When It’s All Said And Done [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on October 6, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I discarded another post this morning. Aghast at the latest lies and childish memes I wrote yet another political rant. It was harsh. It was too much. It led us into a lengthy conversation about how we might live and write in this toxic environment and yet not let the toxins poison us. How do we remain healthy while not denying the reality – the horrors – of our democracy’s collapse at the hands of those who swore to protect it?

In truth, I have not been happy with my recent posts. So many years ago I began writing for a specific audience – and myself – to make the distinction between unhealthy control and generative power. The shorthand is this: Control over/Power with.

Control is wielded over others while power is created with others. Control is self-absorbed. Power is other-focused. Control is the product of duality: us/them, black/white, winner/loser…It is oppositional. It can only lead to discord.

Power is created in a dynamic triad. It is relational. It is complementary and reciprocal. It always gives rise to harmony.

I realized in our conversation this morning that I had myself slipped into a duality. My writing has become oppositional. As our nation grows more violent and ugly by the day, my impulse has been to push back, to sound an alarm. I want to scream, “I am not that! WE are not that!”

Ronald Reagan famously said that “Government is the problem.” He was wrong. Government is neither a problem nor is it a solution (a duality). Government is a service (a triad). It is made of elected representatives in service to their constituents relative to serving the greater needs of the whole. It is dynamic. When functional and fair, it is complementary. Symbiotic.

Government becomes dysfunctional when it tries to run like a business and pretends it is subject to a bottom line (profit or loss). It is death for any service organization that forgets its reason-for-being and attempts to be something that it is not: government is not a business. It’s a no-brainer: privatization of government services places the emphasis on the bottom line – not on serving the people. For instance, privatize prisons and the bottom line of profitability will require the creation of more and more prisoners. Businesses need to grow. The same levers are true when applied to healthcare (as we are seeing) or education.

I believe most of the people of this nation are well intended. I believe the endgame of this administration is control so it must necessarily define everything as Us-and-Them. Demagogues need to demonize vulnerable communities and blame them for the ills of the nation. Demagogues need enemies-from-within since pitting us against each other is the route to ultimate control over…Demagogues need a Them.

People who are not steeped in blaming others for their pain are more likely to take responsibility for their destiny – which means they seek opportunity – which means that they are more apt the reach out to help and for help. Opportunity is a triad. Blame is a duality.

You might rightly ask me, “How on earth could a prompt featuring Sesame Street characters lead to a post so toxic that you had to toss it?” The answer is simple: in a control strategy like the one raging across our nation, in a forced duality designed to appear as angels and devils, good guys and bad guys, the bad guys will always get the focus. That’s the point of a control game: to see bad guys everywhere. To become reactive, suspicious, and angry. To reduce an otherwise complex, diverse thriving nation into a simplistic monotone. We are angels. They are devils. Happy and sad, grouchy and glad.

As someone once said to me, “It’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

I drank the poison. I’m so glad that our conversation this morning opened my eyes and left me asking, “How do I not bury my head in the sand but deal with the reality and still remain healthy?”

Triads, baby. Focus on the dynamic relationships and set about creating some real power with others. When it’s all said and done isn’t that the point of a democracy?

read Kerri’s blogpost about SESAME STREET

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Learn Mu [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on March 22, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” ~ MIlan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

It’s too easy to boil life’s weighty decisions down into two easy choices. Go left or go right. Say it or don’t say it. Stop or go. It’s to imagine a kind of clarity that doesn’t really exist. Sink or swim.

I’ve been rolling the Japanese word, Mu, around in my head these past several months. Mu is a useful third choice, an escape from the imagined duality. It means, “Nothing.” Make no choice. When I berate myself, demanding an absolute answer to the question, “What do I do now?” I know to whisper, “Mu.” Decide not to decide. Stand still. Mu is a third way. The constant nest.

In Mu I’ve learned that frustration is a choice. And anger. When fear takes me by the throat, rather than choose to wrestle with it or attempt to control it (that which I cannot control), I ask myself to make a choice other than fight or flight. “Mu,” I whisper. Choose anything else.

I’ve learned that the weight of the burden is only a small part of what keeps a person’s feet on the ground. The greater part is how the burden is held – rather – when it is held. Future fear or past regret? Ah, there it is – another too easy choice, both crushingly heavy.

Mu. There is lightness in standing still, in choosing nothing. In nothing there is presence with what might seem a heavy burden. Instead of fearing what will be or grinding against what was, I am learning Mu. There is lightness of being in the midst of swirling turmoil, not unbearable, Mu, with feet both firmly planted on the ground, holding in my hands only what is…

[this is one of my favorite of Kerri’s compositions]

The Way Home/This Part of the Journey © 1997/2000 Kerri Sherwood

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora and iHeart Radio

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE NEST

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Lean Into It [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on February 15, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

And what did the oracle say? Did she give you insight? Wise counsel? Did she offer a prophesy? Divination? Are you on your way? Do you know where you are going?

This song has been playing through my mind all morning: “Mama pajama rolled outta bed, she ran to the police station…” Simon and Garfunkel. Down by the School Yard. I think it’s in my head because, for many days, it was rolling through Kerri’s head. Transference. The difference is that when she sings the song it sounds like it is supposed to. Queen of Corona.

Before Simon and Garfunkel moved in, I was awash in The House at Pooh Corner. Kenny Loggins and John Messina. “I’ve wandered much further today than I should and I can’t seem to find my way back to the woods…” I hadn’t thought of this song for years and, this time, Kerri wasn’t a source of song-transfer. Where do these things come from?

A friend wrote last night. Like me, he is a wanderer. He thinks it might be time to find a place to settle. Settle, not settle down. I get that. I looked for my home for years and, as it turns out, it had to find me. A person, not a place. She’s filled with music. “And I’m on my way, I don’t know where I’m goin’ – takin’ my time, but I don’t know where…” I hope he finds his place, his person. I hope he is filled with light.

Impressions on a page. The Balinese taught me it is all a shadow on a screen. The moment I put a name on it, I cleave it in two. Subject and object. Mind and matter. Future and past. The only real place is in between the definitions and it cannot be fully grasped. Just lived. Johannes said, with our words, we make images, projections, and, if the image is good, we lean into it. Reaching for the impression.

“Count all the bees in the hive. Chase all the clouds from the sky…”

Prayer of Opposites, 4’x4′, acrylic on hardboard

read Kerri’s blogpost about FOG AND TREE

comment. like. share. support. many thanks!

buymeacoffee is a shadow on a screen, a simple story to tell.

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Look To 3 [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on March 31, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

My long-ago-business-partner used to tell groups that every human being wears an umbrella hat called “normal.” That is, we try to maintain and make sense of the world according to our personal (and cultural) criteria. We carry the criteria around with us – it does not exist beyond us. We are comfortable when wearing our umbrella hats. We get really uncomfortable when something comes along that knocks our hats off of our heads.

When we lose our hats, we’ll do anything to regain our comfortable “normal.” The fear of losing our hats is what makes change – personal and cultural – so difficult. Despite what they say, no one wants to lose their hat. Organizations have a nifty phrase, change-management, to shield against the reality that change – real change- requires discomfort. How to prevent discomfort? Manage it! No worries! Everything is under control!

The other strategy – also not very effective in the long run – is to pretend that the hat is still on your head. No worries! It’s all made-up! Everything is normal!

The pandemic blew our collective hats off of our heads. We’ve had a front row seat to the realities and responses of a disrupted normal. The recent photos from Miami Beach, the aggressive non-mask-wearers, the absurd and deadly politicization of a pandemic…all in the name of hat retention and recovery.

In our circle of life, we’ve had the ubiquitous conversation about the return of normal. “When can we get together again?” Prior to the pandemic, our week was patterned on, our lives were grounded in, our Sunday and Thursday night dinners with 20. In a fluid artistic life, dinner with 20 was the shape-giver to our otherwise formless weeks. One day last March, we tossed our hats to the wind. It wasn’t safe to gather.

Over the year we left groceries at his door. He dropped goodies at our door. We waved from the car. We had regular phone calls. A few times, when the weather was nice, we sat in the back yard at great distance and discussed how weird life had become.

We looked for our new-normal-hats but they were nowhere to be found. It’s what happens when change cannot be denied: the management of discomfort is the best that you can do. Keep stepping. Chop wood/carry water. One day at a time. A new normal will surface sometime. A new pattern will be established. Pattern making is what we homo sapiens do.

In the past few months we three were vaccinated. We waited for a few weeks. We diligently read our CDC guidelines. And then, as if a year had not passed in the interim, we gathered to share a meal and drink a bottle of wine. Nothing had changed and everything had changed.

2 at the table is once again 3. We are slowly reestablishing what we once knew as normal. Our laughter is easy as it has always been. But the nation we inhabit, the community we see and experience, is transformed. There are stores we will never again support. There are relationships that will always be superficial. There is a bald ugliness exposed as never before in the nation. Ruthlessness. So many dead amidst such fatuous games of denial. The hot wind that blew our normal-hats away exposed the geography – the actual geography – beneath our nation that espouses equality but has deep division and favoritism woven into its DNA. Control by division. It is a mechanism: black gain is seen as white loss. White gain is built upon black loss. It is a seesaw, an angel/devil game. It’s a system doing – brutally – what it was designed to do.

Disruption is an opportunity for change. With so many lost hats, with so much ugliness exposed, a good look in the national mirror is possible. As we struggle to find our new normal hats, it occurs to me that angel/devil games, deep divisions, are never “solved” in twos. Movement is created by two points. Insight is a three-legged stool. Complexity is addressed through triangles, through a focus on relationship. Opposition-in-twos will keep us forever on the systemic seesaw.

Laughter is restored, possibility uncovered, through the lens of three.

read Kerri’s blog post about 3

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Think “And”

Posted on December 28, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative

a second version, a second point of view of my painting Shared Fatherhood

I suppose it is the great trap in human nature to define life through oppositions. Was your experience good or bad? Are you liberal or conservative? Are you your brother’s keeper or is it every man for himself? Oppositions provide the illusion that there is a right way or a wrong way, that any issue can be reduced to a simplicity, a singular path. One way. Oppositions are great language devices for dictators and the righteous. They remove the grey tones and blunt the grey matter. With an opposition, us or them, “god” can be exclusively on your side (a small god, indeed) which self-grants permission for all manner of abuses enacted by “us” on “them.” The problematic word when employing oppositions is “or.”

“And” is a much more useful (and honest) term to employ when dancing with oppositions. Can you be your brother’s keeper AND take care of yourself? Certainly. Can you survive entirely by yourself without the participation of your brothers and sisters? Certainly not. No one lives in a vacuum; “or” is the great creator of illusory vacuums. “And” guarantees a conversation and perhaps a host of useful, challenging and robust perspectives. Both/And is always more functional than Either/Or.

AND the first version of Shared Fatherhood

The snag in “Or” is that there is very little truth in any reduction that ultimately lands on just One. This or that. All life is movement and all movement stops in One. Creative tension requires at least two points and a desire for someplace place to go. There is no single arrival station in real life. There is no achievement that stops all the presses. Every answer inspires new questions. Each question opens doors to multiple possibilities. Agreement is a fluid target at best and must be nurtured. Compromise is never an end state; it is a relationship imperative. Life is never found in the static “or.”

Do an experiment: go to the grocery store, choose any item and ask yourself how many people it took to bring your chosen item to the shelf at that moment. If you are not astounded by the complexity of participation, how dependent we are on actions of others, your imagination has most certainly failed you. Skip, entrepreneur extraordinaire and mentor to entrepreneurs taught me that a business cannot succeed until it serves its customer’s customer. Note the word “serves.” Businesses serve. Not simply a customer but the complexity of a customer’s customer. Entrepreneurism is a service to the creative genius of a community and multitudes of communities beyond.

Entrepreneurism, like artistry, ….even, yes, like governance…like all things vital, moving, complex and growing, live in service according to the good graces of AND. Anything else is a mirage.

 

 

 

Filed under: Art, entrepreneur, Language, Perspective, Seeing, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Create A Purpose

Posted on November 13, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative

photo-2In the sixteenth hour of our drive to the mountains, to keep us awake, Kerri and I began a rousing game of This-or-That. “Frosted Flakes or Lucky Charms?” Frosted Flakes all the way; those little marshmallow things get wonky in the milk. It’s amazing what you learn about yourself and others when the world of infinite possibilities is reduced to two choices. The game soon escalated to the impossible with pairings like “Coffee or Chocolate?” Real life penetrates the game when the only possible answers are, “It depends!” or “Both!”

Since our drive to the mountains I’ve been paying attention to how often people unwittingly play the This-or-That game, pretending that there are only two choices and, further, pretending that the choices are distinct and knowable. Democrat or Republican? Communities collapse when they forget that the important stuff is unanswerable. The important stuff is a moving target and requires conversation, debate, and comes along with multiple points of view. Two sizes do not fit all bodies.

I’ve also been playing my own inner game of This-or-That, purposefully choosing impossible pairings. Order or Chaos? It seems like a no-brainer until you dive in a bit deeper.

My favorite version so far is the Purpose-of-Life category. I picked a most lofty purpose: Illumination – and matched it with the utter absence of purpose. And, of course, I came to, “It depends!” or “Both!” I sprang my line of reasoning on Kerri (she thought we were going to talk about what to make for breakfast. She’s grown quite used to my surprise topics so she rolled her eyes, sipped coffee, and listened, knowing that no breakfast choice would be possible until after I unpacked my game).

No matter which spiritual tradition I read, the final point seems to be presence (living fully – aware of your moments). And in practice, presence becomes possible when thought is either transcended (meditation) or focused (prayer). Meditation and prayer are both purpose-full. Thought needs transcending and/or focus because it is mostly a babbling brook of nonsense or, better, a brook of babbling nonsense. It’s a lot of made up stuff that often takes the form of a game called This-or-That (I win/I lose, I’m right/I’m wrong, Us/Them). The game, as is true of all forms of interpretation, gets in the way of direct experience. It interrupts presence.

Detach from the babble. Meditate. Or recognize that it’s all made up and focus what’s made up. Pray. In either case presence comes through the recognition that it is all made up. The hitch: every notion of purpose, then, is also made up. There isn’t one. But, having a purpose is required to come to the recognition that there is no purpose. It’s a loop. It’s all creativity. It’s all imagination.

Spectrums and polarities are often cycles in disguise. They are both/and. They are yin and yang (not Yin or Yang). Illumination or Purposelessness? It depends. Both. Order needs chaos just as much as chaos needs order. The question is, what do we want to create? Why, a purpose, of course! So, let’s see what’s needed and decide to address it.

“My imagined purpose is breakfast,” Kerri sighed at the end of my rambling dissertation. “Pancakes or an egg scramble?”

 

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, Language, Perspective, Random, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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