folklore | The Direction of Intention

The Door [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on July 29, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” ~ Joseph Campbell

We leaned an old door against the garage. The towel rack serves as an excellent perch for birds. Initially, we entertained the idea of hanging a basket of flowers from the rack but abandoned the idea. As time and weather peel back the layers and reveal the door’s history, we are delighted that we left well-enough alone. The door is beautiful and needs no adornment.

I am rereading The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell’s masterwork introducing us to the idea of a monomyth: the story-pattern found universally in folklore, myths, religious narratives…across cultures. The human journey. This time through I am slow-reading the book, taking in only a few pages a day – or sometimes if it strikes me I linger on a single paragraph. In this phase of my life I am less interested in consuming information and more wanting to savor what I read. I am not trying to “get there” or to “achieve” or ascend the heights of knowledge mountains. I am in favor of strolling and appreciating.

Sitting on the step of the deck, watching Dogga explore the crab grass, I realized that we placed the door directly opposite of Barney the piano. And, because my mind is savoring mythic journeys I was amused at the creation of our unintentional sculpture. Music is Kerri’s bliss. Since she fell and broke both of her wrists the door has been mostly closed. Recently she cleaned out her studio. It feels good in there! There’s light and space and new energy. Occasionally, spontaneously, she will run in and play for a few minutes. Dogga and I exchange a knowing look: the muse is calling.

There was certainly a departure from the known. There have been challenges – more than I care to count. Like Barney and the door, the old world collapses, layers peel away, revealing history long unattended. In the collapse the purest form emerges and finds new light. Though the journey is not yet complete, I am witness to her transformation.

We placed an old door opposite of Barney. Where once there was only a wall, I have faith that this door will open. She will return to the land of the known, and as the monomyth foretells, she will bring with her a boon, a special gift gained from her arduous journey.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DOOR

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Filed under: Art, Awakening, Heroes, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, folklore, Joseph Campbell, journey, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, monomyth, muse, music, myth, narratives, story, studio melange, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, the melange, transformation | 1 Comment »

Constant Companions [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on February 14, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s rapidly becoming folklore week at The Direction of Intention. I blame The Brothers Grimm for inciting a deeper dive into their collection of ancient tales. I somehow missed – or forgot – that the moral of the folk tales is to honor your commitments. Take responsibility for your actions. The stories are driven by transactions-gone-awry. The daughter makes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin: she will give him her first child if he will save her and spin straw into gold.

In another tale, The Pied Piper is hired by the people of Hamelin to save the town from an infestation of rats. He plays his magical flute leading the rats to the river where they drown. Since the town is no longer overrun with rats the leaders decide there is no reason to honor their commitment. They refuse to pay the piper. The Piper once again plays his magic flute and leads the town’s children away. The children are never to be seen again.

Honest dealing. Gratitude. Consequences of actions and choices. Morality tales are told – and have been told across cultures and generations – to instill in the young and affirm in the old the necessity of a moral center. When the moral center collapses, the consequences are far worse than imagined.

We’ve placed a coneflower sculpture in the garden. We can see it while doing dishes, looking out of our kitchen window. I’ve always loved our little coneflower but in the past month I’ve grown to appreciate it as a reminder, a daily nudge to stand closer to love than I do to fear. Coneflowers are symbols of resilience and strength.

The collapse of decency. The disregard for morality. So many toxic and ill-intended transactions swirling around us. It is only a matter of time before the Piper demands payment. Folklore meets the news of the day.

The coneflower reminds me that this too shall pass. Resilience. Out of the now-inevitable loss-of-our-children will someday arise a renewed commitment to responsibility to the common good. A moral center, after all, is nothing other than attentiveness and concern for the needs of others, and a dedication to ourselves to walk in this world with integrity decency, fairness, and an internal compass – reinforced by the stories and symbols we’ve inherited – that serve as constant companions showing us the way.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CONEFLOWER

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Filed under: KS Friday, Language, Metaphor, Story | Tagged: artistry, choices, coneflower, consequences, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, decency, folklore, integrity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, morality, Pied Piper, resilience, responsibility, story, strength, studio melange, The Brothers Grimm, the melange, transaction | 1 Comment »

A Curious Silver Lining [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on February 13, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

She opened the back door and instead of the door pushing back the snow as it always does, the snow folded. It was like origami or an archivist gently turning the page of a book. To say our weather has been unusual would be an understatement – as is true everywhere. Folding snow is a curious silver lining to the fluxing cold necessary to produce it.

Yesterday I called up a bit of folklore in Rumpelstiltskin, an imp that weaves straw into gold. An illustration of the imp called to my mind Hungry Ghosts. In the canon of folkloric creations, Hungry Ghosts are currently among my favorite because I see them everywhere – especially now – in everyday life. “Desire, greed, anger and ignorance are all factors in causing a soul to be reborn as a hungry ghost because they are motives for people to perform evil deeds. The biggest factor is greed as hungry ghosts are ever discontent and anguished because they are unable to satisfy their feelings of greed.” Wikipedia

It helps me to think of the current batch of oligarchs and soul-less-politicians as Hungry Ghosts. It helps me to think that they are in anguish, unable to satisfy their feelings of greed. I see – we see – their vast ignorance, the insatiable greed that drives their inhumanity. If not now, soon they will pass on and discover that they are Hungry Ghosts. They will discover that they’ve arrived at the lowest of the low, the very rock bottom of the karmic inferno (forgive my mash-up of Buddhism and Dante). They’ve already arrived at the rock bottom of humanity (as revealed by their inhumanity), “…beings who are driven by intense emotional needs in an animalistic way.” No greater consciousness.

Folding snow. Hungry Ghosts. A curious silver lining, to be sure. We are surrounded by – or living through – a cautionary tale reminding us to keep intact our compassion, to hold the line of truth amidst a roaring forest fire of lies, to believe in the goodness of human spirits that understand service to others is the very thing that cultivates our greater humanity – keeping us from becoming Hungry Ghosts – and is the epicenter of a healthy community, nation, and world.

read Kerri’s blogpost about FOLDING SNOW

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: anger, anguish, artistry, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, discontent, evil, fascism, folklore, greed, hungry ghost, ignorance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, oligarch, service, soul, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Step Into The Overlap [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on April 27, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

The guy on the horse called out, “I love those. They’re called May Apples!” Kerri was taking photographs of the strangely creature-esque plant when the man in the cowboy hat and chaps rode by. “They’ll blanket the forest floor and be gone by Father’s day,” he said as rode down the trail and disappeared.

It is probably an understatement to suggest that life can sometimes be surreal.

Actually, I’m either not aging well or my eyes are finally opening to the utter strangeness of day-to-day life. The whole ride is surreal. Salvador Dali was a realist and society missed the joke.

Where did the cowboy come from? Considering his outfit, he could well have come from another era. The strange army of plants assembling for their march across the forest floor definitely gave the impression that we’d stepped out of linear time. We could be walking through a Venn Diagram of ages and had stepped into the overlap. Cowboys and prehistoric plants. I took a moment and scouted for dinosaurs since, if my Venn-Diagram-suspicion was accurate, we could be back in the food chain, a snack for a Velociraptor. It’s best to check when reality twists.

It tickled me to think that we might have wandered into the golden age of fairies and spirits. These plants may be watching us. They might have Rip Van Winkle intentions for us; we’d snap photos, continue on our walk and return to a parking lot only to discover that 300 years had passed. What would we do then?

We would do exactly as we are doing now. Navigate the strangeness. Take one-pandemic-day at a time. Orient and reorient to a world seemingly caught in an angry spell, conspiracy theories galloping down the info-trail and disappearing into the mad e-forest, lies bellowed as truths and truths shouted down as lies. The globe warms, the deniers deny (loudly), the religious faithful embrace the outrageous salvation of the pumpkin-orange-grifter. We would sip wine at day’s end and compare strange stories of magic, confusion and wonderment sometimes known as “news”.

Salvador Dali was a realist. I’m now certain of it. The Grimm Brothers were historians and not purveyors of folklore. We walk in the woods, Hansel and Gretel could be just around the bend. If we come across Rumpelstiltskin, we’ll be sure to share the gold spun from straw. Or not. By the time we get to the car, gold may have been a passing fancy, worthless, and tin foil will be the market standard. Who knows! This place is a miracle of possibilities and unpredictability. Avalon disappears into the mist. Time bends or at least drapes lazily in our vast dream-scape.

We walk in the woods. The May Apples assemble for a march. Their ultimate intention is anyone’s guess.

read Kerri’s blog post about MAY APPLES