The Real Promise [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on August 27, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Too many of us still believe our differences define us.” ~ John Lewis

I confess, it has been a life-long fascination. Seriously, since I was a little kid, I’ve been amused, confused, and periodically gobsmacked by the swirling contradiction of identity-messaging in these un-United States.

Because we are the single most individualistic culture on the planet, we place high importance on being unique. We are encouraged to stand out. And yet, the first lesson I learned in school was how to stand quietly in line. We buy clothes that are meant to express our own distinct style while hyper-market-pressured to fit our image to the latest trend.

I spent years and years working with people who spent thousands of dollars outfitting home art studios so that they might express their own unique artistry…and then froze in their newly built temple, so fearful of what others might think of their creation. How many times have I heard someone, dressed smartly in their latest Ralph Lauren, tell me that they were looking for their voice?

It’s untenable. It’s no wonder we are perpetually self-discombobulated. The dreadful shadow of our national commitment to bewilderment is the game drawn along the color line that we’ve played since our nation’s inception: If they gain, we lose. If we gain, they lose.

We-the-people wrestle by placing the accent on the hard line of our differences. We wrestle with reaching across the hard line of difference to find our common ground: most recently our reaching has been known as DEI. Diversity. Equity. Inclusion. We strive to be one in our campaign to be individual.

If there is one universal truth I learned in my life as an artist, in my work with people struggling to find their novelty and power, it is this: unique voice is found in service to others. Unique expression is available when the self-serving ego gets out of the way. It’s a paradox.

Personal voice is meaningless unless it helps other people. To guide. To question. To recognize. To join. Actors perform to unite us in a shared story. Poets write to open us to universal truths. Musicians play to bring us together in a common experience. The real power, the promise available in these United States is no different than the promise bubbling inside each individual. Rare and special voice is found in service to the common good.

Artistry and governance share this trait: grace and power is always found in uniting and is invariably lost in dividing. We may someday realize the great promise in these United States if/when we at long last lay down the tired game of manufactured division and find our true, unique and powerful voice by uplifting all unique, diverse, and beautiful voices, a chorus in service to a common center called democracy.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BLACK SHEEP

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Infinite Palette [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 13, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

A Green Haiku

I stare into space

Today. “Green on green,” she said.

Infinite palette.

At the very end of my life I imagine I will understand – perhaps for the first time, in my final moment – that each day was momentous. I will come to understand that every tick-on-the-tock held more import than I had capacity to conceive. To “just get through it” or to assign “good days” and “bad days” a mind-boggling misunderstanding of the opportunity-of-life.

How much of my perception is chemistry? Ventral vagus tugging-at-war with dorsal vagus for story dominance? Meaning made via neurotransmitter? Does my chemistry generally opt for connection or protection? Like most of us, I imagine myself as somehow independent of my environment, an individual, self-actualized. As it turns out, that is proof of delusion. Or human-specific-hubris. I cannot know myself without your reflection. You cannot know yourself without mine.

First we sense. And then we story. And then our stories wear paths in our mind meadow, chemical preferences.

Green on green. Not as simple as it seems. Boundless as this passing moment. Infinite.

[*special thanks to The Marginalian by Maria Popova – June 9, 2024 – for her reflections on polyvagal theory]

Surrender Now, 24″ x 24″ mixed media

read Kerri’s blogpost about GREEN

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Stand Out [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 30, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Yesterday, in our basement reorganization shuffle, I moved my paintings. It is not a small task to move the remains of a life’s work. At this point, I’ve moved them hundreds of times: between studios, into and out of shows, within a studio space to make more space. Paintings take up a lot of space. Besides my clothes, my unsold paintings have been the extent of my possessions most of my adult life. During this latest painting-location-change I realized what an oddity I must sometimes seem. It sparked some random recall and minor revelation.

It’s not always easy to be a sore thumb, the one one that sticks out; the one doing life a bit differently than the expected norm. The lone tree in a vast field.

I read this quote this morning from Robert Pirsig‘s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade…Originality on the other hand could get you anything – from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.”

One of my favorite activities to do with teachers comes straight out of Augusto Boal and the Theatre of the Oppressed. Each teacher “reenacts” for their peers the simple ritual of preparation they do each morning for the upcoming day. The revelation was always the same. “I’m preparing to control my students,” a wide-eyed teacher gasped when the penny dropped, “It’s the opposite of what I want to do.”

We live in the church of the individual yet the message we actually preach is conformity.

I had the opportunity to create a school-within-a-school and I followed the popcorn path suggested by Neil Postman. He wrote that “learning” in our system conditions students to suss-out what teacher wants and regurgitate it. It was possible to kickstart their original impulse toward curiosity but it would require a bloody battle of about six weeks. Hold the line. Don’t fill in the blank for them. And one day, in a fit of anger and defiance, one student would take the brave step and say, “This is what I want to learn!” Support the step of the defiant one and the rest of the students would follow. They would dare to speak their truth and follow their passion. Postman was right! The battle was bloody. It took exactly six weeks.

This is the ubiquitous misunderstanding about originality: it requires the removal of boundaries, the absence of control. A free-for-all. The opposite is true. The most disciplined people I’ve ever known are artists. Their discipline is internal, not imposed. It was the seed of the question I’d ask the teachers after their uncomfortable revelation: “What would it look like if each day you prepared to unleash the student’s curiosity? What, then, would you have to control?” It was an uncomfortable question. It would require them, probably in anger and defiance, to take a brave step. To stand out. To do something different. To expect their students, through the pursuit of their burning questions, to control themselves.

Everyone has a unique star to follow. Sometimes they simply need help to see it.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE LONE TREE

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Take Note [on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 28, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Although it may not be at first apparent, this is a map for product development. A single stout stalk that supports shoots of replication that explode in support features. One clear central intention. Multiple expressions that return nutrient to the stalk.

Although it may not be at first apparent, this is a map for healthy community. A single stout story stalk that supports shoots of replication, diverse paths that explode in seeming individual expression. One clear central narrative. Multiple expressions sending sunlight back to the root.

Who hasn’t seen the time-lapse films of plants growing, forms expressing and then retreating, the accelerated motion of people commuting on a city street, what seems like chaos is, at speed, cooperation. Those people on the street in real time, walking to work, a to-do list on their mind, are mostly unaware of their symphony of togetherness.

It’s easy to forget the stout stalk when standing at the individual expression point. I have been witness to the demise of many organizations who turn against the stalk in favor of the feature. For instance, the fastest way to kill a non-profit organization is to attempt make it run like a for-profit business. It will forget its story-stalk and lose its heart and mind in a spreadsheet.

The quickest way to destroy a community is for its branches to forget that they are individual expressions of a single stout story. They are not separate as much as extensions. To focus on the multiple tiny expressions as if each small branch is a stand-alone truth is absurdity-creation. Chaos masked as convention. Inverted, the plant dies.

In our literature we are riddled with advice to turn toward nature. Existential crisis? Lost? Go to the meadow, find the woods, take a hike. Get quiet. We go there because…we are there. Alan Watts wrote,”We don’t come into the world, we come out of it.” We are not separate from the stalk; we are expressions of it. Occasionally, the map to sanity that we seek is hiding in plain sight dressed as a platitude. Go to nature. You cannot do otherwise. Realize it.

When I’m running abstract questions of design in my dreams, I know it’s time to take a walk. It’s time to stop, look around, take note of nature’s design, the perfection of a plant. A perfect yoga, branch-fingers reaching for the sun, root-fingers reaching deep into soil.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PARSNIPS

sam the poet, 48×48 (painted and sold a long time ago)

sam the poet © 2004 david robinson

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Look Down [on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 6, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

To all the rugged individualists out there living under the grand illusion that you are blazing a new trail, I have only one thing to say: look down. Someone has been there before you. It’s why there’s a path. And, more to the point, someone – a crew of someones – worked very hard to make and maintain the trail you now tread. It’s true in the forest. It’s true in the big-bad city. Every time we flick a switch and the lights come on it might not be a bad idea to recognize how many people were – and are – involved in the maintenance of our comfort and our self-reliance-fantasies.

On the Pink Bed trail there’s a boardwalk that elevates hikers over the swampy sections. I stopped in utter admiration at the section that took a hard left. Someone – a crew of someones – spent a long time making my corner not only easy to walk but beautiful. Certainly there are more efficient ways to build a turn in a boardwalk and they could have chosen any number of simpler solutions but they didn’t. They took the time to make their work functional, sturdy, AND aesthetic.

Daniel was building a house on the lake. He only builds one a year these days, mostly for fun. He invited us in. Far from being finished, the craftsmanship was exposed. The joints were meticulous. The lumber he chose was solid. The materials mattered. There was beauty in the structure and he was proud to point out the love taken in every step, even the roughest stage of the build. The eventual buyers would never see or know the care alive behind the drywall. They might never fathom the depth of effort and design involved in making their comfort – their triumphant lake home – a possibility.

Horatio and I talk often of the deep philosophical divide in these un-united-united-states. The every-man/woman-for-him/herself camp is at odds with the I-am-my-brother/sisters-keeper folks. I understand the appeal of the self-made-man/woman story but I also recognize it to be mostly a fantasy. Sir Edmund Hillary understood that standing atop Everest, celebrated as the first, was only made possible by the efforts of hundreds of Sherpa, months of expedition planning by John Hunt and team, financing, travel arrangements, government officials, 8 previous unsuccessful expeditions, and the good graces and guidance of Tensing Norgay.

We’d be better off if periodically we stopped and simply looked down.

read Kerri’s blog post about the BOARDWALK

Prayer of Opposites, 48x48IN, Acrylic on hardboard

prayer of opposites © 2003-4 david robinson

Filed under: Creativity, DR Thursday, Gratitude, Metaphor, Perspective, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Look For Joey [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 20, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s been a life-long fascination of mine. In the most individualistic culture on earth, we like to display our status by wearing brand names and shop the same stores in malls that look the same across the nation. We are the inventors of the chain store, the strip mall. The one-size-fits-all. The suburb and cookie-cutter-house. Here in the cult of the individual, we like to do what every one else is doing.

Kerri and I tease about writing a book. It’s called “Looking For Joey.” Google Joey Coconato or his YouTube channel, My Own Frontier, and our blogs pop up at the top. We’ve not written much about Joey Coconato – a few posts – but to our great amusement, we top-the-google-list. And, so, these days, we are regularly contacted by people who are looking for Joey. They think we know him. They think he’s editing his next video in our basement.

Joey lives off the grid. He backpacks the American wilderness and documents his treks with videos. We became avid Joey fans when pandemic-isolating last year and vicariously got “out there” through Joey’s films.

After watching a few of his films it becomes abundantly clear that Joey is what everyone on the grid pretends to be. An individual. His clothes are ripped. His gear is constantly in disrepair. His food is what he can get his hands on at the moment. He is not climbing any ladder. In other words, he is not invested in how he looks, what he wears, or whether or not he’s doing things the way he ought to do them. He’s doing life in his way. At his pace. In his place. According to his star.

After receiving the latest: “Do you know where Joey is? It’s been 8 months since he posted…” I decided that, in these un-united-united-states, everyone is looking for Joey. He has, for me, ascended to the level of metaphor. He is authentic in an age of thin veneer.

While people are draping themselves in tribal-hate-flags and crying “individual freedom”, sticking their heads in the Q-sands as an act of liberation, blinding themselves in a rabid-festival of group think, all the while shaking their fists declaring, “No one can tell me what to do.” Insisting without any connection to reality that an election was stolen, that vaccines in a pandemic are filled with micro chips, that January 6 was an ordinary day at the Capitol – we are a mess of lockstep inanity.

I think everyone is looking for Joey. They – we – no longer know what is real so they -we – are splintering into disparate group-fantasy. Lemmings singing a chorus of My Way as they – we – plummet off our collective cliff.

Honesty is not that hard to spot if you want to look for it. Much of the fight falls away when you are prepared to acknowledge that much of what we profess is cotton-candy, that we are terrified of looking at our full history. Shops and malls and online outlets are not great places to look for answers. Running from critical race theory does not make our past go away.

A walk about in nature has a way of making the absurd abstractions fall away. Carrying your food on your back and looking for water when you need it strips away the investments in the ridiculous.

Individuals – people truly living out of their own center – generally don’t have to wear brands or broadcast their individuality. They are not seeking validation. They are not fighting for their freedom. Like Joey (I imagine) they simply live it.

[ the cool Dr. Seusss plant is called white baneberry or doll’s eyes.]

read Kerri’s blog post about STAND OUT

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Stand Out [on Two Artist’s Tuesday]

Posted on January 28, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

you be you bus copy

You be you. If you think about it, who else can you possibly be? As trite as it may seem, this appeal on the side of a bus captures in simple marketing language one of the greatest paradoxes of living life in the most individualistic culture on the planet. We are reinforced to be hyper-unique but hammered repeatedly to fit in. It is the ultimate split intention. It is why we have such a ubiquitous self-help industry and so many preachers-of-purpose-seeking. Asking, “Where do I fit in?” is a terribly hard question to answer when the expectation is to stand out.

I suspect our current dedication to division is, to some extent, built upon this paradox. Split souls are generally angry souls and anger is an easy organizing principle to exploit. Tribes of anger need nothing more than enemies to bridge the split. A good enemy, real or imagined, can provide to an angry tribe both a sense of individual purpose and a place to belong.

I heard a term the other day that frightened me: low information voter. Years ago I heard an economist speak at a conference and his message was profound. A healthy democracy requires an educated populace. Without the capacity to sort through the heaps of rhetoric, pull apart the agendas to see beyond the manipulation, without some simple capacity  for analysis, or a bigger picture, then votes will be cast from simple, uninformed and often angry belief. In other words, democracies fall when its members do not care enough to know what they are voting for. Power will always corrupt. The brilliance of a democracy is that the people are meant to be the ultimate check on power. In order to be the check, they have to look beyond the political party line and ask, “What really happened here?”

The leaders of angry tribes need low information voters. It’s the only way they can stay in positions of power. It feels good to fit in. But, in a culture known for its individuality, it feels all the more satisfying to stand up, to stand out and ask, “What’s really going on here?”

 

read Kerri’s blog post about YOU BE YOU

 

savannah selfie WEBSITE BOX copy

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