blog | The Direction of Intention

Chase A Ghost [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on February 5, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

The question came in through our site from a man who was instrumental in Kerri’s decision to record her compositions. A voice from her past asking a good question.

There are many surface answers to his question. In our case, all would be applicable: to give voice to our thoughts, to build a community, to call attention to our work…This morning, as I ponder his question, I think the purpose of a blog, my blog, might be to chase ghosts.

I began blogging utterly convinced that I had very little of value to say. I’d never considered myself to be a writer. It was a challenge I set for myself. Actually, I had one thing to say and decided I would, every day, attempt to write about it until I ran out of gas. I calculated that the tank would run dry in less than seven days. I was chasing the elusive ghost known as voice. My voice.

The interesting thing about ghost-chasing is that it makes you pay attention to everything. Ghosts can come at you in an instant from any direction and disappear just as quickly. Sometimes you can’t see them at all but feel intensely their icy presence. That was the first thing I learned in my voice-ghost-pursuit: I was paying careful attention, inside and out. It was not intense, not a strain or a struggle. I didn’t have to try. It was natural.

Not surprisingly, paying attention gave me more and more to write about, more to reflect upon. More to offer. “Have you seen this? Do you understand it?”

Chasing ghosts is a great question stimulator. Ghosts are curious and require all manner of suspension of disbelief so they are also terrific curiosity-energizers. Among the first line of questioning is about your self: your perceptions, your beliefs, your ideas of who you are and who you are not. It’s nearly impossible to write about others without exposing your self. Voice chasing leads to an astounding realization: the self/other boundary is permeable. We come to know ourselves relative to how well we know others. We only know our voice because someone out-there is listening and, hopefully, giving voice in return. Contrast principle.

Our basement is unusual in that it has box-after-box of unsold CD’s – the hard evidence of the music industry making a quick pivot to streaming services. The stacks of my unsold paintings take up an entire room. Our filing cabinets are filled with ideas and manuscripts and songs-not-yet-recorded. There are folios of cartoons that didn’t quite make it to syndication, folios of ink gestures, watercolors, and sketches. Another kind of ghost: the work of years past. When we met and married, we began blogging together, originally to try and call attention to the voice-of-work-past-but-not-yet-sold. That ghost, a very sad ghost, quickly left us; the joy of writing together each day overcame the initial intention.

The joy of writing together. We no longer chase the ghost of voice. It was here all along (of course). Now-a-days, we pursue a much simpler spirit: the gift of paying attention, the pure surprise of what shows up when we dive into and write about our daily prompt. “You go first,” I say, since she is wiggling with excitement to read what she just wrote.

read Kerri’s blog about WHAT IS A BLOG?

like. share. support. comment (give voice). we thank you for any and all.

buymeacoffee is lending your voice in support of our voice so we can lend our voice to your voice. It’s a circle.

Filed under: Awakening, Creativity, Merely A Thought Monday, Seeing | Tagged: artistry, awareness, beliefs, blog, bloggers, blogging, community, curiosity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, ghost, Ghosts, give voice, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pay attention, paying attention, purpose, questions, story, studio melange, surprise, the melange, voice, writer, writers | 1 Comment »

Arrive At The Essence [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on February 15, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

This past Saturday we passed a milestone. We began writing our Melange on February 12, 2018, four years ago. We’ve published 5 days a week, every week, no matter what chaos or crazy storm blew through our lives.

Our Melange has moved through many phases. Originally, we wanted to regain some control over the publication of our music, paintings, plays, children’s books and cartoons. In our first post I called it our “pile of creative perseverance.” Also, we wanted to make a living from our mountain of work so we set up Society6 storefronts and spent hours each day developing products based on what we published. It was a blast and a total bust.

Eventually, the stores fell off, the daily themes changed, and we arrived at a pure essence: we love to sit together and write. Each day. There’s always a visual prompt, mostly from photos Kerri’s taken during the week. There’s only one rule: we can’t read or know what the other is writing about until we’ve completed our drafts. And then we read to each other, talk about our posts and clean them up. It’s my favorite thing to do. It feeds our hearts, energizes our artistic souls and that is more than enough.

Somedays I feel as if we are writing ourselves into existence. Our Melange is the story we tell each other – and you – of our life together. It’s a continuation of the Roadtrip, the daily emails we wrote to each other before we met. And, if the Roadtrip was a narrative offering of “this is me,” the Melange is a narrative offering of, “this is us.”

We launched the Melange with this Chicken Nugget (below). I wrote, as an introduction in the inaugural post, that this Nugget – and the Melange – was “a quiet reminder that the universe of feelings was – and is – so much bigger than words can possibly contain.” Ironic, yes? Coming from two people who, each and every day, write words as their way of reaching into this vast universe of feelings.

Thank you for reading what we write. We appreciate every step you take with us on our journey.

read Kerri’s blog post about 4 YEARS

Filed under: Art, Chicken Marsala Monday, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: appreciation, artistry, artists, blog, blog posts, cartoons, Chicken Marsala Monday, Chicken nugget, co-creation, collaborator, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, feelings, flawed cartoon, Flawed Cartoon Wednesday, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, narrate, narrative, painter, perseverance, story, studio melange, the melange, The Roadtrip, together, writers | Leave a comment »

Read The River [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on August 24, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

an old river copy

The great gift of writing this blog is that I now have ten years of recorded ramblings and ruminations. I have an almanac of my thought patterns, a rolling document of what really matters most to me. I periodically revisit what I wrote five or ten years ago. My visits to the past never fail to surprise me.

I’m chewing on the same stuff. I’m rolling around the same ideas. You’d be shocked – as I am – at how many times I’ve had the same revelation, thinking it was the first time. Yet, since my writing serves as a map to my revelation cycle, I can also see how the man having the old-revelation-anew is not the same man. I have the old revelation through new eyes. Perhaps that is why I have these revelations again and again. Discovery as rediscovery. New perspective makes the old revelation vital again.

As I’ve written before, I feel as if I am living the Parcival story. When I was young I failed in The Grail Castle. I didn’t speak my truth. Rather, I did as I was taught, practiced my good social training, and withheld my voice as a proper knight should. Should. I started writing my blog when I was wearing armor, riding around the kingdom attempting to slay dragons and fight ogres to make up for the wasteland I’d created. I won my battles but lost my war – just as the story prescribed.

Now, I read about my battles sitting in the forest, having dropped my armor. Having mourned my defeat. Having lost my way. Having passed through the frustration and fear and anger that comes with lost-ness. Having relaxed into chopping wood and carrying water. Having the same old revelation again and again.

The story, this life story that we live, is a story of letting go, of paring down. Dropping the “shoulds.” Simplifying to the point that recognizing who we are is of much greater import than who we should be. Inhabiting the present moment is most often the abolition of “should.”

One of the greatest lessons I taught but failed to grock is, “suspend your judgments and learn.” ‘Should’ is a judgment by another name. A self-judgment. Armor. Mechanisms that separate. What story do I tell that separates me from this moment? What story do I tell that separates me from delighting in my self just as I am – and not as what I think I should be? What limits do I impose on my story and why?

Life, I’m learning, is one long lesson about the illusion of separation. We spend the first half of our days creating distance and the second half closing the gap-of-our-own-creation.

So, this morning I sit with my blog. I read the chronicle, this old river, and laugh at what I’ve apparently always known but refused to learn. The old story comes with a consistent bit of wise and useful advice: let go. No one but you tells the old story. No one but you misses seeing the Grail Castle that, as the hermit-in-the-woods giggles when it appears a second time to Parcival, “Boy, it’s been there all along.”

read Kerri’s blog post about AN OLD RIVER