kerri sherwood on itunes | The Direction of Intention

Step Into The Ripple [on DR Thursday]

Posted on March 12, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

sometimesfaith WITH EYES jpeg copy 2

I’ve never understood faith as a religious term. Look up the word in the dictionary and you’ll come across trust, belief, and conviction. Rather than a lofty word reserved for worship day, it has always struck me as an everyday something – that becomes extraordinary when you realize how ever-present-and-ordinary it actually is. Stepping blindly. Blindly stepping. Each and everyday.

We surround ourselves with calendars and lists and routines and rituals and patterns – all necessary mechanisms to plan our days but they also serve to protect us from the truth of our walk on this earth: there is not a moment, an hour, or day that is actually known before it is lived. Every moment of every day is a step into the unknown.

The real practice of faith is not about an abstraction. It is a recognition that walking in faith is an essential part of the human condition. The real practice is in realizing it. Being right where you are, open to the reality and empty of the illusion of certainty that you know what is coming. You do not. The true spiritual practice is to empty yourself of the need for the illusion of control.

Fully inhabiting the moment. Standing at the crossroad of past and future without the map of ‘I-know-what’s-going-to-happen’ dulling the experience.

Spiritual practices are not meant to be other worldly. They are, at their best, concrete relationships found at the intersection of past and future, in that tiny slice of infinity called “the moment.” It is a miracle of unknowns and surprises.

The practice of faith is the practice of putting down what you think you know – dropping the notion that you know what will happen- and stepping fully and with intention into the rippling unknown.

read Kerri’s blog post about FAITH

http://www.davidrobinsoncreative.com

chasing bubbles ©️ 2019 david robinson

chicken marsala ©️ 2016 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, DR Thursday, Edges, Uncategorized | Tagged: abstraction, belief, chicken marsala, Chicken nugget, conviction, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, faith, future, illusion, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, past, pattern, practice, presence, recognition, society6.com/chickenmarsala, spiritual practice, trust, unknown | Leave a comment »

Scream Into The Mic [on KS Friday]

Posted on March 6, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

no balloons copy

During the healing time of Wristgate, as Kirsten called it, Kerri and I have been spending much of our time on the raft [our bed – it is where the broken wrists are most comfortable]. We work from the raft. We eat from a tray on the raft. We plan life from the raft. And, because it is cold winter, we reminisce on the raft. We talk about what might have been, what choices we’ve made, what storms blew in, wreaked havoc and gave shape to our lives.

No Balloons. It is one of the first studio recordings of Kerri. It is from 1980, smack dab in the era of Joni Mitchell, when a cassette tape was the latest and greatest technology. I recognize her very young voice, shaky and not yet rooted, trying to find itself. Sitting on the raft, although I’ve heard the backstory of the song before, to hear it again made me weep.

No Balloons is a song about rape. Kerri’s rape. A young woman, hopeful and trusting, trying to find her voice, a violent storm that blew in, a man twice her age that altered the course of her life. When she sought help she was met with a solid male wall of See-No-Evil-Hear-No-Evil.

We live in the #metoo era. Even though it’s still very hard for young women – any woman – to get the world to listen, to be taken seriously, it was exponentially harder in the 1970’s. The woman, so our sad history goes, was to blame for her own violation. Kerri did what most women did in that time. She internalized it, swallowed her bile, and covered it up. She ran from it, ran from her attacker, ran from a man-world that couldn’t be bothered to listen. She candy-coated her ruin and made it a shameful secret.

After listening to the recording, the sweet quaking voice, the flute floating over the top of the band, the disjoint between the composition and the lyric, Kerri gazed into a dark corner that I could not see and said, “I should have been screaming into the mic.”

Had I not been holding space for her I might have said, “It’s not too late. Maybe the mature woman needs to do what the young woman could not. I suspect there are a legion of young women out there who need you to scream into the mic.”

NO BALLOONS

read Kerri’s blog post about NO BALLOONS

kerri’s music is available on iTunes & CDBaby

no balloons ©️ 1980 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Edges, KS Friday, Power, Uncategorized | Tagged: #metoo, anger, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, sexual abuse, violation | Leave a comment »

Ripple [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 28, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

ymad copy

“you make a difference in their life, even though they don’t know who you are, you make a difference.” ~ Kerri Sherwood, You Make A Difference

I catch myself in webs of my own weaving. There are things that I know to be true but willingly ignore when I am feeling blue and indulge in a warm bath of self-pity. For instance, my move to Wisconsin brought me to my great love but also came as a career killer. I have, in the past few years, spent inordinate amounts of time pondering my worth to the world. Beyond “husband,” who am I now that “no one” finds value in my work?

When my eyes and heart clear, I know that I have willingly stepped into the single greatest trap plaguing the Western world: investment in the notion that my experience – my life on this earth – is a product. That I must, as John O’Donohue writes, “…strive to garner a quota of significance from the world.”

How isolated we are, searching for purpose, trying to make a mark, seeking an experience, trying to find our voice,…have value, like so much property or stocks to be traded. Reduction. People as bottom lines. What is my value? What is yours?

I’ve decided that my favorite movie is ABOUT TIME. The main character, Tim, is afforded the opportunity to live each day over again. The second time through, instead of grinding out his task list and exhausting rush to achieve, he pays attention to the little things, the relationships he has all throughout the day. He is afforded the opportunity to shift his focus from “life as a product” to “life as relationship.” He makes a difference, not because he makes millions or wins the case, but because he smiles at the clerk of the convenience store. He pays attention to the “space between” and realizes he is nothing more or nothing less than a relationship. Ultimately, he has no need to live each day twice because he ceases throwing the first chance away. He releases the life-dulling-I-am-a-product-mentality and embraces the life-giving-I-am-a-relationship reality.

Sisyphus, in his first trip to the underworld, watches as a thousand souls wander the river bank, so lost in the fog of their own stories that they, each and every one, believe that they are all alone. Finally, their manic little stories play out, the fog surrounding them dissipates, and they see each other. In that moment, they return to their natural state, their most powerful state. They blend together into a single, vibrant mist (relationship). In that moment, Sisyphus is forever changed. He comes alive, returning to the upper regions, knowing that the real vitality, crackling life, is available if he looks beyond his isolating story-fog.

Instead of reducing his life to a measurable value, a few gold coins extracted from the world, Sisyphus expands beyond his little story-prison of worth-seeking to paying attention to what he brings to the moment, focusing on the shared space between. His life ripples and those ripples have no end. In fact, he understands that his life is a ripple.

Instead of trying to be somebody (separation) he simply recognizes and fully inhabits the utter miracle of his being (relationship). In that simple, profound shift, the difference is made.

It’s in Kerri’s song. You make a difference in their lives, even though they don’t know who you are. Your life, and their life, are one and the same thing.

YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE is available in iTunes& CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE

you make a difference ©️ 2003 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, Energy, Identity, KS Friday, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: cancer research, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life giving, life lessons, life worth, meaning making, product-thinking, ripple, sisyphus, story, value, worth, you make a difference | Leave a comment »

Ride The Lion [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 14, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

watershed the songbox copy

Let’s just say that 2020 is off to a rough start. If I was to get out my old-school label maker and slap a sticky tape descriptor on last year, on 2019, it would be the year of contention. 2020 is shaping up to be the watershed. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk.

Broken contracts [literal and metaphoric]. Broken wrists. Broken dreams. All of our presses have stopped. We are moving very, very slowly through our days. We are having long conversations about where we’ve been, our successes and failures, dreams realized and those that went to ashes in our mouths, and where we want to go from here.

Unless you are being chased by a real lion, fear is mostly a function of imagination. In the real-lion scenario, fear is a life-saver that makes world-class sprinters of us all. In every other case, sans lion, it is a made-up monster that chases. Running does no good. This chasing monster requires the opposite of the real lion: stopping, turning, and looking squarely into the eyes of your own dark imagination. The only relevant question is, “What’s wearing the mask of this monster?” Shame? Failure? What should have been? What will never be?

It is a turning point. Stopping. Breathing. Turning and staring back at your wild-eyed scare-fantasy and realizing that it’s merely a mechanism to prevent you from being where you are. Standing in this exact moment is the only place from which you can enact change. It is the single location in which you can fully, unequivocally appreciate your life. Self-made monsters always dissipate when scrutinized.

Running away casts you as both runner and lion, chaser and chased. Fear the imagined-lion, be the runner. It splits you in half. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! And what if it is not falling? What if the lion-monster chases precisely to prevent you from standing still?

It’s a vicious circle, an energy eddy, this hyper-active dark imagination. It is true, if you think about it, that an imagination that is capable of so much doom is equally capable of fixating on the light side. Ride the lion. Better yet, give it wings so the ride is uncanny and wondrous. The ultimate human choice is where we decide to place our focus.

The story we decide to tell follows the focus-choice. Standing still, the only place from which we can see the array of choices and available stories, we are once again learning, seems to be the gift of the Watershed.

WATERSHED on the album AS IT IS is available on iTunes& CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about WATERSHED

watershed/as it is ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: KS Friday, Navel Gazing, Seeing, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: action, AS IT IS, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, facing fear, fear, focus, focus placement, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meaning making, monsters, presence, split focus, split intention, story, watershed | Leave a comment »

Know They Are Watching [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on February 4, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

deer tracks converge copy

We go to Bristol wood to return to center. It is a place of peace. It somehow breathes serenity into our overactive minds.

Sign of deer are everywhere in the woods. We rarely see them but we know they are there. I imagine they watch us. I imagine they silently encourage us to walk slower, to catch our breath. To listen to tree song. We delight when we walk a path where they recently tread.

Deer are a symbol of gentleness and intuition. Balance and peace. This summer, on the Island, we saw deer everyday. We would retreat from the contentious community back to the littlehouse, pour some wine, and take a walk. A deer would inevitably appear and we’d stop talking. We’d breathe. We’d watch. It would watch us, too. After a few moments it would leap and disappear and, with it, our day’s concerns would also disappear. The deer would shift our conversation, from a lengthy list of disgruntlement to the beauty immediately surrounding us.

I’ve decided that, in our broken-wrists-time-out, our goal should be to make the whole world Bristol Wood. That we shouldn’t retreat to find peace but should invite peace and balance and serenity into the rest of the day, no matter where we happen to be living it.

Things I used to know. Things I once practiced.

Know that they are there, everywhere. Watching. Silently encouraging us to walk slower, the breathe, to focus on the beauty immediately surrounding us and not on the other stuff. It turns out that balance and serenity are practices, not pursuits. They are choices. Peace-of-heart-and-mind do not exist in the woods exclusively. Peace comes to the place where I decide to allow it. To practice it. To make it a priority.

read Kerri’s blog post on DEER SIGN

deer in woods copy

Filed under: Perspective, Possibility, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: balance, beauty, bristol woods, center, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, deer, deer medicine, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, peace, serentiy | 1 Comment »

Check Your Reality [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 21, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

We parked the truck in the Kemper Center lot, far enough from the shore not to be hit by the flying debris, the chunks of seawall and pavement being hurtled from the impact of the waves. Kerri has lived here for over 30 years, “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she repeated as a towering wave engulfed the gazebo, took down a piece of the wall of the art center, a hunk of coastline disappeared.

Later, after the storm, we went back. Trees were down, encased in ice. Huge sections of the walking path were shattered and tossed into the flooded mess of the parking lot behind the center. Walking was treacherous. Like the trees, the ground, the rocks, the destruction was coated in a thick layer of ice. It was beautiful and inconceivable.

Words mask all manner of reality. We have a word, nature, that can’t even begin to touch the magnitude, the power of where it points. Mother Nature. I have been thrown out of bed in an earthquake that brought down freeways like they were so much satin ribbon. Go to Pompeii or Herculeneum, visit Mt. Saint Helens, watch with disbelief any of the news footage of any one of the tsunamis that have wiped communities off the map. Wrap your mind around it, if you can.

We are cavalier in our conversations about global warming. We impact, we do not command. We reduce it to questions of business, of protecting the beef industry. Which economy will suffer most? We make up these strangely insignificant divisions. We imagine that we are the center, holding all the controls. We imagine that it is all about us. So small, a chihuahua yipping at a forest fire.

Sitting in the truck, feeling the boom of the waves in my chest as they tore off chunks of the shore, I felt tiny. I remembered a snippet of film I saw about a man who wore a superhero suit and stood in the face of an oncoming storm. He flexed and stomped and raged for the camera. And then the storm hit. The best he could do was run for his life.

aftermath copy

read Kerri’s blog post about THE STORM

ice ©️ 2020 kerri sherwood

for prints of “ice” go here

Filed under: Awakening, Energy, Language, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: climate change, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destruction, global warming, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, nature, power, storm | Leave a comment »

Reach In [on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 9, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

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Reaching way back into my archive, we found this watercolor. A few brushstrokes. A few details. It reminds me of how much I used to like working with watercolor.

Prayer and meditation are themes for me. Reaching in to reach out. Joseph Campbell wrote a book entitled The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. I suspect the umbrella title of my visual body of work is the inverse: the outer reaches of inner space.

Quiet inner space takes some cultivating, some understanding of breathing and movement. I think cultivating inner space was the reason I began drawing and painting in the first place. The outer space made no sense to me. It still feels like an alien world. With so much beauty to create, with so much vast life to explore, metaphor to plumb, meaning to make, why hang out with the fist shakers?

My answer is always found in the quiet of my studio or on a walk in the woods. These days I also enjoy leaning on the piano listening to Kerri play, compose, and sing. Magic. She reaches down into inner space, too, and what comes out is gigantic. Breathtaking. It creates more inner quiet. A feedback loop. Life appreciating life. What else is there?

Winged, 27 x 20IN

Sacred Series: Prayer, 24 x 9IN

read Kerri’s blog post about OLD WATERCOLOR PRAYER

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, inner reaches of outer space, inner space, Joseph Campbell, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, meditation, prayer, quiet, vitality, watercolor | Leave a comment »

Believe [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 8, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

believe ornament copy

Kerri just said, “I think I’d believe more if I had another glass of wine.” After I was done laughing (and getting her another glass of wine), I realized that belief is too often like that – contingent on circumstance.

When I was a wee lad (seriously, this stuff ran rampant around my little kid brain), I’d wonder what happened the day after the bloody battle when both sides raged about god being on their side. What do you need to reconcile when your team loses? Why do you need to win to confirm your belief? A side note, another of those rampant ramblings racing through of my too tiny skull (no wonder my parents were at a loss of what to do with me) – this one is to really get me in trouble: if your god takes sides, chooses a team or otherwise reinforces a separation from the whole, how can you not see that it must be a very small god indeed? For perspective, an existential reboot, go outside and look at the stars and understand what you are seeing. No sides. Beyond comprehension.

Conditional belief. It is run amok.

If our capacity for belief was not conditional, what might we actually believe? Who might we become if we understood that we are expressions of this great universe and that this great universe was cheering for us and those rowdy huzzahs had nothing to do with our winning or losing, with borders or righteousness or rules or books or councils or sexual orientation or money or the color of our skin? Or beliefs. Every atom a delight. Every creation a miracle. Would we be hope-full? Would ‘the enemy’ look the same through the eyes of unconditional belief?

I know. Pie-in-the-sky thinking. Only a child could believe so completely, so unconditionally in…goodness.

Anything is possible if you just believe.

[note: this beautiful ornament was a gift that came atop a container of ‘slushy’ – a life giving concoction brewed in Dan’s secret laboratory and delivered each year to my squeals of delight. If my belief is conditional it is Dan’s fault and I blame Gay for not reining him in. She found this beautiful ornament so I also blame this post on her generosity and good taste. These two people make me believe wholeheartedly, without condition, in goodness].

read Kerri’s more coherent blog post on BELIEVE

Filed under: Awakening, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Navel Gazing, Possibility, Uncategorized | Tagged: beleive, belief, conditional beleif, conditional love, contingent, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, delight, division, gods, goodness, hope, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, miracle, separation, unconditional belief, uncondtional love, unity, whole, wholeness | Leave a comment »

Laugh [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

In our ongoing effort to bring you quality programming on the creative process, we offer this insight to inspire you to greater and greater creative heights. These 7 steps are the secret key to your artistic fulfillment and ultimate success. Watch at your own risk.

want to watch again and again? Go to see Kerri’s blog post on THE CREATIVE PROCESS!

go here to hear real recordings of my brilliant wife’s music

www.kerrianddavid.com

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Love, Random, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistic fulfillment, artistry, creative process, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, insight, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, laughter, no one cares, performance anxiety, pressure release, toaster oven, too serious business | Leave a comment »

Write A New Song [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 27, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

you're here songbox 2 copy

In the final week before the holiday, Kerri was preparing for a band rehearsal. She wanted to go over the music for the schmear (her name for the cantata). She played through the pieces as we waited for Guitar Jim to arrive. I was setting up music stands and mic cables when I saw her wrinkle her nose. “I hate this piece of music,” she huffed. The pages were unceremoniously hucked from the piano.

I’m generally a slow study but I’ve worked with enough artists to know when something new is about to emerge. Artists are often like volcanoes. They rumble and grumble before the lava finds its way to the surface.

With the piano now free of the offending song, she started noodling on the keys. She made up a lyric. She sang a phrase. Played it again. By the time Jim arrived she had a snippet of a new song. “What do you think of this?” she asked. He nodded his musician nod of approval.

The next morning, after about an hour of playing and scribbling notes, she had a new song to replace the schmear-offender. She shaped it a bit over the remaining few days of rehearsal. It’s gorgeous. She debuted You’re Here at the schmear and she sang it again at the holiday services.

Just like a volcano, an artist needs to create, needs to make new earth. The creation feeds the creator and vice-versa. I can think of no better celebration for the solstice return of the light than for a composer, a singer-songwriter to write a song. To bring new light.

The technology on my phone made it possible to record it. Left to her own devices she might have never captured a recording of You’re Here. She is fairly despondent about recording these days. Like a sand painting it would have existed for a moment and then returned to the earth. But, thanks to my trusty phone, it’s possible for you to hear it, too. New earth. Go here to listen.

read Kerri’s blog post about YOU’RE HERE

kerri’s albums on iTunes

kerri’s albums on CDBaby