The Direction of Intention

Diversity Defines Us [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 25, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

We called this photograph the “Irish Rothko”. Mark Rothko was one of the great American painters of the 20th century. His paintings are in museums all over the country and around the world. It’s important in our times to recognize that he was born in Latvia. The great American painter was an immigrant.

We heard the channel to the marina was dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day so we bundled up and scurried to take advantage of a clear photo opportunity. While Kerri snapped pictures I pondered the potato famine. The marina was dyed green on this day in 2025 in the USA because 180 years ago over 2 million Irish people fled starvation to find hope in a new land. Immigrants. St. Patricks’s Day is a celebration of the promise of The United States. I’m fairly certain that the vast majority of people all over the nation drinking green beer, sporting shamrock pins and wearing Leprechaun hats were not themselves Irish. Americans of Italian, German, Scandinavian, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Nigerian, Egyptian, Indian, Turkish, Indonesian…descent, hoisted frosty green beverages. Americans, all.

We are a diverse people. Our diversity is what defines us. We regularly celebrate each other and our diversity whether we realize it our not. We are a strong weave from many origins, many races, many religions. We are weakened when we pretend that one fiber is better than another.

I suppose it’s possible to attempt to scrub any mention of DEI. It does not change the reality of the nation. It does not alter the driving imperative of the nation: amidst such a diverse populace to forge an equal, conscious and considerate society. We’ve managed to make buildings wheelchair accessible, begin addressing the disparity of pay for women, with civil rights laws we walk into the hot fire of inequality…all aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion. People with disabilities should not have barriers to workplaces. Women should not be paid less than men for equal work. People of color should not be excluded from opportunities because of the color of their skin. Gay men and women should have the same rights as heterosexual men and women.

Striving for equality makes us strong. It is the necessary ongoing conversation of our nation.Forced inequality makes us immoral, corrosive, and weak. Trying to end the conversation is spineless.

The work of equality takes courage and perseverance. As we are seeing, it is possible to issue an executive order to end the efforts of a diverse nation to forge an equitable society, it’s possible to brand those efforts as “illegal”. It is, however, impossible to stop it. Unity fashioned from rich diversity is the center of our national ideal and is the basic reality of our society. After all, it is the nation’s motto: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

It’s definitely possible to suppress people. It is possible to bully and terrorize people. It is possible to legislate a delusion. It is possible to manufacture enemies. It is possible to pretend that the people at the top of the hierarchy are somehow being victimized and blame efforts at equality as the culprit. All of that is possible. It does not change the self-deception, the corruption and lies necessary to do it.

It is the height of cowardice to scrub white the identity of this diverse nation – as this administration is attempting to do. And, if not cowardice, it is pure malfeasance. To obtain the goal of white supremacy the despot-wanna-be must make our democracy disappear – as this administration is attempting to do. The demonization of DEI is the epicenter of their ruse: Those poor old rich white guys have been so completely abused by laws protecting equality for all. Those sad despairing right-wing Christians who cannot display their nativities on government property have suffered tremendous religious persecution. Apparently, the separation of church and state should apply to everyone but them! It’s discrimination of the first order! And DEI is to blame! (It would be laughable, really, if it were not now so dangerous).

In nature, diversity is strength. In the USA, as in nature, our diversity is our strength.

Mono-cultures are vulnerable and readily eliminated. The Irish potato famine is an example of what happens when a people rely too heavily on a single crop. When it fails – as a mono-culture inevitably does – many, many people die.

We have never been a mono-culture. We will never be one. Pretending to be a white-male-mono-culture will echo nature and lead to culture collapse. No amount of legislating lies or embellishing white-victim-fantasies can – or will – change it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about IRISH ROTHKO

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Filed under: Identity, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, bully, corruption, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, Diversity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Mark Rothko, mono-culture, story, studio melange, suppression, the melange | Leave a comment »

It Is All [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 24, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The ordinary days have a way of lulling us into believing there isn’t any urgency to them…” ~ John Pavlovitz

These days I am more likely to appreciate my moment. I’m no longer trying to get somewhere or be someone that I am not. I have finally traded the harried drive for self-improvement, the fool’s errand to save the world, the not-so-healthy-desire-to-be-other-than-I-am, for the warm embrace of self-acceptance. I’m now less interested in attempting to hide my brokenness than I am in fully valuing the life I have been fortunate enough to live – with all of its foibles and folly.

It’s the word “urgency” that caught me in the quote. It’s an interesting choice in a thought about presence to use a word that implies “hurry” or “haste”. The imperative in each moment to fully appreciate the gift of life. Now. Not tomorrow. Not when the race is won or the bank account is full. Now. Right now. Doing the dishes. Making the bed. The haste of slowing down.

The Buddhists call this “chop wood, carry water”. The awareness of the extraordinary in the ordinary, everyday tasks.

Dogga groans at night. His muzzle grows more grey with each passing month. Sometimes at night he struggles to stand. And, because we know beyond doubt that our time with him is limited, we linger with him. We fawn on him. We want to heap all the love in our hearts on him. There are no ordinary days. There are no throw-away moments.

Limits inspire appreciation. Rolling into sight of my looming limit is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. “Listen to the birds,” she just said. We stopped writing and drank in the birdsong.

The birdsong brought to mind a favorite quote from Shakespeare:

“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” [Hamlet, Act 5, scene 2]

A quote about fate. Acceptance. And what is the gift of readiness? It is to be wide awake. It is all.

read Kerri’s blogpost about URGENCY

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: acceptance, artistry, awareness, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destiny, fate, John Pavlovitz, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, presence, story, studio melange, the melange, William Shakespeare | 3 Comments »

You Do Or You Don’t [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on March 22, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Dear maga-nation: After the events of this week it occurs to me that, although you voted – a sign that you believe in democracy – you actually have no idea what a democracy is or how it works. You voted for dictatorship – a sign that you don’t believe in democracy. Do you see my confusion?

Start here: in our democracy there are three co-equal branches of government. Co-equal means that no branch has more power than any other branch and that is by design. Each branch is meant to serve as a check-and-balance to the other two branches. By design.

Each branch has an assigned duty relative to the law: Congress, the legislative branch, makes the laws. The executive branch, the president, enforces the laws. The judiciary interprets the laws. “Interprets” means they clarify the laws – and have the power of putting on the brakes when one of the other branches strays out of bounds. The law is central. That, too, is by design: in our democracy no man is supposed to be above the law. The creation, enactment, and interpretation of law is meant to be protection against the rise of a king. The enshrinement of the law places power in the hands of the people. That’s why it is called a democracy.

This week you puffed with indignation when a judge put the brakes on the executive when he went out of bounds. You called for the impeachment of the judge. That’s akin to being outraged that your car started when you touched the ignition. Your car did what it is supposed to do so you are infuriated?

Your friends at fox encouraged outrage that a judge would dare challenge the authority of the executive. And, rather than throw a rock through your television and swear never-again to plug into a channel promoting the dismantling of democracy – something you would do if you understood how a democracy works – you puffed up with righteous misinformation. You did as you were told. You raged for the dissolution of checks-and-balances.

Again, do you see my – our – confusion?

You either do not understand why you are puffing up – or you do. And, if you do, it makes me incredibly sad. Sad for you, since you claim in loud voices to be the champions of democracy, to be avid supporters of America’s greatness (democracy) – yet you clearly have no idea how our democracy works.

Or, you do and willingly throw it away. And that makes me sadder still.

This week a judge did his job as defined in the Constitution and you acted offended. Please understand why those of us who believe in democracy – those of us who understand how the system is designed to work – are beyond rolling our eyes. Please understand why we are running out of adjectives to describe the crevasse between your angry rhetoric and your actions. You are either the very definition of ignorant: without knowledge, unlearned – or you are corrupt.

The executive, aided by an oligarch, is circumnavigating congress in an obvious destruction of the system of checks-and-balances. Circumnavigate means “to sail around” it.

In your indignant fox-fueled-puffery, you are gleefully encouraging the circumnavigation of the Constitution. You cheer the blatant disregard for the law. Disregard means “to ignore. To overlook or forget”. Disregarding the law is called corruption. Corruption means “dishonesty, fraud, criminality”.

You either don’t understand what you support – which means someday there may be hope for us to once again meet on the common ground as defined in the Constitution. You may someday wake up, unplug from the fox-cult-of-non-sense-and-anger-exploitation. I hope so. I mean that sincerely. It’s hard to watch how willingly you participate in your own fleecing. It’s impossible to understand how easily you swallow propaganda-swill.

Or, you do understand what you support. And, in that case, you are a knowing participant in fraud, a champion of corruption, a dedicated racist*, a proponent of authoritarianism – a knowing participant in the dismantling of our democracy – and, in that case, there’s nothing more for us to discuss. There is – and never has been – common ground. And I find that terribly sad.

*As I was writing this post, the despot-wanna-be resurrected segregation from its moldy grave. This comes in the wake of a dedicated – and continuing – effort to scrub the achievements and contributions of African Americans, women, people of color, LGBTQ…from our history.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SAD

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: artistry, co-equal, Congress, corruption, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, executive, ignorant, judicial, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, law, story, studio melange, The Constitution of The United States, the law, the melange | 2 Comments »

Naturally [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on March 21, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Before sleeping we usually watch thru-hikes, video journals of people walking the Pacific Crest Trail, The Continental Divide Trail, or The Appalachian Trail. The Hayduke. Early in their journey the hikers experience the unnatural aggression and excessive pace of regular life drop away and a more natural rhythm emerges.

They become different people as they begin to see other people differently. The steely individuality of their urban identity dissolves. The hikers realize that they need other people. They realize that they are dependent upon the kindness of strangers. In fact, they come to understand that without the support of others their trail-walk would be impossible to complete. They begin to rely on – to count on – kindness.

And they are rarely disappointed. The kindness that they hope for always appears. And, as they enter the reality – the necessity – of their interdependence, they more freely offer their support to strangers. They become the kindness others hope for.

Periodically the hikers come across trail angels; people who come to the trail with the sole intention of making life better for the hikers. The angels prepare food or snacks. They offer shade, a cool drink, a place to sit and rejuvenate. They give rides to town. Other angels make sure there is water available at caches across the desert. Others provide places to stay. Almost all of the trail angels were themselves hikers who were recipients of the extraordinary generosity of angels. So, they became angels for others. Naturally.

The hikers always speak fondly of the culture that exists on the trail. A culture of support. Most hikers, after they finish their months-long adventure, remark that their walk was made memorable, transformative, because of generous people they met along the way.

We watch thru-hikers because they give us hope. In a time of national darkness punctuated by ill-intention, self-serving oligarchs, the celebration of mean-spirits, cowardice…it is heartening to know that there is a community of people out there who’ve stepped into nature and out of the unnatural aggression of our nation, and what they find there – and find in themselves – is a natural reliance on others. A feedback loop of generosity. Kindness. People helping people, not for gain, but because they know the value of helping. It’s called humanity. They know that their walk in this life is made better – made more meaningful – by the dance of giving and receiving support, helping others and accepting a helping hand from others. Naturally.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TRAIL

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, culture, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, generosity, humanity, interdependence, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, natural rhythm, nature, story, studio melange, support, the melange, thru-hike, trail angels | 1 Comment »

The Pizza Thing [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on March 20, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

My latest painting I did for Kerri. It is a painting of invocation. I did not paint it from knowledge or plan. I felt my way through it.

On the day I thought I’d completed the painting I asked her if she wanted me to make any changes. After staring at the image for a few minutes she said, “I love it,” and then asked, “But what’s up with the pizza thing?”

In the many art openings I’ve had in my life I’ve learned that what I paint is rarely the whole of what a viewer sees. I used to be surprised by what others saw in my paintings but now I expect it.

“Pizza thing?” I asked.

“You know, the thing they use to put pizzas in the oven. A paddle.”

“Where is it?”

She pointed to a series of connected shapes on the canvas.

Once someone sees something in an abstract image – like a dragon in a cloud – they can never again not see it. I knew the painting was not-yet-done. She would always see a pizza paddle in the painting if I didn’t alter the shapes. “Do you want me to change it?” I asked. She nodded, afraid I was offended.

It is the great challenge of perception: people rarely look in the same direction and see the same thing. We do not share experiences until we…share them, talk about them, compare notes, come to a common perceptual ground.

A younger me would have defended the painting as I saw it. This older version of me feels no need to defend what I see since I don’t expect others to see what I see. I want to learn what they see. I want to step into a common ground, a space of collaboration. That doesn’t mean that I necessarily must change the painting. It does, however, afford me the opportunity to make it better if I so choose, if my question, “What do you see?” actually opens my perspective.

It’s why I feel the need to shout into the winds of our current political and national circus. It is unimportant whether or not we see eye to eye. It is most important that we share notes, ask questions, discuss discrepancies…discern what is fact from what is fiction. We have to want to step into common ground.

When we walk she often stops and aims her camera at the ground. “What do you see?” I ask.

She snaps the photo and shows me the screen. “A heart,” she smiles. “Do you see it?”

“Now, I do.” I say. I would have stepped over the stone and never seen the heart. And aren’t I fortunate to walk through life with someone who is surrounded by hearts and takes the time to show me what I do not see?

In Dreams She Rides Wild Horses (finished, without the pizza thing)

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEARTS

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, change, collaboration, common ground, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, heart, invocation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, perception, perspective, story, studio melange, the melange | 8 Comments »

Or Will We? [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on March 19, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

And suddenly the winds arrive. The forecast warned us to expect powerful winds early this morning so I was taken aback when I opened the door to an eerie stillness. Dogga trotted outside into a world with nary a whisper of breeze. Three hours later, as we sat down to write, as if someone threw a magic switch, the first burst of wind rattled the windows. The trees moaned.

I was struck by this quote from Martin Prechtel:

“I knew that no worthy ritual was done for the experience of the ritual but was carried out to maintain a regular life of work and harvest, raising children and struggle.”

Rituals, like Easter or The Hajj or Diwali are appeals, acts of sacred orientation. They are acknowledgement of our smallness in the face of the vast mystery of this universe. They are meant to renew our connection to the immense, to life. Ultimately, they are the recognition that our actions, each and every day, no matter how small…matter; that we are active participants in the well-being, restoration and continuance of life. We are active creators of our relationship with the mystery.

Rituals are meant to affirm that we are not the overlords but are responsible for the care and feeding of “something bigger than myself.” We are a part of the whole. Nothing more.

Rituals are meant to remind us that we are not passive witnesses to the health of the community or the planet, but that we are stewards, active participants in our own and the community’s well-being: physically, mentally, spiritually. How we walk through life, how we treat each other, how we care for our environment, matters.

The aim is not the performance of the ritual. The aim is how the performance of the ritual intentionally orients us to daily life and to each other.

When the performance of the ritual becomes the point of the ritual it is a sure sign that the greater mythology is dying. Or already dead. And, mythology – a shared story – is the glue that holds a community together. Without it a community fractures.

Rituals need not be religious to be sacred. In the USA, our legal system and how it works is rooted in a ritual dedication to our national communal glue: the law. The Constitution is the sacred document at the center of our legal ritual and is built upon a sacred ideal: no man is above the law.

“In America, the rule of law is king...For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Historians will someday write of the collapse of our ritual of law. They will point to the Immunity decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, someone who swore an oath to protect our Constitution, yet somehow granted a president immunity from the rule of law. He put the whims of a man above the law. The center collapsed.

Today, we witness the dissolution of ours law. A judge ruled and was ignored by a White House that knows the executive branch is immune from law and can, therefore, be law-less.

Last week we saw that congress – our makers of law – had no will to uphold their sacred duty of checks-and-balance to the executive. They signed away their power and with it, our freedoms as protected by their adherence to the Constitution. They meet now for no other reason than to meet – having abdicated their function in the ritual of democracy, having lost their purpose, they now function without meaning. They forgot their role in the ritual renewal of democracy. They now merely pretend that their actions matter.

The ritual collapses. The glue dissolves. It remains to be seen if the people, the ordinary everyday people, the people who, in a democracy, are meant to hold the power, will come together and reclaim our ritual of law from tyranny. Or will we, like the congress and the courts, fear the new king, abdicate our responsibility, remain silent and watch our freedoms circle the drain?

read Kerri’s blog on FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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Filed under: Flawed Cartoon Wednesday, Identity | Tagged: artistry, balance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, government, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kings, law, lawless, liberty, martin prechtel, mythology, ritual, Sacred, story, studio melange, The Constitution of The United States, the melange, thomas jefferson, Thomas Paine, tyranny | 1 Comment »

Bad Cowboys [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 18, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I was a wee-tot I was never without my cowboy hat and boots. I’m told by a reliable source (my mom) that I regularly attempted to sleep with my boots on. I can’t remember my dedicated cowboy fantasy but the few photos-of-proof make me smile. I grew out of my cowboy clothes but carried forward my cowboy ideal. An artist and a cowboy serve similar calls.

The cowboy is a foundational myth of these United States. The rugged individualist. Self-reliant. According to the movie-ideal, the good cowboy is a guardian of the herd, a protector of what is right. The cowboy archetype is a servant to a higher ideal.

The bad cowboy steals. The bad cowboy is needy and self-serving. The bad cowboy isn’t really a cowboy at all. He’s a criminal.

Black-and-white foundational myths afford no shades of grey. Bad cowboys are bandits. They rustle cattle. They hurt people. Good cowboys safeguard while driving the herd to market. Their dedicated individualism is lived as an act of service. They mostly do not own the cattle. They are never paid well. Their reward is honoring the call to a life of relative freedom.

The archetype begs the question for all the republicans out there claiming the cowboy mythos as their guide-star: are they a servant to a higher ideal or self-serving? Are they currently pitting their oath to the Constitution against their desire for personal gain? Good cowboy or bad? My questions are, of course, rhetorical.

The cowboy is the remake of an archetype that reaches back to Achilles, running through the knights of The Round Table, stretching forward to modern tales: Strider and Hans Solo. A servant to a calling, pulled by a force into a life that makes little sense because it is driven by an inner imperative.

“A person who is truly gripped by a calling, a dedication, by a belief, by a zeal, will sacrifice his security, will sacrifice even his life, will sacrifice personal relationships, will sacrifice prestige, and will think nothing of personal development; he will give himself entirely to his myth.” ~ Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss

The good cowboy is gripped by a calling. Again, a servant of a higher ideal. A Jedi knight.

A bad cowboy is gripped by greed. A servant to nothing greater than personal gain at any cost. A swindler. A liar. A robber. A villain.

My inference, of course, is obvious. Our communal cattle are being rustled. We are currently overrun with criminals and cowards pretending to be cowboys.

My hope is also obvious. Against all odds, in the movies at least, the good cowboys have a way of arriving on the scene just in-the-knick-of-time.

read Kerri’s blogpost about COWBOYS

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Filed under: Identity, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday | 1 Comment »

Context [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 17, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The world and I reciprocate one another. The landscape as I directly experience it is hardly a determinate object; it is an ambiguous realm that responds to my emotions and calls forth feelings from me in turn.” ~ David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

I sometimes wonder if we are capable of presence, of being somewhere. With our faces aimed at screens, gaming or doomscrolling every few minutes, lost in Facebook or Instagram, awash in advertisements designed to makes us feel as if we are lacking, perpetually breaking news, worshiping at the biz-altar of efficiency and effectiveness. Do-more-faster. Is it any wonder that we, the citizens of the USA, lead the world in drug-use disorders?

I suspect that we are not trying to escape reality but are trying to find what, if anything, is real. Or meaningful.

“Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils—all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness.” ~ David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous

I had a revelation the other day about our current national mess. During my stint in software development we periodically discussed the context/content reality flip-flop. Essentially, our grandparents lived in a world in which their reality (context) was stable and consistent. They made sense of the news of the day (content) by sifting it through their mostly shared context.

We live in the opposite circumstance. Our context is fluid, volatile. With an average of 100 new emails coming in overnight, with a never-ending-rushing-social-media-stream, with tweets sending shock waves through the system, our context changes every day. Our content now defines our context. We are perpetually trying to arrive somewhere stable. We are constantly trying to find sense in the stream.

We do not sense-make together because we do not share an agreed-upon context.

It’s why we doomscroll. It’s why we have impenetrable information bubbles. It’s why we are impossibly divided. It’s why the phrase “alternative facts” wasn’t cause for hysterical laughter. It’s why there was nary-a-blip this week when, to avoid being held accountable for their participation in the nation’s demise, “…Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day…” [NYTimes.com as quoted by Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From an American, March 12, 2025].

A day is no longer a day. No-shared-context. Reality avoidance. Content defines context. It’s upside-down. It’s insanity.

My revelation? An angry people with no actual shared context are easy marks for a content creator like Fox News. Anger becomes a shared context when people are fed a steady diet of outrageous fabrications meant to exploit their fear. Anger-driven victimhood is the identity-glue that binds maga. It’s a powerful drug. There can be no other explanation for a group so willingly swallowing obvious lies, so readily and eagerly participating in their own demise, so completely and deliberately unplugged from verifiable fact. An overdose of anger gives them a shared sense of belonging. A context.

Kerri and I walk in nature to regroup. We purposefully step out of the noise. We consciously practice being somewhere instead of racing, racing to get somewhere. We return to the trail again and again to reclaim – even for a few moments – a stable context. A known. A natural rhythm.

We might do better as a nation if we turned off our devices for awhile, looked up from our screens and stepped outside. We’d do better if we took a nice walk together in nature in a place (context) that calls forth something other than anger, a context that is easily shared, a context that is undeniably real.

read kerri’s blogpost about BE

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: anger, artistry, belonging, content, context, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, doomscroll, drug use disorder, Heather Cox Richardson, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, presence, reality, shared reality, social media, story, studio melange, the melange, truth | 1 Comment »

It’s Basic [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on March 15, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Basic = Fundamental. Essential. Rudimentary. Elemental. What you see is what you get.

What we are seeing in this administration and what we are getting is pretty much what we expected: Corruption. Greed. Incompetence. It’s basic. There is no mystery – at least to those of us who read Project 2025 and were not intellectually-blunted or morally misguided by the fox or any other Rupert Murdoch fantasy rag*.

It’s basic: a reality tv star is…well, made-up for tv. A character. Not real. A contrivance for entertainment. A fiction. And so an empty suit made for tv now sits behind the resolute desk and plays the role of president for ratings but has no idea what it means to run a nation. He certainly knows how to bilk people. He has a proven track record of running organizations into the ground. He is famously unplugged from verifiable truth. A lifelong bully. Is it any wonder the markets are tanking and our allies are holding their noses and walking away?

It’s basic. Predictable. Obvious. We gave an oligarch and a made-for-tv-flimflam-man the keys to the White House so should not be surprised by the rapid pilfering.

Basically, the title of Bret Stephens opinion piece in the NY Times says it all: Democracy Dies in Dumbness.

*“Many of Murdoch’s papers and television channels have been accused of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests…” [the understatement of the century]~ Wikipedia

read Kerri’s blogpost about BASIC

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: artistry, basics, Bret Stephens, corruption, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, Democracy Dies in Dumbness, elemental, fundamental, greed, incompetence, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, reality tv, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Our Mistake [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on March 14, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I was grateful for the unseasonably warm day. I needed it. Earlier in the day we positioned Adirondack chairs for maximum sun and we literally soaked it up. I felt the marrow of my bones sigh with warm pleasure. We took a very slow late afternoon hike.

It was the kind of day that beckons presence. We knew it was coming so we cleared the calendar. We purposefully lost the to-do list. As evening set in we sat on the deck while Dogga pranced around the yard. The neighbors tree glowed orange. I was so captivated by the color that I didn’t see the moon above the tree until Kerri showed me her photograph. We agreed, life does not get better than this.

Earlier in the day I’d sent Yaki an email. He’d been the conductor/music director of The Portland Chamber Orchestra for years and I saw that the company announced a new music director. It concerned me since the last time we spoke he told me of his cancer diagnosis. In my email I wished him well and hoped he was in good health.

The temperatures were dropping so we came in from the deck. I was telling Kerri about my collaborations with Yaki, what a pleasure he was to work with. She asked a question about his age so I pulled up his Wikipedia page. It showed a birth date and a death date. Yaki had passed away.

It was the kind of moment that beckons presence.

Today I grieve my friend. Grief is a great giver of perspective. It is a reminder not to make assumptions. Not much bothers me today since relative to his loss everything seems minor, insignificant.

I was supposed to do a performance with him in the spring of 2023. The script was already written but a contract snag tripped up the process. We agreed to find a future date. We both believed that there would be a future date. That was our mistake.

Isn’t it always our mistake? Passing up what life offers us today, delaying it until some imagined future date?

Today I am grateful for Yaki. And, I am so glad that yesterday Kerri and I cleared the calendar, lost the all-important to-do list, and held hands while we soaked in a rare day of sun.

My performance of The Creatures of Prometheus with the PCO, Yaki Bergman conducting. 2008

Kerri originally wrote this piece for breast cancer research, cancer survivorship. It generalizes to any fight against darkness: “Fight for others, even if they don’t know who you are.”

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE ORANGE TREE