Hide The Horse

Posted on April 22, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
from my archives. This one is called 'Angels At The Well.'

from my archives. This one is called ‘Angels At The Well.’

I first learned this story prompt from Rick Stone at The Storywork Institute: I come from a people who (fill in the blank), and from them I learned (fill in the blank).

Rick’s story prompt was with me when I awoke this morning because I’ve lately been thinking about my grandma Sue. Kerri and I just started rehearsals on our Back To Center concert series and for some reason Grandma Sue has been present when we rehearse. She passed away several years ago and I adored her. She was small in body but big in spirit. Over the weekend my mother said of her mother, “She took everything in stride and adapted to whatever came her way.” Grandma Sue did not resist her lot in life, she made the most of it. She had fun. She created fun.

I’ve been rolling over and over in my mind a specific story about her that happened before my time on this planet. The shorthand goes like this: the glue factory was coming for an old horse that lived in the pasture next to her house. She knew the truck was coming so she hid the horse in her kitchen.

I grew up playing in her house. I know her kitchen. What makes the story miraculous to me is that 1) her kitchen was teeny and 2) you had to climb some stairs to get from the back door into her kitchen. This tiny woman managed to get an old horse through her back door, make a right hand turn, and climb some very narrow stairs. And then she “hid” it from the owner and the glue factory search team.

I do not doubt the truth of this story for a moment and if you knew my Grandma Sue you would not doubt it either. She was a champion for the underdog, a lover of the small moment, a believer in the extraordinary in the ordinary. She lived from her heart and not her need to make sense. What do you do if the sweet old horse next door is in imminent danger? Anything you can.

This morning, as I awoke, I was again thinking of my Grandma Sue and Rick Stone’s prompt came to me. I smiled because I come from a people who act on what they believe- against all odds. And from them I learned moxie and perseverance.

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Give Yourself Some Advice

Posted on April 9, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
Horatio as a young man

Horatio as a young man

A few days ago I received an email from Horatio. He is an amazing filmmaker and gifted visual artist. We’ve wiled hours and days away talking about art and acting. He’s a treasure. His email was advice that he wrote to himself, the artist (what a great idea!) and with his permission, over the next three days, I will share it in segments. If you are impatient and want to read ahead, visit his blog or take a gander at his work at www.fidalgofilms.com. Here’s his email with the first portion of his Advice To Myself:

The evening after screening The Bath at Taos Shortz Film Festival in March, 2014, a very adept interviewer with the wonderful name Tamara Stackpoole (straight from Downton Abbey or Jane Austen?) asked if I had any advice to emerging filmmakers. My answer, as I recall:

“Let your teachers go. Just tell your own truth. Learn the craft – setup and payoff, three-act structure, and so on – and learn it well. But then let it go and tell your own truth, your vision. You’ll know it when you see it.”

When I woke the next morning, I realized that I had a lot more to say, and that it amounted to advice to myself. It follows:

You only can control yourself, which means your choices. You cannot control anything else.

Choose ethically, you will regret anything else.

The foundation of ethics is to respect others. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Be humble. Pride is the foundation of all the deadly sins, according to Dante and his mentor Virgil.

Your work is the essential ingredient of your life, an expression of your choices, your ethics. 

Connection to others is the essential mechanism of ethics.

A reciprocal connection of human to human (parent/child, student/teacher, artist/audience, friend/friend, or lover/lover) is the basic means to give yourself to others and to receive from them, to further yourself and others.

You will always be learning and practicing that kind of connection. You will never be finished. 

[to be continued]

Prompted by Horatio’s inspiration, I’ve started writing my version of Advice To Myself. It’s a great exercise and amounts to yanking the blankets on what matters to you. It begs the question: what will be your legacy? What might you write to yourself?

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Or, go here for hard copies.

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Feed The Spark

Posted on March 16, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
Marcia, DeMarcus, and me many moons ago.

Marcia, DeMarcus, and me many moons ago.

If I’d shared a context-less photo of Lake Michigan yesterday you’d swear I was standing on a beach in the Bahamas. The water was vibrant turquoise. It was intense and stopped me in my tracks more than once. It was a 180° turnabout from earlier this week when the lake was frozen over and looked like a sea of broken glass. Things change so fast. These extraordinary moments pass so quickly.

I talked with Marcia this morning. Today is her 85th birthday and she told me that she’s working on becoming present. “I’m not very good at it,” she said, “though I think my life would be so much better if I didn’t project myself into a made-up future and worry about the well going dry.” We laughed heartily.

Marcia was a great actress in her day. And when she stepped off the stage she became an exquisite costume designer. Her father, DeMarcus, was a pioneer in the theatre and a great painter and I am the lucky to carry forward their tradition of artistry. I know my lineage! It seems like yesterday that Marcia was designing a play that I was directing; she pulled me aside and said, “DeMarcus wants you to have these.” She handed me a painter’s box with his brushes and paint. That was over 25 years ago. If my house was on fire and I could only save one possession I’d take that box. It contains some of her renderings and some of his notebooks. It is sacred to me.

I dedicated my book to Marcia and her husband, Tom. Tom was my mentor and he passed away in August. Marcia said, “I’m reinventing myself now that Tom is gone.” I asked what she was discovering in her reinvention. “The creative spark never goes away!” she chirped. “I need a good project!” She told me that the final years with Tom were like cocooning because all of her energy went to caring for Tom in his dementia and failing health. “It was hellish!” she whispered, “I wasn’t doing any of the things that keep me fed. I’m ready to create again!”

Before hanging up I asked what she was going to do on her birthday. She chortled and said, “I have an excellent day planned for myself. I’m going to put new carpet in the studio and then I’m going to put my hands in the soil and feel the earth! I’ve no time to lose so you can be certain that I’m going to feed the spark.”

Go here to get my latest book, The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, title_pageSeeker, Learner, Leader, Creator…You.

Get hard copies here.

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Scratch The Wall

Posted on June 24, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

827. 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 am house sitting for Judy this weekend so I have the great pleasure of being cared for by Fuji the cat. This morning before dawn Fuji woke me up by scratching on the wall. It was like finger nails on a chalkboard and made me laugh. Fuji does not couch her intentions in a layer of false modesty or in a set of imposed manners. She is direct and that is refreshing. After scratching the wall she sat on my chest. It was time for some good loving and then food. When she’d had enough of petting she jumped down and led me to her bowl. Later, after she ate, we re-pouched and slept until a more decent waking hour.

Fuji is sage. She is very old and seems thinner every time I see her. She still loves a good scratching and eats like farm hand. She sleeps, eats, and wanders her realm with great self-possession. Fuji does not entertain doubts. She chooses and acts. There is no gap created by inner debate. She does not hesitate and will always take the direct path to her intention while also living a circular life. She knows that wisdom takes time and some questions cannot be rushed; answers will come when enough life has been lived. Fuji is fond of Rilke and knows that we must live the questions.

My favorite thing to do with Fuji is tell her my troubles. I sit with her on the floor and confess my foibles and she listens attentively. I usually ask her to resolve my issues – to tell me what to do – and then act as if she is withholding the answer that I seek. “Fuji!” I exclaim, “I thought you were going to help me out with this one!” She purrs and sits at my feet as if to say, “This one is yours to resolve.” She is a good counselor. She listens with great attention and refuses to provide easy answers. She knows I have all my answers inside me and am usually looking in the wrong place for my resolution. Fuji also knows that all the drama of life is made-up so it is pointless to expend any energy dealing with it.

I strive to be like Fuji and know that I will be old, thinning, and eating soft foods with porcelain teeth before I have enough road behind me to stand with certainty in this question we call life. I look forward to scratching the wall at any hour of the day or night and saying to my human, “Love on me and then let’s eat!”

Filed under: Heroes, Love, Truly Powerful People | 5 Comments »

Ask The Next Question

Posted on May 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

799. 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 met John in his workshop. He was cutting pieces for a chair. He’s decided that his summer task is to learn to build chairs. I’ve known John for many years and he was a master woodworker when I met him. That he’s set himself the task of making chairs seemed at first already within his reach. I’ve sat in many many chairs that John’s designed and built. And then, like a little kid excited to open presents, he showed me his prototype and all the things he didn’t know how to do. He showed me all the things that he couldn’t wait to explore. There are new joinery, curves, and design elements. He’s incorporating metals into some of his designs. Brushing the sawdust from his shirt, he said, “I figure if I’m not learning then I’m probably wasting my time.”

John chooses his projects based on what he doesn’t know. For years I’ve admired how he orients himself to his tasks. He is a true master. Mastery is not about what you know. Mastery is about how you address yourself to what you don’t know. Mastery and curiosity are bedfellows. Most of us choose our projects based on what we know. We do stuff because we know how to do it – and sometimes we mistakenly call that expertise. We use our knowledge to distinguish ourselves from the pack. Masters have no time for such nonsense. They are too busy learning. They are too in awe of life to separate from life. They are joiners and not concerned with status games.

As we jumped into John’s truck to get some dinner and a beer I noticed that he was limping. I asked him about the limp and he was told me about the magic his naturopath was working. He has arthritis in his back. He said, “I have a lot to learn. There is so much for me to do, so many things I want to do. I figure I’ll never get to it all but I need my health. I’m too excited to stop asking the next question.”

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Welcome Horatio Home

Posted on November 13, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Today I celebrate Horatio. He just passed a major milestone for artistic growth; he stepped beyond the finite game of win/lose and entered the arena of mastery. If you knew Horatio like I do, you’d put on your seatbelt. As this man changes his life he will change yours, too; that is the way with all great artists.

Years ago Horatio decided to become a filmmaker. When Horatio decides to do something he doesn’t dip his toe in first. He walks to the edge of his comfort zone and jumps. He threw himself into experiences and classes, read everything that he could get his hands on, he got behind a camera, made commercials, and learned to edit. He took acting classes, talked with directors, asked questions of everyone who might know anything about anything, he studied films and story structure, made more films, made messes and cleaned them up, wrote scripts, shot more film, and entered festivals. And like us all, he made the assumption that everyone knew more than he did.

Like all artists in pursuit of their passions, Horatio assumed that there was a right way to do things – and on a technical level that is probably true. Painters need to know color theory; pianists need to know their scales. Artistry assumes technical competence and artistry thrives in the fields beyond technical competence. Rules are learned to transcend or to be broken. Einstein never would have arrived at relativity had he followed the rules.

Horatio had terrific teachers gifted in helping him achieve technical competence. And one day, today in fact, he arrived at the recognition that he knew more about his artistry than did his teachers. His opinion of his work is more relevant than those guides that brought him to this pass. Today, Horatio became his own teacher. He is no longer trying to know “how” to do it. He’s recognized that “how” is a question that only he can answer; there is not a right way or a wrong way, there is his way. Now, the real fun begins. He is capable of beginner’s mind, the place beyond answers and arrivals, the place where every experience is new; the place where play is possible. Welcome Home Horatio!

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

Embrace Your Silly

Posted on October 23, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Racing passed me on the apartment stairs was little Jaden and his grandma, Espy. Jaden was wearing big tiger slippers; they gave him cartoon feet. Espy whispered, “The monster is coming! I hear him!” Jaden squealed. I said, “I won’t tell the monster that I saw you!” Jaden laughed as he and Espy disappeared through the hall door. Two floors below I heard Pete, using his best monster voice, rumble, “Where are they! I’m hungry!”
Pete is Jaden’s grandpa, Espy’s husband. I waited on the landing for Pete-the-monster to discover David-his-neighbor. It was a sneak attack.

He came around the corner in full monster mode. Roaring, “I’ll find you! I can smell where you are!” he saw me and said, “Oh, hi David.” Another adult might have been embarrassed or shifted out of play mode. Not Pete. He was carrying a large sack of groceries and, like Jaden, he was wearing an enormous pair of slippers, he had cartoon bear feet. “Do you like my shoes?” he smiled, showing off his larger-than-life fuzzy feet. “We just went to the store.” He roared once more to keep the game going while buying us some time to talk.

“I’m being a monster!” he smiled, showing me how he could walk like a bear with his cartoon feet. “We were just in the grocery store and people are so serious!” he exclaimed. “At first I was thinking about being embarrassed to wear these slippers and then I was happy I put them on. They are silly and they made people smile! People need to be more silly! That’s what I’ve decided. It keeps us young,” he declared. As an after thought he added, “Espy had to drive though, monsters feet are too big and they can’t feel the pedals.” Roaring and stomping he said, “Let’s have dinner next week,” and continued up the stairs. I heard Jaden squeal and Espy whisper, “Hide!”

Yoda lives next door and he wears slippers. There is magic everywhere, even in the stairway.

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Do You See It?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

One morning last May, Megan-the-brilliant picked me up at my hotel and said, “Before coffee, I have to show you something.” She was excited and I could tell this was a vulnerable offer, she was opening to me and I adored her courage. We drove into the country to an undulating stretch of road and Megan squealed, “Do you see it? Do you see it?” I did. The shadows of electrical lines cast by the early morning sun made a vibrant pattern on the blacktop: the road looked like a heart monitor tape. She giggled as we descended into the strip, riding through the record of a giant’s beating heart. It was glorious and subtle. She turned up the music and rolled down the windows so we would have the full sensual experience of that moment in time. She made a memory. Ten thousand people have driven that stretch of road and few if any saw the shadows. And, because she took a chance to show me, in that moment just before I die, in my moment of my personal life review, I will feel the wind, hear the music and her giggle, as we roared through the shadows like kids through a sprinkler. We were alive.

Megan-the-Brilliant teaches me that it doesn’t take much. Keep your eyes open. Revel in the small discoveries because, if you engage with the moment, there are no small discoveries. Make your memories. You don’t need to travel to France to do it – and, frankly, the grace you give yourself during travel is to open your eyes and see. You drop the idea that you know what’s there and actually look. The same capacity is available each moment of every day of your life. Nothing is ordinary if you decide to see beyond your boredom (your boredom does not exist outside of you).

If I could give the world a gift on this day it would be for Megan-the-Brilliant to pick you up at your hotel. Before coffee she will take you for a treat. Open your eyes as you may miss it. You’ll know it is there when she rolls down the window, turns up the music and asks, “Do you see it?”

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Find Joe

Posted on September 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

552. 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 am surrounded by amazing people. No one in the past decade has been more influential on my thinking, more loyal in friendship, more dedicated to my growth than Joe Shirley.

A few days ago I sang the song of Sean Smith and later that day I talked on the phone with Joe. He moved away a few years ago and I miss our weekly coffee dates. Like Sean, Joe is in dogged pursuit of his dream but unlike almost anyone I know, Joe’s dream began as a nightmare. His story is the stuff of great art, an intentional passage through the belly of the whale, a film ready to be made.

Joe was bipolar (emphasis on “was”). Because he has an amazing scientific mind he was unwilling to take the brain numbing drugs that his doctor’s prescribed. He suffered great darkness and had to find another way. He had to find a way to navigate life; he knew there must be a way to “cure” himself, to address the cause instead resigning himself to merely blunting the impact of his dis-ease. What he discovered, almost by accident, started a decades long pursuit of his personal liberation and now he is applying what he learned to the liberation of the human spirit.

He was his own best test subject and over several years of intense work he came to understand what he calls the “feeling mind” that is highly structured and infinitely knowable. Learning its “architecture” avails a kind of freedom and power to anyone seeking greater well being. He’s developed and mastered a process that anyone can use to be free of anxiety, blocks, limiting patterns and beliefs. His process is concrete, accessible and designed to be self-directed. He introduced the work to me a decade ago while we were in graduate school and it has provided a tool of transformation that I use with my clients and with myself.

He calls his work Enteleos (“the completion within”). Find Joe. Of this you can be certain: you will never see the world the same way again.

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Unleashing Sean Smith

Posted on September 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Today I celebrate Sean. He has done what many people desire to do, what most people talk of doing but few rarely do: he is pursuing his dream.

I had already been Sean’s coach for several months when he said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper, “What I really want is to do write a book.” He spoke his hidden truth and we both knew it. The idea was more than daunting to him, it seemed nearly impossible. He works more than full-time. He is married and has two kids. He volunteers and is active in his community. Like most of us, his dream sat at the bottom of his list for a very long time.

And, he started to write. He set some realistic goals, writing everyday on his commute to and from work. He allowed himself to take one step at a time and did not forget the all-important matching action: he continued to take steps. Soon there was a chapter and then two, and after some months there were five chapters and then a rough draft. His disbelief took one step at a time, too; about the time he had a rough draft he also had belief. He knew he could do it. He knew he would do it.

But “doing it” was no longer the goal, being a good writer was now the goal. And this goal, he knows, is also only temporary; the real goal is be become masterful. He began attending seminars and classes. He sought and interviewed writers; he did not hide or pretend because he surrendered his outcome-focus for the more vital and satisfying process-focus. He sent his draft to editors and entered the purgatory of an endless cycle of rewrites and revisions. And he kept taking steps.

As he wrote he also he put together a solid plan for publishing and promoting his book that included personal and professional networks, reviewers, publishers, and more.

Sean’s first book, Unleashing Colter’s Hell, a fiction thriller set in Yelowstone National Park is now available through Amazon.com. He told me he’ll soon begin work on the screenplay but wants to do a rough draft of his second book before jumping into a screenplay. Sean is on fire. It’s what happens when you strap on your shoes and walk toward your dream. (I’ve already read chapter one of book two and I’m desperate to know what happens next….).

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