Some things need no interpretation and this song, going into Mother’s Day, is one of those. So, from studio melange, a gift-song from a mom, Kerri, to mothers everywhere.
FISTFUL OF DANDELIONS available on iTunes and CDBaby
from studio melange, a quiet suggestion for the start of the new week.
For me, this Chicken Nugget falls into the category of what-more-needs-to-be-said. And then I hear the chorus of voices blaring from my past work-life that would call this Nugget idealistic pie-in-the-sky blather. “We live in a dog-eat-dog world!” they cry. “It’s survival of the fittest!” To that chorus I need to say more. Dog-eat-dog is a belief system, not an inevitability. Survival of the fittest is a harsh lens and there are, in fact, other lenses available. It’s possible to learn the distinction between human nature and acculturation. Through a different lens all of life is cooperative.
The noise of our airwaves, the chatter of our day is most certainly rooted in fear. It may not seem like a choice but the fear-root is an unnatural selection. People have to work hard to hate. Sadly, I admit, division sells, so the hard work of fear is routinely justified and rabidly defended.
Human nature rises through the noise and becomes visible when disaster strikes. Love is what we see when the hurricanes hit, when the forest fires rage. People running into fire to help. People risking their lives to save others because, in those moments, the truth is out: there is no separation. The political blather drops away. The moralistic chiming rings hollow. It is human nature to reach, not reject. To help, not to hurt.
It’s obvious and all around us if we take off the fear lens and look. Root in love. What-more-needs-to-be-said.
Don’t tell Kerri but this composition, Riverstone, is one of my favorite pieces of her music. It lifts me. Every time. It brings me immediately to my personal mountaintop moments, those times when I felt most alive and shouted to let the universe know it. It perfectly evokes for me that moment on a hot summer day when I waded into a cold mountain stream, my feet stinging, and I laughed at the simple joy of it.
What could be a better gift to give your self on this Friday. Step into Riverstone and let it take you, even for a moment, to your mountaintop.
A Chicken Nugget from studio melange to start your week.
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I adored my grandpa Chan. I carry his middle name. Because he lived in Iowa and I grew up in Colorado my time with him was rare and precious. After his death, as his sons were sorting through his possessions, they asked if I wanted anything, something he might want me to have or to keep close. Immediately I thought of one thing: an old, barely functioning nutcracker that he kept by the pool table in his basement. He let me win many games at that table. We often cracked nuts during my surprising winning streaks. I wanted it because he held it and, as treasures go, now, for me, it holds him.
I keep Chan’s nutcracker in a special box (DeMarcus’ paint box – another priceless treasure). When I am feeling blue or somehow alone in the world, I retreat to my basement and hold that nutcracker in my hand. I feel the presence of a man, my grandfather, so full of laughter and more than his share of mischief. “Do you want to shoot some pool?” I ask, feeling the alone-ness dissipate.
Posted on February 27, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
I knew from a very young age that I would never have children of my own. I knew. It was an intuitive knowing, not an intellectual resolve. My life, I knew, would be a wandering through the wasteland. I would tilt at windmills. I would seek for things that can never be found. Children, I believed (and still believe), needed the kind of stability that a restless seeker like me would never have been capable of providing.
Last night we went to the foreign film festival and saw an inspiring, funny and poignant Irish film called Sing Street. The ingenue explains to her suitor, an aspiring musician, that love is happy-sad. To love is to experience both.
I now have two amazing step-children. They were adults when I came into their lives and both live far away. I am slowly developing relationships with them, creating memories with them. I listen with fascination (and sometimes horror) as Kerri converses with her friends, mothers all, about their children. There is so much suffering, to want to be near their children and yet want them to fulfill their dreams and fly. They want to be present and available BUT not too present or available; those wacky offspring want full support AND they want mom to stay out of their business. Motherhood, I’m learning, is a bottomless yearning, a constant ache, and there is nothing better. There is nothing more fulfilling.
Fathers, I’m observing, are mostly confounded. They shake their heads, not so much in agreement, but in concession. Their spouses are capable of reconciling and celebrating the ambiguity of parenthood. Fatherhood, it seems, is a surrender to the unsolvable. A submission to the mystery. The ache is no less profound. The joy is no less intense.
Posted on February 13, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
Standing at the doorstep of her mortality, Kerri’s mom, Beaky, turned to her daughter and offered these words of advice. Live life, my sweet potato. This print hangs by our front door as a reminder of two very precious gifts: Beaky and this life.
Live life; who doesn’t occasionally need a reminder?
A few years ago, as a readership experiment, we created and published a series of simple images with words. Each image or phrase had a special meaning for us. We called the series two-artists-making-stuff-for-humans. The experiment was a success, our readership quickly grew, and then, like all attention deficit artists, we moved on to other projects. In the melange, Tuesdays belong to Two Artists.
Posted on February 12, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
We were 14 hours into a 17 hour drive when she asked the question. “If we’d had a child, what would we have named it?” After much laughter and too much coffee we settled on Chicken Marsala. Chicken kept us awake for the rest of our drive.
No one can accuse us of not being productive. We are a creative melange of paintings, music, plays, books, children’s books, and, now, cartoons. For over a year we attempted to syndicate our strip, Chicken Marsala (the imaginary child of an aging couple…) and were met with much enthusiasm but not syndication. We produced months of strips and single panel nuggets (chicken strips and chicken nuggets. Titanic wit, yes?).
Brewed from our studio, from the pile of creative perseverance that is stacking up below and above the ping pong table that serves as our archive , we’ve decided to offer a daily blend of goodness, thought, laughter and beauty. It may come fresh off the press or it might be aged and, like Chicken Nuggets, it might be looking for some light. Art is made to share, not archive. Either way, welcome to the melange. Chicken’s day is Monday. This nugget has everything to do with Valentine’s week and a quiet reminder that the universe of feelings is so much bigger than words can possibly contain.
Posted on October 11, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative
When I first met Kerri I told her that she needed to know two things about me: I don’t sing and I don’t pray. I imagine that was bracing news for a woman whose life has been about composing and performing music. I imagine it was especially disconcerting for a woman who stands firmly in a greater spirituality. I thought she needed to know.
A few short months later we were driving through the hills of Georgia en route to North Carolina, windows rolled down, a James Taylor and Carole King concert blaring through the sound system. James Taylor’s song, Something In The Way She Moves, began to play and I sang along. Kerri pulled the car over and began to weep. It turns out I sing after all. And I like it, too. That song became our song (one of them). Jim sang it at our wedding.
We have a dvd of the James Taylor and Carole King concert – at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. We watched it a few weeks ago for the first time. James Taylor told the audience that his song, our song, Something InThe Way She Moves, was the song that popped open his career. He said it was like that song was the doorway to the rest of his life. I knew exactly what he meant. A song. A door pops open. Life.
Yesterday was our second anniversary. Two years ago, Kerri recorded a song she wrote for me, for us. It’s called And Now. Amidst the chaos of our wedding week she somehow recorded it so I might enter the church, enter our wedding ceremony, to the song she wrote and sang, her song for me, our song. As I walked down the aisle that day, her song became the doorway to the rest of my life. In a moment, with a song, my life popped open.
Yesterday, after watching the sunrise we came home, made more coffee and sat on our bed (we call it the raft) with DogDog and BabyCat and told stories of our wedding week. It was the wedding equivalent of a barn raising. Our stories are the stories of all the amazing people who cooked, baked, carried, hauled, comforted, soothed, celebrated and helped us through the doorway. Amidst the stories, we reread our vows. We listened to the songs that to which we processed into the church, Gabriel’s Oboe for Kerri. And Now for me.
Listening, remembering, I sat on the raft and found myself weeping. I understood, perhaps for the first time, that on the other side of the doorway I routinely defined myself by what I was not: not a pray-er, not a singer. On this side of the doorway, there is life, rich, uncontrollable, vast, ever moving, no-need-for-nots or brakes or resistances. Just now. And Now.
Posted on January 7, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative
Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog has moved through several names in his 3 years on earth. He has a cornucopia of names. For a while I dropped the “Tripper” part of his name and simply called him Dog-Dog. Now, much as a mother might use their child’s middle name, we only call him Tripper when he’s in trouble.
Lately I call him Dog-a-Dog (or doggadogga). He answers to Wag-A-Wag. He is an Australian Shepherd and has a bobbed tail that never stops wagging. He is a happy, happy boy. When I let him out in the morning I call him Fuss Bucket. When he comes back in I call him Poop Sack (for obvious reasons) or Bark Monster or Fur Ball. He sheds like a champion. When he circles through the rooms of our house looking for a safe place to deposit his bone, I (cleverly) call him Bone.
All the variations and derivatives are terms of endearment. Dog-Dog knows and responds in kind. Love is like that. Once, sitting on a train, I watched a grandfather lovingly toss his toddler grandson in the air saying, “You’re just Rubbish! That’s what you are! Rubbish!” The boy squealed with delight. The grandfather chuckled with pleasure and repeated the toss, “You’re just Rubbish!”
Language is a beautiful paradox. It is reductive even as it points to the unfathomable universe and the infinity of love. It is referential; we sometimes forget that the word “tree” is not the tree itself. It is merely an invented-phonetic-pointer toward something too complex to comprehend.
Language is powerful beyond comprehension. We use it to narrate our worlds, both inner and outer. The words we choose create the world we see. The words we choose define the world we inhabit. In my consulting/coaching days I used to love playing with exercises that revealed how easily we come to the language of gossip and blame. It requires almost no effort. Like sugar, hate-speak is addictive. It is the mark of a lazy mind.
The language of love takes some intention and consciousness. It demands conscious effort. It requires paying attention. It requires focusing the energy of the mind and, like any focus (or muscle) it demands exercise to be healthy. And, when exercised, it becomes easy. With great love, the word “Rubbish” can generate squeals of pleasure. The name “Fuss Bucket” will engender a full body joy-wag. And, a full body joy-wag will bring the love full circle. Love is like that. Joy is like that.
In his many books, Martin Prechtel writes beautifully about the power and necessity of speaking beautifully. Speaking beautifully creates a beautiful thinker and a beautiful thinker creates – narrates – a beautiful story, a beautiful world.
Posted on November 1, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative
a sketch: Dancing At Crab Meadow
Kerri works on her “un-cantata.” She plays a short section from a piece and it captures my attention. I put down my pencil, close my eyes, and listen. I am inking a cartoon, preparing a proposal. It is mechanical work, rote. I have learned to use this stage of the process as a kind of pay-attention-exercise. It is only tedious if I slip into the illusion that I’ve drawn this line before; I have not, just as I have not lived this moment before.
Artistry is often like laying bricks. Repetition is rarely sexy but beautiful creations come from it. I know that in my repetition I am “putting the lines in my body,” building muscle memory.
I have not heard Kerri play this piece and I find myself savoring it. I love it when she plays. The first time she played for me I was stunned into silence. “Something came through you,” I tell her. “It was enormous.” I often tell her the story of the first time I heard her play. I tell her the story so she will play more. I tell her because I know that music wants to come through her like images want to come through me. “You have to go to the piano,” I say. “Let it come through you.” She responds, “Let’s take a walk.” And we walk. Life comes through.
Neither of us spends as much time in the studio as we ought. Our walks, however, are extraordinary.
We went to a funeral on Saturday. We will attend another funeral tomorrow. There have been many, many in the past few years. I suspect that we are of the age that funerals become common. I have been paying attention to the eulogies with some fascination. They have become life-giving or at least revealing of what actually gives life (and what does not). In the many eulogies I’ve heard, the lives recounted, I’ve yet to hear about the big house, the luxury car that was bought, the clothes or jewelry that the deceased strove to possess. I never hear about the accumulations, the stuff or achievements. I hear warm stories of relationship. I hear of family dinners, trips to the lake, walks in the woods, laughter and lessons. I hear stories of life’s repetitions, the holiday feasts, the coffee sitting, the small moments, the messy moments that amount to time spent together. The walks.
