Fill With Wonder [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 11, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Upon seeing the first tree at the entrance gate I asked a question that I repeated all night, “How did they do that?”

My question was rhetorical. I did not expect an answer. I might as well have exclaimed,”OMG!” or, “WOW!” or whispered, “Unbelievable!” Instead, my wide-eyed-awe expressed as a quiz-to-no-one.

Kerri sometimes quotes from Anne Lamott’s book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. I realized, walking through the Garden, astonished by the lights, that I was immersed in one of Anne’s prayers. I’m not a big prayer guy so it amused me that my enthusiastic WOW was voicing as a question. The images projected on the mist. The field of dancing firelight. The light cathedral. How-did-they-do-that-how-did-they-do-that-how-did-they-do-that?

As we left the Garden and wandered toward the car I was delighted not to have an answer. The lights moved me to tears. I laughed heartily. I was stunned to silence. I watched children and adults alike, dancing into the dome and running toward the many-colored fireflies. Knowing the “how” would have diminished a bit of the magic. The more important question was obvious: there is no better “why” than to fill people with wonder.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREE

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Play | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Give The Gift [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 28, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” ~ Pablo Picasso

As guiding principles go, this one, for me, is top of the heap: deep down, everyone wants to play. Behind every stony face and wrinkled brow is a titanic impulse to play. It’s as true in boardrooms (or bored rooms) as it is in artist’s studios.

Sometimes it takes effort to peel off the layers of acquired seriousness. Sometimes it takes a deep sea dive to locate the original impulse and bring it to the surface for air. No matter the case, with a proper opportunity, play will find a way. Air will fill the lungs and hoots will follow.

If I had a magic wand I would ding the world-of-humans on the noggin’ and reveal their original impulse. Drop the armor, take off the mask and feel the sunshine. Kick off the loafers and feel the grass beneath your feet. Slide across the floor in your socks. Ties are better used as headwear or for slinging snowballs.

Wind up the reindeer and listen to the laughter in the race to the edge of the table. The inner child is one wind-up reindeer away. The inner artist needs finger paint or frosting for a cookie. The opportunity for play is the best gift of this or any season.

read Kerri’s blogpost about REINDEER

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Play | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Wrap It [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 9, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Christo wrapped mountains in fabric. He wrapped coastlines. He populated passes with umbrellas. When I saw the candlesticks wrapped in plastic and ready to roll out the door, I thought, “Little Christo.” Wrap it and it becomes something else. Visible, invisible.

My favorite part of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s website was found way at the bottom. Click on the words, “Projects Not Realized.” There were so many ideas! Whacky and wonderful visions that, for one reason or another, never made it off the drawing board. Why was one building wrapped and another rejected? Why did the mountain of barrels never block the intersection? What sense is there to be made of projects that are not invested in sense-making?

Sense-making follows experience and, in these times with so much media shouting for attention and propagandizing belief, it’s very hard to have a direct experience. I suppose that’s why Christo wrapped mountains. It takes an extreme act of non-sense to shock us into silent what-the-heck-ness.

I saw his umbrellas popping vibrant yellow along the pass from Bakersfield to LA. Giant dandelions stretching for miles. What I most remember as I stopped to get a closer look: children found it impossible not to dance at their bases. Make sense of that.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CANDLESTICKS

Greet The World, 48x48IN, mixed media

greet the world © 2011 david robinson

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Play, Possibility, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Relax And Prime [on KS Friday]

Posted on November 26, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon yesterday drawing cartoons. I had to get away from the computer screen. I’ve learned – relearned – that staring into the screen too long makes me myopic and unimaginative. I’m not certain if this is true for everyone but I am kinesthetic. There’s a necessary balance. Sitting still and staring at a screen without the opposite focus are creative-killers for me. I do my best thinking when I move around, when I stop trying to solve or deconstruct. I’m fortunate that drawing with a #2 pencil at an old-fashioned light table is part of my job.

Greg lives his life in front of a screen – multiple screens – and, to get away, he dives. His underwater photography is gorgeous. In a meeting a few days ago, he said that diving clears his mind. His greatest insights come when he’s underwater or sitting on the beach after a dive. There’s good science behind his insight. Relaxation triggers dopamine: the more dopamine, the more creative. Comfort and relaxation prime the creative pump. Stress and tension unplug the pump.

The best thing to do when trying to squeeze out a revelation is to walk away. Take a drive. Take a shower. Stop thinking so hard. Daydreaming is very productive. I’ve learned that anger and frustration rarely – if ever – lead to creative insight and generally produce the opposite of what’s desired. Anger (like too much time in front of a computer screen to me) is myopic. It narrows. It squeezes off the dopamine. It blinds the mind and heart to possibility.

Kent Nerburn wrote that, “For those of us in the arts, enthusiasm is never outlived. The sun is always rising before us, and our wonder at the world, the true source for all meaningful art, only grows stronger as life slows from passage to moments…” There’s always a next painting to paint. Another song to write. A photograph to take. It’s one of the reasons I love taking walks with Kerri: we rarely get very far before she gasps, and stops to take a photograph of some small miracle. And, while she’s collecting images of small miracles, I look to the sky and let my mind wander, a walking meditation, a creative pump primer.

And, almost always, somewhere on the trail, the dot that refused to connect while I was too-long staring at the screen, takes me by the hand and says, “It’s so simple. Do you see?”

read Kerri’s blog post about EVERGREEN

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

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Play, Possibility, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Go To The Shoe Room [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 16, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I managed the theatre conservatory at PCPA Theaterfest, I occasionally gave backstage tours. It was great fun because the favorite stop on the tour – on every tour I gave – was the shoe room. Visitors always enjoyed standing on the stage, they were impressed with the scene and costume shop, they delighted to watch the prop master at work, but the moment we entered the shoe room, they were transcendent. Wide-eyed and giggling, pulling period shoes from the shelves to show their companions, it was as if they’d entered a candy store. The magic was released through the shoes.

The shoes, I suspect, harkened back to a time of dress-up. Childhood. The shoes touched their spirit of play. They beckoned to be worn and, as any actor knows, the shoes will inform how a character moves. The sooner you don the shoes, the sooner you will “find” the character. The shoe room was a portal to possible-other-lives.

I am more enamored by sketches than I am by final drafts. I delight in watching master craftsmen and craftswomen work. Theatre artists do not create illusions, they provide access to other worlds, unknown paths. They invite us to the shoe room to try on another life, even for a moment. The process, to me, is more beautiful than the performance.

As we walked the paths of the Botanical Gardens, the technicians were preparing for the festival of lights. Walkie-talkies crackled. Connections were checked. Battery packs were carefully placed. Multi-colored light strands ran like rivers up the trunks of trees. E-candles on armatures floated in the waterways. Magic was in the making. During the daylight, the entire expanse of the Garden is backstage – exposed wires and explicit design. At night, the mechanics will fade behind the light curtain. Backstage will become fore-stage. The light will invite us into another world. The light will touch the spirit of play.

I have always believed that people, lurking behind those serious faces, really just want to play. It’s the reason I kicked off my shoes every time I entered a room to do a facilitation. Lose your shoes and it’s no longer a serious affair. Play threatens. Play is suddenly a real possibility. The spirit of play cracks even the most harden entrenchment. Play necessitates collaboration and sharing. Pirates and Princesses need mates and parrots and knights in order for the world to be complete. Lawyers will take off their ties and wear them as headbands when the shoes come off and the serious topics are approached in socks and bare toes.

I recently – as we all have – been privy to an endless contentious debate about what this nation needs to do to get back on track. I believe it is not so complicated. We can carry on our oh-so-serious-division, but the single rule should be that no one can open their mouth – politician, pundit, and pedestrian alike – before first taking off their shoes.

read Kerri’s blog post about LIGHT STRANDS

Filed under: Art, Business, Creativity, Identity, Metaphor, Play, Possibility, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Reach Purely [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 2, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Art, as best practiced and understood over the centuries, is a spiritual as much as technical pursuit.” ~ Kent Nerburn, Dancing With The Gods

It was disconcerting. It still is. The illusion was so distinct that I had to show the book to Kerri and ask if she saw it, too. Each morning I read a few pages from Kent Nerburn’s book. This morning, in a chapter entitled The Divine Thread, I turned the page and a single paragraph, just a few sentences, was printed in a font twice the size as anything else on the page. I read it a few times since the author had given the section such obvious emphasis. After the I finished the chapter, I looked back to reread the oversized section – and it was printed in the same size font as everything else. It wasn’t emphasized at all. The shock of it made me dizzy.

“Art, however, does create this touch. It speaks in different voices, different rhythms, different languages. There is no place in the human heart it cannot reach.”

Paul taught his student-actors that they had an obligation to something greater. “When you choose to get on the stage, you have the power to impact other people’s lives. Do not take that responsibility lightly.” Your art, your creation, if purely intended, will reach the heart of another – purely. Even the loneliest painter knows the transcendence of the expansive energy that comes through in the moment of creation. Transcendence is all inclusive.

I have been humbled by the great artists I’ve known. Teachers, mentors, and others. I’ve been humbled by their humility. Tom, a brilliant director of plays and believer of possibility, influenced more artists than any person I know. He was tortured by the size and scope of his gift. At the end of his life, sitting before a fire in his cabin, he was, for a moment lost in thought. I watched his revelation come to the surface. He looked into his wine and said, “I think I did my best work when I was a just starting, when I was second grade teacher. It was pure imagination. I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that we could have fun telling stories and going on adventures where our imaginations led us. It was pure.”

I met a few teachers who’d been second grade students in that classroom of long ago. They told me that year changed their lives. They touched his heart and he touched theirs. Shrunken heads and planning expeditions to the Amazon. Maps and budgets and “What do we need to bring to survive?” They spent weeks preparing for “blind day,” an exploration of the world through the full scope of senses. “What could we learn if we didn’t rely on our sight? What would we need to prepare to help each other?” he asked. Pure.

For our wedding, Julia made for us a small box with a Klimt’s ‘The Kiss” decoupaged on the lid. Inside, she placed a few Euros. A metaphor. Great love as a container for great adventure. We placed the box in our sitting room in a spot where we see it everyday.

Kerri knelt on the dock to get this photograph of the water. “The color!” she gasped. Pull up an image of “The Kiss” – or any of Klimt’s paintings for a closer inspection and you’ll see this water pattern. Klimt might have painted it. He studied swirls in water, swimming color on the reflection of the surface. I’m certain of it.

Great love. Great adventure. Tom. Julia. Paul. Art that is pure. My head spins. There is no place in the human heart that art cannot reach.

read Kerri’s blog post about WATER

images of water © kerri sherwood 2021

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Education, Gratitude, Metaphor, Play, Possibility, Transcendence, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Try To Explain [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on October 25, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s nearly impossible to explain. I’ve had the conversation a thousand times and I know it’s fruitless from the outset. Why did I choose a life without a safety net? A life with stability and benefits? Why was I willing to work 80 hour weeks for not-very-much-pay? I’ve heard more than once that “Artists are indulgent.” Or, “Artists are fools.”

Maybe. I’ll never know because it is impossible to explain to someone who operates from a different imperative. I’ve thought myself foolish more than a few times, and, usually, when I measure myself by the standards of 9-to-5.

For me, like all the artists I know and admire, there has never been a distinct line between work and play. Given any amount of free time, I’d rather be in the studio than anywhere on earth. When I was directing plays and running theatre companies, I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and get back to work. The time between productions or studio time, what most people call “vacation,” was-and-is meant to catch up on sleep and fill up the well for the next project. Often, this thing called ‘vacation’ was an opportunity to visit museums, drink in art/inspiration or stand in a castle or sit in the city where the next play is set.

For most of my life, even before I really thought about artists or artistry, vacation involved a sketchbook. I sat in the back of the station wagon and drew Colonel Sanders from the bucket of chicken or tried to copy a photo from the National Geographic magazine. Fun and play involved a deep dive into the world I could create/discover through a pencil on blank pages.

I can spend hours sitting and watching people. Small dramas. Gestures. Manipulations. Kindnesses. A little burst of love that would otherwise go unnoticed. Traveling for work meant time spent in airports, a goldmine of observation-time. Work or play?

Perhaps that is why there is no line between work and play. I see it in Kerri, too. We are constantly noticing. Paying attention to what is beautiful or interesting. Feeling what is needed and what is not. We’ve talked endlessly about being empathic. Feeling what others feel. I’ve watched Kerri walk into a rehearsal and “know” where there is pain, where there is joy, know when she needs to wrap some humor around a bruised community. Many years ago, a wise-old-artist told me that I had to learn to distinguish between what was my “stuff” and what was not. What were my feelings and what was not. Sage advice. I’ve been witness to many artists imploding, carrying other people’s garbage as their own.

When we walk, Kerri takes photographs. “I’m sorry,” she says, stooping to focus on a leaf or stone. Why does she apologize for noticing? Here’s a hint: all of her life she’s been asked to explain why she stops to notice. What value can there possibly be in stopping forward motion, especially in a world hell-bent on “getting there faster.” What is the value-proposition of noticing? “Can you please explain why you have to stop and see and, of all things, make it into music?” Or a story. Or a painting. Or a dance.

“Why did you climb that tree?” the adults asked. “It’s where I write poetry,” she explained. Work or vacation? Is it play?

Every Saturday we go through Kerri’s photos from the week and choose five as prompts for our Melange. We collect phrases we hear, words that inspire or disturb. Those end up in the Melange, too. Are we working? Is this play? We delight in sitting each day and writing together. We laugh at our Smack-dab cartoon. They are fun to write and draw and color. None of this makes us any money. Is it work or is it vacation?

I’m currently drawing cartoons and tossing thought-bombs into a community of software entrepreneurs – the boss understands that I notice things and can translate what I notice into other shapes and expressions. Is there value in that? Is it work? Is it play? Will it make money?

Are there possibly other measures of value?

It’s nearly impossible to explain.

read Kerri’s blog post about VACATION

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Navel Gazing, Play | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Be The Rain [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 20, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Simple elegance. Courteous goodwill. Thoughtfulness. Consideration. Do honor. Ennoble. Look up the word “grace” and these are the phrases and synonyms that you will find.

John Updike wrote that “Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.” California is on fire. So is Greece and Turkey. Siberia. Reservoirs are shrinking. So many are looking to the sky awaiting its descent to the earth. Awaiting simple grace.

When I lived in Seattle I delighted on a hot summer day of running through the International Fountain. I was not alone. Children and adults alike squealed as they played in the dancing jets of water. It was a joy to go to the fountain, sit in the spray and watch people play, rest, and rejuvenate with and in the water.

We are following couples as they through-hike the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail. They plan their days according to their water sources. There are water-less stretches that are made do-able only because a trail-angel maintains a cache of water for the hikers.

Trail-angels, people who, for no other reason than having the satisfaction of helping ease the journey of others, give me hope. They bring respite, perhaps because someone in their past did it for them and it mattered. They make difficult passages do-able. Sometimes they provide a ride into town. They look for opportunities to help. They are the rain when rain is nowhere to be found.

Isn’t that grace? Rain meeting earth? Angel meeting a need, providing water so a thirsty traveler might drink and continue walking?

Grace on the album Right Now

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

read Kerri’s blog post about WATER

grace/right now ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Gratitude, Heroes, KS Friday, Metaphor, Play | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Pull The Weed [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 6, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

One of my favorite simple pleasures each day is watching Kerri go out in the early morning and tend to her tomatoes. The world is quiet. The coffee is brewing. Dogga makes sure the yard is clear of marauding squirrels so the path to tomatoes is safe. An extraordinary ordinary moment. A tender ritual. A wonderful world.

Put down your clever and pick up your ordinary. It is one of my favorite “rules” of improvisational theatre. It is also a good credo to live by. Trying to be clever will take you out of the game every time. It is as true in all aspects of life as it is in art. The beautiful little secret: power, presence, flow…these live in the province of the ordinary.

When I was learning to scuba dive,Terry tried to teach me one central concept: get neutral. After several dives, fighting for control, trying “to do it right,” burning through my oxygen with my dedicated stress, I simply relaxed. I found the neutral that he advised. It was as if I joined the current. The colors sharpened. Time seemed to slow. My breathing definitely slowed. What was a struggle only a few moments before was suddenly easy. I’d picked up my ordinary. I got out of my way.

I delight watching children draw. They are free in their ordinary, not a shred of clever to be found. They lose that. We lose that, trying to be…something other than what we are. How many of us shudder in the notion that we are inauthentic? How many of us invest in the notion of low “self-esteem?” The circle of ordinary comes back around though it is cloaked in words like “self love” or “acceptance” or “wholeness.” Get neutral. Put down your clever.

Ordinary, not clever. It is a discovery that ought to stick early in life but generally lands much later. There’s very little distance between the child that freely colors and the adult that one day remembers that nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing. It is ordinary to color with abandon. The riches are in tending the tomatoes. “Clever” is merely a weed that needs pulling. In the ordinary, a wonderful world is waiting.

PULLING WEEDS on Kerri’s album RIGHT NOW is available on ITunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blog post on TOMATOES

pulling weeds/right now ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, KS Friday, Metaphor, Play | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

In-Tolerate [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 21, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

In theatre school, I was taught that the action of the play was driven by conflict. I’ve never been comfortable with that word. Something did not ring true with the concept of conflict. A dividing line. Battle. Fight. Kerri just suggested that conflict is not simply a line, it is bandwidth. A full spectrum of color in our human struggle.

I recently read that, through resistance, all things become visible. We see color because some light rays are absorbed and others are reflected. The light ray is filtered, separated into color bands. We see the color that was resisted. Rejected by the surface. Split off. Separated. Is it any wonder that the epicenter of most faith traditions, the driver of most origin stories, is the journey through separation back to unity?

We become visible in our birth. Separate. We become invisible in our death and are given to imagining a comforting story of reunion. Re-union. In between those two points, separation and unity, there is life made visible and wildly colorful by the separation. The filters. What is absorbed and rejected. Reflected. Learned. Ignored. Appreciated. Vilified. Visible. Invisible.

This time of pandemic has been, for us, an exercise in separation. In the distancing, we’ve nurtured, intentionally and unintentionally, an appreciation of quiet. Over these many months we’ve grown a garden of simplicity. We read together. We walk our paths slowly. We’ve found that we do not need to be entertained or distracted. We have a low tolerance for crowds and run the opposite direction when there’s too much noise ahead.

We’ve fostered an appreciation for those who walk through life considerate of the needs of others. Our circle of friends has come into focus. We’ve dropped off the plate of many and many have dropped off of our plate. The connective tissue is felt, established and hearty. In some cases, even though our actual conversations are rare, the focus is sharp. Deeply rooted. Arnie. Judy. Jim. Mike. David. In other cases, we communicate almost every day. 20. Brad and Jen. Heart-y.

Our play has become visible through resistance. What we absorb and what we reject has come into stark contrast, clear focus, through the separation. Layers of shallow tolerance have been peeled away revealing a much deeper understanding of what we desire to create in this life, how we desire to live. It is necessary to understand the boundaries set and the colors illuminated by intolerance. Said another way, it is important to be able to thoroughly sort substance from noise. Both inner and outer. I have learned that I have limited tolerance for thoughtless acceptance, for unthinking noise. My resistance. I surround myself with questioners, those curious enough to dig, dedicated to building their thought-castles on bedrock instead of shifting sands. Those few who are capable of releasing their grips on the comfortable known and step willingly into the uncomfortable question. I absorb them. Take them in.

We – all of us – walk the same path, visible in our birth. Separate. Invisible in our death. Re-union. In this we are equal. What we do, how we choose to support each other, or choose not to, in the passage between those two universal points, is all. These choices define the story we live.

The pandemic, the separation, has helped me to a deeper understanding and appreciation of this word: Intolerant. A word that used to inspire egg-shell walking for what it implied. A word held with shallow roots. Now, it is a word rich in complexity, useful in paradox, a resistance that has made so much come visible. Tolerance, ironically, is at the same time intolerance. What, in your play, is acceptable? What, in your play, will you tolerate? What, in your play, will you not tolerate? Your play is not separate from mine.

read Kerri’s blog post about TOLERANCE LEVELS

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective, Play, Seeing, Story | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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