Posted on November 4, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
One of the first paintings I did for Kerri is called Dancing In The Front Yard. From the very beginning we’ve had a natural impulse to dance. In the kitchen. On the deck. In an airport. On the trail. In the front yard.
If we break into spontaneous slow-dancing and the Dogga is near, it never fails that he joins us. Standing on his hind legs, paws on our shoulders, together we three dance our celebration of togetherness. There is nothing better on this earth.
Posted on October 18, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
Two people sit at a bar, late in the afternoon, and order far too many appetizers. Then, when offered, they say “Yes” to a peek at the dessert menu. They split a second glass of wine. They seem as if they have not-a-care-in-the-world.
Things are rarely as they appear.
I often remind myself that I can never know the full story of another person’s life. My reminder comes in handy when I am judging or comparing. It is the thinnest image slice that invokes judgment. My comparison is made with a facade.
The day of our anniversary was so fraught that we couldn’t reach through the angst to touch a moment of celebration. We sabotaged the day. Lit it on fire and watched it burn.
The next day we took a very long hike. We sorted through the ashes of our angst. We laughed at ourselves. After our hike we decided to have a glass of wine. We did what we almost never do: we spent money on ourselves. Two people at the bar. We decided to order appetizers and, since it was a make-up day for our anniversary, we ordered anything and everything we wanted. Pressure release. We were like kids in a candy store, our eyes a’ poppin’ when the food arrived. We clapped our hands. We giggled. We savored each delicious bite.
Our plates and glasses were empty. So full we could barely move. As a courtesy the bartender asked us if we wanted to see the dessert menu. He was as surprised as I was when Kerri said, “Yes.” And then she ordered another glass of wine for us to split. And then, a slice of flourless chocolate torte.
This was a first. In our decade of life together, frugality has been our necessity. A first taste of excess, a moment of generosity to ourselves, was a healing balm. An anniversary celebration.
We laughed at the story the bartender must have told of this care-free couple. Of their excess. He could not have known.
“For one person to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks…” wrote Rainier Maria Rilke. “Loving…is a tremendous responsibility.”
Posted on October 6, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
Kurt Vonnegut posited that stories have shapes that can be graphed. According to his graphs, there are only eight story shapes. His story graphs work on a horizontal axis, from Beginning to End, and a vertical axis, Good Fortune to Ill Fortune.
Stories are journeys. Life is a journey. Over the course of every journey, fortune flips. Robert McKee writes that fortune flips are central to making a well-made screen play. What looks like a gift becomes a disaster and vice-versa. Just like life.
Kerri calls this photo of a mushroom A Table For Two. It reminds her of our pop-up table. We’ve celebrated anniversary dinners at the beach around our pop-up table. We’ve had pop-up snack time in the woods. The pop-up table was a great idea that came during pandemic isolation. For me it became a visible symbol of a fortune-flip. How to bring light into a dark time? Make a special meal pop-up in any location: a beach, the woods, a park, a trail…
There are circumstance-driven fortune-flips. There are fortune-flips brought through intention. When circumstance brings ill fortune, there is no better response than to pack a special meal and celebrate the day from a surprising location. Flip the circumstance through intention. Choose the shape of the story.
Ten years ago, right about now, I was sitting on an airplane wondering what she would be like in person. We’d been corresponding everyday for several months. An unlikely correspondence. Spontaneous at the beginning; growing in intention during the months that followed. “You’re already good friends,” I told myself. “Let it be what it is.”
What it is. That first meeting in the airport she was holding a daisy so that I’d recognize her. I’d have known her without the daisy. We held hands. We skipped out of the airport.
We held hands and skipped out of the church the day we were married.
In our ten years together we’ve packed in a lot of life. A full spectrum of life’s colors. Deep grief to mountain high joy. Wild frustration to even wilder elation. Sometimes I feel as if life is trying to hammer us into submission. Or, just hammer us. Ours has not been an easy road. Lots of water. No safety net. But one thing has been true throughout: even on the worst days, we somehow find our way by holding hands. We find our way by skipping.
Posted on December 24, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative
Rob and his family celebrate the solstice. Arnie and his family celebrate Hanukkah. My sister and her clan observe Christmas. The earth travels. There is a moment when the tide of retreating light tips and returns. A touch more light than dark. Minimum declination pivots and slow walks, minute by precious minute, toward maximum. For eons, humans have celebrated, personified, and symbolized the moment of light’s return.
The best story. The fewest words.
[in preparing for a cantata, she wrinkled her brow and said, ‘I need another piece!” She noodled for a few minutes on the out-of-tune church piano, pulled a few phrases from the imagination-sphere, and then sang this song. It sprang into earth fully formed. Thank goodness I had my old iPhone at the ready to capture it. We didn’t record the performance. I tell her, again and again, that she needs a proper recording of this beautiful song. She says, “Someday. And maybe with a cello line…” In our own way, we await the return of the light]
Posted on December 21, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative
Sometimes it feels as if we were shot into space for a few years and have come back to much changed Earth. Or, it feels like we were stranded on a desert island and are returning to places now strange in their familiarity. Reentry from isolation. Everything is changed. We are changed. The rituals of the season punctuate the strangeness.
We’ve been delighted to once again have dinner with friends. Unmasked. Unprotected. Indoors. I look at the faces of the people I love as we laugh and I think, “Oh, yes. I remember this.” The warmth of companions-in-life, reaching across time and covid boundaries. “We missed you,” we say, relearning who we are together. Our faces are older. Perhaps wiser in all that has passed.
Last year we drove to North Carolina. We arrived late in the day on Christmas. We walked through the small town, beautifully lit for the season, though seemingly abandoned. Our footsteps echoed off the walls. We were happy to be there, enjoyed the displays in the windows, we walked down the center of the street with no thought of possible traffic. We held hands. The absence of others was so normal that we didn’t think it odd that we had an entire town to ourselves.
This year is the mirror image, an alternate reality. People are out. We are out though the vestiges of isolation hang on us like Marley’s chain. We stop to take photos of the lights like ethnographers fascinated by the ceremonies of the locals. I found myself staring at the row of illuminated trees wondering what it represents. “Why can’t it just be pretty!” I admonished myself. “This is how people celebrate the season.”
And, aren’t we all looking for the moment that Scrooge awakes after a night of ghosts with new eyes and a deeper understanding of precious life, throwing open the window to the morning sun, hoping against all hope that he hasn’t missed it and asks, “Boy! You there! What day is it?”
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes or streaming on Pandora
The ritual became real when Kerri asked the bride and groom to turn and look at the community of people assembled as witnesses to their wedding, “No, really look,” she said. Eyes met eyes. Family. Friends. The unspoken but oh-so-apparent moment: We’re here for you.
Rituals, like a good story, are about single moments. Everything builds to the moment. In the ceremony, Kerri told the couple that they would have days that they could not take their eyes off of each other and that they would have days that were…not so much, but in all of their days, through all of their challenges and celebrations, they would have this moment, and this single-moment, when all else dropped away, would carry them through everything: standing before their community of support, they looked into each other’s eyes and said, “I do.” I carry your heart.
Initially, when they asked her to perform their wedding, she was stunned. “Why me?” she asked. After their ceremony, unique in all the world, simple and profound, I wanted to ask but did not, “Now do you know why they asked you?” My wife understands the power of a moment, the deep river of a ritual, and the long ripples that simple words and intentional actions can send through the long-body of a lifetime.
“Are you ready?” she whispered to the couple when the music faded. “Yes. Oh, yes,” they replied.
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
This is among my favorite of Kerri’s compositions. It is children laughing and running through tall grasses. It is the tender green shoot pushing up through the crusty soil to drink the sun. It is the bursting grape, the wine. This is hope and giddy life. It is “Do it now. Don’t wait another moment.” It is a spontaneous celebratory dance because you can’t hold it in another second. It is the soundtrack for the moment when you come to realize that life is boundless and vibrant and right now.
YOU COME TO REALIZE on the album THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY is available on iTunes & CDBaby
The Direction of Intention 