A Closer Look [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on June 6, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ~ Thomas Merton

A closer look at the dandelion reveals a fractal. Each level a repeat of the same or similar pattern at a progressively smaller scale.

Listen to your inner monologue. It is the story that you tell yourself about yourself. Listen to the stories in the news or racing across your social media screen. They are the stories that society is telling itself about itself. Any good novelist or playwright will tell you that conflict is the motor of story. Note: conflict need not be violent. Longing is a conflict. Unrequited love is a conflict. A search for meaning is a conflict. A closer look at humanity reveals a fractal. Each level a repeat of the same or similar pattern at a progressively smaller scale.

Robert Olen Butler defined story this way: “When a yearning meets an obstacle.” I believe words matter. I have always appreciated Robert Olen Butler’s definition of story because it does not use the word “conflict”. It is the fractal of the human experience.

The Buddhists teach that desire is the cause of suffering. I giggle every time I consider that marketing is essentially the creation of desire so it follows that it is the engine of suffering. The peace found in possession is fleeting. My Buddhist cartoon: retail therapy is but a single stop on a continuous cycle of suffering. If I was a teacher of story-writing I’d send my students to the outlet mall to study shoppers. My bet is that they’d eventually recognize themselves in the shoppers; then they’d have something essential to write about.

Picasso said, “Every painting is a self-portrait.” His sentiment is a fractal. We watch movies to see ourselves. We attend concerts to transcend ourselves – to lose and then find ourselves in the music.

A closer look at us reveals a fractal. We are both the yearning and the obstacle. A repeat of the same or similar pattern no matter the level or the scale.

Fistful of Dandelions © 1999 Kerri Sherwood

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DANDELION

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Story | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Work A Circle [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 5, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Kerri has gifted me with the practice of looking close-in. Because she notices and photographs detail, I have the great pleasure of seeing things I never would have noticed by myself. I walk through the world seeing connective tissue and pattern, the view from 30,000 feet. I am grateful to regularly have my mind pulled from the clouds to witness the miracle of the minute. In her photographs I see connective tissue and pattern. It’s all one amazing fractal.

This is the very first post I wrote on my new blog named The Direction of Intention. I wrote it in 2010 following a meaningful conversation in a DEI facilitation about the nature of power:

1. Truly powerful people are dedicated to inspiring true power in others.

It goes like this: empowered people empower others.

Think about it.

How powerful must you be to free yourself of the need to diminish others? No more reducing others to elevate your self. No more reducing yourself to fulfill the mistaken belief that, “you are not worthy.”

What if your worth was no longer in question? What if your value was no longer an issue? What would you do with all of that newfound time and energy that previously was dedicated to bullying your self or reducing others?

In later posts I wrote about the distinction between Control and Power. They are not the same thing, in fact, they are opposites. Control is an action taken by the fearful and, ultimately, weak. It is the path of the bully. It necessarily sucks the potency of others. Control is the action of a vampire. Taking.

Power, on the other hand, is the generative creation of many. Empowerment. Giving to a common center. We learn about power after natural disasters: people coming together to help other people.

Control is the preferred action of authoritarians. Empowerment is the ideal behind democracy. Together, we-the-people are capable of creating a more perfect union.

I’d forgotten this tiny detail, the reason why I started writing. I felt as if I had something to say about power and how it is often confused with control. I did not consider myself a writer. It was scary new territory in 2010.

I’ve now put in my ten thousand hours and I find in these past few weeks that I am once again writing about power. I recognize that my words about power sometimes sound like raging, Captain Dan tied to the mast screaming at the storm. This storm is called the abuse of power, an assault on the power of a free people by a malignant leadership enamored with control fantasies. Vampires, all. There is good reason to rage.

My first 498 posts began with this phrase: Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine. And so, I work a circle. I return to where I started, to this one tiny detail, the original thought: empowered people empower others. There has never been a time more vital to remember – and serve – this simple imperative.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BEAUTY

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Power | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

In Our DNA [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 5, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Often, if you pay attention, the smallest pattern of action is a fractal revealing the bigger picture.

For instance, a small pattern of action: when Kamala Harris first became the Democratic nominee for president, many of our neighbors had to display their yard signs from inside their houses; if left outside their signs disappeared.

Bigger picture: the maga-candidate and his supporters promise to erase all voices of opposition. It is their pledge, their vow, the entirety of their platform.

Our democracy is a two-party system founded on the principle of healthy debate. In other words, opposition, the active engagement with opposing points of view is the magic ingredient of our form of governance . Our vote is the sacred epicenter of the ongoing, healthy debate. Our vote is literally our voice in the debate. It is how we sustain and perpetuate the gift of democracy.

Democracy is never finished. It is not a place of arrival. It is not a noun. It is an ongoing, living process, imperfect and messy, that generation to generation strives toward a more perfect union. It is an action, a verb. We are what we do. Today -and every day – we are the stewards of this high ideal: government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Today, unlike any other vote of our lives or our parents’ or grandparents’ lives, our great-grandparents’ lives – democracy in on the ballot. Kamala Harris has been clear: she will ensure that voices of opposition have a seat at the table. That is the way of democracy.

The maga-candidate has been clear: he intends to arrest and silence all voices of opposition. He will, if necessary, use the military to do it. He’s labeled voices of opposition as “the enemy within”. That is the way of fascism.

Removing opposition silences the debate and smothers the breath of democracy.

Small pattern: over time, more and more Harris/Walz signs showed up in yards, moving from inside the house to the outside where they belong.

Big picture: the voice of opposition grows stronger, louder, more vibrant, when tyrants attempt to repress it. That, too, is an American tradition. It’s in our dna, our national character. We don’t like it when we are stripped of our freedoms. As Kamala Harris reminded us, our nation was established when a petty tyrant tried to suppress our voices and restrict our rights; when the petty tyrant tried to eliminate our freedoms he unleashed an uncontrollable voice of opposition. We the people.

248 years later, another petty tyrant promises, if elected (ironically) to remove all voices of opposition. Opposition stands in the way of his lust for absolute power. He vows to abolish the magic ingredient. He is committed to the eradication of democracy, the birth of fascism. He’s already begun his erasure of opposition by once again claiming without evidence that our elections are corrupt.

And so, today, our choice could not be clearer. Today, we exercise our right of voice. We will either carry forward our inheritance of healthy opposition or we will fall into the petty divide and end it.

Today we weigh in on the debate. Democracy or fascism? We vote.

read Kerri’s blogpost about VOTE

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Filed under: Edges, Identity, Perspective | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Pop A Cork And Ponder [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

It is, at long last, election day in these-once-united-states. If I had a wine cellar it would be stocked to the top with election night libation and reality-numbing assistance.

Through Kerri, I received a loving and gentle push back against my use of the phrase these-once-united-states. Our reader reminded me that these-states-were-never-united. Not really. Of course, there is the very real possibility that division IS what identifies us. In a stroke of planned obsolescence or perhaps a nod to the absurd, our forefathers wrote that all men are created equal while participating in and promoting slavery as the driver of the economic engine. They certainly knew what they were doing. It might be that division is what unites us.

Who would we be if we actually practiced equality and made sure that our institutions were not only the guardians but promoters of our central ideal?

Mostly, those wacky forefathers kicked the can down the road. They understood that the nation would one day have to reconcile its split-intention. We’ve made a run at it more than a few times and, like every good fractal, rather than deal with our shadow pattern, we manage to repeat it. Slavery becomes Jim Crow…and here we are. BLM meets The Proud Boys.

We are so far away from dealing with the can kicked-down-the-road to us that the mostly-men-on-the-red-team deny the very existence of systemic racism. That, too, is part of the fractal. Take note of how much energy has been spent making it hard for black Americans to vote. Right here in the year 2020. Some things never change. Some things need to change.

So, today we line up to cast our ballots. In this seemingly endless and ugly election season, we’ve been witness to an undermining of the postal service, the removal of ballot boxes, the stuffing of the supreme court, a president casting doubt on the very system he was sworn to support.

So much energy spent to ensure the continuation of the divide! Another squirt of glue? An organizing principle of negative and positive charges? Opposite charges attracting?

We need a new organizing principle. Division is a threadbare story and, as we know, can only run in a vicious circle. I hold little hope for it but wonder what might come about if we attended to a simple basic, just like the sign says. “Be Nice. Say Hi!”

In the absence of general kindness and courtesy, something every mother teaches and every grandmother upholds, I will pop a cork and ponder what we might have been if the system had been set up and penned by our foremothers. I suspect we’d all know how to play nice by now.

read Kerri’s blog post on BE NICE. SAY HI!

Filed under: Pattern, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

See The Elegance

Posted on December 28, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

659. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Bryan and I talked tonight about the elegance of design. He told me that many years ago he became interested in the Golden Mean, which led him to research the Fibonacci sequence, which led to an interest in eclipses. He became fascinated by the simple elegance and paradox of astronomer’s capacity to precisely determine when an eclipse would happen and the impossibility (due to weather) of predicting if we would be able to see it. The Golden Mean and the Fibonacci sequence are simple equations that, when replicated, maintain the integrity of design throughout very complex structures and calculations. They are fractals. Much of classic architecture is based solely on the Golden Mean. Much of what you will learn in contemporary art school about composition is based on the Golden Mean.

Our physical bodies are complex structures based on a simple cell design. We are at the same time miracles of complexity and simplicity; more space than solid, more water than mineral, reducible to a small pile of dust and yet expansive beyond all imagining. We are elegant in our design, as nature only designs elegant forms from the same simple notion and very simple (yet complex) building blocks.

Our thoughts run according to the same principle. I once read a statistic that showed that we think mostly the same thoughts each day, day after day (don’t ask me how you measure such a thing….). We build our thought on a few replicable principles and then go holographic with them. A few simple assumptions will lock you in prison or set you free. Check out the pattern of the story you tell yourself each day. Are you locking yourself in or opening the cage? I realized years ago that the epicenter of my coaching work – or any other form my whacky work takes – was really about story change. I often say this to groups: change your story and you will change your world. They mostly respond, “It can’t be that easy!” or “Pie in the sky!” I didn’t say it would be easy – we are after all deeply invested in our stories; we are great fighters for our limitations. The wrong assumption is that it need be complex. We are elegant in our design, even down to our repetitive thoughts. Change the simplicity and you will some day be capable of manifesting an entirely new soaring cathedral of thought.

Filed under: Awakening, Body, Possibility, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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