Fill the Gap [saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on May 29, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

As Shakespeare wrote, “The truth will out.” Kerri makes certain that I remain humble. Keeping me in proper perspective is a difficult job. I, for one, am delighted that I won out over the parakeet.

read Kerri’s thoughts on this smack-dab saturday

smack-dab. ©️ 2021 kerri sherwood & david robinson

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Take A Second Chance [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 24, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

This is a story about second chances. Both of us had first go-rounds and neither went according to the dream. The gap between life and dream is sometimes daunting, vast. But, the good news with all-things-daunting is that, if you are lucky – and we are, you emerge on the other side, not only with a better sense of humor, but an understanding of the hard work it takes to make dreams a reality. Or, said another way, you live into a better sense of yourself. Kerri and I could be the poster children for people who’ve crossed the gap and come out laughing.

Early in our relationship we danced in the living room to Rascal Flatt’s song, The Broken Road. After our dance, we spent a long evening talking about our broken roads. There’s something powerful (and telling) about two people who willingly pull out their broken pieces and spread them across the table for the other to see, not for a pity-party but to say without shame, “This is me. This is what I’ve done and where I’ve been. I don’t want to hide any of it from you because I want you to see me, barnacles and all.” It is the mark of the tribe of second chances. Vulnerability as a strength.

In a second chance you have the opportunity to discover yourself anew. That might sound thrilling – and it is in retrospect – but it requires a good deal of hot fire to burn away the former shell. It’s as if the rules of life that have always applied, the rules that have always provided orientation to the game-of-life suddenly no longer apply. Trying to hold onto the old version is like trying to hide the fact that you are aging. It’s impossible. We started collecting our beautiful moments of denial and rude-awakening because, well, they were and are funny. For instance, I looked in the mirror one day and saw my grandfather staring back. It happened overnight and I was horrified! I spent the rest of the day looking for soft light so I might delay Kerri seeing my new grandfatherly face.

Second chances come to all of us. We have friends and family in our circle that are recent empty-nesters. The kids are gone. The house is quiet. They are asking two questions: 1) Who is this stranger sitting across the table? And 2) Who am I, the person looking back at the stranger across the table? Like us, they are walking through the rule changes, the body changes, the purpose changes, the identity changes. We hope that they, like us, recognize their barnacles as a shared map forward, a reason to bond and learn each other, and themselves, anew.

That’s the reason and the story behind our comic strip SMACK-DAB. Like us, it is a second run at a good idea only this time, less armored. For now, we’ll publish a new strip every Saturday. Our chronicle of second chances. Smack-dab in the middle of middle age. The laughter and good love that comes from splaying all the broken pieces across the table and saying, “This is me and I want you to know and share every last shard. For the rest of my life.”

Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you ~ Bless The Broken Road, Rascal Flatts

read Kerri’s blog post about SMACK-DAB.

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Count What Is Right [on KS Friday]

Posted on May 21, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

As I came up through the garbage layer of sleep, that half-awake state where all the gunk of being human floats like detritus on the ocean awaiting consciousness’ return, I thought, “I want to have a full day in which I make no diagnosis. In other words, solve no problems, make no judgements, resolve no issues…A mindful day.

Mindfulness is only mindfulness when there is no judgment or discernment or necessity involved. Have the experience, make no meaning. Try it. It’s hard to do. Minds like to story things. I know that, later today, I will sit at the drafting table, script and draw the next batch of images for my latest project – try doing that without judgment or discernment!

Somewhere in my dark and sordid past I realized that I never had a problem or a stress that I didn’t create. The Greek tragedy, the absolute imperative, the all-too-important-agendas were not happening outside of me. I was making the agendas and lists, storying myself into rushing around or fighting back against ogres of my own making. Minds like to story things and conflict is the driver of story. Yearning meets obstacle. Desire meets impediment.

Why not make up a better story? Be careful! There’s an all-important caveat, a prerequisite in telling a better, stress free, story: it only becomes possible when the teller of the story relinquishes their oh-so-important-self-importance. Better stories are lived off the pedestal. Better stories, stress free, are available to tell when the teller realizes that their season on this earth is a passing thing and the notion of leaving a lasting mark just might be hubris.

I’ve been enjoying the reemergence of the hosta plants this spring. They are intrepid. They spread easily. Not so long ago their spiky heads jabbed up through the earth. They looked like little spearheads. DogDog had to dance between them. Overnight, the soldiers-beneath-the-soil transformed as their spears unfurled into tiny variegated leaves. A day later, or so it seemed, the tiny leaves swelled into thick dense clusters. Every year the hostas claim a bit more of the yard. People in these parts dig them up and give them away to their neighbors and friends when they realize that the hostas are taking over and will soon be spreading into the house.

I confessed to Kerri yesterday that I was, very intentionally, counting what is right in the world. It will come as no surprise to you that the list of what is right in the world greatly outstrips what is wrong. The hostas of my mind are the generosities and kindnesses. I want to be overrun by them. The little things. It will also not come as a surprise to you that, if you start counting what is right in your world, you’ll discover that the vast majority of what you find are the simple, the ordinary. The everyday. Kerri and I make dinner together. DogDog leads me to the gate when I’m taking out the trash. Feeling the breeze on my face as I open the door first thing in the morning. The first sip of coffee.

What is right in this world includes Kerri’s music. There is nothing I love so much as when she plays. She didn’t pick this composition for today’s melange. I wanted to hear it. That’s all. That’s enough. Right Now. It’s another name for mindfulness. It’s on the list, like hostas.

right now is available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about HOSTAS

right now ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Gratitude, Identity, KS Friday, Navel Gazing, Pattern, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Laugh At Yourself [on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 20, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Had you come across our website during the era of The Roadtrip, a play that Kerri and I wrote from the several-months-email-conversation we had before we first met face-to-face, you’d have read this phrase: smack-dab in the middle of middle age…a true story of quiet hope and the arrival of life’s second chances.

Smack-dab. In the middle of middle age. We met. We married. We walk the neighborhood arm-in-arm. We write these blog posts each day. She brings her wise-eyes into my studio and I tell her what her music makes me feel and think.

For an intense year or so, we tried-like-crazy to syndicate a cartoon strip called Chicken Marsala, the imaginary child of two people who met smack-dab in the middle of middle age. In the course of writing and drawing Chicken, we also pitched a single-panel cartoon, Flawed, and another called At The Door. Chicken Marsala had several iterations because the syndicate liked it…almost. They asked for improvements though never specified what those improvements might be – in the writing? The art work? In this age of too much information, no answer ever came back to us.

In the face of unspecified and uncertain improvements, this ONE thing is certain: we generated a mountain of material in the hunt for the elusive improvement. Oh, and this, too: we laughed heartily at ourselves. The mountain of material was about us. We were poking fun at the things we do and say each day.

This morning I found Kerri furiously working at her computer guffawing. She’d pulled up the old Chicken file. There was an iteration of the strip that was pre-Chicken, the middle-aged couple prior to the appearance of their imaginary son. We sat this morning and laughed again at ourselves. These things actually happen and how joyful is it to chronicle yourself in-and-as a cartoon?

I suspect we are going back to the drawing board. This time, we’ll not hide behind our imaginary son. This time, we’ll pull the blankets on the source. Smack-dab. In the middle of middle age. Two artists met and got married. What could be a better set-up for ridiculousness?

read Kerri’s blog post introducing SMACK-DAB

*don’t believe a word she writes, she guffaws all of the time.

smack-dab ©️ 2021 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Chicken Marsala Monday, Creativity, DR Thursday, Love, Navel Gazing, Surprises, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Consider The Intention [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 17, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

My least favorite character in Romeo and Juliet is Capulet, Juliet’s father. A few years back I thought it would be a good exercise to tell the story from his point of view. In his world of privilege and order, he has an out of control daughter, a teenager no less, ignoring the rules of the house and society, having sex with the son of a sworn enemy. He imagines a better future for her (and himself) and has worked hard to protect her and match her with royalty. Like every parent I know, he just wants his daughter to behave and thrive.

Every story has an agenda. That’s true of the stories we tell of ourselves at parties, it’s true of the stories we shout at each other when we are having fights, it’s true of the stories we tell when we are falling in love, it’s true of the stories we tell when breaking up. Every story has at least two sides and each side has an intention.

Stories are never neutral or passive. It’s precisely why Blind Justice is so important to the health and well being of a society: between two opposing/competing stories there is a point of equilibrium that we call “fact” or “truth.” Blind Justice carries a scale to symbolize that place of story-equilibrium, ideally free of status, privilege, sway…weighing the stories to arrive at fairness and equity.

Health is the capacity to consider the other side of the story.

It is the truly despicable character that steps with intention into the gap between competing narratives solely to create discord. To lie for gain. Iago is just such a character. He creates an illusion with no greater intention than to hurt, to destroy. Desdemona dies. Othello murders because he cannot see through the lie Iago is telling. Othello’s love turns to hate. He cannot or will not hear the other side, the love story, the truth of Desdemona.

Hatred is a territorial flag planted in a one-sided story.

The modern GOP is Iago. Othello is a cautionary tale relevant in our times. What or who will be murdered before the lie is laid bare?

I have always been a lover of myth and parable, stories that reach with intention to deeper truths. It is why I stepped into the theatre in the first place. Art, like Blind Justice, uses story to reach deeper truths, truths that can rarely be captured in words. It’s the paradox of art and truth is always found there.

No story has a single point of view. No truth is singular – that is the hallmark of the truly important challenges that every society faces. It is why successful governments tell their story with truth as their intention. It is why successful relationships sail through stormy seas. The intention is pure. The desire to stand in the shoes of the other-side-of-the-story is genuine and necessary in order for the relationship, the community, the country to thrive.

Capulet is not a bad man. He has good intention. The play ends when he becomes capable of standing in and considering the other side of the story. Hope and equity is the promise rising from the pain.

Iago, on the other hand, is a wholly different story. His play ends in a cage with a nasty celebration of the pain, death and havoc he’s wreaked, gloating about his capacity to snare others in his big lie. All are made fools.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

Filed under: Art, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Seek The Old Gods [on KS Friday]

Posted on May 14, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m thinking a lot about gods and goddesses these day. No, it’s not a weird fixation. It’s a project, a story that involves the old gods and the new. The elemental and the angry. The unified and the divided. We make ourselves in the images of the god[s] we embrace. It’s a story about reaching back to the old gods, to a time before the worship of the great divide.

We took a walk along a trail just behind our airbnb. We were only in the mountains for a short time, long enough to have dinner and a day with our daughter and her beau. On the trail we turned and gasped. The mountain towered above all things. It reached to the sky. So majestic in its presence, it did not look real. “Now, there’s an old god,” I whispered to no one. It challenges one to know it, to climb it and participate in the beauty and the ascent – with no opinion at all about who might deem themselves chosen or not. It does not discern nor divide. It reminds. You are this. Climb and breathe the fresh air.

Kerri saw hypericum berries [“You say hypernicum, I say hypericum, let’s call the whole thing off…”] in the grocery store. “These would look lovely on our table!” she exclaimed. They came back to the airbnb with us and found themselves placed in a fine Ball jar sitting in a prime spot on the table. She was right. Lovely. We did a bit of research and discovered that 1) no one can agree on the spelling of the berry [or they’re two different things but we could not discern the difference], and 2) it is often used as a winter wedding flower. Winter’s daisy. Red on green giving its color and presence at unions. “Another old god!” I declared to no one. Elemental. Till death do us part where we will once again unite.

She wrote a note of gratitude and placed the corner beneath the Ball jar that held the hypericum. “Our host will love these!” she said. Gratitude adorned with beauty. We hated to leave but had run out of time. We had to hit the road. We stood at the door and breathed deeply of the mountain air. More gratitude. The blue sky ringing against the red rock of the western slope. Old gods everywhere.

“We’ll be back soon,” I said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t leave,” she whispered.

“But oh if we call the whole thing off then we must part,
And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.”

You say hypernicum. I say hypericum. Winter wedding. Both/And. Gratitude and mountains. Old gods. Old gods everywhere.

read Kerri’s blog post about HYPERICUM

kerri’s albums are available on iTunes

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Go Home [on KS Friday]

Posted on April 30, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Haiku From The Road

The blue mountains rise,

Like phantoms from the prairie.

Cairns to the way home.

Read Kerri’s blog post about THE WAY HOME

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Catch His Hand [on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 29, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Many years ago, somewhere in the middle of the 1990’s, I painted a portrait of my dad. It is monochromatic and a fairly quick study. In the painting, he is either emerging or returning to the corn. Or both. I can’t remember why I painted him in the corn except that he was born in Iowa and wished his entire adult life to return to the small town where he grew up. Perhaps this is a painting about yearning. Perhaps it is a painting about returning home.

It occurred to me, when I found it while re-stacking paintings after the great studio flood, that I painted this when he was roughly the age I am now. For a fleeting moment I wanted to paint a monochrome self-portrait simply so I might place it across the room. We’d have a staring contest that reached beyond both of our lives.

I chucked the idea for many reasons but mostly because I had no idea what “field” I might emerge from or into? My symbolic return home would be…what? I am not connected to a single place, a tiny town in Iowa or, like Tom Mck, a ranch in California. I have been a wanderer.

I’ve always loved hands. They are, in many ways, more expressive than faces. They are not as guarded and rarely put on airs. My dad was a working man and has working man hands. He was proud of the work he did. It was hard and broke his body but he loved it. It was out of doors under the open sky. He started his career as a teacher and, although he never confessed as much, I think he hated teaching. The classroom was suffocating. He needed to get his hands in the dirt, feel the sun on his face. Even after he retired, as he aged, he sat on the porch in the mornings, he worked his garden or clipped his grass or cleaned his gutters; anything to be outside.

I had a dream many years ago that has stayed with me. My dad and I were free-falling through time. As we fell, he reached out his hand. I stretched out my arm, tried to grasp his hand, but in falling, we were just out of reach. In the dream I stared intently at his hand as I tried to extend my arm, tried to grasp his hand. I knew, if I was successful, if we could catch his hand, it might not stop our fall, but we, neither of us, would fall alone.

read Kerri’s blog post about COLUMBUS HANDS

www.davidrobinsoncreative.com

Filed under: DR Thursday, Family, Gratitude, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Make Belief [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on April 13, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” ~ Saul Bellow

In addition to meaning uneducated, it occurred to me that the word ‘ignorant’ also means to ignore. It’s an adjective, a descriptor. Someone who ignores is ignorant, is an ignorant. I looked up the root of the word to be sure. To disregard.

Early in the pandemic, we placed a table in our sunroom. We call it our pandemic table. In our isolation it helped us to end the day, looking out at the back yard, and watching the light wane. Through the spring, summer, and into the fall, we’d sit at the table and talk about the news of the day. We’d ramble on and on about our disbelief in the angry wave of intentional misinformation rolling over the country, the big things and small things people have to ignore in order to make belief. To support an angry illusion.

One evening, we shook our heads in utter incredulity as a member of our community re-posted a QAnon assertion that the CDC was exaggerating the numbers of COVID deaths just to make the then-president look bad. As proof, the post included a morbidity chart extracted from the official CDC website. We pulled up the website – it took less than 15 seconds – to see the extracted chart nestled on a page with multiple charts detailing comorbidity data; the many many ways that COVID kills. We felt compelled to write a note. It was too easy to debunk the assertion. We asked him to take a moment and go to the site, to look at all of the data. He was being fed a chart cherry-picked from a veritable mountain of information. Nothing was being hidden. No evil plot was in play. His reply was angry, defensive. He unfriended us. We’d done the unthinkable and revealed what he was ignoring.

We learned a lesson about the power of invested ignorance.

Over the year our pandemic table has changed. It’s been populated with sparkling lights and plants. A bonsai gardenia, a birthday present from Kirsten to Kerri sits next to the ponytail palm, both surrounded by succulents. It’s become a sanctuary. We’ve changed, too. We rarely give our time to shaking our heads in disbelief or pushing back against the non-sense things people-in-our-world believe. I’ve stopped exclaiming, “Check Your Sources!”

We occasionally comment about the big things and small things – the mountains – being ignored in order to sustain the modern bubbles of make-belief. The big lie. We are no longer shocked by the dreck that people swallow without question or thought. We’ve moved beyond our own naive illusion and admitted that many people simply do not want to know anything that might challenge their make-believe.

We sit at our pandemic table. We listen to the mourning doves. We eat our lunches looking out at the vibrant green returning to the backyard. We laugh at Dogga running circles in delight. We talk about replacing the very-worn rug beneath our feet. We appreciate the bonsai gardenia, checking the moisture of the soil. We celebrate when our friends and family are vaccinated. We know more than ever it is important to hold dear the baseline, to not disregard our responsibility to check our sources, to carry a healthy doubt about what we are hearing on the news, the story we are being told.

read Kerri’s blog post about BONSAI GARDENIA

Filed under: Identity, Language, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Finish The Race [on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 8, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

We are nearing the anniversary of SHAYNE. As heart projects go, high atop the list of projects that mattered, sits SHAYNE.

One night, Kerri’s mom, Beaky, called in tears. Nearing the end of her life, she wondered what she’d achieved. A brilliant woman born in the early part of the 20th century, many roads open to a man were utterly inaccessible to her. She wondered, as Kerri said, “What comes after the comma behind her name.”

Decades earlier, Beaky had written manuscripts for three children’s books based on the family’s dog, Shayne. She’d submitted them without success to a publisher. Kerri searched the earth and found the manuscripts. In a matter of days, we illustrated and published the first in the series. We constructed a website, set up and publicized an author’s reading. Over 70 people came, complete with the press and photographers, to hear Beatrice Arnson read and sign her new children’s book. Her first sale was in The Netherlands so I teased her that she was an international author.

Beaky passed away 18 days after the event. The word, “author” followed the comma after her name. She saw the cover art for the second and third books in the series but never saw them published. In fact, we published the second book posthumously but have yet to publish the third. It’s been too hard.

And, each year, on the anniversary of the book signing, we revisit publishing the third book. We simply need to a take a week, lay it out (the illustrations are complete), and publish it. The anniversary we approach is not only about the publication of the first book. It is the closure, the lingering necessity, of publishing the final book and complete the race that we started more than 6 years ago.

Resolution. Conclusion. Completion. More than just words. A symbolic mountain that is very difficult to climb.

The books are more than just books. The illustrations are more than just drawings and paint. They are a dream come true. A gift from daughter-to-mother and mother-to-daughter; the best kind of love-loop. They are a word that follows the comma after a name.

read Kerri’s blog post about SHAYNE

Filed under: DR Thursday, Family, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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