Metaphor | The Direction of Intention

See The Dance [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 26, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“You can only push the truth down for so long, and then it bubbles back up.” ~ Cassandra Clare

“Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul.” ~ D.H. Lawrence

Last night we made a fire in the fire pit. We decided to have a pop-up dinner by the fire so we set up our table, lit candles, poured some wine, and brought our dinner out under the stars on a chilly October night. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky so we looked at the stars. We wondered if the brightest lights were planets.

There are many, many works of art from a genre in the Middle Ages known as the Dance Macabre. Dance with death. The scary images were meant to remind people of life’s fragility, its passing nature. They were also meant to point out the obvious: we are all united in our final destination. No one is better or worse than any other in the grand scheme of things, in the Dance Macabre. In the Middle Ages, the allegory was meant to suggest it was best to aim your focus at the afterlife. Do good works as an investment in your future or go to the fiery place below.

Were I to paint a series of Dance Macabre images today, my intent would be the exact opposite: aim your eyes at this moment. There is nothing more precious or wonder-full than this moment. If there is a heaven, it is now. And, it will go unnoticed if the dance is not acknowledged. There is no sadder phrase on earth than, “Same-old-same-old.”

According to some cultures, I am now in sacred space. I’m seeing all things relative to my dad’s recent passing. Sitting by the fire, our dinner complete, we talked about his death and my inability lately to invest too much emotional energy in anything. Things that would have upset me a few months ago barely register. I’m watching the usual list of anxieties and worries drop off. Why would I give an ounce of my wonder to something so…small? Perspective is the gift of the dance macabre. Clarity of sight and intention comes with this kind of perspective.

We clinked our glasses, the cold night and the heat from the fire colliding around us under the stars. DogDog slept on the deck, a few feet away. We realized our moment. Fully. Magic was alive, bubbling everywhere.

read Kerri’s blog post about BUBBLES

Filed under: Art, Edges, Energy, Family, Gratitude, Love, Metaphor, Perspective, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, awe, bubbles, cassandra clare, D.H. Lawrence, Dance Macabre, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Finite, focus placement, fragile life, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, middle ages, perspective, starry night, stars, story, studio melange, time, truth, Two Artists Tuesday, wonder | Leave a comment »

Glance Sideways [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on October 20, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It came as quite a shock. Our beloved plant, Snake-In-The-Grass, was hosting a community of Gnomes and Faeries. We haven’t actually seen the Gnomes and Faeries – they are notoriously hard to spot. They are not fond of human beings since we are famously territorial and also so easily eschew our imaginations. Fearing all things “wild,” we generally erect fences and street lights, build dams and make management plans for “nature.” If we could see them, I suspect we’d notice how often they roll their eyes at us.

When I was playing the role of consultant in public school systems, I took note of a central mandate of the adults, playing the role of teacher or administrator: clamp the imagination of the young people, those imaginers playing the role of students. The students would enter the system with wide-open imaginations, free from limitation, and the oldsters found it necessary to kibosh or contain that wide-open meadow. This is not meant to disparage those actors playing the role of adults; when young, they’d been recipients of the imagination whammy, too. They were simply carrying on the tradition. The imagination is apparently considered a wild-thing so necessary of damming.

Dammed imaginations do not die, they distort. Imagination, as a wild thing, will run in circles when put in a cage. It will gnaw its leg off when caught in a snare. It will invent monsters and madness as it paces to-and-fro. It will get angry as it descends into madness. You might say that millions of Americans are gnawing their legs off, angry at the swirl of dark imagining run amok in their caged craniums, seeking reasons and someone-to-blame for their dark imagining. The caged imagination will lead all the lemmings over the cliff with the shout, “Where we go one, we go all!” It seems that we are awash in imprisoned imaginations howling to be freed.

I took it as a positive sign that the Gnomes and the Faeries took up residence in our house under the good protection of Snake-In-The-Grass. While the world outside our doors goes deeper and deeper into the cage-of-its-own-creation, the world inside our house seems to have become a refuge, a safe haven, for those beings still alive in their imaginations.

David recently wrote that he was dedicating himself to being a better artist. He’s been making art with his son again, a wild imaginer that has pulled his daddy (and me, too) out of our cages and into the open meadow. I can’t wait to see what David will do next. Who he will now become. What role he will shed. He’s already a great artist so the possibilities are…wild.

I confess that I regularly wander into the sunroom and glance sideways at Snake-In-The-Grass. Sideways – so they say- is the only way we humans can catch a glimpse of the Gnomes and Faeries. I want them to know that I’m looking.

read Kerri’s blog post about TINY MUSHROOMS

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor, Random | Tagged: artist, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Faeries, freedom of expression, Gnomes, imagination, inhibition, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mushrooms, nature, possibilities, safe haven, stifled imagination, studio melange, wild | Leave a comment »

Listen To Claude [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 19, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

In his 60’s, the famous Impressionist painter Claude Monet went blind. Cataracts were removed, restored his sight, but also changed his capacity to see color. He painted in blues because he couldn’t perceive red and yellow. He was not fond of the paintings that he produced. He painted what he could see. Historians, on the other hand, credit his blue paintings as an important link to abstract painting.

We never really know the impact of our actions or our work.

The path paralleled a stream. As we walked up the mountain, she stopped often and took photographs. The sun on the water was enticing so she aimed her camera at the stream. “Look!” she said, showing me. “These look like abstract paintings!”

“They look like Monet,” I said. “Gorgeous.”

Whether they know it or not, artists are always having conversations with their artistic ancestors. I was amused at the idea that Kerri and Claude were having a chat. The world of a master painter, living before ubiquitous photography, meets they eyes of one who sees and quickly captures.

I was also amused that, through Kerri’s picture, Claude and I were having an exchange. “I love your blues,” I say. Claude responds, “Ah, but it’s the reds and yellows that make the blue so vibrant. Contrast principle,” he winks.

Excited, she returned to the stream to take more photos.

I turned my face to the sun. I breathed in the mountain air, the aspen leaves fluttering. I have not finished a painting since the pandemic began. “I feel empty,” I say to Claude.

“We paint what we see, ” Claude whispered. “Sometimes we simply cannot see.”

“Yes,” I said, “I am blind. But my cataracts are not in my eyes.”

“No,” Claude replied. “You are not blind, you see well enough. You’ve closed your eyes.”

“Lookit!” Kerri smiled, “These are so cool!” She shows me more water close-ups, a symphony in orange, blue and gold.

“Don’t worry,” Claude smiled. “When you are ready, you’ll open your eyes again. You’ll see a whole new world. New colors and shapes. More than blue.”

“You think so?” I ask.

“Isn’t it beautiful!” Kerri glowed.

“Do you see?” he smiled and faded into the photograph.

“Yes,” I laughed and nodded, “It’s really beautiful.”

read Kerri’s blog post about MONET WATER

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Identity, Metaphor, Navel Gazing, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: abstract, artistry, beauty, Blue paintings, Claude Monet, contrast, contrast principle, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, impressionists, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mountains, painter, red and yellow, seeing, story, studio melange | Leave a comment »

Roll Easier [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 15, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“I feel like I’ve been writing about fall all week!” she said, “What more do I have to say?”

She took this photograph during a walk around our neighborhood. When we left for Colorado the leaves were just beginning to turn. A week later, when we returned, the ground was a festival of color. The sidewalks beckoned children of all ages to drag their feet through the leaves. Shushing sounds. Instead of dragging her feet, she knelt to get closer. “Lookit!” she gasped, all one word. If appreciation is prayer, then sometimes taking a picture is prayer.

Rather than at new years, the fall is when I find myself making resolutions. My resolutions are rarely about achievements – things that I want – and more of what I desire to let go. What will lighten my spirit-load? I am a wanderer to the core and so much of what I’ve accumulated in life is heavy to carry. Making shushing sounds through the leaves, I know this fall that I will leave behind some friction. I’m dropping some long-held resistance, so I might roll easier in the world.

Fall is for reflection. Fall is for dropping brilliant leaves and making sounds with the crunchy color. Synesthesia. What more is there to say?

all of Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blog post about FALL

Filed under: KS Friday, Metaphor, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, autumn, color, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fall, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, leaves, leaving, letting go, reflection, resistance, studio melange | Leave a comment »

See Through It [on Flawed or Not-So-Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on October 13, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Light passes through. Transparent. Trans; across or beyond. A prefix of movement.

Last night we had snacks with some pals. Our conversation turned to politics and how resistant we are as a nation to tell our full story. Opaque. The opposite of transparent. Impenetrability of light. “It’s just history,” someone said. “History is history.”

Narrative. With a point of view. The winners of wars tell one story. The opposite side has another tale to tell. History is never just history. A country as deeply divided as ours is warring over its history. What happens if we actually tell our full story? Who are we if we acknowledge our shadow? Shine the light or snuff it?

Boiling our times down to the essence, we’d arrive at these two words. Transparent. Opaque. Isn’t it always the way that people who have something to hide proclaim transparency? Isn’t it always the case that people who lie claim to be holders of the truth? Opacity is a tricky business.

I recently watched again Simon Sinek’s first TED talk. He said, “There are leaders and there are those who actually lead.” We could call it a simple truth: we know those who actually lead because they boldly shine-the-light. They are not afraid of being seen or seen through. They are, however, a threat to those who call themselves “leaders,” those that fear the revelations of light. Reveal-ations. Those leaders will fight to-the-death to maintain their opacity. They will sacrifice the greater for the lesser if necessary to remain opaque.

We are watching – and participating in – history being written. Our question – as has been true from the beginning: will we shine the light without fear of transparency or hide behind the wall of opacity? It’s just history.

read Kerri’s blog post about TRANSPARENCY

Filed under: Edges, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Language, Metaphor, Pattern, Seeing | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, hsitory, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, leadership, light, opacity, opaque, reveal, revelation, seen, simon sinek, story, studio melange, the full story, those who lead, transparency, transparent, truth, unseen | Leave a comment »

Glut And Remember [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on October 6, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Max Boot just wrote an op-ed: The GOP has become the stupid party – and proud of it.

Recently, in the Wall Street Journal, Lance Morrow wrote, “You Are Living In the Golden Age of Stupidity.”

As we drove across the country I read headlines to Kerri. “It’s all so unbelievably stupid!” we say in unison as the miles tick by. I see vast farms with sign-after-sign declaring anger with government interference though the farmers seem okay with the interference when it comes as a subsidy. A manipulated market. A paved road. A public school.

Ignorant. Dense. Brainless. Foolish. Mindless. Synonyms of stupid. “Maybe we’ve always been this stupid,” I offer as we pass an abandoned Stuckey’s. “Maybe,” she says.

One day, when I lived in LA, I opened my studio to find the space filled with pigeons. I closed the door and called the landlord. The next day, after hearing all was clear, I returned to find my studio filled with dead pigeons. I closed the door and called the landlord. “Oops,” he said.

It haunted me that the pigeons died, their bodies forming a perfect circle. They knew in death something that we can only imagine.

We walked downtown and saw pudgy pigeon in a doorway. He’d eaten himself into a conundrum. Too heavy to fly. Alone. All he could do was sit and glut and remember what it felt like to soar.

“Oops,” I said. “No landlord necessary,” I mused, darkly.

“What?” she wrinkled her brow.

“Nothing,” I muttered.

“So sad,” Kerri replied, looking at the flightless bird.

A metaphor, I thought. No circle. Solitary. Just stupid.

read Kerri’s blog post about PUDGY PIGEON

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor | Tagged: circle, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, death, foolish, Golden Age of Stupidtiy, GOP, governement, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lance morrow, max boot, mindless, pigeon, studio melange, stupid, subsidy, wall street journal, washington post | Leave a comment »

Hold The Vision Lightly [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 29, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Тhe gentle overcomes the rigid.
The slow overcomes the fast.
The weak overcomes the strong.”
…
“Everyone knows that the yielding overcomes the stiff,
and the soft overcomes the hard.
Yet no one applies this knowledge.” ~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

If there is a metaphor on this day – or a lesson – it is that a plan or a goal held too firmly is…not useful. Tom Robbins wrote that stability is not rigidity. Stability, like all aspects of balance, is dynamic, constantly adjusting. How’s that for a paradox? Stability is fluid.

My clan is gathering. We are driving a long distance to attend so have plenty of time to talk, to think, to remember. Kerri has lost both of her parents so I have many questions about the river of complex feelings running through me. Joseph Campbell said in an interview with Bill Moyers that “No one lives the life they intend.” I wonder what life my father intended? I think he was more capable of rolling with his circumstance than I, at first, understood.

There are no straight lines in nature and it turns out that we humans, we storytelling animals, are a part of nature and not above it. Our story of dominion is just that, a story. My dad loved to be outdoors. He tried to be a school teacher but there was not enough air in a classroom. He couldn’t breathe so he made a life out in the elements. His skin, at the end, was so sun-baked that it was brittle. He achieved his desire and his desire was simple.

I am, at this point in life, ecstatic that I didn’t achieve what I set out to do when I was 20. I actually thought I was a train on a fixed track and learned through derailing (a few times) that I needed to let go of my notion of the track. I found my artist when I let go of my artist. On this drive, en route to the funeral, I fully appreciate my wanderer heart and my compulsion to step off of edges. I could have done with a bit less chaos but am now of the mind that life has given me a master class in balance. It continues to teach me to open my hand and not hold so firmly to my ideas, my beliefs.

I am currently working with software engineers. They are building a system. It has rules and boundaries and limits. It has a guiding principle. It will do what it is designed to do. And yet, it will never be finished. It grows and changes almost daily. There is a master plan, but the vision does not blind the visionary or the developers to surprises. To changes. They learn as the software emerges. On one hand it is a foreign land to me and on the other, I know intimately how this land works. There are no iron tracks. No straight lines. The movement is in cycles and circles and every time we try to force it into a line, we impede the process, we inhibit the growth.

The lesson is always the same.

We awoke this morning exhausted. And, rather than push our way back onto the road, we sat and sipped coffee. We watched the sunrise. We decided not to put our day on an iron track. We appreciated our moment. So, there is some hope, some small evidence – some – that the lesson is taking root.

read Kerri’s blog post about TRACKS

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor, Navel Gazing | Tagged: artistry, balance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, death, father, fluid, funeral, Joseph Campbell, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lao tzu, lessons, life, metaphor, stability, story, studio melange, Tao Te Ching, Tom Robbins, vision | Leave a comment »

Make It To Last [on KS Friday]

Posted on September 24, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’ve watched master carpenters work. They consider the wood, the grain, the feel. Joinery as artistry. When John volunteered in the scene shop I teased him that furniture made for plays need not survive the apocalypse. No matter. He built tables and chairs for plays that will be at auction 100 years from now. He cared about his work, not his circumstance. The future hosts of Antiques Road Show will speculate about the mysterious origins of the unique and fine furniture found in the old prop house.

Standing in the old firehouse I was taken by the floors. They were not mass produced, engineered in a factory, or pre-cut to fit a template. They were planed by hand. Individually cut. They were pegged into place. The human touch was everywhere apparent. Someone, now long gone, cared about the job. Rough carpenter, solid sturdy work. Unlike the contemporary version of flooring, this was made to last. It was meant to outlive the artisan and the artisan took pride in that.

I recently learned that our refrigerator was engineered to breakdown in seven years. “It’s not a good business model to make things to last,” the salesman explained. Years ago, when I bought my truck, Rob told me it would start having trouble at 90,000 miles. It would be junk by 130,000. He was spot on. “They’re made to fall apart,” he said.

It is true, we do things fast. And, there’s a host of praises to be sung about our capacity to produce, the speed at which we invent and adapt. However, I wonder what the person at the factory assembling my destructible refrigerator thinks of their work. It must just be work. What about the engineer and designers? Made to fail? And what about me? A consumer of goods, an easy discarder-of-things.

Standing on the floor of the firehouse, I couldn’t help myself: systems do what they are designed to do. I wondered, in this age of easy discards, what kind of community conversation we would entertain if the business model – if the community model – the leadership model – considered the pride of workmanship, if human hands and hearts were more apparent in the process. Pride in workmanship. What if we made things to last rather than to discard? Would we see each other through different eyes?

read Kerri’s blog post about the FLOOR

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora

Filed under: KS Friday, Metaphor, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: artisan, artistry, business model, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, design, engineer, floors, human touch, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pride, released from the heart, studio melange, the melange, untitled interlude, workmanship | Leave a comment »

Look For Joey [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 20, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s been a life-long fascination of mine. In the most individualistic culture on earth, we like to display our status by wearing brand names and shop the same stores in malls that look the same across the nation. We are the inventors of the chain store, the strip mall. The one-size-fits-all. The suburb and cookie-cutter-house. Here in the cult of the individual, we like to do what every one else is doing.

Kerri and I tease about writing a book. It’s called “Looking For Joey.” Google Joey Coconato or his YouTube channel, My Own Frontier, and our blogs pop up at the top. We’ve not written much about Joey Coconato – a few posts – but to our great amusement, we top-the-google-list. And, so, these days, we are regularly contacted by people who are looking for Joey. They think we know him. They think he’s editing his next video in our basement.

Joey lives off the grid. He backpacks the American wilderness and documents his treks with videos. We became avid Joey fans when pandemic-isolating last year and vicariously got “out there” through Joey’s films.

After watching a few of his films it becomes abundantly clear that Joey is what everyone on the grid pretends to be. An individual. His clothes are ripped. His gear is constantly in disrepair. His food is what he can get his hands on at the moment. He is not climbing any ladder. In other words, he is not invested in how he looks, what he wears, or whether or not he’s doing things the way he ought to do them. He’s doing life in his way. At his pace. In his place. According to his star.

After receiving the latest: “Do you know where Joey is? It’s been 8 months since he posted…” I decided that, in these un-united-united-states, everyone is looking for Joey. He has, for me, ascended to the level of metaphor. He is authentic in an age of thin veneer.

While people are draping themselves in tribal-hate-flags and crying “individual freedom”, sticking their heads in the Q-sands as an act of liberation, blinding themselves in a rabid-festival of group think, all the while shaking their fists declaring, “No one can tell me what to do.” Insisting without any connection to reality that an election was stolen, that vaccines in a pandemic are filled with micro chips, that January 6 was an ordinary day at the Capitol – we are a mess of lockstep inanity.

I think everyone is looking for Joey. They – we – no longer know what is real so they -we – are splintering into disparate group-fantasy. Lemmings singing a chorus of My Way as they – we – plummet off our collective cliff.

Honesty is not that hard to spot if you want to look for it. Much of the fight falls away when you are prepared to acknowledge that much of what we profess is cotton-candy, that we are terrified of looking at our full history. Shops and malls and online outlets are not great places to look for answers. Running from critical race theory does not make our past go away.

A walk about in nature has a way of making the absurd abstractions fall away. Carrying your food on your back and looking for water when you need it strips away the investments in the ridiculous.

Individuals – people truly living out of their own center – generally don’t have to wear brands or broadcast their individuality. They are not seeking validation. They are not fighting for their freedom. Like Joey (I imagine) they simply live it.

[ the cool Dr. Seusss plant is called white baneberry or doll’s eyes.]

read Kerri’s blog post about STAND OUT

Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: aarp, artistry, back packing, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Dr. Seuss, fit in, frank sinatra, freedom, group think, individual, individuality, joey coconato, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lemmings, malls, metaphor, my own frontier, my way, Stand out, story, studio melange | 6 Comments »

Attend To The Quiet [on KS Friday]

Posted on September 17, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

My studio is a place of quiet. Inside and out. It is the place where I go – where I’ve always gone, when I need to recenter myself of exit the crazy-brain. Lately, my studio has been blown to bits. Water has been a near constant invader, either from the ceiling when the pipe broke in the spring or from the floor when roots clogged the sewer main. Twice. It seems as if water wants me to take a break from painting. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Each time the water rises, the paintings rise, too. We scramble to move everything up the stairs. Mostly, they are stored on blocks so live protected above the rising tide – but pulling up carpet or clearing space for the plumbers has meant a perpetual studio deconstruction. Kerri stubbed her toe – okay, broke her toe – on one of the bigger paintings that now populate our sitting room. It’s a maze of paintings out there. Yet, she is wise. She’s insisting that we leave the paintings where they are, scattered here and there. At least for now. At least until we can clear out and rethink our space.

Kerri is much more sound sensitive than I am. I am much more spatially sensitive than she is. The sign on our deck, “Shh” addresses her need for sound-quiet. It’s all about space-quiet for me. Space-quiet means open space. It’s been that way all of my life: if there’s too much stuff, I shut down.

The water, as it turns out, is trying to tell me something. Lately, when I go down into the blasted-apart-and-now-empty-studio-space, I can breathe. I feel it every time I descend the stairs. I breathe. My space had become too impacted. Too many paintings, too many tables, too little space. “Shh.”

I’ve often written about the time, after I moved to Seattle, that I burned most of my paintings. I needed space. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was tired of hauling and storing paintings. I didn’t know what else to do. I needed air and fire brought it to me.

And, so, the water pours from the ceiling. It bubbles up through the floors. Again. What feels like a catastrophe comes with a cautionary message. No fire is needed this time. To attend to the space is to attend to the quiet. Stop. “Shh.” Breathe.