Gordon MacKenzie | The Direction of Intention

Sail Toward It [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 26, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Gordon MacKenzie ends his wise little book with this: “You have a masterpiece inside of you, too, you know. One that is unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be. And remember: If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you.”

His analogy – his encouragement – is to let go of others’ expectations and paint your painting, not the paint-by-number painting that you think is required of you.

I wrote this note to myself over ten years ago: you do yourself a terrible disservice to doubt what you know.

I know the world is round. If I set off on an adventure to the unknown I will never touch the horizon. It will always call to me. And, if I sail toward it long enough I will arrive back where I started. Home.

If I believed the world was flat, I would delude myself into thinking that I could catch the horizon – and touch it – merely a moment before I sailed over the edge and into the dark abyss. I know this: no one holding a flat world belief will knowingly sail toward the horizon, the great unknown. That would be crazy! No one willingly sails into the abyss. Better stay safe in the harbor! Color within the lines!

Masterpieces are made by sailing into unknown territory. Releasing control and discovering what’s just over the horizon. And, what’s just over the horizon is more horizon! More questions. More experiences. More discoveries. More tastes. More textures. More sounds. And, to sail toward the horizon with abandon first requires an understanding that the world is round. It is all horizon.

Paint-by-expectation is the road of a flat-earther. Perfection is a false horizon. Try to touch it and the abyss is yours.

Young artists jump back and forth between the flat and the round earth philosophy. They have to. Vulnerability is a learned skill and comes easily when the quest to touch the horizon is abandoned. In other words, painting a masterpiece comes when the quest for a masterpiece is ditched. When making a mess takes precedence over “doing it right.” When following your bliss determines the rules you uphold.

It’s counterintuitive. There’s a place where control and freedom blend into one. You’ll find it when you aim at the unattainable horizon.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE HORIZON

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor | Tagged: adventure, artistry, control, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discovery, expectations, expression, fear, freedom, Gordon MacKenzie, horizon, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, masterpiece, perfection, release control, story, studio melange, the melange, unique, unknown, vulnerability | 2 Comments »

Steward The Radical [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 26, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m reading Gordon MacKenzie’s brilliant book, Orbiting The Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide To Surviving With Grace. There’s plenty to love in this little book that extrapolates beyond the corporate cubicle. This morning I laughed heartily when he compared two organizational systems, the pyramid and the plum tree. Traditional versus Holistic. Mechanistic versus Organic.

For me, the point of his Fool’s argument, sketched on yellow-pad-paper, comes down to this: the traditional pyramid, a hoosegow of compartmentalization, kills collaboration and snuffs the creative. It is purposeful division. The holistic plum tree, an integrated dynamic continuum, enhances collaboration and stimulates the creative. He draws an arrow pointing to the words “Enhancement of collaboration,” and writes, “This is radical.” [his underline]

It might seem radical to suggest that a system that intends collaboration is radical until you consider our current state of affairs. The latest attack on “the woke” by “the traditional” is, in essence, a pyramid that fears a plum tree. Pyramid people have an investment in exclusion, in standing on the top. Supremacy, white or otherwise. Keeping the cubicles intact, keeping the hierarchy in place.

Plum tree people, the proudly “woke,” reach across and eliminate division because they recognize the truth and power of the continuum, “integrated in a single creative ecology” otherwise known as a “community.” It is the opposite of supremacy. Float all boats.

There’s a race to the bottom in these un-united united states: the recent scrubbing of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the banning of books, red-legislators knocking themselves out trying to bleach our history, bury our past, snuff a questioner’s right to question (i.e. to learn), eliminate a woman’s right to choose; to squeeze gender-identity into a too-tight-airless-box…

In this environment, to suggest a system that intends collaboration, a system that enhances collaboration, is radical. Of course, democracy, by definition, is a system that intends collaboration. It is a system that needs collaboration to survive. It is a plum tree. The real and present danger of the pyramid, as Gordon MacKenzie points out: a pyramid is a tomb.

Democracy is radical. That people of diverse backgrounds and orientations might come to the table together with full respect for their differences – in fact a celebration of their differences, and intend to create “a more perfect union” is-as-has-always-been, a bright star to follow. It is a radical dream that demands open eyes, the capacity to ask questions of ourselves and each other, to tell our full history, to consider the perspective of all the human-beings sitting across the shared table. A radical dream, an ongoing creation stewarded into the future by the radical collaborators, keepers of the dream, the proudly woke.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PROUD BUTTONS