The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (401)

Posted on April 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

401.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I told Scott that I was at zero; all around me was a blank slate. He smiled and said, “That reminds me of a poem by Hafiz I recently heard:

Zero
Is where the Real Fun starts.

There’s too much counting
Everywhere else!”

I laughed when he said, “You’re right where the real fun starts.” How does this always happen: seeking sympathy my pals hit me with a poem and I realize with cartoon stars swirling around my head that I am again standing right where I want to be! Zero is the beginning of the adventure. As choices go, Zero can be utter stillness, the wasteland, lost in the woods, a score on a math test, or the moment before the big bang. It most certainly is a state of mind.

Once, I was represented by a gallery whose owner was also a painter. His home was his studio and in one of the seasonal fires sparked by humans and blown into conflagration by the Santa Ana winds, his house and all of his paintings burned. He was at zero. He said, “There’s nothing but space around me and I’ve never felt more alive.”

Scott watched my thought train and said, “It’s a good one isn’t it.” I said, “Now that I know better, Zero is the only place I want to be.” I’m tired of counting.

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Truly Powerful People (400)

Posted on April 13, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

400.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My morning work plan was trumped by the sound of the Sound. It was one of those rare spring mornings where the air is so still that is seems to magnify the sounds. The tide was in the magic in-between, not out and not quite fully in so the waves lapped the shore, pulling slowly on the rocks and pebbles like a lover’s fingers on your back. The pebbles became a rhythm instrument and I felt as if I was hearing the birth of music. The waves breaking, followed closely by the base drum of water thrumming on seawall, the pebbles long moan with a punctuation, a landing note made by the thump of driftwood butting together. Whoosh, thrum, mooooaaaan, thump (silence) Whooosh, thrum, mooooaaan, thump (silence). The birds joined the beat adding a chorus of notes hovering above the steady rhythm. I was enthralled. I wanted to dance it.

Many years ago I worked with an incredible musician. He spent his life traveling the world learning to play traditional instruments. He was incapable of unplugging from the rhythms around him, the beat was in his body and his body was the beat. We went to dinner when I was first getting to know him. We were sitting in a booth when suddenly he sighed, “ho, yeah,” and began tapping a beat from a source I could not hear. He smiled and told me to listen carefully. In the kitchen, across the room and behind swinging doors was an old refrigerator tapping a tune as it wheezed to keep the food cold. My friend helped me pick up the beat and then he said again, “Listen.” The swinging doors added a perfect compliment. We began running both sounds through our bodies. The ceiling fan began to play and my friend was catching them all in his toe tapping, finger drumming, and mouth popping. For just a moment I was in his world of music. He saw the elation on my face and said, “It’s always there if you have the ears to hear it and a body ready to play.”

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Truly Powerful People (399)

Posted on April 12, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

399.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Riding my bike over the low bridge out of West Seattle, I shifted into an easier gear and my bike locked up. No pieces flew off like the last time this happened. It was as if I tossed the anchor off the back of the bike and moored myself to the spot. I lurched and stood, secure in the knowledge that I was going nowhere. My gears where broken. I heard Megan’s voice in my head saying, “metaphor alert!” I did not want to consider the implications of the metaphor. So, instead of my bike carrying me to my studio I carried my bike half a mile back to the new cycle shop that opened the previous week; I noticed it as I passed on my way to the bridge. Another metaphor alert: if your bike is going to drop anchor in the middle of nowhere then how fortuitous is it that a bike shop chose to locate itself on the edge of nowhere? I chose this as my metaphor.

I was jamming on my bike because I had a call with Alan so, instead of doing the call from my studio I found a nice bench overlooking Puget Sound. There was a drive through coffee stand a few hundred yards before the bench so I walked through, got a coffee, and had a call with one of my favorite people on a beautiful spring day with a hot morning latte from my bench office with a spectacular view across the Sound to downtown. I took off my helmet as my head was swelling with imagined status. Also wearing a bike helmet without a bike requires people to ask, “Are you okay?” Two people asked in addition to the barista. I never know how to answer that question. I did know how to answer the man loading the truck who asked, “What happened to your ride?” I responded, “It threw a shoe so I left it at the blacksmith.” He laughed and I laughed because he laughed.
Later (from my studio – I drove) I had a call with Teresa who is helping me rethink and market my business. She said, “Let’s start from the inside out,” and I almost wept for joy; no marketing plan on the planet has ever worked for me because, as Teresa said, “People come to work with you because of who you are – not everyone is ready for that (another metaphor alert!) so they must come to you when they are ready.” She told me I was like guy in The Giver who helps people when they see color for the first time. “They see the color red and think they are going crazy and you help them know that red is what they are supposed to see. You help people know that their creativity isn’t crazy; it’s natural. Then, you help them find all the colors of the rainbow.” It’s a good thing my helmet was already off.

She made all of the metaphor alerts come into focus. I am just like the bike shop; I’ve chosen to place my shop on the edge of nowhere because that is where the seekers pass on their quest to find color. She laughed when I told her my target audience is people whose bikes have spontaneously dropped anchor and then she said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.” That was my plan all along.

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Truly Powerful People (398)

Posted on April 11, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

398.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Sometimes a day is loaded with amazing phrases. Today was one of those days. It was one long found poem of delicious word candy. At first I thought someone was playing a trick on me! Feeding me yummy word bites so I would slip into a sweet language coma. Some of these phrases came from a class conversation, some from a walk down the street, a few from the porch of the library and some from standing in line at the grocery store. It was raining word dances and with no umbrella there was nothing to be done but tilt back my head, close my eyes and open to the bounty. Taste these words (eat slowly):

“I fell into your language and found myself.”
“Don’t be seduced by the complex, the fancy. Transformation happens in simplicity.”
“Forgiveness is ongoing. So is change, transformation, conversion and resurrection.”
“I’ve learned that most of the aggression that comes at me is a projection of the other people’s pain. The same must be true of my aggression.”
“I became real so he became real.”
“Contact the world!”
“Burst! And roll away the stone.”
“Who are you being when you’re just being?”
“The gift of the dream is to let go of trying to be anything else.”
“You know what would be cool? Neither do I!”
“What is movement when you are perfectly still?”
“Who is like me? There must be somebody!”
“Do you know the word I love saying today: “fascinating.” Say it slowly.”

Martín Prechtel writes of speaking beautifully to feed the world. Don Miguel Ruiz writes of being impeccable to your word as an act of self-love. Say what you mean, mean what you say and say it lusciously. If language is the building block of the story you tell yourself about yourself, then the language you choose creates your world. Change your language, change your story, change your world. Today, the people around me fed the world (and me) a feast. I fell into their language, was seduced and found myself saying slowly over and over again, “fascinating.”

Filed under: Language, Truly Powerful People | 4 Comments »

Truly Powerful People (397)

Posted on April 10, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

397.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Last week I pulled out everything in the studio; all of the archives, the drafts, the drawings, the paintings – all of it, and I took a good long look. It’s been a year since I completed a painting. I lost my arm for several months (I put it down and couldn’t remember where I left it) and when I finally found it my working life was blown to smithereens. It is amazing how much energy is required to remake yourself. And the truth is, in the midst of arm-less-ness and work-life-explosions, I had no energy for my artist life. I was empty: e.m.p.t.y. Zip. Ziltch. Nada. Who drew that? It wasn’t me.

The good news is that I have been empty before and recognized the feeling so I let the field go fallow. In past incarnations I would have panicked and forced myself to produce something, thus, draining the tank even further while convincing myself that I have no business being an artist. We do not grow wiser as we grow older, we grow more self-loving and that looks wise. There is less room for self-abuse and too high of expectations when you recognize your mortality. The moment I recognized my empty tank I thought, “Time to rest.” So, I did. All winter – as we are supposed to do in winter. “Be as the bears,” I thought as I rolled over mid-hibernation.

Today I stapled a canvas on the wall. It was an old canvas, gritty and color smeared, perfect for jumping back into the pool, getting back on the pony, picking back up the brushes. Some of my paint had dried over the year so I chucked the jar across the studio, banked it off the drafting table and scored when the jar went into the waste basket – swoosh. Not rim. Sometimes you want people to be watching! But since the studio is a solitary place I roared like a crowd and pranced, arms in the air (both arms) as the basketball player that I am not. It was a game winning shot, of course. Raw Siena gone all rubbery and here I am taking a victory lap having just won the championship.

Ana once told me that my goal now is to make the world my studio. I think she is right. A studio is a sacred place to me so why contain it? And since I accept her notion as an intention I’m issuing a blanket caveat: if you find that someone has drawn on your walls and you exclaim, “Who drew that!” It wasn’t me. Unless you like it; then, I will do a victory lap, make roaring crowd noises and pretend that I knew all along that you wanted drawing on your walls.

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

Truly Powerful People (396)

Posted on April 9, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

396.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The crows and the seagulls are at war. They must not know that it is Easter. Children everywhere are scouring the bushes for colored eggs and above their heads the skies are alive with aerial combat.

Squadrons of seagulls hang on the breezes screeching warnings to their mates. They are not the aggressors. The crows soar above, tip their wings and swoop into the seagull squadron breaking their tight formation. The crows are relentless in their attack and the seagulls are persistent in their objections. I imagine a transcript of the seagull chatter might read like this: “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Don’t do it! AH! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID IT! (repeat as the crows reset for their next foray): a mini Syria and the United Nations.

And then the eagle enters the neighborhood and slowly, regally, lands in the madrona tree. A territorial insult to the crows that is too much to bear! En masse, the angry crows forget the gulls and swoop into the madrona tree; they take turns bombarding the eagle. The gulls, now allied with the crows, fly a circle around the tree and cheer on the offended crows (“Get her! Get her! Get her!” they cheer). The eagle is unaffected, almost bored by the assault. “What to eat next?” she ponders, “Or who?”

On the ground, children fill their baskets with chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks and shiny new pennies. There are a plethora of new Easter dresses, colorful hats and clip-on ties, cinnamon rolls, fruit salad, egg dishes, coffee, pastel sweaters and shoes too tight for the feet they hold captive. The Masons march in Georgetown, swords clanking, the feathers on their caps fluttering in the morning breeze. Church organs honk. Bells clang. Gas prices rise. A sacred day for some, an oddity to others, on the ground or in the sky the rituals of spring are in full bloom.

The madness of spring is upon us so the play of life is more apparent. There are nests to build. The eagle steps off the branch and soars toward the Sound; unhappy news for an unsuspecting salmon. The crows crow their perceived victory as the seagulls scatter, old alliances forgotten.

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Truly Powerful People (395)

Posted on April 8, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

395.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Saul is a great teacher. I meet him in the Dance Underground every Saturday morning to attend his beginners Tai Chi class. He is one of those amazing people who is near 70 years old but looks and moves like someone a quarter century younger than he is. He is filled with the laughter of someone who has nothing to prove and everything to give. I would call him a master and he would tell me to shut up.

He teaches through story. While clarifying a move he’ll stop mid stream and tell a long winding story that usually begins with a foible and ends with a question. Sometimes he gets lost in the maze of his story and re-enters the movement with a shrug and a chuckle yet I have gained something in the journey. Today he stopped mid-cycle and said simply, “Power demonstrations interrupt learning.” When he saw our confused looks he laughed in recognition that the first half of his story was told in his head so he filled us in saying, “I once worked with a teacher that would do impossible feats to show how much better he was than his students. It was impressive but discouraged his students. It took me a long time to realize that this was a demonstration of power for power’s sake. The teacher needed the students to know his superiority. That is not teaching. That interrupts learning.”

I loved the phrase, “power demonstrations interrupt learning,” and repeated it a hundred times so I would remember it after class. It made me wonder how much of our education system is about learning and how much is about power demonstration. The excellent teachers I know and work with are empowering their students. Their focus is not on what they know but on how they serve the bigger questions of their students. The system in which they work is nothing if not a power demonstration – a system designed to control the batches of kid-lumber moving through the mill. I once worked with a group of vice-principals that gave each other high-fives when they successfully expelled a student. That is a power demonstration, an ugly ship sailing without a map or a star to guide them.

Recently I had an email exchange with the executive director of an arts organization. We are collaborating on a grant and the guidelines require us to squeeze our art outreach program into the language of state standards. She wrote, “I loathe these standards, I don’t believe in them and hate that my own children have to learn in a system driven by them.” I hear parents, teachers and administrators use the word “loathe’ a lot in reference to the standards and tests they spawn. I told her how ubiquitous the word loathe is in the education community and wrote back asking, “Then why are we participating by squeezing our big expansive arts program into the minimal lowest common denominator thinking of the standards?” She replied, “Because we have to play the game.” “Do we?” I asked. “If we want to grant money we do.” That’s the rub, isn’t it? If the schools want the funding they must dance the power demonstration dance regardless of its impact on learning.

Repeat this phrase100 times so you remember it after class: power demonstrations interrupt learning.

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Truly Powerful People (394)

Posted on April 7, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

394.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My grandmother grew up in a gold mining camp in the mountains of Colorado. There is a wonderful picture of her as a young girl, riding a mule, dressed in overalls and a straw hat, a female Huck Finn. In her lifetime she experienced the advent of electric light, flush toilets, hot water on demand from a faucet, and central heat. She saw two world wars – each the war to end all wars that, ironically, gave birth to the war industry. She lived the mind bender that came with the atom bomb. Airplanes took flight, automobiles took over, and she saw a man step on the moon. Hearts became transplant-able, credit was forever associated with a plastic card, food became fast, ovens could microwave and salad could be found at a bar. Serve yourself.

Once, she hid an old horse in her kitchen because the truck from the rendering plant was trolling her neighborhood. She lived near Pearl Harbor on that day of infamy. She out-lived two of her children. She was a tiny woman who technically could not ride some of the rides at the carnival (she was shorter than the clown) but no one stood in her way. She taught me that formidable had nothing to do with size.

I once half-joked that if the world came to an end the one thing I wanted to guarantee my survival was my grandmother’s purse. It was shaped like a punching bag and was a bottomless source of food, bandages, water, rain gear, tools, utensils, maps, wire, string, duct tape, clothing, shelter and toys. Her purse was something out of Harry Potter: pure magic.

She drove an orange Volkswagen bug and was not above tying her wet clothes to the antenna to dry as she drove to the next adventure. She could barely see over the steering wheel. Once, in her little bug we were surrounded by a herd of buffalo and although I initially tended toward terror it was her laughter that defined the experience for me. It is her laughter that I most remember about her. It was her laughter that carried her through.

Everyone lives a big life story and few know it so adept are we at reducing our lives to the mundane. So gifted are we at not noticing the extraordinary in the day-to-day ordinary of our lives. She was not a movie star, she never won a Nobel prize or took the blue ribbon at the fair. She worked a mind-numbing job on the line at a candy plant and achieved almost nothing that this world might recognize as valuable. However, she lived every moment of her time, she never once lost sight her glorious life. She walked a beautiful life. How’s that for a legacy!

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Truly Powerful People (393)

Posted on April 6, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

393.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I’m cleaning our some files and came across more notes from the archive; these thought are connected to the last batch:

Not only is story capable of holding us in a coordinated orbit and conversely, blinding us to each other, story also holds the power of guiding us through the wasteland and back to the garden. The old stories are like maps: this is how it will look and feel; these are the challenges you will face, this is what you can expect.

Knowing the stories won’t save you from your trials but they will bring greater meaning to them. Stories connect: every human that has ever walked the face of the earth has been born, grown to adulthood, wondered what was theirs to do, loved and lost, fulfilled themselves or not, grown old, and died; their advice comes to us in the form of a story.

If we listen metaphorically, the wisdom it holds will spill its guts. Stories don’t need to be tortured to reveal their secrets, they are eager to share. However, treat them as fact and they will clench their jaws and clutch their fists and hold their breath until they pass out. Their treasure lives beyond the realm of facts, beyond the superficial. You have to listen deeply, engage it, feel it in your body. Story requires a relationship with you. Reading a story factually is to cage what is wild, to shackle what is free. Reading a story as fact generates fog.

This principle holds true of people – because we are, each of us, storytellers. Believe that your thoughts are fact, that you are right, and you will impound your spirit.

Jay Griffiths writes in her delicious book, WILD, “To me, the human spirit is not a stain on wilderness as some seem to think. Rather the human spirit is one of the most striking realizations of wildness. It is as eccentrically beautiful as an ice crystal, as liquidly life-generous as water, as inspired as air.”

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Truly Powerful People (392)

Posted on April 5, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

392.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Two years ago Sean said, “I want to write a book.” He had the idea, he had the desire, and he had no belief that he could do it. There is always a first painting, a first strum on the guitar, a first time at the keyboard. Usually, there is a desire to do something and no reality to the dream. There is an image of “how I will be” when the dream is complete, but no image of the hours and hours and hours and hours of pursuit of the dream.

Sean wrote 500 words a day. Sometimes he wrote more and sometimes less. He wrote on his commute to work because a more-than-full-time job, 2 kids, a wife, school activities, in-laws, and all the other demands of a busy American life consumed his energy and his time. On the train to work each day he had some uninterrupted creative space and ample energy to turn the idea into words on a page. He wrote on his blackberry, more than 70,000 words in the only way possible to capture his thoughts given his circumstance.

On the way to a completed manuscript he doubted, he feared that he was not good enough, he wondered if there was an end, whether he was crazy, whether he had anything worth saying, he lost sleep, he rejoiced when ideas expanded, he celebrated milestones, he got to know his characters and their backgrounds (and his characters got to know him). He was full and empty and full and empty. He realized that writing the book was only a part of the journey. He attended classes about publishing, conferences about how to get an agent, seminars about publicity. He made a strategy. He wrote letters to agents. He interviewed editors. He asked a million and one questions and made no pretense about needing to know anything because he didn’t; he wanted to learn.

Somewhere along the way he recognized that the book was going to be written. It was no longer an abstraction but an actual dream being manifest. It was little steps, everyday, that accumulated over time. His first book, Colter’s Hell, will be available to the public in the next few months. He’s about to pull the trigger on his publicity plan and he’s excited to start letting the world know that his book is complete because he’s already chomping at the bit to write his second book. He knows the story; he has the idea. He has the desire. And now he has the belief that he can do it. One step at a time; there is glamour in the fire of creativity, but mostly it’s a slow walk. Sean said, “I’ll get there when I get there.”

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