Reminisce [on KS Friday]

Posted on March 3, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Staring at a waterfall throws me into reminiscence. The rushing water pulls me into the past. I never know where I’m going to land, who I will remember, or what moment I’ll revisit. Waterfalls are time machines. They are also great reminders that time-does-not-stand-still.

While Kerri took photos of the falls, I was transported back to the ranch. A long time ago. Sunset over the fields. Tom and I sipped wine while he told stories. He was a great teller of stories. He was a great saver-of-lost-boys and it had only just occurred to me that I was among the lost boys that he’d saved.

Applying for jobs is akin to staring at a waterfall. Reminiscence without the romance. I was preparing material for a position that involved mentorship and, to stir my cover-letter-thinking, Kerri asked me a question, “What was the single most important moment you’ve experienced with one of your mentors?”

I responded with the first memory that came to mind. And, in truth, it didn’t come to my mind; it hit my heart like thunderclap. Tom came for a visit. I was living in Seattle and he flew in to spend some time with me. It was so simple. A visit. This man that I so admired went out of his way to hang out with me. I mattered. It altered the path of my life.

Time flows by. The waterfall of my life is rich beyond measure. I am now the age Tom was the evening that we sipped wine on the deck at the ranch. I am forever grateful that he altered the course of my life-river – by simply showing up.

Tom and me a long time ago.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE WATERFALL

[this piece reminds me of THE LOST BOY and Tom]

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

riverstone/as it is © 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday, Love | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Shape The Story [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 17, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.” ~ John Guare

Jen’s question sparked a many-days-conversation between Kerri and me. She asked about my favorite childhood birthday memory. I stared into space. My memory pool was empty. There was nothing but white noise between my ears. I sputtered something about awkward valentines in elementary school. Later, on the drive home, I confessed to Kerri how unnerved I was to have little or no distinct memory to recount. Both Jen and Brad had palpable stories to tell – and many of them.

Since that evening we’ve talked about the power of reminiscing. Neither of us has lived near our families. We’ve had relatively few opportunities to sit around a table and tell stories of childhood, recount foibles, ask questions, laugh at where we’ve been and what we’ve done with the people who shared the experiences with us. During our recent trip to Florida I was startled at Bill’s precise memories of his time in Vietnam. Each year he gathers with the surviving members of his squad and they tell stories of their service. His memories are clear because he regularly tells and hears the stories. It’s a ritual meant to keep vital the thread of connection to the past. Shared story is the glue that holds together a family, found-family or otherwise.

Last night we were wide awake at 3am. We turned on the light and returned to our conversation about the power of reminiscence. The power of enlivening stories with others who hold the same memory. Kerri can tell me stories about raising her children but I wasn’t there. We were not parents together so I am able ask questions but I am unable to spark a visceral memory with, “Do you remember when we…” A one way street is not as accessible as a memory street shared by two.

Inevitably, as the sun began to rise on our sleepless night, our conversation turned toward what we want to create. Together. What are the shapes of our dreams? We began to tell stories in the other direction. We imagined and, so, we created. The power of reminiscence balanced by the power of aspiration. We laughed and built metaphoric houses. We populated studios with creations. Kerri challenged me to paint in a new way, not images but to give color and shape to my feelings.

Feelings. Suddenly, I remember a birthday from a time I was very young, single digits. In the basement, made from refrigerator boxes, Columbus built a birthday surprise. A train or an airplane? I can’t remember. But I felt like it was yesterday, the thrill of running down the stairs to see what my father had made for me.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TRACKS

meander/as it is © 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Identity, KS Friday, Story | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Feel The Space [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 13, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Georgia O’Keeffe might have painted it. The Light Cathedral is iconic and people approached it with veneration. It was as if the Cathedral pulled people into it. They stopped at the entrance to take it all in before stepping inside the light. Once inside, enthusiasm overtook reverence. Smiles erupted. Families posed for portraits made possible with the photo-help of strangers. I was overwhelmed by the crush of the crowd and my built-in-covid-response propelled me to the far side and out. I turned back to locate Kerri, smiling, patient with the slow moving mass, gazing up at the magic of it all.

I confess: I wanted it all to myself. I wanted to walk to the very center and close my eyes and feel it. I wanted to lay on my back and fall into the apex like so many stars. I wanted to slow-walk from portal to portal, free to turn and pause and spin. To linger inside this art space. A place created.

The lights transported me to another life: Barney took me to a fairy ring. A perfect circle scribed by towering redwood trees. He knew I could feel it and suggested I spend some time there. I meditated. I returned early the next morning to the ring and sat in the center of the circle. Time stopped. I felt rejuvenated. I felt ancient. I laughed because it felt good. A natural sacred space.

Art spaces. Power places.

“What are you thinking about?” Kerri asked as she joined me outside the Light Cathedral, bringing me back to this life.

I smiled, “Two of my favorite things.”

[listen to the difference. One composition. Two variations. Art spaces. Power places.]

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about the LIGHT CATHEDRAL

always with us/always with us/as it is © 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Power | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Retrace Your Steps [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 2, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

We completed the first loop and, rather than continue in the same direction as we usually do, we turned and walked the other way, retracing our steps. It was remarkable. Walking in the opposite direction seemed like a different trail altogether.

It is the way of memory. Take a walk backward in life through places you’ve already been. It is a different trail. Often unrecognizable. In fact, with each backward stroll, the path is surprisingly different depending on the reason for retracing your steps.

This is the season for retracing steps. Remembering people and places, tastes and smells. Kerri asked how we celebrated Thanksgiving when I was a boy. We spent the next several hours roaming through our forgotten lands. Some were delicious. Some painful. Some made us laugh.

I’ve been talking with Horatio and emailing with Rob about next steps. Where to go from here. This seems like a well-worn path: sudden job loss. Their advice is clear: do not walk the same path. Do not do the same old thing in the same old way. “My advice is mundane,” said Horatio.

As we set our eyes on a new trail, we also walk old paths in our minds. In order to avoid doing the same old thing -again – we must first see the loop that we’re on. Turning around and walking in the opposite direction seems prudent.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about STEPS

figure it out/right now © 2010 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Edges, Metaphor, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Sit On The Horizon [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 10, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

We are the first wave of humans to experience a pace of change so fast that the media of our memories becomes irrelevant – and sometimes inaccessible – even before the paint on the memory is dry. A crank driven film camera caught a toddler version of me running down the hall in my footie pajamas on Christmas morning. Images rare and, at the time, expensive to develop, our technology makes those films seem prehistoric. Kerri and I work on computers that are separated by over a decade. Mine works lightning fast and hers…is teaching her patience.

I’ve recently been pondering a quote attributed to many: “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” Facebook is a tool. Twitter, too. This screen that opens entire universes for me is a tool. These screens that pull us into them are tools. Our stories, our expectations, our experience of time and space and each other, shaped by our tool. This river runs so fast that front page news is less than an afterthought tomorrow. We take so many photos and movies that we can’t remember taking them. It’s a million miles from the days of precious and rare footage in footie pajamas.

Kerri found the bin. It holds many treasures. Movies that her dad recorded of her first album release concert. Early performances. Recording of movies complete with commercial breaks (before tevo was a glimmer in its inventor’s eye). Luckily, we have a VHS player. And it works! Some night, very soon, we’ll plug in the player and I will get to see her, at the very beginning of her career, long before we met, play.

Reaching back. Racing forward. Little miracles of remembrance rendered obsolete by faster and smaller miracles of moment-capture.

We sit squarely upon the event horizon, our memories both a bin found in the basement and an intentional composition – Instagram stories, Facebook memories, a story shaped by our tools, tools shaping us, a creative act.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BIN

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

let me take you back/as it is © 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Creativity, Edges, Identity, KS Friday, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Ready The Wings [on KS Friday]

Posted on March 11, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Yes, I’m being followed by a moonshadow/Moonshadow, moonshadow/Leaping and hopping on a moonshadow/Moonshadow, moonshadow” ~ Cat Stevens, Moonshadow

An appreciation of life, no matter what comes. It is the meaning of this lyric, this song – or so I’ve read. It seems obvious. I’m having many, many conversations about loss these days. This has been an era of loss and, so the cliche’ goes, with loss new opportunity arrives. It’s true though one must move through the loss in order to arrive at the new. On the way, there is weeping and fear and anger and disorientation. Chrysalis. The trick, we are told, is about focus placement. One day we shift our eyes and see what we have instead of what we no longer possess. We move toward rather than look back.

Kerri has, for years, surrounded herself with symbols of peace. They are on our walls, on rings that she wears, on chains draped on the corner of our bathroom mirror. She draws them in the sand on the trail. A prayer for the world she desires to create. Inside and out. Since she fell, my solo-piano-playing wife has lost more than mobility in her wrists. Strange stuff is happening. Fingers that sometimes refuse to respond. Pain that shoots, seemingly from nowhere. After a photograph – a wish for the world, a peace sign in shadow – she said, “Come look at this. Look how much my finger is bending!” Strange stuff.

What is most remarkable about this shadow is, a year ago, it would have been cause for frustration. A reminder of loss. Full of fear. Today, it was a curiosity. She looks back, she looks forward. Each day she writes lyrics and poetry and wisdoms. She hums the music running through her mind and heart and, sometimes, she dances. Standing at the crossroads of what was and what is to become. Peace replaces pain. All in good time. Good time. Wings readying to unfurl.

[peace. this is one of my favorite pieces of Kerri’s]

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about PEACE

peace/as it is © 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Body, Creativity, Gratitude, KS Friday, Love, Perspective | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Feed It [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 4, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The devaluation of music and what it’s now deemed to be worth is laughable to me. My single costs 99 cents. That’s what a single cost in 1960. On my phone, I can get an app for 99 cents that makes fart noises – the same price as the thing I create and speak to the world with. Some would say that the fart app is more important. It’s an awkward time. Creative brains are being sorely mistreated.” ~ Vince Gill

I am the first in line to tell you that everyone has a creative mind. Everyone. That river of ridiculousness running between your ears is nothing other than creativity-run-amok. What else? Telling yourself that you are not creative is, in itself, a creative act. Seeds planted early in life grow into mighty obstructions. Creative wastelands are created. If you want to hear a terrific appeal to educators to nurture rather than stifle the creative mind, listen to Sir Ken Robinson’s 2006 Ted Talk. It’s appropriately titled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”

I’ve listened to numerous school boards tell me how much they truly value the arts – until it’s time to pay for it. Sadly, it’s not a question of whether or not they value the arts; it’s that the arts, the creative minds, do not fit any of the standards of valuation against which all things are measured. They do not know how to value the creative minds that they steward. Arts organizations and artists, mostly, are not money makers. Creative minds, creative acts, do not fit in the boxes and are not measurable on standardized tests. Thinking outside of boxes is, after all, the point of a creative mind. Metrics and goals stop a creative mind and heart in its tracks. The cruelest thing you can ask any artist to do is write a grant.

And yet, an artist has to make a living. Yaki asked me if I had to choose between making a living and making my art, which would I choose? I answered, “Art, of course,” but that it was really a question of Maslow’s hierarchy: it’s hard to make art when you are not surviving. What I didn’t say is that his question perfectly captured the reason schools kill creativity and creative brains are sorely mistreated: it is assumed one must choose between. Making a living and thriving creativity are understood as oppositional.

How many parents have tried to dissuade their children from following their passion for the arts? How many times have I heard Kerri say of the stacks of music on her piano waiting to be recorded, “What’s the use?” How many times have I sat in my basement studio looking at my stacks and rolls of paintings and wondered, “Why bother?” We do it to ourselves, too.

And then, the phony metric falls and we breathe, pick up our brushes and sit at our keyboards. There is a river of riches that runs deeper than money. It is, after all, a creative act to kill a passion. It’s also a creative act to feed and nurture an artistic soul. Both. It’s what the school board doesn’t understand: the choice is not between making a living or living as an artist, the choice is between feeding inspiration, expanding a creative mind, or smothering it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CREATIVE MINDS

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

watershed/as it is © 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Whisper, “Thanks.” [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 8, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

We found the gratitude wall in a small mountain town. It was a mess of appreciation, overrun with thankfulness. I thought, but did not say, “This ought to be the visual expression of every inner life.”

I didn’t write on the wall. I whispered my gratitude to the wall. Kerri played for my father’s funeral service. This woman, who is a Yamaha artist, considered a modern master at her instrument, after breaking both wrists, after a second fall, an injury from which she will never fully recover, with a middle finger that sometimes responds and sometimes does not, with a pinky that is curling, wrists that cannot bend, hands that cannot reach the keys as they once did…she played. For the first time in many, many months. She stood at a piano and played. Beautifully.

My dad, a great lover of music, spent hours of his life listening to her CDs. He loved her playing, delighted in her compositions.

I cried for two reasons at the funeral. Both reasons overwhelmed me with gratitude. I was a mess of appreciation, so, I whispered my bottomless thank-you to the gratitude wall.

kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blog post about GRATEFUL

grateful/as it is ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Unfold [on KS Friday]

Posted on September 3, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

September. The air was cool last night. We put on longer sleeves, sat on the deck and listened to the sounds of the summer night. Cicadas. The waves crashing into the shore. The bubbling of the fountain. Distant voices of others enjoying the evening. Dogga sighed and stretched, closing his eyes.

Stephen’s memorial, a gathering of friends and relations. At the same moment, across the country, a baby was born, a new little brother. On the same day, Kim completed another circle around the sun. I missed wishing her happy birthday. Celebrations of life wearing its many faces.

The chipmunks have discovered Kerri’s tomatoes. They are considerate thieves and take only one tomato at a time. Lately, a salmon-colored cardinal sits on the cage and pecks the leaves of the plants. The basil did well until the relentless heat and humidity, the torrential rains. It is ready to retire, old before its time. The crows swarm the hawk. The squirrels have shifted into overdrive, preparations for the coming season.

We stopped on our walk. Kerri approached the tree and snapped a photo of a bright crimson leaf, harbinger of fall. “So much has happened this summer,” she said. “I can’t believe it is already September.”

Textures. Colors. Sounds. Passages. Paying attention. It has us asking that age-old question, “What really matters?’

David sent a photograph. Dawson squeezed a whole tube of blue paint onto a canvas and, with a new cool art-tool, spread the rich thick paint, carving it into creation. An artist dad in play with his artist son.

That age-old question is so easy to answer, wearing longer sleeves, sitting on the deck on a cool summer evening. You can see it from “the plateau,” as George Leonard used to call it. Be in your moment, and you will see that the little things are really the big things. On the plateau, everything unfolds simply and with clarity. Friends gather. A baby is born. Blue paint squeezed onto a canvas.

UNFOLDING on kerri’s album AS IT IS

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

read Kerri’s blog post on TEXTURES

unfolding/as it is ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: KS Friday, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Intend And Stop Wishing [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 11, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

We walk. Each day we stop all work, bundle up, and find a trail. That is how we create peace.

We create peace.

It might seem that peace is hard to come by in our angry divided nation, pandemic raging, deniers denying, propaganda smearing,… It’s not so hard if you look for it.

We say to the departed, “Rest in peace.” It is a wish. It’s always seemed to me a bit late to wish peace on others only after they die. Why not wish peace for the living?

Actually, we do – as a seasonal ritual. This is the time of year we hear the hopeful proclamation, “Peace on Earth!” It is sung and inscribed on holiday cards, it is printed on banners hanging in malls and city centers. A wish. Good will toward men and women.

Good will. Peace – like anything else – will always remain a wish, a holiday bromide, until it becomes an action. An intention with effort. A priority. Until we decide it is more important to create peace than it is to wish it. To wish for it.

Good will. To will good.

Will [verb]: expressing a strong intention or assertion for the future.

We walk. We create peace for ourselves. Every day. It is a practice. We know that peace cannot ripple out if the center is turbulent chaos. We know that peace will remain a wish unless we stop work, bundle up, and act on our desire to experience it. To spread it.

Peace. Good will. They are choices. They are actions. They will only be hard to come by until we decide, with strong intention, that it is what we desire for our future. Until we decide peace is more important than division, until we decide to create it. And create it. And create it. Peace isn’t an achievement. It is a relationship.

Pie-in-the-sky? Here’s a thought from my inner cynic: If peace made a profit we’d be doing more than singing about it.

Here’s a thought from my inner idealist: Look around you. We are capable of creating anything. Most likely there’s a little miracle called a “cell phone” within your reach. Peace is no more difficult to create than that little device of connectivity. It is no more difficult than walking. A simple practice. A pursuit. An intention. One step at a time.

All of Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about PEACE

Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Possibility | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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  • visit the studio melange at kerrianddavid.com

  • The Seer available on Amazon.com

  • Lucy & The Waterfox is also available on Amazon.com