The Direction of Intention

Truly Powerful People (391)

Posted on April 4, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

391.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Today, during my walk, I was taken by how many people had stacked stones on the beach; little mini-cairns sprang up overnight! The seawall was festooned with seashells laid in patterns. Someone gathered feathers from the seagulls and crows and ducks and geese and create a small maze in the sand – an installation of black, white and blue. The driftwood was upended and rearranged. The design brought to mind Easter Island or Stonehenge.

It reminded me of an email from Horatio. Recently, without coordinating, Horatio and I watched the same movie, The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, about the Chauvet cave paintings. I was so moved by the paintings, what we know and don’t know about how they were made, that I wrote a blog entry. Horatio, excited by the serendipity of having been similarly impacted by the same film on the same night, wrote me an email that I adore. Here is an excerpt:

“….What struck me was the obvious wonder of creation, that elemental thing you and I and every other artist feels when the work is genuine, that clearly burst in a relative blink of an eye into human life.. …The raw power of that creative act obviously made the cave a kind of holy place, and the fact that over millennia (millennia!) other Picassos emerged and picked up the torch (literally and figuratively) and added their images is maybe the most profound of all the facts the movie told. The power of representation, mirroring the world, telling a story, and passing it on. Boom. Suddenly you have power, as a man, as a woman, as a tribe! Wonder. Awe. The Mysteries!

The movie made all the work of the last millennium or so seem a bit smaller in a way, with our classes and our Photoshop and our internet and Shakespeare’s royal patrons and The Globe and those Italians and their papal audience and the camera obscura and fancy paints that those Dutch guys used in their well-tailored clothing. But it also made it much, much more grand as we see how we involuntarily continue to seek and represent our subjects and images and the stories that they drive as we continue to live on the earth. The movie laid the elemental creative act bare, with its mysterious but clearly profound repercussions to the tribe. We can’t help it. We keep picking up the torch.”

Horatio is exactly right: we can’t help it. We stack stones. We face the driftwood to the sea to stand guard. We see the feathers and must arrange them for no other reason than we must arrange them. We draw in caves for reasons beyond reason. We can’t help it.

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Truly Powerful People (390)

Posted on April 3, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

390.
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 found these notes in the archives and brushed them up a bit. My thoughts loop back as I find myself remembering how central to communal health is a common story and a vibrant, shared image:

Where is the story that unites us?

Story is the gravity that holds us together, pulls us into a common orbit. It is the irresistible cadence of invitation: come. Sit. It is singular and essential; it holds us in affirmation like a burgeoning pod: it is the common narrative that affirms, “This is who we are.” In the absence of a shared narrative it is almost impossible to truly say, “This is where I belong.” This “story that unites us” is the nucleus, the artist’s obligation and most important role.

I took my fingers from my ears and heard the whispered possibility of a single narrative when I recognized the artist’s call, not as an obligation, not as something I had to “do;” it was something that I already was. I recognized that I am an artist, not as a role, not in the sense that I need to produce anything; nor that I need to comment on the politics of my world. I am an artist because I am aware. I am aware that I create my world in how I engage and interpret every moment. We create in every moment. And, because I am aware, I am capable of listening to the story behind the words. I understood the call when I began to ask, “What is the story that I am telling through my life (with my fingers jammed in my ears)?” What is the story that I am telling my self about myself? I am an artist not through anything I do, but in how I choose to be, in what I choose to hear and see, in the story I choose to tell. Is there a story that we choose to tell together?

Story is the gravity that holds us together, this we’ve forgotten, I know. And like the musicians in an out-of-tune orchestra, when we no longer recognize our common story the gravity reverses itself, we spin off into the void, alone in a cacophony of inner monologue. Hell is a community of individuals lost in the fog of their own story. Hell is the universe that has forgotten the existence of symphonic music. Hell is where you compare yourself to others (and the others always win), where you have to be perfect, where you are never good enough; Hell is where you invest in false notions of who you should be, have to be, could have been. In Hell there is no present moment because you are too invested in the fears of the future and regrets from the past. It’s a dense fog, an inner wasteland, a lonely place.

Staying in hell takes a real commitment to the story that you tell! The commitment to telling a common story is no less arduous but produces a dramatically different sound.

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Truly Powerful People (389)

Posted on April 2, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

389.
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 sand hill cranes leave prints in the mud. They return to the river each night, find a nice sand bar, swoop in by the thousands and land en masse to await the return of the sun. Although I don’t know this to be true I imagine they huddle together, moving like a river eddy, impressing the sand and mud with a map of their movement. It’s an incredible map to see! The natural world’s Jackson Pollock made more impressive when you consider they’ve made versions of this map at this time of year for centuries!

Remove your shoes and walk the map and you’ll receive a crane reflexology treatment. Their map is 3 dimensional and massages the bottoms of your feet! All of life’s stresses slip away when you add your impressions to their map. Tragic tales and stories of woe melt like butter as crane perspective fills your body and soul. I felt an entire year’s worth of life gumbo leave with a sigh.

As I stood on the map I wondered what geography I scribe in the mud of my life. What mark does my eddy leave? Of this I am certain: if you removed your shoes and walked my mud map you would be more likely to break a toe than leave behind your stress. Now that I have had crane reflexology and filled my metaphoric cup with their perspective I am committed to tracing a different life map. Smaller steps, more circles, with attention paid to my natural migration pattern instead of walking the concrete paths and straight lines of urban human flight. At the end of my days I want my fellow walkers to be inspired to take off their shoes, stand in my impressions, and feel the goodness of the being that once walked in this place.

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Truly Powerful People (388)

Posted on April 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

388.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Kicking back on the hood of her car, gazing at the stars, Megan said, “Now, there is something I can worship.” The sky is so big in Nebraska that it is almost impossible not to fall into it and I had the feeling we’d been falling into this moment, this place and time for a lifetime. How many people before us have looked into the sky on a still quiet night and felt the enormity of their universe and the quiet intensity of being alive for the few turns of the earth that we have together? It is a gift to bear witness and story it into existence. Sky gazing opens us to the mystery and isn’t that the purpose of worship?

Earlier in the day Megan, Jill and I stood in the Platte River. We’d come to see the cranes. Megan said, “I always wonder where this water has come from; how far has it traveled to be here?” We immediately put our hands in the water to feel it – not just any water but this water that traveled this way at this moment, the same moment we decided to wade into the river. Little did we know that soon we’d be covering ourselves with mud to incite stories from kindergarteners, Jill’s inspiration. As I stood in the back of a classroom watching these incredible mud covered women listen with rapt attention to small people telling stories of bear hunts and being shot from a cannon into a mud pie I felt like the water having traveled so far and was grateful for the hands that reached into the river to touch my life at just the right moment.

Sitting on the hood of a mini-van parked far beyond the city lights on the spinning earth with a brilliant half moon slowly circling around us, coyotes howling far in the distance, cranes by the thousands sleeping beyond the fields, clock time was no where to be found. I marveled at the currents that brought me here to this place and this moment and thought, “This is what it feels like to worship. Isn’t it amazing to be alive?”

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Truly Powerful People (387)

Posted on March 31, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

387.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

We hold our workshops in Hastings on the top floor of the police department – a building that used to be a school so on the third floor it sports a small multi-use room with a stage – it is perfect for the experiences and messes that we create. This morning, dense with fog, we sent the teachers out of the building looking for edges.

Fifteen minutes later they proclaimed, “There are edges everywhere!” We live in a world that knows itself by the lines that it draws and the rules that it makes. They translated their edge discoveries into art installations and then taught us what they learned about edges.

First, we learned that it’s at the edges where the real learning happens. Edges are uncomfortable. Edges are to be played with, feared, challenged, leapt over and run from. Edges are where differences come together. Edges are necessary and not necessary. Judgments are edges. Edges are useful in making distinction and it is through our edges that we come to know ourselves. Edges can be sharp, broken, smooth, clean, rough, precise, unknown, limits, boundaries and horizons. Playpens are defined by there edges and so are prisons. Stories have edges just as pictures have frames. There are edges to perception. Doubt is an edge just as choice designates an edge. Opportunities are found on edges. Your edge is different than my edge. We seek our edges and redefine them. Yesterday’s edges look small and today’s edges look intimidating.

That’s just a snapshot of what they found. Who knew there was so much to be found on an edge! What do you find on your edges?

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Truly Powerful People (386)

Posted on March 30, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

386.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

David asked me to think about color and my relationship to color. Later this summer we will have a chat and I can’t wait. Since he sent me the note with his questions (on brilliant yellow paper, I might add. A shade of yellow that tends to the reds and not the greens so it is warm and inviting), I’ve had several surprising encounters to help me prepare for my color conversation.

For instance, today as I work with the incredible educators in Hastings, NE a teacher told the group about her kid’s belief that color did not exist before the 1970’s; camera’s caught the miracle of color coming into being. Television programs caught it, too! I imagine the kids asking, “What was the world like before color?”

My dear friend Judy has an app on her phone that allows her to mix and create color. She tells me it is mesmerizing and can play with the app for hours. When she greeted me instead of saying, “Hello, she announced, “I’ve created the most extraordinary color.” It is not mystery what Judy’s relationship is to color!

Silvia took me be the hand and said, “You have to see my new basement color!” She skipped down the steps, flipped on the lights, and told me the story of her accent wall, an amazing shade of blue, warm and relaxing. And, it went perfectly with the couch. “I really love it!” she said.

Driving to see the Sand Hill cranes, Megan pointed to the magenta sun slowly setting through the purple gray clouds. “Look!” she exclaimed. I caught my breath. It was a color I rarely see and was growing more saturated by the second. She took several photos to capture the colors melting together in the sky.

My first revelation for David: I am seeing color through the eyes of others and I am astounded at what I see. When am I not having a relationship with color?

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Truly Powerful People (385)

Posted on March 29, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

385.
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 night I stood by a river as the last light of the sun transitioned from orange to purple to silver to grey to Prussian blue. Over the low murmur of the water the cranes called in the night. I was instantly quiet inside and realized that I am not enough in nature. My mind and life are full of fuzzy abstractions that dissipate on the banks; I am small here, insignificant and fleeting, a perspective necessary to the development of soul. I do not know how long we stood there, as time by the river is not counted so much as experienced.

Jim Edmondson once told me that people go to the seashore to touch the infinite. I think people attend the river to feel the finite, life both in cyclical and linear motion. If I lived here would I count my years by the return of the cranes? I hope so, though the sun and moon play chase around me and I pass months without participating. Once, I worked with kids in Los Angeles that had no experience of stars. I wondered what might change in their lives if only they travelled beyond the lights of the city. I wonder now why I choose to live within them.

Martin Prechtel writes about his village: people who more than participated in the dance, they attended to it. Their actions, their language, their thought mattered as they told their story again and again to recreate Time. They had eyes to see a world that was living (because they were living) and not just a resource to be consumed. They stood by the river all the time, or, as Joseph Campbell might say, they were in their church all the time. When was the last time that you knew without question that your thoughts and actions had impact in the regeneration of life? When was the last time you knew without question that you are fleeting, and it was your turn to keep the story alive?

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Truly Powerful People (384)

Posted on March 28, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

384.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Here’s a bit of a story. It’s the tease; the promise:

It was a special day. The King was to dine with their master that night. That’s why the cook let the young wife go without nicking her face with the cleaver. All must be beautiful in the eyes of the king. As she polished the finest china and silver, the young wife knew she had to find a way out of this hell. The cook was going to kill her.

The king was a renowned dandy and was given to fashion and high style. His closets were vast and full. He was known to change his clothes several times each day. He kept his designers and tailors busy and hated to be behind the trends. As far as he was concerned, one of his primary duties as king was to set the fashion standards. Had there been photographers in his day he’d have legislated that only his photograph could grace the cover of the gentleman’s fashion quarterly magazine.

As she placed the silver in it’s box, the young wife had an idea. She knew that the King’s visit was her chance to get out. She also knew that the King could have her executed for doing what she was planning to do….

Johan Lehrer writes that creativity begins with a problem; flashes of insight are born of frustration. Hitting the wall is necessary for us to move beyond our analytical mind and into the intuitive mind. The heroine or hero of a story must come against the wall as a prerequisite for the risk, the incentive to step into the void that will inevitably lead to their transformation. The promise of the story is nothing without the obstruction. The same is true in our lives – that’s why stories are, in the words of Reynolds Price, “…second in necessity after love and before nourishment and shelter.”

Stories are helpful because they beg you to consider where in our lives you we trying to eliminate our obstacle; when do we give up too soon. Where do we withhold our voice and not speak our truth? Meeting the obstacle is where the opportunity is available. Insight lives just on the other side of the wall. Choosing safety at the expense of growth or ceasing to try because we are frustrated short circuits our capacity for vision. It inhibits transformation. It is a decision to sit in the dark. What do you know in your gut that you need to do but are resisting? What cook has backed you against the wall and threatened you with her cleaver? What do you imagine the young wife is about to do? How might you problem be the door into the promise of your story?

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Truly Powerful People (383)

Posted on March 27, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

383.
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 call them universal dope slaps. I do not mean a dope slap that applies equally to everyone. I’m talking about a dope slap delivered by the universe – a specific slap for a specific action. Sometimes they are gentle. Sometimes they are abrupt. I had two this week from opposite ends of the dope slap spectrum. In fact, I’ve had two in the past two days.

I’ve gone months without a single slap and suddenly two in a row. And, the gas-door-mystery-problem continues; something is up! Yesterday I took an early morning walk. Sometimes when I walk I fall into deep thought and I lose all track of place, space, and time. It is my version of Alice down the rabbit hole. I am like a little kid following all the shiny objects in my mind. When I came back to this world, I was on the walkway at Alki beach. There are wonderful barnacle encrusted concrete stairs that lead down to the beach. At high tide the lower steps are underwater. The birds are migrating and what brought me back was a noisy flock of black and white ducks, an entire squadron coming in for a landing just beyond the steps. I ran down to the lowest step and looked over the concrete wall to get a better glimpse just as a rogue wave hit the seawall. The wall of water that washed over me was prodigious. It filled my coffee cup to the brim. Water dripped from the tip of my nose. “Wake up!” said the universe as the duck squadron cluck-chuckled at my drenching.

This morning as I walked I was once again chasing shiny mind matter. This time I was deep, way beyond the Queen of Hearts, into unexplored Wonder-territory. It was the flutter of wings that brought me back. Gentle and quiet, I was being accompanied by the neighborhood pack of pigeons. They fluttered around me, forming a circle, and as I moved to the circle’s edge, they would lift off, and flutter into a new circle formation around me. I’m certain they thought I had snacks. They were with me for several hundred feet. I was enjoying our walk, fully engrossed in the pleasure of wings cleaning the space around me, eyes up, which is how I missed to the obvious trip-able branch stretching across my path. Charlie Chaplin would have appreciated my prat-fall; it was glorious, keystone cop-ish. “Wake up!” chuckled the universe as the pigeons chortled and took to the sky.
“I’m awake!” I announced to no one in particular. “So am I!” said the old woman sitting on the bench behind me. A double-dope-slap!

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Truly Powerful People (382)

Posted on March 26, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

382.
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 little door to the gas tank is stuck shut. I am at the gas station and I can’t get the little door open. As life metaphors go, this one leaves me dubious. Dado, my mailman, pulls into the station and jumps out of his mail truck with his usual life-giving greeting. We embrace and he asks why I was tugging on my car. I tell him my problem but leave out the part about its possible metaphoric implications. I know how hard he would laugh and then I’d laugh and we’d be at the gas station all morning. I’m especially pleased that he pulled in when he did as I was starting to doubt my sanity – the kind of doubt that comes when you loose your car keys and look in the drawer and check your coat pockets for the eighth time.

Dado gives it a tug. There is no lever on the inside of the car; the gas cap door is old school and opens when you pull on it. At least it is supposed to. We both give it another tug. Now the laughter begins. We are giddy with the absurdity of the situation. Lacking any option I do what guys always do: I pull out the manual from the glove box and pretend that I know what I’m doing. Dado and I laugh harder as I thumb through the manual looking for the section that tells you what to do when you don’t know what to do.

I call the dealership and a nice man named Elliot tells me he’s never heard of anything like this before and asks if I can drive to the shop. I can’t. I have no gas. Now I am certain it is a life metaphor. Elliot tells me that there is nothing to be done but pry it open or tear it off. Dado looks concerned as I report the options; he is not a violent man. I am concerned at the options because now I am certain this is a life metaphor. Where is my gas door, metaphorically? What does it mean to pry it open or tear it off? How far can I go with limited fuel and no access to the tank? Questions I leave unanswered as I abandon Dado and drive for home; I have no tools in the car.

As I drive away from the station the other life metaphor, the one I almost missed, occurs to me: in my moment of stuckness, the most joyful man I know showed up. Dado would have delayed his mail route and spent all day with me, laughing and pondering ways to break in to my gas tank. As life metaphors go, this one leaves me delighted.

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