bridge | The Direction of Intention

Connect The Dots [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 11, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

A curious sentiment painted on the concrete support wall of a busy overpass in a burgeoning city. Crumbling cement sidewalks, hard asphalt, steel cable supports securing a post just outside of the picture frame. A message about bridges painted beneath a bridge.

People hustle by as if there was no time to spare. They drive fast over and around the curious sentiment. The painter-of-the-sentiment placed it adjacent to a stoplight. Perhaps, while revving their engine, awaiting the return of the green light, a motorist might turn and read the thought. Perhaps the motorist might breathe it in. Perhaps the motorist might consider the message as they passed beneath the bridge.

What gets you from here to there? From birth to death? Amidst the hard realities of the road, the steel cables, the thoughtless people whizzing passed, the persevering grasses pushing through the cracks in the cement, the litter at your feet? A thirteenth century Sufi poet thought it important enough to write about it. A twenty-first century painter thought it important enough to paint the poem on a wall.

People across time and cultures have thought it necessary to place significant messages on walls. Aspirations and appeals to our better nature. A compass pointing the way for what might be, what exists but goes largely unseen. The primary thing. Every parent knows this bridge beyond the abstraction of a message on the wall. Every time rings are exchanged, vows spoken, the unseen is understood.

The hawk landed on the fence. Kerri met its eyes and they stared at each other for what seemed a very long time. Divisions disappeared. Forms fell away. Life experienced life.

Just try and place a word on that experience! A Sufi-poet tried. A contemporary street artist thought it necessary to paint the sentiment on a hard wall. What bridge connects the poet and the painter?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BRIDGE

Filed under: Language, Love, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, bridge, connectivity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, interconnectivity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, long body, love, nature, poetry, presence, relationship, Rumi, story, studio melange, Sufi poet, the melange, whole | 1 Comment »

Take A Slow Walk [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 8, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

bridge song box copy

Many years ago, on a beautiful fall evening, I was in San Francisco. My work was complete. Thinking that my work would stretch into the evening I’d planned to stay the night before driving back to Los Angeles. It was a rare treat to have so much free time.

I walked. I let the winds of fancy blow me, going in any direction that caught me. The sun went down. I wound my way up a hill and came upon a park with a view of the city. It sparkled. I sat on a wall and watched the city shimmer, listened to the sounds, and reveled in the remarkable absence of any demand-on-my-time. A space between.

Kerri’s BRIDGE brings me back to that evening, to that slow walk to nowhere-in-particular on a crystal clear fall evening. It brings me to the peace of sitting on a wall, overlooking a city, with no desire or need to be anywhere else. May this BRIDGE, Kerri’s remarkable BRIDGE, bring you the peace and presence that it always brings to me.