Posted on January 18, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative
Hopeful. Playful. Lighthearted. A birthday surprise. DogDog romping through a new snowfall. Chasing the surf on a summer day. The discovery of a spring meadow in the middle of the forest. A good story told with an open heart. An evening of potluck dinner and laughter with friends.
Listen to UNFOLDING, as I do, with your eyes closed. Happy, life-giving memories and images will flood your being and lift your day. What could be a better gift to give yourself on this Friday.
UNFOLDING on the album AS IT IS available on iTunes & CDBaby
Posted on January 4, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative
I don’t know about you but my watershed moments usually pass without my notice. I rarely recognize them when they happen. It is only later, looking back, that I recognize the moment that changed my life. An email. A decision to take advantage of a layover. The choice to turn around and see if what I thought I saw was true.
And, once the choice was made, I stepped into a river of forces that took over and swept me along. A left hand path to an unforeseen destination. A destiny.
This piece, WATERSHED, begins as all watershed moments begin. Simply. And then…
WATERSHED on the album AS IT IS is available on iTunes & CDBaby
Posted on October 12, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
Yesterday we drove the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive to see the fall leaves. It was our anniversary gift to each other. A day off. A day away. A conscious decision to step out of the busy-list of to-dos, the concerns and stresses, the tug and pull and demands…. What could be a better gift to each other than presence with each other. Time less wandering with intent to appreciate.
Every Breath could be the soundtrack of our gift-drive. The crisp air, the glow of the leaves (“Look at that hillside!” she gasped). An utter appreciation of all things passing. Every Breath.
On another note, if the cello line in this piece doesn’t kill you, then you need to take the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive and wake up. Kerri’s compositions were made to be played with the rich depth of a symphony. Every Breath will make you catch your breath. It’s gorgeous like the leaves.
EVERY BREATH on the album AS IT IS available on iTunes and CDBaby
Posted on September 28, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
It’s been a week. How’s that for a non-statement statement? It reminds me of a phrase Roger taught me years ago. It’s an emergency phrase to pull out when the play you’ve just seen is rotten and the director wants to know what you think. He said, “Simply smile and exclaim, ‘Now that was a play!'”
We write posts everyday. Sometimes the real story we are trying to tell is found in the overview, where the posts are juxtaposed. For instance, the difference between what I wrote Tuesday: a nod to all the special people willing to help, and what I wrote Wednesday: routinely checking for exits, not feeling safe in a gun crazy culture, reads like a study in opposites or the ravings of a schizophrenic. And then, to ice my polarity cake, yesterday I wrote about the universal wisdom of finding the middle way. This is the moment when you would smile at me and exclaim, “Now that was some writing!”
Competing narratives. Seeing the pervasive kindness in a culture saturated in violence. We want things to be one way or another and it rarely is. It is both/and. We want Hollywood endings and Hallmark predictability all the while yearning for a life of unpredictability and excitement. We story a past that we claim was better than today, forgetting or editing, the hard parts, the ugly parts. “History repeats itself,” we caution out of one side of our mouths while, in the next breath insisting, “Things were better back then.” Competing narratives.
Sometimes I long to go back and make different choices. Sometimes I am intensely grateful that I’ve walked this rich and broken path; I wouldn’t change a thing. Longing is like that, I think. And, Kerri has caught perfectly both sides of longing, the collision of narratives in competition, the desire to go back in time, the utter appreciation of standing right here.
LONGING on the album AS IT IS is available on iTunes & CDBaby
When I first met Kerri I was still pitching ideas to Yaki, a conductor/artistic director of symphonies. We’d created a few projects together. Yaki is a visionary, one of my favorite past-collaborators. He knows that symphonies, like all performing art forms, must reinvent themselves to attract the next generation audiences. Our projects were rooted in both new and traditional compositions. They were multimedia story-tellings, explorations of arts crossing disciplines.
So much of Kerri’s work lends itself to a symphony. Listen to the strings in PEACE! There is a cello line that breaks my heart every time I hear it. I sent PEACE to Yaki with two statements and a question: Listen. Imagine the possibilities. What could we do?
It was a different time then, or, perhaps, it is a different time now. Have we ever needed peace more than now? And so, on KS Friday, I send you this PEACE with the same two questions I asked Yaki but with a much greater imperative: Listen. Imagine the possibilities. What could we do?
PEACE on the album AS IT IS available on iTunes & CDBaby
Before Kerri and I were married, I asked her daughter, Kirsten, to tell me ‘the one thing’ I should know and understand about her mother. Kirsten’s answer was immediate. “Mom’s the most thready person you will ever meet,” she said.
It is true. Kerri is the most ‘thready’ person I have ever met. Thready means threaded to the past. We mark auspicious days. Each piece of furniture in our house carries a story. Every day she writes in her calendar what we did or what happened; at the end of the year it is our ritual to read the calendar and retell the stories of the days just lived. We light candles for lost loved ones.
She is rooted, deeply rooted, in family, in ancestry, and she actively and consciously tends the root through her thready-ness. And, what is most remarkable to me, is that her thready-ness is not weighty. It is in no way heavy. It is light-hearted and surprising and lively, just like her composition Let Me Take You Back. On this KS Friday, take a moment, and let Kerri give your spirit a lift. Let her take you back.
LET ME TAKE YOU BACK on the album AS IT IS available (track 12) on iTunes & CDBaby
Don’t tell Kerri but this composition, Riverstone, is one of my favorite pieces of her music. It lifts me. Every time. It brings me immediately to my personal mountaintop moments, those times when I felt most alive and shouted to let the universe know it. It perfectly evokes for me that moment on a hot summer day when I waded into a cold mountain stream, my feet stinging, and I laughed at the simple joy of it.
What could be a better gift to give your self on this Friday. Step into Riverstone and let it take you, even for a moment, to your mountaintop.
Meander. A gentle word, that brings to mind a slow stroll through a sunny day with no place in particular to be. It is a word without to-do lists and achievements.
Kerri’s composition and performance of Meander invariably opens my heart/mind to a slow stroll through memory, a warm gallery of small hopeful moments. A barefoot walk in a mountain stream. A sunrise, that moment that the warmth hit my face. A meteor shower and the scent of sage at midnight. The puppy smell of Tripper Dogdog when he first came home.
On this KS Friday, from studio melange, give over to Meander. Let this amazing piece of music inspire you – as it does me – to step out of the race and take a stroll, real or through memory, to those rich and sunny fields beyond hurry-up and go-go-go.
The Direction of Intention 