Bark Your Opinion

Posted on May 7, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
K.Dot and Tripper

K.Dot and Tripper

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog does not like the ukulele. He is not shy about expressing his opinions, particularly where his musical tastes are concerned. For instance, Kerri has a djembe (a very cool drum) that he adores. My frame drum, on the other hand, makes him frantic and filled with angst. I was certain that it was my playing and not the drum that drove him nuts until Kerri tried my drum and he was equally distressed. So desperate was he to silence the offending sound that he tried to put his head through the drum. He bit the frame. We can no longer play my frame drum in the house as it evokes the inner rabid wolf spirit in the normally calm and reserved Tripper Dog.

Our house is filled with musical instruments. Dog-Dog hangs out under the piano when Kerri plays. He wraps himself around her stool and chews a bone when she practices her cello. He sleeps through my clumsy first attempts at new guitar chords (or, perhaps my playing puts him to sleep). His broadmindedness snaps shut at the ukulele. He will go to great lengths to stop the strumming. If we contain him in the kitchen he howls.

Tripper Ukulele Interruption

Tripper Ukulele Interruption

I’m considering an experiment. If you’ve not yet discovered Jake Shimabukuro, do yourself a favor and listen to his work. He is a ukulele master and makes those four little strings sound like a full orchestra. He plays rock and jazz and the blues and anything else that you can’t imagine coming out of a ukulele. Go see his concerts. You won’t believe your eyes or your ears. I have a Jake Shimabukuro CD and am considering slipping it on the player while Tripper isn’t looking. I’m wondering if his disapproval of the ukulele might dissolve in the face of mastery. I’m wondering if Tripper Dog-Dog might gain an appreciation of the ukulele if introduced to deeper levels of sophistication. He is, after all, a puppy and generally open to learning new tricks.

As an old dog, I, too, am open to learning new tricks and the ongoing lesson in this life is about what I can and cannot control. Whether or not Dog-Dog ever grows to appreciate the ukulele is definitely out of my control. What is in my control is this: I will love him either way.

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

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Know What Matters

Posted on May 5, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
A day with Beaky

A day with Beaky

When you leave Florida driving north there is a stretch of highway in Georgia that is littered with billboards advertising everything from the adult superstore to the second coming. The spectrum is as breathtaking as it is comical.

I’ve driven this stretch three times during the past several months and each time I wonder what an archeologist from some distant future might deduce about us if this stretch of highway was the only remaining fragment of evidence of our culture. A few years ago I spent a day in Herculaneum, the other city buried with Pompeii on the day that Vesuvius erupted. Like Pompeii, it was remarkably well preserved. We have so much writing from that time, we have eyewitness accounts, we have museums stuffed with artifacts and art. While I walked the streets of Herculaneum on that hot summer day, I read about the social norms, the exercise practices, food preparation, infrastructure, and what we assume a normal day was like. I also read, based on the placement of the bodies, what that most unusual day, the day the world ended, must have been like. There was a timeline of events. All the while I couldn’t help but wonder if our study of their culture could only reach the superficial, the top layer, the economics. We can sort through the garbage and garner much about daily practices. To study is not the same as knowing. What we know is minute when compared to what we do not know. The timeline told me little of the terror. It told me nothing of the love. The economic statistics told me less than the plaster cast of the old couple huddled together, arms wrapped around each other on their final day.

I recently watched a short TED talk by Ric Elias who was on the plane that a few years ago landed in the Hudson River. He talked about his thoughts as the plane went down, what he learned about life when he faced his death. He was surprised that there was no fear in dying but there was great sadness for all the things he would miss, all the relationships he would leave behind. He learned from that experience that the only thing in his life that mattered was being a good father. He also decided to clear all the toxic relationships and never again participate in negative energy. He said that he gave up being right. I thought of him as I drove the billboard gauntlet a few days ago. The archeologist from the distant future would glean much about our economics and ponder our obvious confusion. She would write studies useful for the tourists that would travel halfway around the world to visit the site of a once thriving community. The tourists would walk the stretch of ancient freeway, gape at the billboards and speculate about our addictions. But they would know nothing of the people who everyday drove that stretch of road with their families, or about people, like me, who drove more than a thousand miles to spend a day or two with a 93 year old woman named Beaky who can tell a story better than almost anyone I’ve ever known.

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

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Hold A Vigil For Kermit

Posted on April 6, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
My studio moves into the light.

My studio moves into the light.

Life returns slowly. It is the time of year that the goddess Demeter ceases grieving because her daughter, Persephone, is allowed to return from the underworld. Demeter’s joy ignites earth’s renewal.

This morning we sat outside on the back porch, wrapped in a blanket, our chairs facing the sun, our backs to the wall so we could feel the radiant heat. We drank coffee, soaked up the sun and talked about everything and nothing at all.

We are feeling the stirring. We moved the studio from the basement into the light. A stalled project now has life and is arcing toward production. Inspiration and enthusiasm are playing chase through our creative sessions. A few days ago I found my sketchbook and spend time each day filling its pages. There are new canvases sitting on my easel.

It is the season of resurrection. We are holding vigil for our pond frog, Kermit. Although his name is common his story is extraordinary. Last summer, after we dug the pond in the backyard, Kermit suddenly appeared. All through the fall we checked on him. He looked out at us from his hiding place in the rocks or if caught him by surprise, he’d dart to the opposite side of the pond. This winter was harsh and the pond froze solid. We worried about his fate. When the pond melted, we found a seemingly lifeless Kermit on the bottom with the leaves.

Many species of frogs hibernate. In fact, we learned that certain wood frogs freeze solid to the core. When winter comes their bodies replace the water in their vital organs with a protective “anti-freeze.” All signs of life cease. The heart stops (it is frozen). All measurable electric impulses close down. When the weather warms, their core thaws, and they quite literally come back to life. If you’ve ever doubted the magic and mystery of this life, spend some time watching frogs.

We don’t know yet if Kermit is hibernating or not so we watch. A layer of ice returns to the pond each night. The temperatures are bobbing just above and way below freezing, so we wait, drink in the sun and good coffee. We watch Tripper-dog-dog-dog discover birds and bark at raindrops on the pond; this is his first-ever spring. We fill with hope and ourselves slowly revive from a long winter of hunkering down. We stretch our limbs, we thaw, we breathe.

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

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Filed under: Art, Awakening, Possibility, Random, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Serve Life

Posted on March 12, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
Untitled by David Robinson

Untitled by David Robinson

I’m writing language for a website. In the past my website reinventions felt like an exercise of the same old cereal in a new marketing box. This time it’s different. I am a new cereal and I’m not certain that I want a box. It makes a difficult task of telling people what I do when I’m fully invested in container resistance. As I wrangled deep into the night with clever but remarkably meaningless marketing language, I had two mini-epiphanies:

1) Last year, unlike the captain of the Titanic, I sailed my ship directly at an iceberg so that it would sink. I sank the ship with all of the fine china, the gold bars and diamonds in the safe, the furniture, the clothes and fine food. It all went to the bottom of the ocean. I wanted off the ship so why would I now build for myself a new ship? I didn’t bob around in my raft in the vast ocean spearing tuna and catching rainwater so that I might someday step back on to the bridge and do it all over again. What, exactly, am I building?

2) I have tried my whole life to squeeze myself into too small of a box (as, I suspect, all of you have, too). I have worn the jacket of coach, of facilitator, of teacher, of director, of actor and waiter and painter. I am none of these and all of these. I have made websites complete with testimonials and classes, nice pictures and e-books, workshops and retreats. The process of building a site is a two-agenda process: first, locate yourself in space and time for other people so that they might find you and, second, orient yourself toward other people’s concern so they might know why they should seek you. In other words, 1) this is where I am and, 2) this is what I provide. The pronoun is “I.”

What, exactly, do I provide? I am not a plumber or a pizza maker. Every marketing person I’ve ever known has advised me to brand myself. Brand myself as what? Brands are made up. A year ago on New Year’s eve, tarot woman told me that she didn’t see a career for me. Rather, she saw lots of expression. “Brand that!” I thought to myself. Last night I reasoned, “I am not a brand.” Neither can I reduce what I do to a pithy phrase or clever visual. That’s precisely why I sought an iceberg and sank the ship!

I’m an artist (a painter and performer) and I write. I like to write a lot. At the center of all that I do is…disruption or change or spirituality or transformation, words that sound great but what do they mean on the concrete, day-to-day experience of living. I deal in heart, intuition, and soul. Great. I hold people’s hands and walk with them into their dreams. I dive with them into their past so they might let go of their story and sit solidly in their present. I help them unbuckle the weight belt of their story so they might surface for air. Brand that.

To ask, “What do I provide?” is to ask the wrong question. This question will always lead to too tight boxes.

Joe sent me some links: short films of Stephen Jenkinson (The Meaning of Death and Making Humans). Stephen Jenkinson says that humans are made, not born. He speaks eloquently about the necessity of dying to our childhood – which means recognizing that our short lives are limited. That’s the recognition necessary to grow up. We can only really fulfill our gifts when we understand the necessity to serve life, not our life. We end. Life continues. Martin Prechtel writes of his community’s male passage rituals; young men learn that they can only serve their community when they recognize their mortality. The passage ritual is meant to bring them to the realization that they are finite. Only then can they understand the imperative to serve something greater than themselves: life. Tonight in the Taize service, Pastor Tom read a passage about losing yourself to find yourself. It is the same concept wrapped in biblical clothes.

Here’s what I want to say on my site: when you are willing to stop trying to save your life and ready to start giving it, call me. No box necessary.

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

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Filed under: Emergence, Identity, Random, Seeing, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Listen To The Window

Posted on March 10, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
'Dancing In The Front Yard' by David Robinson

‘Dancing In The Front Yard’ by David Robinson

I am having an ongoing conversation with a stained glass window. Perhaps it sounds odd but I sit in the choir loft, across the sanctuary from it, and I listen. Without fail a thought always jumps into my head. Sometimes it’s a feeling and if I continue to listen, if I ask questions, breathe and get quiet, great insight follows. My conversations may be the fodder for my next book.

Here’s what I heard today: Stories can be the heaviest thing on earth to carry.

“Tell me more,” I prompted, staring at the red robe that serves as the visual focal point of the window.

After a few moments I heard: So many stories are fear-based. Fear stories are the centerpiece of angst and depression. They are monumental. If you pay attention you can see the weight of the story that people carry. Closed hearts and furrowed brows, burdened shoulders and bad backs: these are bodies struggling under the weight of the story they carry. Stories of shame are heaviest of all.

There was silence but I know enough to sit still, breathe, and listen. After a few moments, the stained glass window continued: No one need carry the burden. Every story can be set down. A story can be left behind.

“Why do we choose to carry the weight?” I asked.

I heard almost immediately: Everyone has experiences that inform the arc of their lifetime. Sometimes it is a wound. Sometimes it is a loss. The story is often the account of “something happening to me.” It forms the great helplessness. It is the victim story. People confuse their life with the story they tell of their life. They think they need the story to know who they are. Without the story they would have to own their choices. Both feet in! They would have to start living. People are life, not the story they tell of life.

“People tell stories. It’s what they do!” I responded.

The light poured in through the window. The clouds must have shifted across the sky. I imagined the window was chuckling at me as I heard: Stories can be the lightest thing on earth to carry….

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

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Do You Hear That?

Posted on February 28, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
'The Wind' by David Robinson

‘The Wind’ by David Robinson

This morning we drove the side roads on the way back from Lake Geneva. We passed through some small burgs that sported gas stations, antique stores, small diners and maybe a bar or two. These are the sweet forgotten places, once on the main road to Lake Geneva, but left behind when the highway was built. They sit amidst the fields waiting for spring thaw and the plow. Barns populate the horizon. People drive slowly, turn slowly, stop slowly. They have a different rhythm than we urban dwellers.

During the drive I thought a lot about the last day I spent with Tom. He passed away in August. I didn’t see him in the last few years of his life so the reality of his passing has yet to hit me. He slipped into dementia and Marcia, his wife, asked me not to come. “Better to remember him as he was,” she said.

It was autumn when I last saw him. Tom was already deep into his dementia and he wanted to show me the small rural graveyard where his ancestor, Frankie, another lost boy, was buried. He’d shown me the site a few times but he didn’t remember and it was important to him that I saw it. I buckled him into my rental car and drove him down the road that cut between the fields, passed the tiny schoolhouse where he went to school as a boy, and stopped at the clump of valley oaks that marked the location of the little graveyard.

We wandered through the graves looking for Frankie’s stone; Tom couldn’t remember where it was.  I led him to it and said, “This one has Frankie written on it; is this it?” He looked hard at the stone before responding, “No. No. I don’t think so.” He stared at the ground, confused. The wind rustled the autumn oak leaves, though the trees were not quite ready to let them drop.

Tom and me a long time ago.

Tom and me a long time ago.

We stood still for several minutes. A man drove up, parked, and came into the graveyard. He carried a small bunch of flowers picked from a home garden and walked directly to a new grave. As we passed him I said, “Hello,” but he didn’t respond. Tom and I moved toward the arch that marked the exit. The man began to sob, deep guttural wails of loss. Tom stopped as if listening to the wind and asked me, “Do you hear that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Poor Frankie,” he said, “I wish I remembered where he is? We always meant to move him so he’d be closer to the rest of the family.” He sighed and looked up at the leaves chattering in the breeze. “I love that sound!” he said, “Don’t you just love it?”

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

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What’s The Question

Posted on February 18, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sand SpiralThese were my questions from the day:

What is the difference between a very strong snowstorm and a blizzard?

What is the difference between a purpose driven life and a passion driven life?

What does it mean to the quality of a lifetime if you begin with the end in mind?

Isn’t the end we have in mind nothing more than something that plagues a mind – isn’t it a story? And can I really ever know the end?

Who cares?

Why is “not knowing” so scary for people?

Why is caring so scary for people?

Why is speaking truth so difficult to do?

Whose truth?

Have I always been on a pilgrimage? If so, why did I only now just realize it?

What does it mean to release the past? Why would I assume that today was going to be like any other day? Why would I assume that I know what is going to happen today just because I have things jotted on my calendar? How many miracles have I missed because of my assumptions?

Gary the waiter told me that during the Olympics, everyone becomes an expert at things that they really know nothing about. Isn’t this same principle always true?

Ann is in the final stages of cancer. I wonder what her questions were today?

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

Go here for hard copies

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Roll Up Your Sleeves

Posted on February 9, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
"Plumber" by Marcia Milner-Brage

“Plumber” by Marcia Milner-Brage

I’ve never owned a house so I’m not much of a repairman. I don’t come with tools or know-how. So, when the bathroom sink plumbing failed yesterday, I was contemplative, which is to say, not much use. I watched Kerri roll up her sleeves and get to work. She crawled under the sink, swore like a sailor, and pulled apart the offending pipes. I ran to fetch tools, paper towels, buckets, and anything else that she needed. I became the plumbing equivalent of a sous-chef.

All the little rubber rings (a technical term, I’m sure) in the pipe joints failed. I like to think that after many years of fine service they simply decided to retire and since they started their careers together they retired together. It was a group retirement without prior notice.

Since we’d entirely deconstructed the fittings, we decided to replace everything so we went to the hardware store, stood in an aisle and consulted with a man who knew less about plumbing than I did. Kerri rolled up her sleeves, swore like a sailor (the unhelpful man fled), and she began pulling parts off the rack until she’d discovered what she needed for reconstruction.

Like true plumbers we had coffee and delayed the inevitable descent beneath the sink. After a healthy interval, since all the heavy lifting and brainwork was already done, I did the deed. Following the example modeled for me, I rolled up my sleeves, swore like a sailor (though my repertoire of words was less imaginative than Kerri’s), and crawled under the sink. Like a control tower helping a passenger land the plane after the pilot passes out, Kerri talked me through the assembly. I was triumphant when the pipes did what pipes are supposed to do, when no water dribbled to the bathroom floor, when the sink was once again open for business.

In my work and my life I rarely experience a sense of real completion. It’s the reason I like to do dishes: there’s a clear beginning, middle, and end. Right now I’m trying to find ways of getting my book into the world and I’ve run through what I know to do. I’ve exhausted my first level of ideas. I realized that the challenge is a lot like plumbing. At the beginning, contemplation is not very useful. Asking the question, “How will I do it?” is necessary but needs to come somewhere in the middle of the process. And, “how” is never a definitive answer, it is a good guess at a next step. “How” never reveals itself until after the job is done.

I work with lots of people and the number one block to meaningful action is the question, “How?” Yesterday in the role of plumber’s apprentice, I learned what I teach: the answer to “how” is this: pull things apart, put your hands in the muck, swear like a sailor, see what’s there, ask for help, know when help is or is not useful, look at the pieces, run and get buckets because there will most likely be a mess. Then, take another step based on what you find.

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

For hard copies, go here.

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Consider The Root

Posted on January 18, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative
Doves by David Robinson

Doves by David Robinson

This one reads like a Zen koan. It is from Tom. We had a conversation the other day and I scribbled these thoughts from our exchange:

Change always shakes the tree. Leaves fall off. People see the leaves fall off and panic. They mistake the leaves for the trunk. They mistake the transient for the foundational. Superficial change is visible; leaves fall. The deeper, necessary change is invisible and much slower in pace; people rarely consider the roots.

It is necessary for the health of the tree to drop its leaves. Roots regenerate in the winter.

Leaves fall. Leaves return. Roots reach deeper so the tree can grow taller. These two oppositions are actually a single action.

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

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Toss It In The Bin

Posted on November 5, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

Here’s an old question that I used to ask in workshops and retreats: what if nothing in you is broken? What if nothing in you needs to be fixed? It jumped out of the archive of my mind today as I clean my house literally and figuratively. I am revisiting the eras of my life and the geography of my growth path. I am also having conversations with people who carry the assumption that they are broken or somehow missing a piece of themselves. They are seeking wholeness, which is another way of saying that they are seeking themselves.

Where is wholeness to be found?

I spent entire decades of my life looking for the missing pieces only to discover – as we all do – that nothing was lost. The moment I stopped trying to meet other people’s expectations, trying to fulfill obligations that were not mine to fulfill, taking responsibility for feelings that were not my own, I discovered that I had all of my pieces. They were there all along. I was looking for my wholeness in other people’s eyes so no wonder I couldn’t see myself clearly! I was looking in the wrong direction.

Wholeness is not something we lose. Wholeness is something we lose sight of. Focusing on meeting other’s expectations blinds us to our own expectations. Taking responsibility for how other’s feel distracts us from taking responsibility for our own feelings. I only have one obligation and that is to realize my wholeness in the actions I take everyday. Wholeness is a practice, not an outcome.

So, as I unpack my boxes and sweep the space beneath the stairs, I smile at an old version of me that carried a broken belief so was consequently invested in finding all the missing pieces. Like a decades old birthday card, I remember it but have no attachment to it. I tossed it into the bin with all of the other out-of-date sentiments.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, check out my new comic strip Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.

Filed under: Random, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

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