work burning the midnight oil. He said, “Your work is also capable of saving lives. If you are not working this hard you have no business being on the stage.”

Once, when I was assisting a director, he told the student-actors, “Each night on the stage your work will have the capacity to impact the lives of others. That is a very serious obligation. If you take it lightly you will do harm and it is best if you never set foot on the stage.”

This is how I understand art in all its forms. It is meant to change lives. It is meant to hold the central narrative of a community (the identity); the arts are the container of both tradition and change. It is necessary and powerful because it is capable of holding paradoxes. It is potent because is serves the conservative impulse while facilitating the path into the unknown. A healthy society is built upon a living art. A healthy society negotiates its paradoxes through its arts.

Reduce the arts to entertainment, intellectual concepts or a luxury for the elite, remove it from the schools and from daily life, and there is no center. Social gravity weakens with the absence of a coherent narrative – people are like planets and without the pull of narrative gravity they spin off into space and wonder why they feel so alone. Without a common center we will continue to kill each other for bling because we have no concept of what matters and what does not.

Rather than walk away from our arts, telling our selves they are too expensive or merely electives, it might be time to attend to our business, look within (that is the point after all), and set foot on the stage with a gravity worthy of our obligation to others.

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Truly Powerful People (474)

Posted on June 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

474.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

When I was a kid I used to draw the same cabin nestled in the same meadow next to the same tree. I became an expert at drawing that place. It was imagined. I never saw that cabin in that meadow by that tree but I liked going there. So, I drew it again and again and again.

As I drew, I allowed my imagination to fill in details and over time my imagining became sensual and specific. It was a log cabin and the tree rings were visible at the end of each log. I counted the rings. I ran my fingers over them, weathered and cracked, they told me that the cabin was built in another time, a time before electricity and power tools. My cabin was made of some very fine old guardians! There was a particular knot in the wood next to the doorframe. I loved the way the place smelled. There was a small porch and I could stand on that porch for hours. I can still feel the texture of the wood beneath my fingers, the creak of wood beneath my feet. Often, in my mind, I ran my hand along the logs, tracing the path from corner to window, window to door.

My favorite spot (it was the point of view of the drawings) was just beyond the tree. It was the place I could sit and look across the meadow to the cabin. The tree was very old and wise and I liked sitting beneath it. I liked walking through the leaves in the fall. It must have been an oak tree though I didn’t know that when I was drawing it. I sat there for hours and imagined my life as I lived in the woods. I liked the quiet of the place. I liked the wind moving through the trees, the rustle of the grasses, the symphony of bird and insect musicians. I was a boy Thoreau.

It is a place as rich and specific as any place I’ve visited outside of my imagination (if that is possible). Earlier today I read this phrase in a story from Patricia: “art is the only thing that makes sense to me…,” and it brought me up short. As I rethink my life I am revisiting my past and that is why I visited my cabin. It’s been a long time. And as I sat on the porch, remembering, I know that for me it is also true: art is the only thing that makes sense to me; it is the only way I know to make sense of the world.

Filed under: Art, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: imagination | 1 Comment »

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