fiction | The Direction of Intention

Re-Right The Un-Real [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

She teased herself, saying, “Look how many posts I’ve written lately using the word “Real” in the title!” There were 3 in the past few weeks.

“Of course you have.” I said, “We’re living in a time that reality is just damn hard to believe.” For instance, our current president has his very own Wikipedia page listing the numerous accusations of sexual assault against him, dating back to the 1970’s. It’s a lengthy list. One of the women on the list was thirteen years old when she claims he raped her at one of Epstein’s parties. Of course, this page, these accusations, have been available for all to read for years. How unreal is it that he is being protected by the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, those who call themselves Christian – all the while the red-red-party loudly proclaims moral authority and trumpets their mission of “protecting” our sons, daughters and wives against the evil Woke?

Un-real.

It is one of the reasons why we planted the sweet potato vine. First, I was awed by its color and luminescence. Seriously, I’ve never seen a plant glow or grow like this vine. Each day I step out back and stare at it, saying, “Unreal.” It’s more beautiful than I can believe. In an upside-down era it re-rights the world. It is real.

Recently, as if it intended to delight me to my core, a single caladium leaf emerged from the field of sweet-potato-vine-vibrant-green. “Look! An outlier!” I called to Kerri.

“Just like us,” she said, admiring the misfit. We poked around the plant to make sure this lone caladium leaf was really emerging from within the sweet potato vine. It really is. It, too, is real.

Real (adjective): 1. actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.

What’s real? Our current president is an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, a serial liar with a wiki-rap-sheet of sexual assault accusations that takes more than a single sitting to read. Those are facts, not imagined or supposed. Even so, his sycophants are doing back flips to keep we-the-people from seeing what is really in the Epstein files. They claim – as they have for over a decade – that what’s real is fake and what is fake is real. Apologists for the unforgivable. Apparently, accountability is nowhere in their party, nowhere in their plan, nowhere in their president, thus we are hit each day with a tsunami of conspiracy, chaos and blame, a festival of the fact-free, the supposed fantastic, the un-real.

Is it any wonder that each day we shake our heads and huff, “Really?” And then we head outside to check in with our sweet potato vine and outlier caladium leaf in an attempt to re-right our topsy-turvey world, affirming for ourselves what is actually real – and what is blatantly not.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE CALADIUM LEAF

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Seeing | Tagged: accountability, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Epstein files, fact, felon, fiction, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, outlier, rapist, real, reality, serial liar, story, studio melange, sycophants, the melange, upside down, wikipedia, woke | 1 Comment »

Make Belief [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 27, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“People must surely be afraid, without knowing it, that their hold upon reason and sanity is precarious, else they would not so resent being asked to look at visual experience in a new way, they would not be so afraid of not seeing the world as they have always seen it and in the general publicly agreed way of seeing it.” Joanna Field (Marion Milner), On Not Being Able To Paint

We saw the little green men at an antique fair. They come in peace. I wondered so asked the Oracle Google why aliens – peaceful or not – are always depicted as green. The AI master responded:

“Green has been associated with aliens in folklore and mythology for centuries…” Forest creatures, fairies and sprites. Leprechauns…

“The term “little green men” gained popularity in the 1950s, coinciding with reports of flying saucers. This imagery was further popularized by movies and other media.”

“In summary, the “green alien” trope is a creative and cultural construct rather than a scientific expectation. It reflects how we use our understanding of life on Earth to imagine possibilities on other planets.”

A cultural construct. Imagining the possibilities of life on other planets has brought us to the common agreement that green is the color of aliens.

The term “common sense” refers to practical, sound judgment. In practice, however, common sense need not make sense at all. Common sense is not so much about feasibility as it is about group agreement. It is “common” sense, meaning that it is consensus. It need not be factual or practical.

When faced with overwhelming evidence that the earth is round, there are people on this round earth who adamantly insist that the earth is flat. They claim that it is common sense; one need only look at a flat horizon.

Similarly, conspiracy theories are rooted in “common” sense. Mob mentality is not rooted in reason. Lemmings regularly run over cliffs.

Common sense is not necessarily a representative of truth. Common sense need not be rooted in fact. Common sense is just as easily an agreement built on fiction or fantasy. MAGA is an example: a group awash in an agreement of a reality that is sourced in make-believe. Make-believe: make-it-up-to-create-Belief.

Make-Belief. It is the fox’s game. Is there really any sense to be made from an orange man in a blue suit spewing balderdash? Common or not? Simple minds united under red hats of outrage? Do little green men really arrive in saucers that fly? No sense required; only group agreement awash in nonsense. Like the Republican Congress. Common.

read Kerri’s blogpost about ALIENS

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Filed under: Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, common, common sense, conspiracy theory, cultural construct, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fantasy, fiction, Joanna Field, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Marion Milner, reason, republican, sense making, story, studio melange, the melange | 3 Comments »

Either Way [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on November 1, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Imaginary problems.

It is my personal favorite phrase – and point – pulled from Jimmy Kimmel’s special monologue for the republicans in our families. It’s an appeal to their sanity, a summary of the nonsensical incoherence and hate daily spewing from the mouth of their dictator wanna-be and his enablers.

He creates imaginary problems.

For instance: Imaginary problem: that there is rampant voter fraud in our elections. Reality: we have safe, fair, and free elections. There was no evidence of voter fraud in 2020. There is no evidence of voter fraud in 2024.

Other examples of a ridiculous and dangerous imaginary problem: immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Gangs of immigrants are taking over Aurora, Colorado. There are dangerous imaginary problems within the imaginary problem. For instance, immigrants are murderers and rapists set free from the world’s prisons and running amok in our nation. Or there is this: The border is an open door. In reality – yes, in reality – none of it is true.

The “invasion” rant, the immigrant-hate-speak we hear daily, the voter fraud screed…is nothing more or less than fearmongering. Fearmongering: (noun) the action of intentionally trying to make people afraid of something when this is not necessary or reasonable.

Imaginary problems are meant to make people afraid of something when it is not necessary or reasonable.

Imaginary problems cause real problems. Here is a real problem: A full 47% of our citizens are preparing to vote for the dissolution of our democracy. They are basing their vote on imaginary problems. They are voting for fascism as the way forward. That’s a real problem. They are voting for the end of the constitution, the promised use of the military to silence voices of opposition, the end of free and fair elections.

Real problem: People in a democracy are voting for fascism because they have been thoroughly steeped in the imaginary monsters set loose by the wanna-be-dictator and magnified by his X oligarch and the fox-megaphone. Very real problem: 47% of the voting public have lost faith in our system based on lies and imaginary problems; fear manufactured in order to sway them.

The monsters are imaginary. The hate and fear it invokes is very real.

The impact of the wild conspiracy theories and incessant lies aren’t imaginary. For instance, the refusal of the dictator-wanna-be to accept the results of the free and fair election of 2020 led to the deaths of 5 Capitol police officers. 140 police officers were injured by a mob responding to an imaginary problem. The families of the 5 officers who died viscerally know the reality of death, all due to the imaginary problem whipped up by the only president in our history who refused to accept the results of a free and fair election. Real problem: the same man – the only man in our history – who incited violence rather than carry on the American tradition of a peaceful transfer of power – is once again whipping up the same imaginary problem. Real problem: his maga-party is enabling his lie.

Yes, we have a real problem.

Keep in mind, the facade that the dictator- wanna-be is a successful business man is imaginary. Reality television is, well, not reality. Neither is his business acumen. His six bankruptcies are real. His grift is real.

His 34 felony convictions are real. His civil conviction for rape is real. The multiple felony counts he faces are real. What’s imaginary? That the charges against him are politically motivated. He would have his supporters believe that he bears no responsibility for his actions. That is a real problem.

His love of the world’s dictators is real. The world’s dictators love him, too. He is, as those who know him well and served in his administration, famously easy to manipulate. Their cautionary tale to us is not imaginary. They are screaming for his supporters, for the nation, to wake up and see what is real before it is too late. The consequences of his ill-intent are and continue to be very real.

And so, we vote. And the question we answer with our ballots is whether or not we are capable of discerning between what is real from what is imaginary, what has substance and and what is falsehood, whether or not we will step forward as a real democracy or step off into the dark fascist imagination of a tired angry reality tv star, a fabrication of a man whose only gift seems to be creating imaginary problems.

Our vote can be an actual solution to the wanna-be-dictator’s abundant imaginary problems.

Either way the consequences of our vote will be real.

read Kerri’s blogpost about IMAGINARY PROBLEMS

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Filed under: Identity, Language, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, elections, fabrication, faith, fascism, fearmongering, fiction, free and fair elections, hate, imaginary problem, immigrants, jimmy kimmel, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, problem, reality, reasonable, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, vote | Leave a comment »

The Essentials [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

The interviewer asked me to name three things I love and three things that piss me off. “Ah, here’s the trick question,” I thought. Tom Mck once told me that, when conducting interviews for teaching positions, he’d ask a trick question, “Tell me about your experiences with a bad student?” If the interviewee answered the question, he would not hire them. “There is no such thing as a bad student,” he said. I knew better than to answer the interviewer’s question but I did anyway: “I can’t see my dad anymore and sometimes that really pisses me off.” Of course, I did not get the job.

I read The Little Prince, first to myself and then aloud to Kerri. As I turned the last page I saw that she was silently crying. “I forgot how it ended,” she said. So had I. In the book, after the Little Prince is bitten by the yellow snake and dies, the narrator searches the sand but cannot find his body. The author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a year after he wrote the book, crashed his plane over the Mediterranean Sea. It was 1944. His plane was later found but not his body.

Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985. It is more relevant today than when it was written. He predicted our indifference to lies. It’s not that we cannot discern fact from fiction, it is that we do not care to. It’s much more entertaining to spew self-righteous bile and shared discord within the confines of the social-bubble. A free press, the mechanism meant to function as society’s lie-detector, has collapsed and become a terrific magnifier of falsehood. Entertainment. That which can be seen with the eyes but is nowhere detectable with the heart. Wild lies, outrageous claims and blame, blame, blame, blame, blame are much more captivating than essential truth. It’s about numbers: grotesque behavior attracts more audience than genuine discourse so completely dominates the info-stream.

The body politic fragments, like pieces of an airplane tumbling from the sky.

Lately, I hear often – and speak – this common refrain: “I just can’t understand how people don’t see it.”

“Oh, people do see it,” whispers The Little Prince, sweeping clean his volcano, adding, “With their eyes.”. He winks, “Closed hearts are not concerned with the essentials.”

The wind shifted so we sat outside and enjoyed the evening cool after a hot day. Just like my dad used to do. Now, when I close my eyes, I can see him. We made dinner with 20 and ate under the waning light in the sky. It was the solstice. The stars made their slow entrance. Gazing up, I wondered if perhaps Antoine de Saint-Exupery found a way to join The Little Prince on his planet so together they might attend to the vanity of the rose. I hope so. For a moment, we sat in silence and appreciated all that our open hearts could see.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SEEING CLEARLY

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Filed under: Awakening, Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor | Tagged: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, artistry, closed hearts, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, entertainment, essential truth, essentials, fact, fiction, free press, heart, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lies, Neil Postman, seeing, solstice, story, studio melange, The Little Prince, the melange, truth | 3 Comments »

Take A Closer Look [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 25, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Knowledge is rarely completely divorced from power, and interpretation is too often an expression of convenience.” ~ Wade Davis, The Wayfinders

Discussing our project, Yaki and I agreed that we needed to step lightly. “We wouldn’t be allowed to perform this piece in Florida,” I quipped. Yet, sadly, it’s true. The piece is Beethoven. Nothing controversial there! I’ve written and will perform the narrative, an update of the piece from 2008. Yaki asked me to rewrite the narrative to speak to the issues of 2022.

It’s odd. Were we to perform the new script in the world of 2008, it would be benign. No one would deny or take issue with the fact that slavery is part of the history of the United States. It would have been laughable to challenge the era of Jim Crow or that the struggle for Civil Rights was and is a part of our story. Our division is not new. It’s institutional, systemic. Yet, in 2022, in red states, the dark side of colonialism is being scrubbed from curricula. They’re attempting to rewrite our nation’s history as a Hallmark movie.

Things are rarely what they appear. It’s one of the reasons why art is so powerful and necessary in a healthy society. When a community goes off the rails, claiming truth is fiction while aggressively promoting fiction as truth, the truth deniers always attempt to shut down and/or shout down all conversation. The theatre, the arts, during turbulent times, can reach into dark fiction, and resurrect the soul of truth.

Things are rarely what they appear. Staring out the kitchen window I was amazed that the bird perched on the wire fence was so still. It was so uncanny that I walked out back to get a closer look.

It’s the only way for people, for ideas, for communities, for nations, to grow. To question. To be curious enough to have a closer look. To laugh at themselves when the bird is discovered to be a leaf. To not be afraid to have their illusions popped, their history unpacked, or to welcome another point of view.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BIRD

Filed under: Art, Edges, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, beethoven, civil rights, colonialism, Critical Race Theory, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fiction, history, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, narrative, portland chamber orchestra, story, storying, studio melange, systemic reacism, the creatures of prometheus, the melange, The Wayfinder, truth, Wade Davis, yaacov bergman | 1 Comment »

Chew On It [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 9, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

The first and most important question of the day is, “What is nougat?” I’ve always been more of a peanut M&M’s guy or, these days, a straight-up almonds, sea salt in dark chocolate lover. I’m currently accepting donations of Chocolove’s Salted Almond Butter in Dark Chocolate. You should be, too.

So, what is nougat? Originally it was honey, nuts, and egg whites but in this era of “it’s-better-not-to-know-what-I-just-put-into-my-mouth-and-called-it-candy,” I wonder what passes for nougat? I only ask because I’d never heard of a Charleston Chew so, to understand the reference, I looked it up. When I read that a Charleston Chew is, “…flavored nougat covered in chocolate flavored coating…” I immediately spotted the word “flavored” twice in the same sentence. If the chocolate isn’t really chocolate then what are the odds that the “flavored” nougat is really honey, nuts and egg whites?

To borrow and bastardize a bit of Hamlet”To eat; perchance to savor: aye, there’s the rub.” Kerri assures me that a Charleston Chew is yummy. Who cares what’s in it if it makes my toes wiggle with satisfaction? It’s the inverse argument of all those nasty foods adults made us swallow as children: who cares if it’s good for me if it makes me gag? Make me go hungry and send me to my room! Please! Caring adults forget that kids squirrel away and hide Charleston Chews beneath the mattress so banishment to the bedroom for not choking down brussel sprouts is tasty a reward.

This is key to understanding why people do what they do: we know what’s in a brussel sprout*. We have no idea what’s in a Charleston Chew. We’ll clamp down our jaws or pitch public fits rather than eat what’s good for us. Yet, we’ll happily binge on mystery snacks that are certainly no good for us but, damn-do-they-taste-good. Insight: humans are not rational beings. We puff up and proudly defend all manner of thought-nougat but can’t be bothered to look up the source or verity of the dreck we’re feeding on.

Of our current dilemmas, there is one thing that is certain: we can’t Charleston Chew our way out of this.

Take heart. There’s always Chocolove.

[*now that I’m rumored to be an adult I love roasted brussel sprouts]

read Kerri’s blogpost about CHARLESTON CHEWS

Filed under: Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, brussel sprouts, candy, Charleston Chew, chocolate, Chocolove, compulsion, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fact aversion, fact check, fiction, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, nougat, propaganda, rational, reason, story, studio melange, the melange, thought nougat | Leave a comment »

Achieve Some Reason [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 21, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I laughed heartily when I saw this Dodge Challenger commercial. It’s entitled Family Motto and inadvertently speaks to the one of the major challenges of our times. We have a very hard time separating the real from the fabricated. The frame freezes, the small boy in the driver’s seat of the in-studio-muscle-car looks to the camera and says, “Our lawyers just want you to know that this isn’t real.” They poke fun at the ease of deception, the effortlessness of suspended disbelief. It’s fun to believe that the kid is driving the car.

It’s fun until it’s not.

For instance, in a lawsuit against Tucker Carlson, the lawyers at Fox News successfully argued that no reasonable viewer would take anything he said seriously. In other words, much of what he espouses is nonsense not to be believed. It’s entertainment, not information. He’s akin to a comedian, like Stephen Colbert – only not funny. Sydney Powell, after months of sowing doubt and slandering Dominion Voting Machines over the last election is attempting to make the same argument. Reasonable people, she claims, would never believe a word that she said. All of those press conferences, those indignant claims of voter fraud blasted into the news cycle, were apparently for sport. They were meant to be fun.

Thinking-people should know better than to believe what they are being told. Reasonable people know that the kid isn’t really driving the car and so they should also know that the pundit and the lawyer are peddling fiction and not fact.

It’s one thing to sell a car. It’s quite another to sell a false-reality. To peddle a lie. The car is being sold during a commercial. The false-reality is being sold on a network platform that sports the word “news.” Context is everything. Reasonable people, we are told, should know the difference. Is it news? Is it a commercial? Is it entertainment or press event? What do we call it if it is broadcast between commercials?

The problem, of course, is that reasonable people are either in short supply or they base their reason, invest their faith and belief in places they ought not. The false-narrative is literally ranted into the camera from behind a news desk or at a press conference. It’s propounded with the same enthusiasm that Phil Swift uses when selling Flex Seal products – only not as nice. The lie is proclaimed as truth. And then, the lawyers step in. And then, the story changes. The previously spouted truth should not be believed and reasonable people ought to know better.

We have a very hard time separating the real from the fabricated, news from entertainment. We’ve had a lot of help ascending our mountain of confusion.

I recently heard this phrase: an armed person is a citizen, an unarmed person is a subject. It is, of course, a phrase that is bandied about by the 2nd Amendment alarmists but I think it is more relevant and applicable when “being armed” applies, not to guns, but to information. Those men and women who stormed the Capitol, beating the police with flags, declaring their freedom, were in fact, being sold a false narrative. Voluntary subjects void of information, grown fat on a diet of fantasy. Easily led.

A person armed with information in the face of so much deliberate confusion, has a prayer of being a citizen. Achieving reason takes some effort. The lawyers want to you know that no reasonable person should believe that the kid is driving the car. The same is true for the space between the commercials, the detritus in the media stream.

read Kerri’s blog post about IT’S NOT REAL

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective | Tagged: citizen, citizenship, confusion, control fantasy, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dodge challenger, entertainment, fabrication, fact, false reality, fiction, Fox News, information, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, reality, stephen colbert, sydney powell, truth, tucker carlson | Leave a comment »

Pray For Apollo [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on April 28, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

contrail copy

I confess to seeing this contrail and thinking it might be Apollo’s chariot. Of course, if it was Apollo’s chariot then we’d all be in really big trouble. The sun seems untethered from the chariot. Depending on how the myth is told, the sun is either being pulled by the chariot or the sun IS the chariot and, either way, if you are seeing what I am seeing, Apollo has lost control.

Of course, the other side of my brain always kicks in and I think to myself, “Apollo flipping across the sky, gripping the reigns, sans chariot, is not a bad metaphor for these troubled days.” In addition to riding the chariot/sun across the sky, Apollo is symbolic of reason and logic. All things illuminating.

Our world is upside down. Fact is assailed as fiction. Conspiracy theories are traded like baseball cards to deflect attention from the actions of a feckless president pushing disinfectant as a pandemic cure while science bites its tongue for fear of offending him. Blame inhabits the vaunted seat of responsibility. A good portion of the population willingly and knowingly plants their heads in the sands of propaganda. Reason is shunned. Questioning and perspective are rejected. Sand is preferable to logic. We’ve reduced our hallowed ideal of jurisprudence to base partisanship; justice is no longer blind but sees in shades of red or blue.

Apollo twirls like a kite, hanging on for life to his mighty horses as they race across the sky, wild-eyed, in no particular direction.

read Kerri’s blog post about CONTRAILS