Edges | The Direction of Intention

Avoid The Vortex [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 4, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

I miss my friend dearly. We spoke on the phone for almost two hours this morning. It had been too long since our last check-in. He said something very pertinent to our times. Although he does not believe in the devil, by way of metaphor he said this: The devil’s job is to pull us into a negative vortex. And, these days, the devil is winning.

I am guilty of being pulled into the angry vortex and his caution hit home.

Yesterday, Kerri’s entire catalogue of posts was blocked by Facebook. That’s 130 weeks times 5-posts-a-week = 650 posts. We have no idea why. We read FB’s new Community Standards, the reasons they give for blocking content, and can’t find evidence of a single violation. It’s almost a mystery.

Almost. A few minutes before her posts were wiped from FB, someone visited our business page, scanned Kerri’s blog-posts from last week, and alerted FB that they were spam. Coincidence is not always correspondence however, in this case, one action – the alerts – triggered the other action – the blocking of Kerri’s posts. It was an intentional act and not an accident.

In this age of information there is, of course, no person to call, no help line or customer service agent. There is a firewall, a form, a void or black hole, that accepts feedback. The feedback form, however, informs givers of feedback [human beings] that their feedback will not be read.

I scratch my head at the existential drama I am currently living. Sarte. No Exit.

The Facebook-content-scrubbing may be temporary. It may not. The blog-posts may be reviewed or they might not. There’s no one to ask and there’s no next-level-information available. I wrote about this a few months ago, the good-bots at FB suddenly sent Kerri copyright violation warnings on her recordings. She wrote, recorded, and owns the copyrights to all of her music and albums. FB now blocks her from sharing her own music. Her protests went into the same black hole as her blog-post-feedback.

The intelligence is, at best, artificial.

People are angry. It takes a special kind of anger to systematically go through someone’s posts and mark them as spam. They had to jump my posts to reach Kerri’s so it seems obvious that the anger is personal though the none-the-less feeble. Any poltroon can hit a button; it takes a bit of courage to give voice, especially when it is in opposition.

The vortex may be attempting to suck the light from all of us but I doubt the devil will win. Life is not a win/lose game. It moves. It changes. Day follows night.

My friend said something else that I found hopeful in these dark times: out of ashes, out of chaos, the phoenix always rises. That is important to remember. It is best to stand still when all things seem like they are spinning, spinning out of control.

read Kerri’s blog post about SHHHHH! [it’s possible that her posts may never reappear so, if you enjoy reading Kerri’s blog, consider subscribing. I know we publish waaay too much but, with the minor exception of us, no one reads everything that we write.]

Filed under: Edges, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: anger, black hole, blocking, censor, chaos, coward, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, devil, Facebook, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, phoenix rising, poltoon, silencing, voice, voiceless, void | Leave a comment »

Stand and Trawl [on KS Friday]

Posted on July 31, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

untitled interlude copy

I call it her daily horror trawl. Each morning, as I make breakfast, Kerri scrolls through Facebook. She yips and growls and exclaims, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!!” It is akin to intentionally hitting your thumb with a hammer or repeatedly smacking your head against the wall. Purposeful pain.

This is a new behavior. It corresponds with the pandemic, what feels like the intermission between act one and act two of life. Some folks saddle up to the bar. Some folks hit their hands with hammers. Kerri tosses her fishing net into the e-weeds.

After breakfast she gives me a summary of the horrors. Occasionally, there is something positive, a cute puppy story or a blast-from-the-past photo. Mostly it’s grisly stupidity and loud proclamations of ignorance. And vacation photos. This morning, she showed me Craig’s post. Green Day’s prescient song from 2004, American Idiot. Check out the lyrics! Now everybody do the propaganda/ And sing along to the age of paranoia. I laughed heartily. The horror trawl is not without its prophets and rewards.

I know it’s hard not to look at the collision. The wreckage is strewn across the e-landscape and magnified over the air waves. People can’t help but gawk at the fight. I’m finding that all I want to do these days is go down into the studio. Mostly I stand in it and look. I rarely touch my brushes and am curious about that. I don’t sit and that’s also curious. I suspect I don’t want to bring the outer world into my inner sanctum. It’s too soon. The fire is still raging. I stand in my momentary escape and breathe. Then, without fail, I go back up the steps and say, “Let’s take a walk!”

Life in the interlude. We stand together, making some sense and perhaps finding a wee-bit-of-grace in the liminal space.

UNTITLED INTERLUDE is on the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART

read Kerri’s blog post about UNTITLED INTERLUDE

a snippet of FEEL THE RAIN

untitled interlude/released from the heart ©️ 1995 kerri sherwood

feel the rain ©️ 2019 david robinson

Filed under: Edges, KS Friday, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: american idiot, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, green day, in between, interrlude, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liminal space, pain, pandemic, paranoia, propaganda, released from the heart, untitled interlude | Leave a comment »

Embrace The Mush [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on July 28, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

butterfly butterfly spread your wings copy

We walk almost everyday. We always have. We walk to clear our minds or to stir our creative conversations. Since we work together, we sometimes call our walks “meetings.” Neither one of us is good at sitting.

Lately, we walk as an escape or a pressure release. Between job losses and broken wrists and pandemic fears and aging bodies and titanic leadership failures and civil unrest and financial collapse and missing-family-because-it feels-unsafe-to-travel…there’s very little quiet mind space. We hit the trail and have to remind ourselves to slow down. Be in it, not get through it.

It’s a life reminder: be in it. All of it.

We walked across the busy highway to the trailhead and a butterfly circled Kerri and landed at her feet. She’s been having many butterfly encounters lately. They circle her. They fly with her, crisscrossing her path. This butterfly stopped her motion completely. It snapped her into the present moment. She pulled out her camera and the butterfly hopped. She followed and the butterfly hopped again. It seemed to be leading her. It wanted her to follow. Another hop.

While watching the chase I couldn’t help myself from thinking of the symbolism. A butterfly, the universal symbol of change and transformation, leading Kerri on a chase. Perfect!

Our world is changing.

The process of becoming a butterfly requires the caterpillar to cocoon and then dissolve into mush before reforming, taking on the new shape. There’s no way to rush through the mush phase. There’s no way to rush into a thing with wings. In fact, the arduous process of busting out of the cocoon is necessary. It takes time for the wings to dry and the struggle to get free of the safe house provides the drying time. That, and the what-the-heck-are-these wings-doing-on-my-body phase of new recognition. Fear of the first step affords a few more moments of structural prep.

Going to mush takes time. Re-forming takes time.

No one willingly goes to mush. People famously grouse about changing but avoid change at all cost. I imagine that if the caterpillar had any idea of what was about to happen, it would yammer on and on about its dream of flying but would run screaming from the very idea of cocooning.

COVID has us cocooning. We are going to mush. I can only hope my country is also going to mush. A caterpillar that attempts to ward off the necessary transformation distorts and does not live long. A caterpillar that attempts to control its change process is delusional. It will rush and step off the limb before its wings are ready. Another route to disaster.

We are going to mush. Losing the known form is not easy. Living in uncertainty is uncomfortable. That’s the point. Discomfort heralds change. It opens new paths of thinking and possibilities for experience.

Watching Kerri hop after her hopping butterfly, I found myself laughing. This is what mush feels like. I’ve been here before. There will be another side, a breaking out, a fearful flapping of wings. A timely leap and a discovery. Butterflies are also symbolic reminders to step lightly and with grace in times of change. There’s nothing to be done but take nice walks, breathe a bit slower and hop after photo-shy butterflies.

read Kerri’s blog post about the BUTTERFLY

greet the world

greet the world ©️ 2011 david robinson

Filed under: Edges, Emergence, Identity, Pattern, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: aging, butterfly, change, covid19, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discomfort, job loss, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pandemic, present moment, symbolism, symbols, transformation, walking | Leave a comment »

See The Opportunity [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on July 6, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

In the past few days, two phrases have been injected into the common parlance in such a way as to be interchangeable: cancellation culture and replacement theory. Here we go!

Cancellation theory is a pop culture phrase – the withdrawal of support for a company or person after they say or do something offensive in the media-sphere. For instance, right now many advertisers are cancelling ads with Facebook until Facebook does a better job policing hate speech on its platform.

Replacement theory is a far-right conspiracy theory. It is scaremongering and asserts that, with the help of the “liberal elite,” the white population (and history) is being replaced with “non-Europeans.”

Conflate the two phrases, as was done with great intention at the foot of Mount Rushmore and again the next day at the national Independence Day celebration, and the fear-message is clear: them is out to cancel us. It’s a win/lose game and the dividing line runs along multiple fault lines but mostly racial and political. We’ve gone so far down the division-rabbit-hole that we turn our bile on ourselves. If successful, it is the tried and true fascist checkmate move.

Good heavens. It’s as if this nation is either short on brain cells, has no memory for history, or we are simply gullible to the point of believing almost anything. Sadly, Issac Asimov comes [again] to mind: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Don’t we see this quote play out everyday in these United States? A cult of ignorance.

There is a vast difference between replacing a story and telling the full story. Communities and individuals are alike in this aspect: they cannot become whole until they deal with their shadow side. They cannot realize their promise until they have the courage to turn and deal with rather than deny the totality of their path.

In this moment we stand at a rare opportunity. The full story of our nation has some seriously ugly truths. Slavery is the original wound in the national psyche. Our rhetoric is and always has been out of alignment with our actions. And, because we have yet to fully face the gap between who we are and who we say we are, we continue re-creating the shadow, tearing open the wound. Systemic racism. Police brutality.

How do we know that we stand at this opportunity crossroads? The fearmongers are in full voice. The fox hole is working overtime to scare the ignorant to death. To the usual screeches of, “They’ll take away your second amendment right!” or “Socialism!” or ‘Protestors are thugs!” add, “They’re trying to rewrite history!” or “The radical left, the marxists, the anarchists, the agitators,…the angry mob…is out to take away your freedoms” [insert eye roll].

The other night, having drinks at social distance across the driveway, John pondered how we would ever cross this gaping chasm, this canyon between the red and blue. I speculated that we really weren’t that far apart. Division is the tool of a weak leader and the propaganda machine that profits from his poverty of thought. We are being made to think our teams are irreconcilable. We are being force-fed a finite game, a world view of limited pie.

I suggested that, if people could pull their heads out of their propaganda-narrative, we might find that we are much closer in belief than we think. We might, at this crossroad of history, be able to step into our ideal rather than pander to the politics of identity. Ignorance is a choice, as is knowledge. Somewhere beyond knowledge, wisdom is possible, but only if we have the courage to live what we espouse, to face the full truth of the wound. Then, maybe, just maybe, we might be able to live as if all are created equal. Embrace equal opportunity under the law. One nation bubbling with diverse people made strong with respect for diverse perspectives. Our story is, and always has been, multi-cultural. Apples AND oranges.

read Kerri’s blog post about APPLES AND ORANGES

a prayer of opposites

Filed under: Edges, Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Pattern, Perspective, Possibility, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: black lives matter, cancellation theory, consipracy theory, courage, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Diversity, Facebook, identity politics, ignorance, Issac Asimov, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, knowledge, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Replacement Theory, slavery, wisdom | Leave a comment »

Sing [on KS Friday]

Posted on July 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

sing

The story is famous in these parts. It goes like this: when I met Kerri I told her that she needed to know two things about me: 1) I don’t sing. 2) I don’t pray. She gave me a sideways knowing look and said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”

I had some very-traumatic-early-in-my-life-singing-experiences. Lots of shame and humiliation led me to an adamant preemptive proclamation with my musician-soon-to-be wife: I do not sing. No way. Don’t even ask. I’ll watch from the sidelines.

Of course, within a few months, she had me in a ukulele band, a choir, and a band. It turns out I like to sing. The problem, she taught me, was not in my capacity to sing, it was in how I hear sound. I hear an octave up. She taught me how to hear. I am now a confident parasitic singer (i.e. I sing just fine with others, just don’t ask me to sing alone).

I’ve spent my life teaching people to see. How beautifully ironic (or perfect) that I needed to learn to hear.

Early in the saga of Beowulf, he is caught in a swarm and blinded by bees. Because he was blinded, he had to develop other senses; his heightened senses were critical in combating and defeating the monster Grendel. Late in his life, he retired as a beekeeper. He not only made peace with bees, they become his allies. At the very end, his bees are his greatest strength. They defeat a dragon plaguing his kingdom.

The great stories are with us for a reason. They can help us navigate and craft our own life stories. For instance, the greatest wounds can be limits or they can lead to new and vital gifts. I’ve learned from Beowulf that the path you take – limit or liberation – depends on the story you argue for, the focus you choose. When I met Kerri I was arguing for my limitation. I do not sing. Period.

Another recurring theme in the great stories goes like this: when you are ready, the right teacher appears.

read Kerri’s blog post about SING

shaman [you won’t find this one on my site]

shaman ©️ 1993 david robinson

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Edges, KS Friday, Metaphor, Seeing, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: bees, Beowulf, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, gifts, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, singng, story, storying, strength, wound | 1 Comment »

Pull It Apart [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on June 30, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

lettuce copy

The thing that I didn’t write about last week, in fact I avoided, was my latest brush with coincidence. It went something like this: I’ve been moving the Prometheus paintings for years. They are big paintings! Three canvases, each 4ft x 8ft. They require a truck to move. I’ve shown them. I’ve stored them. When I moved to Kenosha they literally could not fit into my studio in our house so Brad and Jen were kind enough to store them for me.

Truth? I thought that someday I would again perform the symphony for which I painted the series. I wrote and performed the script. I painted the pieces to accompany the performance. I thought they might someday have a second life. Over the years, Yaki and I have tossed the idea around once or twice but it always fell into the maybe-someday-abyss.

Jen and Brad are doing some renovation and I needed to move the paintings. I brought them home and they lived in our dining room. I offered to donate them to the PCO – the company that produced Prometheus. I approached several organizations that might be interested in visual statements borne from literature and performance. The paintings are too big. So, finally, last week, I pulled them apart. Took them out of the frames, disassembled the panels so I could move them down the stairs. The frames went into the garage. There was something cleansing about acknowledging that these pieces were done. I sighed with relief when dropping the illusion that they might someday see the light of day. Two of the panels are hidden behind a tall cabinet in our sitting room, still too big to make it down the curve of the stair into the studio.

The next day, Yaki called. “I want to do the Prometheus,” he said. “But, can we pull it apart? Can we make it more relevant to what’s happening today?”

I laughed heartily. “Yes,” I responded. We can pull it apart.”

Sometimes space must be made. This universe abhors a vacuum. It seems all of my life lessons these days are about letting go of what was. Letting go of how things used to work or who I represented myself to be.

Can I pull it apart. Yes. Done and done. “Cultivate your serendipity,” Quinn used to say.

And, what on earth does this have to do with lettuce? I’d never planted it before. I’d never planted anything before. 20 gave us the boxes. He told us what to do. Growing lettuce – growing anything, it seems – takes some patience. And, some luck. Sunshine and attention. From the seed, if it is tended and mostly left alone -given space – something good will grow.

read Kerri’s blog post about LETTUCE

greet the day

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Edges, Metaphor, Navel Gazing, Truly Powerful People, Uncategorized | Tagged: coincidence, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, letting go, lettuce, paintings, patience, pco, prometheus, Quinn, serendipity, surrender, yaki | Leave a comment »

Treat The Origin [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 26, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

it's a long story copy

Yaki called. He wants to dust off our Prometheus project and give it another whirl. The Creatures Of Prometheus is one of Beethoven’s early works, a ballet that is nigh-on impossible for a contemporary ballet company to afford. Besides a symphony, it requires scores of dancers. Twelve years ago, Yaki asked if I would write and perform a narrative – a storytelling- that would weave together the movements. It lives among my all-time favorite collaborations. Yesterday he asked, “Can we update it? Can we make it relevant with what’s happening in the world today?’

My first thought: it’s already relevant! It is a creation story. Prometheus is given the task of creating human beings, a man and a woman. Although he is instructed to make them dull and crude, he creates them to be beautiful, to see and appreciate their connection to the earth from which they were made. Angered by his disobedience, Zeus punishes Prometheus by corrupting the new creatures; he fills them with fear and division. He twists their fear into a lust for war. He makes them dull and crude. Now, Prometheus waits for them to remember and recover their original sight, to remember their capacity for pure seeing, fearless living. To drop their madness and return to their senses.

My second thought: people are notoriously incapable of grasping metaphor. It’s the Zeus thing in practice. The update has to be a direct statement. It must leave no doubt and puncture the commitment to dullness. “Gear down!” as Kerri constantly reminds me.

“How can Prometheus speak to Black Lives Matter?” he asked. We are both artists in the later stage of our career. Yaki added, “I want my work – my art to really speak to what’s happening today. I want it to help.”

I’ve been sitting in his questions since we talked yesterday. We are standing again at a moment in time when change is possible. We are also standing at the moment when the system, a living thing, a wizard of recreation, will fight to maintain itself. Consider: we had this moment with the abolition of slavery and the system responded with Jim Crow. Segregation. Institutional racism. We had the moment again with the civil rights movement in the 1960’s and the system responded with a draconian judicial/policing/incarceration apparatus, disproportionate tax structures…segregation by legislation (again and again and again).

In our current moment, in this latest moment, how can we make the necessary changes that are not merely the existing system putting a new face on a 400 year old mechanism? Real change requires steps in unknown directions [the rule: if you know where you are going you are merely re-creating what already exists]. How can Prometheus speak to that?

We focus on behavior when we need to stare at the underlying structures. Behavior, as Robert Fritz reminds us, always follows the path of least resistance – the sub-structure determines the path of behavior.

In the story, Prometheus is in it for the long haul. He knows his creatures are made for beauty and will inevitably see beyond their made-up fear and return to their source. They will one day stop listening to the fear mongers and race baiters. They will wake up and recognize that they are not made to be dull and crude and divisive. In fact, quite the opposite. They were made to appreciate and participate in the creation of beauty and betterment. Nature.

Prometheus is in no hurry. He waits for his creatures to remember. He plays the long story. What will that look like?

IT’S A LONG STORY is on the album THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY

read Kerri’s blog post about IT’S A LONG STORY

joy

it’s a long story/this part of the journey ©️ 1997/2000 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Edges, Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor, Pattern, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: beauty, beethoven, black lives matter, change, creatures of prometheus, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, fear, institutional racism, it's a long story, jim crow, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, portland chamber orchestra, possibility, Robert Fritz, segregation, storytelling, systems, the path of least resistance, this part of the journey, unity, walla walla symphony, yaacov bergman | Leave a comment »

Know The Pet Peeve [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 24, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

marked license plate stickers copy

Kerri has a pet peeve and because she is from New York she expresses her annoyance with all of the out-sized force and bluster that comes with her east coast roots. “OH MY GOD! DO YOU SEE THAT?!!!” She gales as we drive down the road, gesturing wildly, letting go of the steering wheel. I close my eyes because I do not want to see the fiery crash that we are most certainly about to experience.

“DID YOU SEE IT?!!!” she repeats, demanding an answer. I open one eye to see if she’s regained control of the car or if she is still gesticulating with gusto. She looks at me with disdain, “YOU DIDN’T SEE IT?” I shake my head. “HOW CAN THAT NOT DRIVE YOU CRAZY?!!!” I shrug my shoulders and secretly look for a way to safely exit the car.

The offense? The horrid transgression that causes such wild arm flinging, finger pointing, and loud outdoor-voice-exclamations? A license plate renewal sticker placed on the wrong part of the plate. “DO YOU THINK THEY CAN’T READ?!!! she bellows. “DO YOU THINK IT’S TOO HARD TO FIGURE OUT WHERE THE STICKER GOES?!!! She snarls. I slide down in my seat. I practice my cloak-of-invisibility act.

Once, early in our history, before I realized this peeve was her pet, I said, “Maybe they are being creative, like trying to color out of the lines.” My perky suggestion was not welcome. It was as if I whispered the magic words that unleashed all the demons from hell. Smoke came from her nostrils. Lightning from her eyes. My perky backpedaled and disappeared leaving me all alone with no place to hide. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!! she growled. “IT’S A STICKER!!!!!!!! IT’S SUPPOSED TO GO IN THE RIGHT SPOT!!!!!! THERE’S A SPOT AND THE STICKER IS SUPPOSED TO GO THERE!!! WHAT’S SO HARD?!!!!!!”

I had no answer. Or, more to the point, I dared not have an answer. I had better run away from anything that looked remotely like an answer. Pet peeves are best left alone!

In that moment I knew only one thing for certain: the path to a happy life was predicated on one small action – I simply need to place the sticker in the right spot when it was time for the license plate renewal.

read Kerri’s blog post on OH MY GOD!!!

pieta with paparazzi

Filed under: Edges, Flawed Wednesday, Random, Uncategorized | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, east coast, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pet peeve, renewal sticker | Leave a comment »

Don’t Go Home [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 4, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

House on Fire. 2004-ish. Watercolor. And, yes, I was all over copying Guernica.

“The continual retreat from the discomfort of authentic racial engagement in a culture infused with racial disparity limits the ability to form authentic connections across racial lines, and results in a perpetual cycle that works to hold racism in place.” ~ Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility

I confess to rewriting this post. What I wrote initially was pedantic and preachy. So, this is a second go-round.

We’ve been hearing this question much in these past days: why don’t things ever change? Here’s an answer I learned in school: a society is a living system and, like all living things, it will fight to the death when threatened with change. Why we can’t seem to “solve” our problem with racial disparity and the dehumanization of black people? It’s built into our system. The system, a complex and living thing, will fight to the death to keep the injustice securely in place.

That’s a heady answer and somewhat hopeless. Its abstraction makes it a safe and somewhat antiseptic response.

I lived in Los Angeles in 1992. My apartment was in the hills so I had a good vantage point to watch the rioting and the city burn. When it felt too unsafe, I fled the city. I had a safe place to go.

A few years later, working with a school district, the head of the Black Student Union asked me to come in and work with her students. MLK day was fast approaching and the students, preparing presentations for the day, were in rebellion. They were mad. They didn’t want to read speeches about peace and justice when those ideals were nowhere on their horizon. I thought it was my job to help them give voice to what they wanted to say. It was my first conscious lesson in my white-blindness. The frightened parents of the students descended. I’ll never forget the mother and father that pulled me aside, saying to me, “You don’t understand. If they say what they want to say they’ll be killed.” Their terror was real. They had to teach their children a lesson that was the opposite of what my parents taught me.

To call it a problem is to reduce it to the level of mechanics. It is to pretend (or hope) that a few changes in the law or better policing will do the trick. To treat it like a problem guarantees that we’ll recreate it. This is not a problem, this is a pattern. It is a cycle. It is a relationship.

The pattern is currently in our faces. The pattern is not only the death of another black person. The pattern is also what white America chooses to do – or not do- with the knowledge of it. What is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves that makes it possible to stand in the fire with people of color during the protests but walk-on once the fire subsides? It is simply this: I get to go home. I get to drive out of LA when things feel too unsafe. I have someplace to go. I get to go home when the officer is prosecuted or a law is changed or a commission empaneled, dust off my hands, and say that I did my part.

Why don’t things ever change?

I was stunned when those parents pulled me aside. At first, I couldn’t believe that they were going to silence their children when their children had something so important to say. It made my head spin. And then I went home. And then I realized that they couldn’t go home. There was no place in this “living system” where they were safe. That was what they were trying to tell me. It was what Martin Luther King was trying to tell us. It is what the protesters in the streets today are trying to get us to see/admit/realize. We are watching a living system built on racial division and inequality fight to the death because change is knocking.

What if we realized that we cannot simply go home and forget about it?

read Kerri’s blog post about HOUSE ON FIRE

detail of Weeping Man

Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Identity, Language, Seeing, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: black, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dehumanization, House On Fire, identity, inequality, inequity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pattern, racism, Robin DiAngelo, system, white, white fragility | Leave a comment »

Leave Her A Note [on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 14, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

my loves, mixed media, 24 x 48IN

I came around the corner just in time to see it. Kerri crawled onto the bed, resting her head on DogDog, she closed her eyes. BabyCat, not wanting to be left out of the snuggle, moved over and curled into the cuddle. I stood very still and memorized the moment.

My artistic well has been dry all winter. I believe dry spells are great opportunities to experiment, to make messes and learn again to be free, to not take anything on the easel too seriously. And so, in my emptiness, I began playing with my memorized moment [last week I published the rolling iterations this image passed through].

Sometimes playing with an image feels like wrestling with an angel. It has the upper hand and is toying with you, the mere mortal. One day, after wiping the latest iteration off the canvas, I had a very mortal thought: this might be the last painting I ever paint. Pandemic thoughts reach deep.

And, what if this was my last painting? What if? I would want my last painting to be a love note to my wife. I would want her to know that one day, as she laid her head on DogDog and BabyCat curled against her, I stood in absolute adoration and appreciation of my family, my wife, my moment. My life. My loves.

read Kerri’s blog post about MY LOVES