creative flow | The Direction of Intention

Pull The Weed [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 6, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

One of my favorite simple pleasures each day is watching Kerri go out in the early morning and tend to her tomatoes. The world is quiet. The coffee is brewing. Dogga makes sure the yard is clear of marauding squirrels so the path to tomatoes is safe. An extraordinary ordinary moment. A tender ritual. A wonderful world.

Put down your clever and pick up your ordinary. It is one of my favorite “rules” of improvisational theatre. It is also a good credo to live by. Trying to be clever will take you out of the game every time. It is as true in all aspects of life as it is in art. The beautiful little secret: power, presence, flow…these live in the province of the ordinary.

When I was learning to scuba dive,Terry tried to teach me one central concept: get neutral. After several dives, fighting for control, trying “to do it right,” burning through my oxygen with my dedicated stress, I simply relaxed. I found the neutral that he advised. It was as if I joined the current. The colors sharpened. Time seemed to slow. My breathing definitely slowed. What was a struggle only a few moments before was suddenly easy. I’d picked up my ordinary. I got out of my way.

I delight watching children draw. They are free in their ordinary, not a shred of clever to be found. They lose that. We lose that, trying to be…something other than what we are. How many of us shudder in the notion that we are inauthentic? How many of us invest in the notion of low “self-esteem?” The circle of ordinary comes back around though it is cloaked in words like “self love” or “acceptance” or “wholeness.” Get neutral. Put down your clever.

Ordinary, not clever. It is a discovery that ought to stick early in life but generally lands much later. There’s very little distance between the child that freely colors and the adult that one day remembers that nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing. It is ordinary to color with abandon. The riches are in tending the tomatoes. “Clever” is merely a weed that needs pulling. In the ordinary, a wonderful world is waiting.

PULLING WEEDS on Kerri’s album RIGHT NOW is available on ITunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blog post on TOMATOES

pulling weeds/right now ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, KS Friday, Metaphor, Play | Tagged: artistry, creative flow, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, flow, improvisation, improvisational theatre, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, neutral, power, presence, scuba dive, self worth, self-love, story, studio melange | Leave a comment »

Conceal To Reveal [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 26, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I was tilting at windmills, one of my favorite things to facilitate was mask work. I brought masks to lawyers, to CEOs, to teacher’s, government workers, elementary school students, corporate trainers, business coaches and sometimes to actors. There’s nothing better than a mask to pop open possibilities and challenge petrified thinking.

Masks conceal and reveal. They serve the paradox and, therefore, are tapped into the root of truth.

It’s impossible to work with masks for long before realizing that the faces we wear everyday are also masks. We “put on” a smile. We attempt to hide what we feel by the mask we manufacture. Some faces freeze in masks of indifference or masks of disdain. We perform ourselves, and craft our masks accordingly.

Many cultures around this world believe the mask opens a communication with the gods. Don a mask and something bigger-than-you speaks through you. When I paint I often have that feeling. Artistry sometimes means getting out of the way so the creation can flow.

It’s why I brought masks to lawyers and CEOs and corporate folks and teachers. To introduce them to the fields that bloom beyond their need to control. So much of their lives, so many of their problems and challenges were wrestling matches of control. They were actively creating the obstacles that they desired to remove.

What do we actually control when we harden our faces over what we feel? What do we gain by attempting to control what others see or think or feel? We are makers of our own prisons. We are deluded by our fantasy that we have the capacity to determine what others see. The only control we exert is upon ourselves.

The mask work makes abundantly clear that control is not power. Power – creativity – flows. It is the dance of the artist to master technique, to learn control, and then transcend it. To get out of the way.

My favorite moment, with every group, in every circumstance, came when the masks released the people and they slowly, respectfully said goodbye and removed them. Their faces was also mask-less. It was like seeing infant’s faces. Bright. Open. They would, for a few brief moments, look at each other, unmasked and unprotected. Simply astonished at being alive, together, in the world.

read Kerri’s blog post about MASK

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Emergence, Identity, Possibility, Seeing, Transcendence, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artist, artistry, artists, control, control fantasy, creative flow, creative process, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discovery, exploration, facilitation, flow, identity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, masks, power, seeing, something bigger, the art of seeing, truth | Leave a comment »

Chicken Marsala Monday

Posted on February 26, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

If blocking your creative arteries is the goal then there is no better illusion to consume than trying to be perfect. Eating the idea that you can be free of flaws or experience mastery without mistakes is guaranteed to clog your capacity to move. Notions of perfection turn the imagination toward the fear-monsters and breeds an especially severe inner critic. Perfection is like the Medusa, give her your gaze and she’ll turn you to stone.

Imagination, creativity, learning, growing,…are words of movement. They are experiences of free flow. If investments like perfection crimp flow, then granting simple graces like trial and error, or “seeing what happens” will inevitably open the channel. Creative flow, like profound learning or wild imagination happens when inner-judges retire; it happens when nature is allowed to take its course. Nature is movement. Falling down is a necessary form of movement. Perfection is about appearances. Learning is about process.

From studio melange on this Chicken Marsala Monday comes this simple reminder. Try. Remove failure from the gallery of options. Get on the bike and ride. Expect to fall down. It’s the only way to learn how to stand up.

FALLING DOWN IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF LEARNING merchandise