Posted on December 10, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
tango with me, mixed media, 39 x 52IN
The other night I dreamed I was giving a commencement speech to a class of young artists. I stared at them, looked at my prepared notes, folded them, and told the crowd of curious faces that I had absolutely nothing of value to say. I asked them what advice they would give to me? What would they tell an artist on the other end of the life-road? What wisdom would they share with me? What could they tell me about the artist’s path?
The caps and gowns stared back at me.
Rilke wrote in his Letters To A Young Poet that, “…your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become a way of knowing, it must become critical. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it,…”
My father is in his last lap. Each day, when I get angry or scared or upset or frustrated, I imagine myself sitting at his bedside. I ask him, “Did anything you were ever afraid of really matter?” He doesn’t need to say anything. He knows I already know the answer.
What would I say if, sitting at his bedside, he looked at me and asked, “What can you tell me about living life?”
Posted on December 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
helping hands
The ends of canvas roles. What to do with the odd strip, the random slice of remains? The left-overs-pieces. I dedicate them to my “narrative” series.
These odd little canvases were originally meant to be rough drafts. Idea-captures for the future. I imagine these paintings to be huge. They are – or have become – the paintings I will do someday. Someday.
The very first canvas was enormous. 11 feet long, maybe 4 feet wide. I have no notes. I sold it before I recorded the dimensions or took a proper photograph. I had an old oblong piece of canvas and some animator’s cell paint. I stapled the canvas to my deck in Los Angeles. I taped house-painter’s brushes to long sticks. I loved what I painted. It was free. An experiment. It became a spot on the horizon. I am walking toward it still.
Helping Hands. There have been plenty of those over my life. There are many of those now.
A few weeks ago, Norm told me about the creation of his “purpose statement.” It was a new and surprising process for him. Almost twenty years ago, Alan wrote a book about creating these statements for people. Through ancient principles, Hermetic Laws, helping people articulate/discover/uncover their “purpose.”
I smiled at Norm’s description and his personal discovery. I remember.
These days I stand solidly in the paradoxical/hypocritical opinion that no human being is simple enough to service a singular purpose. AND, every human being is singular enough to service only one simple purpose: help others. That’s it. Feed other minds. Feed other bodies. Feed other souls. It will feed your own.
Too much solar. Not enough lunar. Too many straight lines. Not enough circles. Too much surface. Not enough soul.
That’s the narrative behind Helping Hands. I opened a box in search of the only photograph I have of that first huge narrative painting. I found it buried beneath yellowing photographs of Tom, and Arnie, and Jim, and Judy, and David, and Bob, and Kathy, and Carol, and Bruce, and Roger, and Doug, and Mike, and…Helping hands all. How could I walk in anything shy of gratitude?
Posted on November 26, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
Today is Thanksgiving Day in these sometimes-united-states. As a master of understatement and friend of Captain Obvious, I would like to suggest that this Thanksgiving is like no other.
Many of us are in quarantine so we cannot gather. In fact, with COVID-19 raging, the most loving and responsible thing we can do is NOT gather. Family relationships are strained as we peer at each other across the red/blue reality divide. Many of us have lost our jobs – all of them – so the traditional horn-of-plenty is a slightly frightening empty bucket. Thousands of us are queuing at the food banks. Homes are lost, evictions abound. Many are grieving the over quarter-million lives (so far) lost to the pandemic.
And yet…
If I understand my history, this 2020 Thanksgiving is more like the original 1621 version than our usual remembrance. Theirs was a celebration of survival. More than half of the people who arrived the previous year to establish a colony had perished. A hard winter and a raging epidemic took a heavy toll. That very first day of thanks encompassed the grief of loss as well as the gratitude for living to see another day. A successful harvest meant they had a slightly better chance of making it through the coming winter. Can you imagine their exhaustion?
Hope, no matter how dim, provides the necessary fuel of dogged perseverance.
Hope. Belief in the promise of a better day. Imagination sets sail on the seas of the unknown, following the guide star of renewal. Making it through, surviving to see a time of abundant harvest.
So, today, we take a moment, a day. Colonists awash in apprehension. We take a breath. We look back, we know that there is no going back. We grieve what is lost. We ponder how we got here. We take another breath, a day of rest and gratitude before turning to face the realities of rampant uncertainty. We wonder how we can do better. We fill our tanks with hope, knowing that tomorrow we will arise, look forward, and take a single-first-next step.
Sometimes a single-first-next step is as far as we can see.
Posted on November 19, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
a watercolor sketch for Icarus
My call with Norm could not have been better timed. For some reason I’d recently dipped my toes into an old thought-pool and our conversation was like a ripple across the water. He is working with a team dedicated to self-empowerment, articulating purpose, making better relationships and a better world. I laughed as he reminded me of a younger version of myself.
A few days ago I wrote a phrase twice on a piece of paper. My Whole Life. My Whole Life. The phrase could mean “my entire life.” It could also mean “my flawless life.” I’m hard-pressed to conjure up a single example of someone who considers their life-story whole.
The words “purpose,” “power,” “voice” and “strength” populate the contemporary quest through the wasteland. We seek our power. We search for our unique voice. We hire coaches. We consume curriculum. We attempt to tune ourselves to wholeness like we tune our cars for the road.
There is a profound lesson in all of the great stories [stories are terrific guides…] and it is simply this: you can’t find “it” out there. You already have “it” and will, if you are lucky, realize “it” when you give up the search. Stand still. Feel the sun on your face.
The penny dropped for me while working with a group in the Netherlands. Everyone – every group I’ve ever worked with – wants to know “how?” There must be a prescription! What are the guaranteed six techniques to personal power? John O’Donohue wrote,“The gateway to our deepest identity is not through mechanical analysis.” In other words, there is no prescription. There isn’t a list. There are no tools to fix what is broken.
Parcival had his illusion shattered. The more he fought the dragons the worse the wasteland became. The grail castle came back to him only after he took off his armor, only after he completely relinquished and forgot about the fight.
None of this is to suggest that the search is ridiculous. It is not. It is a necessary process step in the cult of the individual. It is a necessity for people who believe themselves to be powerless to climb on a warhorse and ride into a personal hero tale. The knight will also need to flee from or fight with the inner-dark-anti-hero, the one who cries “fraud” or “loser” or “worthless” that serves as the shadow, the balance point of every power quest. The more he fight the dragons the worse the wasteland becomes.
“Let go of the hero,” Harald taught me, “and the anti-hero will also disappear.” Then, and only then, do we find the the middle way and the selflessness that comes with it. Some traditions call “it” presence. Some call “it” illumination. Some call “it” self-actualization. Some call “it” getting neutral or detachment. Some call “it” wholeness. Most locate “it” in the middle way.
Icarus did not listen to his father who warned him not to fly too close to the sun as it would melt the wax holding together his wings – and to not fly too close to the sea as the water vapor would make the feathers of his wings too heavy for flight. “Fly in the middle,” Daedalus cautioned. “Fly the middle way.”
Icarus, so the story tells us, became enamored of his ability to fly, so lost in his new power, that he soared toward the sun. Only when he was plummeting from the sky did he remember his father’s caution, “Fly the middle way. Fly the middle way and live.”
Posted on November 12, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
a watercolor sketch circa 2002
Looking at the sketch, Kerri said, “I think that’s how a lot of people feel right now.” I asked her what she would name it. After a moment she sighed, “Collective Exhaustion.”
Horatio and I spoke this morning. He began our conversation with this: “The real deficit today,” he said, “is in truth-telling.” He just ran for local office and experienced the truth-telling deficit firsthand.
Horatio is reflecting on these past several months and, in the absence of truth-telling, asked, “What’s the point?” It is a great question and perhaps the single question we-the-people ought to be asking. What, exactly, is the point?
Is the point to win at any cost? To lie, slander, obstruct? To enable? Get-your-own-way? To keep your seat no matter the cost? To make profit?
Or, is to participate with honesty in the hotly collaborative process otherwise known as ‘democracy’?
Managing civilization through the necessary debate of differing points of view is, historically speaking, a relatively new aspiration. One that requires good intention and a commitment to shared values like…truth-telling.
Democracy as we understand it is a nascent experiment. Whether or not the experiment succeeds or fails, to a certain extent, teeters on Horatio’s question. In our recent national dedicated-rejection of truth-telling and embarrassing romper-room-enabling, we have no alternative but to ask, “What is the point?”
That we even need to ask the question is exhausting. That we need to answer it is essential.
Posted on November 5, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
shared fatherhood
This morning, as I looked through my stacks, I could find no more relevant painting for this day, for our times.
Ironically, I made two runs at this painting. Both times it evolved into something else. It started in violence and ended in shared fatherhood. In the final paintings, you cannot see is the inception, the original impulse, the story that made me pick up my brushes. Polynices and Eteocles. Brothers fighting for the control of the kingdom. Both die. They kill each other rather than share.
The story is ancient. Like all Greek stories, it’s a cautionary tale. It’s a story of fate. Oedipus’ children. An original sin playing to its inevitable conclusion. It’s been one of my metaphors for these now-ridiculous-united-states. Brothers fighting for control, forgetting that they are brothers. It’s a lose/lose story. Hubris kills all.
The mystery to me is why – in both attempts – did my if-wishes-were-fishes subconscious kick-in and transform this horror story into something positive? Out of the fire, I argue in the naive recesses of my being, we will forge a union.
I’ve always known that I am an idealist but, this morning, listening to the trickster fox whip its gullible crowd into an election fruit-smoothie, amplifying the bloviated rants of a shyster, creating fraud-fantasies from thin air, I recognize that I am perhaps the most foolish of all, the blue ribbon winner of witless. Perhaps not.
I will make a third go of this painting. I have the drawings. This time, my realist might punch through the wall of hopeful idealism. The tale is cautionary. It is ancient. It is worth telling. To look with clear eyes at “what is” does service to “what might be.”
Kerri just reminded me that, on our walk yesterday, I waxed poetic about how what we focus on matters. It’s true. Possibility needs to be firmly rooted in reality.
Bubbles always burst.
The brothers kill each other rather than share a kingdom. Is it their fate [our fate]? Is it inevitable – human nature – to be so blinded by the lust for control that we plug our ears to possibility, that we refuse to see the promise we lose in our petty penny struggle? Do people always need to sacrifice the greater for the lesser en route to waking up?
The pandemic rages. The Fox feeds lies to hungry-angry listeners. The brothers fight over something as silly as a mask. The map sprouts virus-red. The populace dies in the struggle.
Is this merely a chapter in the story of becoming? I guess we’ll see.
As a dedicated introvert who requires a great deal of personal space, it is one of the great surprises of my life that Kerri and I spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week together. And I like it. No, check that. I love it. We work together. We write together. We cook together. We create together. We walk together. We read together.
We didn’t plan or force our constant contact. We didn’t evolve into it. Hand-in-hand has been our way since the moment we met and skipped our way through the airport.
DogDog and BabyCat have, of course, grown accustomed to our togetherness. They are patterned to it and find it deeply unsettling if we are apart. So it was unnerving when Kerri flew to Colorado to visit Kirsten.
They wandered room to room looking for her. They’d periodically stop at my drafting table and look to me for an explanation. Nothing I said brought solace. I decided to wander with them. We cycled through the rooms of the house, looking, looking, looking. “Where is she? Where’s momma?” I’d ask after each loop and we’d make another pass through the house. Their hope never flagged. This time we will find her!
I’d like to report that, in her absence, we drank beer, ate pizza, played our music way-too-loud, and basically tore up the joint. Boys will be boys. But, we didn’t. We walked many miles, searching. We made a book chronicling our experiences of missing her, a gift for her return.
I had a call with Arnie this week. As we talked I watched DogDog circle the yard, clearing it of marauding squirrels and other potential threats to our safety. I listened to BabyCat’s way-too-loud snoring. Kerri was on a Zoom call in the other room. I wondered aloud about how much of my life I’ve tossed away at the idea that anything I-ever-achieve really matters or will matter. How many of my todays have I lost in pursuit of an imagined tomorrow?
Despite the lost jobs, the broken wrists, the out-of-reach healthcare, the pandemic,…all is right in the world right now. I know it because DogDog, BabyCat and I are not wandering room to room.
Posted on October 22, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
One of the great pleasures of having a bevy of cartoons-that-went-nowhere is to pull them out and see them anew through the lens of changing times. Space Invader – which begged for the addition of a mask – has taken on a whole new meaning in these days of COVID-19.
It’s funny and it’s not. Each week we hear stories of the collision of mask wearers and pandemic-deniers. Each week we are witness to the aggressive posturing of the mask-free.
This little piece of fabric has become a split symbol: for those of us who believe in science, a mask saves or could save lives. To wear it is to care for the well-being of others. For those who deny the science and gorge on the rhetoric, wearing a mask has come to represent an affront to their personal freedom. To ignore it is to care only for themselves. Space invading is now a bellicose statement.
These once-united-states has 4% of the world’s population and boasts over 20% of the world’s deaths. This is not an accident. It is utterly predictable. When the simple science of mask wearing and social distancing is whipped into a fruit-smoothie-of-controversy, a dividing line for division, more people will die. More people are dying.
The split-symbol goes further. It has come to represent America-the-Ridiculous. My pals in other nations shake their heads in disbelief at our mask-wrangling. They express sadness for our plight but a river of incredulity runs beneath their concern. Were Americans this superficial all along?
My imaginary future professor, preparing his notes for the seminar, “2016-2020 – What Were They Thinking,” will no doubt utilize the mask as symbol for our collapse. The symbol of the divide. The marker of how shallow, glib, and selfish we came to hold our notion of freedom.
The original. From the time when space invasion couldn’t kill you.
The era of roadtrip hotel posts is almost at an end. You will miss these moments of brevity.Thanks to my ‘given’ daughter Kirsten for taking us on a high mountain hike to Lower Lost Man Lake. I’m still shaking my head at the beauty, and the care you gave your mother(and me)during the ascent.
The Direction of Intention 