Posted on October 23, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
The torrents of rain and tropical wind gusts paused momentarily to regroup, so we went out. She couldn’t wait to set foot on the dock. She needed – needed – to walk to the small pavilion at the far end. A shelter with benches and remembrance. Her memories called.
Many years ago I had a week all alone in my childhood home. I was writing my book and the empty house seemed like a perfect quiet retreat. Between writing sessions I walked. I literally felt pulled to revisit the places and pathways of my youth. I stood at the edge of the present and listened for the echoes of my past. It’s what she was doing as we slow-walked toward the pavilion: attuning to the resonance of her life.
Standing beneath the shelter, already drenched from the rain, the wind winding up for the next hard gust, she said, “I wrote a song here…” The story spilled from her in fragments and she reassembled the pieces. A small section of the puzzle came together.
The birthplace of a song. The birthplace of an artist. A tiny pavilion at the end of a dock. The place where a young woman composed music in her mind and left behind a bit of the song, a popcorn trail for an older woman to follow so that she might someday find her way home.
Posted on October 9, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
Years ago, very late at night, I sat by a pool and had a conversation with the full moon. Essentially, I was letting go of my grip on safety and security. I was about to blindly step into the current. I vowed to the full moon that I would go wherever the flow would take me, I would love wherever it would lead me.
I’d completely forgotten about that long-ago-moon-chat until last weekend when, after setting the hose in the cool of the evening, I turned and was startled by the moonrise. The moon was enormous. It seemed to be staring at me, smiling. “Well?” it asked, “Do you love it? Was it worth all the tossing around in the tide?”
“Oh, yes,” I whispered. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Posted on September 8, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
Years ago I facilitated a conversation with students about the first amendment. They were doing a research project and ran headlong into a wall of hate speech from the KKK. They were horrified and adamant that this kind of expression shouldn’t be legal. The question was this: if you restrict their freedom of speech are you not also restricting your own? Infringing on the core liberties of any group – no matter how much we disagree – damages constitutional protection and endangers the freedom of speech for everyone.
It’s not a fundamental right unless it protects everyone equally. That is the genius of our constitution.
In the past six months we’ve witnessed the suspension of due process (a violation of the 5th and 14th amendments), the suspension of habeas corpus (a violation of article one, section nine of the constitution) and, more recently, the Posse Comitatus Act (a violation of federal law).
People are being plucked off the street and “disappeared”. People are being sent to concentration camps without charge (violations of due process and habeas corpus).
The government is using the military as a police force against civilians (a violation of posse comitatus).
We’ve also been witness to The Supreme Court ruling that a president has absolute immunity from prosecution. The law no longer applies equally to everyone so, essentially, the law no longer applies to anyone. Witness the immunity granted to the January 6th insurrectionists by the president who has absolute immunity.
To MAGA and to the republicans who hear-and-see-no-evil, to the law firms that have folded, the no-longer-free press, to the tech bros scooping up our data and to the fox fueling the fascists, the message is the same to you as it was to my long ago students: what is being done unto others will soon be done unto you. It’s not a right or a fundamental freedom unless it applies to everyone. Everyone. Understanding this simplistic principle is what makes it an imperative to fight for the rights of others, even when you don’t agree with them. Understanding this simplistic principle this is what it means to be woke. We-the-woke know that you do not yet understand this simplistic principle. When due process dies for other people, it also dies for you. When immigrants or democrats can be incarcerated and disappeared without charge, it will inevitably happen to you.
Do you understand that this simplistic principle is the genius of our constitution. It’s why we are marching and protesting and resisting this authoritarian take-down of our democracy. We believe protecting the freedoms and rights of others is to protect our personal freedoms and rights – and yours. As you cheer the military rolling into L.A or snicker as the president declares war on Chicago, as the freedom to vote is being stripped from women and people of color…we-the-woke wonder at what point you will wake-up. At what point will you realize that these losses of freedom also apply equally across the board?
Posted on September 1, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
Recently we wrote about the ubiquitous question, “What can I do?” We-the-people are under assault by a government racing toward fascism and often find ourselves frozen in disbelief. John Pavlovitz’s answer to the question is to look local. Find a local need and fill it. A million small acts of kindness and support add up to a tsunami of good will across our injured landscape. It’s the Butterfly Effect.
On the list of needs, raising awareness of the importance of this assault on voters rights is urgent. It, too, is the Butterfly Effect. Erase protections from racial discrimination in voting and there will be no constitutional prohibition on the republican gerrymander. A tsunami of republican political manipulations will sweep across our land and essentially end free and fair elections for all of us. Pushing back, protesting, ringing the alarm on this assault on minority voter protection…is utmost on the list of needs.
The republicans are attempting to push through their SAVE ACT that places limits on voting rights. The repeal of The Voting Rights Act would essentially be the nail in democracy’s coffin.
Number one on our national list of needs: a republican party that actually believes in democracy. They work to restrict voter access to free and fair elections while openly scheming to rig elections so they will forever remain in power.
Perhaps the number one need is mainstream news sources that actually report the news. Where-oh-where has the free press gone?
With a corrupt Supreme court doing the bidding of the wanna-be-king that they made, with a goosestepping republican congress and a largely AWOL democratic congress, it seems that the buck stops with us. A million tiny actions, like ringing the alarm or taking to the streets…can lead to very large consequences. After all, democracy, a government of, by, and for the people is, in practice, The Butterfly Effect. Every single individual act – every individual vote in a free and fair election -when combined with millions of votes – can send a tsunami of good will across our injured land. But first we have to actively protect the integrity of our right to vote from a deeply rotten Supreme Court and a republican party that serves a corrupt man rather than the oath they swore to our Constitution.
Posted on August 25, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
If conformity is what you seek, you need look no further than the Texas republicans – or republicans from any corner of the union. However, their lock-step compliance has nothing to do with the rule of law or adherence to standards or traditions – or any other conservative value; it has everything to do with obeisance to one bully-man. They bow low. Although they swagger and loudly proclaim their cowboy culture of independence, in action, they grovel in abject subservience.
Stephen Miller called protesters in Washington DC “aging hippies” and suggested that they go home and take a nap. It made me laugh; those aging hippies, exercising their first amendment right to protest, were refusing to grovel in the face of an authoritarian takeover. Unlike the swaggering-yet-toothless republicans, the aging hippies are resisting the militarized takeover of their city by the dictator-wanna-be. Those aging hippies are upholding a longstanding American tradition of protesting; they demonstrate to protect our freedoms from a lawless leader. They are standing up with courage and dignity.
Dignity and courage: two values – among many – that the toady republicans have apparently abdicated.
You know the world is upside-down when the cowboy-hat-wearing-guys-in-traditional-suits mewl and betray every single bedrock value that this nation holds dear, while the aging hippies stand tall and take to the streets to protect democracy. When the once unconventional hippies stand as the last firewall of democracy against those who claim to be conservative yet crumble and pule while working to make fascism the convention of the land.
There’s more than a little hippie in the original fighting spirit of this nation. By Stephen Miller’s definition, George Washington was a hippie. Abraham Lincoln was a hippie. Frederick Douglass was a hippie. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a hippie. Every soldier who has ever fought for our democracy was a hippie. Every person who marched for civil rights was a hippie. Martin Luther King Jr. was a hippie.
A message to Stephen Miller and his fellow whining republican sycophants: no one – especially we hippies – and there millions of us – are about to go home and take a nap.
Don’t be surprised if you find us in the store, eyes closed, delighting in the scent of the Warmies – those cute cuddly stuffed animals filled with lavender. My favorite is the sloth. Kerri is fond of the bear. They provide a dose of instant calming. They are serenity found in an unlikely place, an oasis of comfort in aisle 9.
Tranquility is hard to come by these days. Each day, inundated as we are in the politics of hate, I search for tranquility in words and sometimes find it – momentarily – in a poem or the heart-touching-story of a fortuitous puppy adoption. I am buoyed by writers from Rumi to James Baldwin, keepers of our conscience, sirens to kindness.
But for lasting peace of mind it is necessary to break beyond words. Nothing beats the senses for a call into the immediate, the only place where contentment can be found: the smell of basil, the cooling evening breeze after a blistering hot day. The delightful chirp of a hummingbird as it zips overhead. The distant foghorn underscoring the cry of seagulls. The vibrant colors of the sky transitioning into night. Lavender. Rosemary. Onions and garlic sauteing. The first sip of bold red wine. The Warmies on the grocery store shelf.
I used to lead an exercise in which people would face a partner. Standing a few feet apart, the instruction was to be present-with-the-other. No words were allowed – so no fortress of distraction could be erected. Simply see and be seen. A few minutes would feel like an eternity as the impulse to hide and deflect and control slowly surrendered to the scary vulnerability of presence. The fortification, the hyper-management of image fell away. Only then could the beauty break through the mask. Unprotected, the partners would either weep or laugh or both. Seen. Seeing. In presence the tide turned. Serenity was discovered in a most unlikely place. An oasis of comfort found in the eyes of the other.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” ~ T.S. Elliot, Little Gidding
It is not so simple to Be You.
I’ve yet to meet a person who knows without question, without doubt, who they are.
That is not a flaw. It is a given since we are not a piece of furniture, not a thing or an end result. We are so much more. An unearthing. A discovery.
We are human beings. Questioners. Questions.
We are both seeker and sought. We are both archeologist and vast hidden city.
Of course, that is not the meaning behind the message stitched on the rainbow hat. Be You is an affirmation of inner truth in the face of social pressure to Be Other than You.
There are other seekers – other people – who, in their fear of the unknown, attempt to define you. Confine you. They make rules, absolutes. They wish to stop the seeking.
Your difference is a disturbance in their rigid field of sameness.
They desire limited commerce and will only travel well-worn paths. They worship control – so controlling you, they believe, will keep them safe in their comfortable known. They would have you walk on their paved path. Color within the lines. Worship as they do.
Your difference shakes their cage. Your difference is a siren’s call to the scary edge of the unknown, to growth since growth is always in the direction of the unknown.
They quake. They fear your difference because they fear that they will disappear if they step toward the rim of learning: they fear what they will find in themselves – or have to admit to themselves – so they sail far away from the edges.
Be You? Just as others propel you forward in your discovery, just as resistance helps you discover the parameters and depths of your belief, your difference serves as a harbinger for others, a message in a bottle, calling them to the precipice of their greater archaeology.
What is over there? In there? Under there? Beyond? Me?
Is it an end? A beginning? And who will walk with me? Why?
As always, rather than a book of rules, a fistful of pat answers, is it not more useful – more honest – to ask and ask and ask a better question?
[Quinn called these The Big 3: Who am I? Where do I come from? What is mine to do? We never arrive at an absolute answer since we are a moving target, always growing in a relationship with the unknown. The point is not to nail down a forever-answer; the point is to be brave enough and open enough to continually ask the questions.]
We’ve taught Dogga not to bark at the dachshunds next door. He stands vigil on our bed where he can see out the window and over the fence. He waits, knowing their morning routine. When the moment arrives, when the dachshunds come outside, Dogga groans and moans – like a character in a melodrama – to suppress his bark. He leaps off the bed, turns to look at us, and vigorously complains. His indignation is among our favorite morning rituals. We giggle at his yawling discord. We tell him to, “Go get candy cane!”, his favorite toy, useful in chewing away his dissatisfaction. He races into the next room returning with his plastic candy cane in his mouth, looking somewhat like Groucho Marx gnawing on a red and white striped cigar.
In those moments I couldn’t be more in love with my life. It’s the smallest of things.
We were like small children overrun with anticipation as we awaited the blossoming of the peonies. Last fall Loida gifted Kerri with two new peony roots. Elsa Sass and Amalia Olson. We planted them with great care, following the instructions to the letter. In the spring, little green adventurers broke through the soil. Soon there were leaves and then the tiniest buds. And then, one day, the buds began to swell; nature’s Jiffy Pop. Like Dogga peering out the window, we’d race outside each morning to hold our vigil. This week, the buds burst open, radiant flowers unfolded. Kerri was beside herself. The photo session has been ongoing for days. “I just love them!” she exclaims with each and every snap.
It’s the smallest of things.
This weekend, people left the comfort and safety of their homes to walk together in the streets. They showed up for each other. They showed up en masse to remind their elected leaders that they serve the public and not their party; they are meant to serve the needs of the public and not the whims of a criminal. People walked together to remind the absent/silent Republican members of Congress that they swore an oath to uphold The Constitution – and they are betraying their oath. Millions of people stepped out of their houses to walk together, to express their dissatisfaction with the brutality, the attempted authoritarian take-down of our democracy, to join together their voices to say, “We will not abdicate our responsibility to each other as you have abdicated your responsibility to us.”
It’s the smallest of things. To step out of the house. To walk with others. To speak truth to power, especially when power is a bully threatening violence.
Recently I’ve asked myself – as I’ve heard many others ask, “But what can I do?” This weekend we experienced an answer: Do the smallest of things. Step out of your house. Take a walk with your neighbors that sends a clear message to the cowards in Congress and the supremely corrupted court: The democracy that our ancestors planted here is precious and worth protecting.
“In the art world, lines are a fundamental element used to create a wide variety of effects. They can define shapes, create movement, guide the viewer’s eye…” ~A-I Overview to my inquiry about lines in art
I confess that I am having a hard time. I’m in the middle of a mini-moral crisis.
I’ve written this blog since 2010. I set out to write about positive things, affirmations and stories of the best of us. At the time I began writing I was traveling around the nation, working with incredible people everywhere I went, so I had a bucketful of stories to share, celebrating the best of the human spirit. Kerri and I began writing our Melange 382 weeks ago. We had so much art and music in our folios and files and we wanted to bring them into the light of day. Sharing the best of us – another way of celebrating the human spirit.
After all of these years I enjoy a small but enormously appreciated (by me) audience.
Lately, I am aware, that my daily writing and my focus is not about celebrating the best of us but has almost exclusively become about ringing an alarm against the worst of us. I am sometimes snarky. I am mostly horrified at how dulled we as a nation have become to the outrageous. I am alarmed at our normalization of the monstrous, the disappearance of Congress, the collapse of the system of checks and balances.
Each day I have a chat with myself about staying focused on the positive but I am lately finding that to be naive to the point of dangerous; it is akin to sticking my head in the sand or plugging my ears so I hear no evil.
Each day, more and more people are being swept off our streets. Each day, they are denied due process. This morning I’ve been reading – and verifying – accounts about the unnecessary death of a Haitian woman in one of our many overcrowded detention centers. The conditions are appalling. She is not the first. She will not be the last. Her crime: trying to escape abject poverty and enter the land of the free and the home of the brave.
90% of the people – human beings – are being held without due process in privately run detention centers that are by many accounts no better than concentration camps. Think about it: “privately run” means that they are detention-for-profit; the more people swept up and crammed into these camps the more money they make. Inhumanity with a profit incentive.
Which brings me to my moral crisis. I am both a visual and theatre artist. I know how to create movement that guides a viewer’s eye. I know how to make an audience see in a story what I want them to see. I also know how to prevent them from seeing what I don’t want them to see. It’s akin to the magician’s trick. Create a distraction so the mechanics of the trick go unnoticed. Our national media are masters of distraction. They make rather than report news.
We-the-people are being distracted. We are being pitted against each other so we do not look at the magic trick that is making our rights – and the rights of others – disappear. We are not supposed to see what is happening in the detention centers – we are not supposed to know how our taxes are being used, what we are paying for, what we are creating: a police state.
Follow the lines. It is not so hard to see what we are not supposed to see. It’s ugly. A president ignoring the law, exploiting brutal immigration sweeps to incite violence, manufacture an “insurrection” in order to turn the military against citizens. The suspension of elections will surely follow. The sweeps will include voices of opposition.
It is morally irresponsible to look the other way. It’s morally reprehensible to say, “There’s nothing we can do about it,” or “I didn’t vote for this,” or “I had no idea what was happening,” or “This doesn’t impact me.” It is fundamentally immoral to pretend that this is something that we “Can’t talk about.” It is depraved to roll along as if the current course of this nation is anything other than ethically bankrupt. People are dying, being held without due process in deplorable circumstances. And we-the-people are paying for it. We don’t like where the lines lead so we change the channel. We look the other way or swallow whole-cloth the media spin.
What is my responsibility to write? To paint? To draw? How can I celebrate the human spirit, the best of us, when the leaders of the nation are every day grinning at, applauding and investing in brutality, taking delight in human misery? And our tax dollars are making it possible.
Lately everything seems to have extra significance. While we pulled all of the pots from the garage in preparation for planting the herb garden and flowers, it occurred to me that we are in preparation for the coming economic crumble. Empty pots brought to mind empty shelves.
When we go grocery shopping we are intentionally stocking up on products that we know will or are already going up in price. Basics like coffee and olive oil. The wave is coming so it feels foolish not to fortify the larder.
“Plan for what it is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small.” ~ Sun Tzu
When I was a lost lad, one of the many books Quinn threw my way was The Art of War by Sun Tzu. His reason had nothing at all to do with war since he was – to his core – a peaceful man, a philosopher. In retrospect I think he was teaching me about preparation. He was guiding me on a path of self-knowledge.
Right now it is easy for us to stock up.
During his first chaotic term, it would have been easy for Mitch McConnell and the Republicans to have voted to convict the twice-impeached president. Their appropriate action, while it was still easy, would have stopped the autocratic impulse in our nation before it toppled our democracy. Now, it is not so easy. They refused to do what was great while it was small. They still could stop it – if they had the courage to do their jobs as prescribed in our Constitution. To date we are witness to their absence of courage. Either that or we are witness to their rejection of democracy and full embrace of fascism.
Perhaps it is not courage they lack but self-knowledge. It brought to mind another quote from Sun Tzu. The important sentiment is the third line in the following quote:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
The Direction of Intention 