Love | The Direction of Intention

Plant What You Love [on DR Thursday]

Posted on March 26, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

“All that we are arises with our thoughts. Speak or act with a pure mind and heart and happiness will follow you as your shadow, unshakable.” ~The Buddha

What is it to speak or act with a pure mind and heart? I’ve often thought about Don Miguel Ruiz’s 4th Agreement: be impeccable to your word. He writes that being impeccable to your word is the most self-loving thing you can do. Mean what you say. Say what you mean. And, beyond that, say nothing. How often have I said something I didn’t mean? How often have I done something out of anger or spite or fear that I knew I would later regret?

Pure (adjective): free of contamination.

Wayne Muller wrote a book I admire, How Then Shall We Live. In it, he asks four questions. The second question is, “What do I love?” He writes that “we must plant what we love in the garden of our lives.” Plant anger and you will grow anger. Plant generosity and you will grow generosity. Nurture reactivity and your garden will run amok with weedy reactivity. So, self love: say what you mean and only that. Mean what you say and only that. Jay made me laugh out loud when she told us what she used to say to her young students: “You can think it in your mind but don’t let it out of your mouth.”

Horatio told me that I needed to get back into the studio, even if it was only to sit and sip a glass of wine. I took his advice. On the easel was a canvas with the trace of an image that I had sketched and then wiped clean. On a cold autumn day, DogDog and BabyCat asleep on the bed, Kerri (pre-broken wrists) crawled between them and cuddled with DogDog.

An image of what I love. In this time of high anxiety, anger, division and fear, in the quiet of my studio (which induces quiet in my mind), perhaps my entry back into painting should be attention to my garden. In this first image, I will plant what I most love.

k.Dot Dogga BCat copy

read Kerri’s blog post about SKETCHES

http://www.davidrobinsoncreative.com

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: BabyCat, Buddha, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dogdog, don miguel ruiz, Four Agreements, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, painting, pure heart, pure mind, Wayne Muller | Leave a comment »

Give And Receive [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on March 11, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

sleeping dogga copy

DogDog has two distinctly different personalities. In the sunny hours he is high strung, high energy, high joy. He rarely stops moving, circling the yard, circling the rooms of the house, moving his toys from here to there and back again. When it is time to take out the garbage, he delights in clearing the yard of marauding squirrels. I am always well protected when I deliver the trash to the can.

At night, our energizer-bunny-of-a-dog collapses. He gently herds us into the living room and, if we sit, even for a moment, he believes that his people are securely in the pen and he is off duty for the day. He punches out, settles on the cool floor and is asleep in a nanosecond. In that moment he is transformed into ‘sweet dog.’

Rather than serving as the protector, sweet dog is a sponge for affection. If we move, stand, cross the room, cough,… he rolls onto his back, availing himself for a belly-belly. Sweet dog does not bark. Sweet dog knows our nighttime travel patterns and is somehow always positioned in our path. Sweet dog is a no-apology opportunist.

High joy. Sweet. Giver. Receiver. Both are qualities to be admired.

At night, before he retires to his crate, he waits for us on the foot of our bed. We spend several minutes loving on him. He gives himself over completely to our affection. It is among my favorite rituals of the day to heap love on DogDog before putting him in his crate.

I read once that the phrase “unconditional love” was redundant. The quality that makes love love is the absence of condition. If what we call “love” comes with qualifiers or expectations then it is not love at all. It is something else.

High joy. Sweet. Love (unconditional). I am always, everyday, in awe of this furry teacher and mostly grateful that he is endlessly patient with the glacial pace of his student.

read Kerri’s blog post about DOGDOG SLEEPING

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Heroes, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Dog-Dog, joy - a christmas album, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, patience, presence, service, student, sweet, teacher, unconditional love | Leave a comment »

See The Series [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

life series quote copy

The closing moment of the film Love Actually is a wonderful montage of greetings at the arrival gate at Heathrow airport. The Beach Boys sing God Only Knows to images of children greeting grandparents, husbands rushing to their wives, friends opening their arms to friends. Hugh Grant’s voice over: “Love actually is, all around us.”

For reasons I’ve never quite understood, we human beings have an uncanny ability to focus on the negative stuff while completely missing the love all around us. We famously study ourselves and the data is overwhelming: we yammer on and on to all who will listen about the “bad” thing that happened in our day. We share the “good” stuff less and with far fewer listeners. There’s something about a fight that draws our eyes while a kiss will make us look away.

Stand on any street corner and watch the world go by and one thing becomes immediately clear. There are far more acts of generosity than there are acts of violence. The kind hearts outstrip the mean spirits by far so why do believe the opposite?

Krishnamurti famously said that “Life is a relationship. Living is a relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally.”

Violence and division make for better ratings because it’s profitable [and easy] to focus the feed on all things negative. Low hanging fruit. It’s profitable to keep the eye off the thousand tiny miracles. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t happening all around us, every minute of every day.

What might it take to pull down the wall so we might more than periodically peep over it? So that we might see that love actually is all around us? To borrow a phrase from The Beach Boys, “god only knows.”

read Kerri’s blog post about A THOUSAND TINY MIRACLES

Filed under: Language, Love, Seeing, Story, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: beach boys, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, god only knows, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, krishnamurti, love, love actually, meaning making, seeing | Leave a comment »

Rest Full [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 21, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

quarter rest

“The primeval beauty of silence becomes audible in the elemental music of the earth and in our music of instrument and voice. At the core of the world and at the core of the soul is silence that ripples with the music of beauty and the whisperings of the eternal.” ~ John O’Donohue, Beauty

I have said more than once these past few weeks, that the silver lining of two broken wrists is that all the presses have stopped. The endless list of things-to-do fell into dust on the floor and the true priorities jumped into immediate clarity. The superficial things gave way to the essential.

Little things, like showering or getting dressed in the morning, are no longer mindless rote activities. The are now intentional. Attention is paid to every movement, every moment. They are care-full. I am learning once again that there are riches all around me when I am not racing to get to the next thing but, instead, occupying the moment that I am living. The other night at rehearsal I nearly burst into tears so beautiful were the people and the laughter surrounding us. A month ago, pre-wristgate, I might have missed it.

Caring for an other. Caring for one and another. Other caring.

We rest. We do not push through. So many in our amazing community have asked me, as I care for Kerri, am I also taking care of myself? I love this question. It is generous. The answer is ‘yes’ and the question it raises is ‘why isn’t this level of self-generosity the norm?’ Are you caring for yourself? In the midst of all that life flings your way, first and foremost, as you care for others, are you also attending to yourself?

I’m learning that the two things are inseparable: caring for another is also caring for yourself. Or, flip it over: it is impossible to fully care for yourself without caring for others. We know ourselves through relationship. We can only thrive when loved and while loving. People in isolation go mad. Banishment from the group was once considered a punishment worse than death.

As silence is to sound. Caring as making beautiful life-music. We take our quarter rest.

read Kerri’s blog post about QUARTER REST

Filed under: KS Friday, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: beauty, caring, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, earth, elemental, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, music, relationship, silence, sound | Leave a comment »

Pick Your Star [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 19, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

pre joy joy copy

Mike Libecki is a mountain climber. He calls the necessary suffering of his sport pre-joy. “That way,” he explains, “I get to use the word joy in all of my sentences.” There’s joy at the summit. There’s pre-joy on the way up. It’s not a bad orientation to life, everything is relative to joy.

Skip’s meditation these days is on resilience. After a horrific car accident, he has more than a few tales of pre-joy. He has even more tales of joy. Human beings have a remarkable capacity to choose their stories, to orient to a path that is life-giving or to collapse their story into a state of no-joy. Skip chose resilience. The capacity to recover. To spring back in order to spring forward. Pick your star and sail toward it. That is Skip’s lesson to me.

Judy just wrote a book, Summoned By A Stroke. It is the blog posts she wrote to her community of support after her husband, Kim, suffered a major stroke. It is a remarkable testament to the invincibility of the human spirit when it intentionally orients to joy. It is also pays homage to the magnetic pull joy has on a community. There is no attempt in Judy’s story to deny the pre-joy; there is a deep understanding that there would be no real joy without it.

During my Seattle years, when I was feeling blue, I would jump on the ferry to Bainbridge Island to visit Judy and Kim. This man wrecked by a stroke and, my friend, Judy, his wife, never failed to lift my spirits, to fill me up with laughter. More than once, on the return ferry, I would sit in utter amazement. I told myself that I should be bringing comfort and support to them but the opposite was, in fact, the case. What I experienced with them was beyond words. So much joy. If there is a place where pre-joy and joy blend together, Judy and Kim inhabited it. Today, this is Judy and Kim’s lesson to me:

“Kim and I are learning that happiness is not about what we do or where we go but how loving we are in relationships, how open and curious we are about where we find ourselves, and how inventive we can be with what we are given.” ~ Judy Friesem, Summoned By A Stroke

read Kerri’s blog post on PRE-JOY/JOY

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Heroes, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, inspiration, joy, judy friesem, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, laughter, meaning making, mike libecki, mountain climbing, spirit lifting, story, storying, summoned by a stroke | 1 Comment »

Take Another Step [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 24, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

my best friend with frame copy

We spent some time last week talking about our beginning. We’d written a post and it prompted us to remember. It was surprisingly necessary to recount our story. To revisit our genesis.

In the guest room in Kerri’s parent’s house was a wall of family photographs. Many were pictures of weddings. A proud man in a uniform about to leave for the second war to end all wars, arm-in-arm with his bride in her wedding gown. A generation back in time, stiff collars, seated brides. There were more recent grooms and brides, too. Kerri’s sister and Bill. Wayne and Jan. Wendy and Keith. Heather and Brian. Beaches and rains of rice. When we stayed in that room, I’d sit on the bed and study the pictures. People standing together on the threshold of a new life. All of the unknowns, the triumphs and tragedies, the obstacles and stories of overcoming, waiting to be lived. But, in this one photographic moment, the vow, the unsullied togetherness, shines: we will walk hand in hand through thick and thin. I promise.

I loved looking at those photographs. The people in them are focused on all good things. There is not a hint of future fear. It’s as if the camera crew at the edge of the mystery was taking snapshots of the bold adventurers on the day the expedition set sail. Anticipation. Hope.

Our photograph is on a wall now. Not Beaky and Pa’s, but on our wall. In our picture, we stand toe to toe. In another, we are skipping out of our ceremony just as we skipped out of the airport the day that we met. Ours, we remembered last week, is a story that began with skipping. With wine on a roof top. With burgers and champagne. With a mystic Taize.

Kerri wrote this song for her niece’s wedding a decade ago. So much life is being lived! So many roads walked. So many adventures ahead. What would the camera crew at the edge of the mystery capture in their photographs today, at this stage in the adventure? Anticipation? Hope? Holding hands, squeezed in affirmation. Let us take another step together, my best friend.

the single, MY BEST FRIEND is available on iTunes & CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about MY BEST FRIEND

my best friend ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Family, KS Friday, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: a wedding song, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, marriage, My Best Friend, new life, remembering | Leave a comment »

Read The Symbol [on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 16, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I was flying in to meet Kerri for the first time, she told me that I’d recognize her because she’d be the one holding the daisy. Consequently, were you to scrutinize my paintings these days, you’d find more than a few daisies.

Her daisy-greeting-idea cemented what I suspected before I met Kerri. She is special. This was my thought process/reasoning: This woman has 15 albums in the world. Her picture is everywhere in the Google-sphere. Yet, it never occurred to her that I should or would know what she looks like. She’s humble. Also, point #2, I did my research. The maker of extraordinary pianos, Yamaha, consider her a “Yamaha Artist” or [translation] a modern master who performs almost exclusively on their pianos. With that kind of resume, with that size of gift and notoriety, you’d think she’d have mentioned it during those many months of conversation that preceded our meeting. She didn’t. She’s an unassuming artist (the best kind).

Humble. Unassuming.

The second time I flew in she greeted me at the gate with a veritable bushel of daisies.

My paintings are filled with symbols. Some conscious. Most not. I discover them after the fact [like those *#@^! three spheres that populated most of my early work. Jim had to pull out my paintings and point them out to me…] The daisies? I know exactly what they represent. I know without doubt when and why a composition requires a daisy.

read Kerri’s blog post about DAISY

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Family, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: artist, artistry, composer, daisies, daisy, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, humble, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, singer song writer, symbol, unassuming, yamaha artist | Leave a comment »

Take One Glorious Step [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 6, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

make hundreds copy

This post marks the 100th week of our Studio Melange. As it turns out, to my great surprise, the body of work I leave behind in this lifetime will probably have nothing to do with my paintings. I write everyday. I do not paint everyday.

I read that Graham Greene, one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century, wrote 500 words a day. Sometimes those 500 words took an hour. Sometimes they took several hours. Either way. Write 500 words a day, every day, and you, too, will be prolific.

Listen to enough mountain climbers and you’ll receive the same advice. One step at a time. One hand hold at a time. Don’t think of climbing the whole mountain. Rather, pay attention to the next step and the next and the next. The action of stepping will take you farther than the wishing. Step consciously and the summit will cease to be a goal and will become another glorious step en route to another glorious step [and, best of all, your odds of survival will skyrocket].

Were Kerri and I to scrabble together into book form our 100 weeks of writing, we’d have more than a few tomes on the shelf. A single prompt. He said/She said. Mounds of accumulated thoughts. Lots of writing. A few precious and treasured readers. Every once in a while, especially on these dark winter days, one of us asks, “Why do we keep doing this?” The other will inevitably say, “Well, let’s stop.” The answer is always, “Nooooo! I love doing this!”

Why do it? Why climb the mountain? Why walk toward the horizon? Why paint what no one sees or compose what no one hears? Our answer, after 100 weeks, is becoming clearer and clearer: do what you love. Even better, do it with someone you love. One glorious step en route to another glorious step.

read Kerri’s blog post about MAKING HUNDREDS

Filed under: Creativity, Language, Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Uncategorized | Tagged: consciousness, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, graham greene, he said/she said, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love it, one step at a time, presence, prolific, studio melange, week 100, Why | Leave a comment »

Laugh [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

In our ongoing effort to bring you quality programming on the creative process, we offer this insight to inspire you to greater and greater creative heights. These 7 steps are the secret key to your artistic fulfillment and ultimate success. Watch at your own risk.

want to watch again and again? Go to see Kerri’s blog post on THE CREATIVE PROCESS!

go here to hear real recordings of my brilliant wife’s music

www.kerrianddavid.com

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Love, Random, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistic fulfillment, artistry, creative process, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, insight, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, laughter, no one cares, performance anxiety, pressure release, toaster oven, too serious business | Leave a comment »

Learn The Single Lesson [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on December 31, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

dogga babycat end of day copy

At the end of each day, with great enthusiasm and mission, Dog-Dog herds us into the living room. Because it is hysterical to see how many different strategies Dogga can pull from his Aussie bag of tricks, it has become a game for us to give him several false starts. We step toward the living room and then return to the kitchen. We say, “Let’s go!” and he races away with fervor while we remain firmly planted. He returns moments later with a wildly wagging tail. He never gets frustrated. He only gets more clever, more lively in his intention. He is eternally hopeful and more excited by the chase than the finish.

It is the single lesson I hope to learn from him. He is an excellent teacher and I am a very slow student.

It is the last day of 2019 and it has been, to put it mildly, an exhausting year. We are making special preparations to launch the good ship 2019 into the annals of time-gone-by. We might wave a polite so-long as it departs but most likely we’ll turn our backs on the passage, and, like Dogga, we’ll run into the next year with hopeful-tails a-wagging.

We know it is an imaginary line, a made-up calendar distinction. We don’t really expect a clean break, a new, fresh start. Or, perhaps we do expect it. Or perhaps, we desire it in the same way Dogga desires us to go to the living room. It’s the game of chase!

Perhaps the coming year will be less exhausting and more fulfilling if I learn the single Dog-Dog lesson: drop all expectation of outcome, all fear of circumstance, all investment in things that exist only in my too-active-imagination, and love my people whether or not they meet me in the living room. Love my people when they send me on a wild goose chase, not once, but many times. Love them because they love me and it’s fun to be alive and, after all, the circles I run will bring me back to them. Or to myself. Why not laugh?

Perhaps in this new year I will at last learn to fully live what I preach and enjoy the chase simply because it is ALL a game of chase, even the parts that look momentarily like completions. Even the parts that look overwhelming. They pass, too.

The mantra many years ago was to cultivate surprise. Expect surprise. The truth is, I don’t know what will happen in ten minutes or two seconds or in ten days. Do you? Why do we pretend that we know? I think it is the key to Dog-Dog’s delight, he doesn’t pretend to know. He lives in the truth of surprise as opposed to the preconception of boredom or fear or fulfillment. He leads with his heart and his heart is bursting with hope (another name for the expectation of surprise). It is why, after his people-sheep have ambled to the couch [what?! A surprise!], he can sleep so soundly, so completely unburdened by resistance to the day gone by or trepidation-stories of tomorrow.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE END OF THE YEAR