Posted on February 19, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
High atop the list of obstacles we erect on our creative life path is this: I don’t know how…. As a coach, I heard it daily from clients. As a consultant, I heard it regularly from business leaders and educators (the pronoun changed: we don’t know how…) Artists regularly lock up in the face of a monstrous HOW?
When I was a young erector of massive obstacles in my path, Quinn would smile and say to me, “Nobody knows how. Just start.” I thought he was being flippant with encouragement but lived my way into recognizing that his advice was not only sound but it was sage.
Knowing how to do something is never a prerequisite for action. It is, however, a really good excuse to prevent action.
Knowing how comes second. Always. It comes after the fact, after the experience of trying and adjusting and learning. It comes at the end of the day, looking back. That’s when “how” becomes visible. Today’s Chicken Nugget via the studio melange is timeless and simple advice. It would make Quinn smile: sometimes the best thing to do is start.
Posted on February 16, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
It is one of the great pleasures of my life to be down in my studio painting when Kerri, upstairs in her studio, begins to play. I always stop and appreciate how rich, how utterly fortunate I am. There is more than just music in our house. There is a source, an amazing composer, a gifted musician. She plays like most people breathe and I marvel at the enormity and ease of her gift.
From the melange on this Valentine’s week comes a Slow Dance. It is from Kerri’s album As Sure As The Sun. Friday belongs to Kerri’s music. I am particularly fond of Slow Dance. It is visceral and reminds me of a summer evening, sitting in the adirondack chairs in the front yard, sipping wine and talking. We were listening to music and without really intending it, we began to dance. Fast dances, silly dances, rowdy-run-around-dances, and finally, laughing and exhausted, there came a slow dance. The neighbors still talk about it….
[a note to consider: the links will by default take you to apple music – apple’s streaming service. With respect to artists everywhere, please consider downloading your music on itunes rather than streaming your music. It requires one additional click. Downloading means the artists get paid for their work. Streaming guarantees that they don’t.]
Posted on February 15, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
[Held In Grace: Embraced Now, mixed media on canvas, 48″ x 36″]
Beaky showed me a photograph taken of Kerri and me early in our relationship. She said, “I like this one because your strong arms are holding my daughter.” I took her comment as a kind of blessing. It was her way of telling me, ‘This is right and good. In this embrace you two have found all that you will ever need.’
In the studio melange, Thursdays are for my paintings. I chose this painting as the first in our melange offerings because it came from Beaky’s sentiment. During this Valentine’s week, let this painting, Embraced Now, from my Held In Grace series, remind you, as it does me, that all is right and good. In this embrace you will find all that you will ever need. It’s not a shabby thought to help navigate through a Thursday!
Posted on February 14, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
There is so much good mischief in our studio melange! If trying to syndicate Chicken Marsala in strip and single panel [nugget] form was not enough, in our spare time, with the help of our dear friend 20, we also made a run at another cartoon, Flawed. Everyone needs a good laugh on hump day. Wednesdays – especially this Valentine’s Wednesday – belong to Flawed.
Posted on February 13, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
Standing at the doorstep of her mortality, Kerri’s mom, Beaky, turned to her daughter and offered these words of advice. Live life, my sweet potato. This print hangs by our front door as a reminder of two very precious gifts: Beaky and this life.
Live life; who doesn’t occasionally need a reminder?
A few years ago, as a readership experiment, we created and published a series of simple images with words. Each image or phrase had a special meaning for us. We called the series two-artists-making-stuff-for-humans. The experiment was a success, our readership quickly grew, and then, like all attention deficit artists, we moved on to other projects. In the melange, Tuesdays belong to Two Artists.
Posted on February 12, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
We were 14 hours into a 17 hour drive when she asked the question. “If we’d had a child, what would we have named it?” After much laughter and too much coffee we settled on Chicken Marsala. Chicken kept us awake for the rest of our drive.
No one can accuse us of not being productive. We are a creative melange of paintings, music, plays, books, children’s books, and, now, cartoons. For over a year we attempted to syndicate our strip, Chicken Marsala (the imaginary child of an aging couple…) and were met with much enthusiasm but not syndication. We produced months of strips and single panel nuggets (chicken strips and chicken nuggets. Titanic wit, yes?).
Brewed from our studio, from the pile of creative perseverance that is stacking up below and above the ping pong table that serves as our archive , we’ve decided to offer a daily blend of goodness, thought, laughter and beauty. It may come fresh off the press or it might be aged and, like Chicken Nuggets, it might be looking for some light. Art is made to share, not archive. Either way, welcome to the melange. Chicken’s day is Monday. This nugget has everything to do with Valentine’s week and a quiet reminder that the universe of feelings is so much bigger than words can possibly contain.
Posted on October 11, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative
When I first met Kerri I told her that she needed to know two things about me: I don’t sing and I don’t pray. I imagine that was bracing news for a woman whose life has been about composing and performing music. I imagine it was especially disconcerting for a woman who stands firmly in a greater spirituality. I thought she needed to know.
A few short months later we were driving through the hills of Georgia en route to North Carolina, windows rolled down, a James Taylor and Carole King concert blaring through the sound system. James Taylor’s song, Something In The Way She Moves, began to play and I sang along. Kerri pulled the car over and began to weep. It turns out I sing after all. And I like it, too. That song became our song (one of them). Jim sang it at our wedding.
We have a dvd of the James Taylor and Carole King concert – at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. We watched it a few weeks ago for the first time. James Taylor told the audience that his song, our song, Something InThe Way She Moves, was the song that popped open his career. He said it was like that song was the doorway to the rest of his life. I knew exactly what he meant. A song. A door pops open. Life.
Yesterday was our second anniversary. Two years ago, Kerri recorded a song she wrote for me, for us. It’s called And Now. Amidst the chaos of our wedding week she somehow recorded it so I might enter the church, enter our wedding ceremony, to the song she wrote and sang, her song for me, our song. As I walked down the aisle that day, her song became the doorway to the rest of my life. In a moment, with a song, my life popped open.
Yesterday, after watching the sunrise we came home, made more coffee and sat on our bed (we call it the raft) with DogDog and BabyCat and told stories of our wedding week. It was the wedding equivalent of a barn raising. Our stories are the stories of all the amazing people who cooked, baked, carried, hauled, comforted, soothed, celebrated and helped us through the doorway. Amidst the stories, we reread our vows. We listened to the songs that to which we processed into the church, Gabriel’s Oboe for Kerri. And Now for me.
Listening, remembering, I sat on the raft and found myself weeping. I understood, perhaps for the first time, that on the other side of the doorway I routinely defined myself by what I was not: not a pray-er, not a singer. On this side of the doorway, there is life, rich, uncontrollable, vast, ever moving, no-need-for-nots or brakes or resistances. Just now. And Now.
Posted on January 7, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative
Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog has moved through several names in his 3 years on earth. He has a cornucopia of names. For a while I dropped the “Tripper” part of his name and simply called him Dog-Dog. Now, much as a mother might use their child’s middle name, we only call him Tripper when he’s in trouble.
Lately I call him Dog-a-Dog (or doggadogga). He answers to Wag-A-Wag. He is an Australian Shepherd and has a bobbed tail that never stops wagging. He is a happy, happy boy. When I let him out in the morning I call him Fuss Bucket. When he comes back in I call him Poop Sack (for obvious reasons) or Bark Monster or Fur Ball. He sheds like a champion. When he circles through the rooms of our house looking for a safe place to deposit his bone, I (cleverly) call him Bone.
All the variations and derivatives are terms of endearment. Dog-Dog knows and responds in kind. Love is like that. Once, sitting on a train, I watched a grandfather lovingly toss his toddler grandson in the air saying, “You’re just Rubbish! That’s what you are! Rubbish!” The boy squealed with delight. The grandfather chuckled with pleasure and repeated the toss, “You’re just Rubbish!”
Language is a beautiful paradox. It is reductive even as it points to the unfathomable universe and the infinity of love. It is referential; we sometimes forget that the word “tree” is not the tree itself. It is merely an invented-phonetic-pointer toward something too complex to comprehend.
Language is powerful beyond comprehension. We use it to narrate our worlds, both inner and outer. The words we choose create the world we see. The words we choose define the world we inhabit. In my consulting/coaching days I used to love playing with exercises that revealed how easily we come to the language of gossip and blame. It requires almost no effort. Like sugar, hate-speak is addictive. It is the mark of a lazy mind.
The language of love takes some intention and consciousness. It demands conscious effort. It requires paying attention. It requires focusing the energy of the mind and, like any focus (or muscle) it demands exercise to be healthy. And, when exercised, it becomes easy. With great love, the word “Rubbish” can generate squeals of pleasure. The name “Fuss Bucket” will engender a full body joy-wag. And, a full body joy-wag will bring the love full circle. Love is like that. Joy is like that.
In his many books, Martin Prechtel writes beautifully about the power and necessity of speaking beautifully. Speaking beautifully creates a beautiful thinker and a beautiful thinker creates – narrates – a beautiful story, a beautiful world.
Posted on December 10, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative
It occurs to me now that all along I’ve been asking irrelevant questions. Or, perhaps framing my questions too narrowly. For instance, years ago I went to graduate school to study systems because I wanted to follow a question that reached deep into my life and identity as an artist: can a mythology be rekindled once it has died? Art, after all, is one of the primary life-keepers of a culture’s story and the beating heart of the story is its mythology. And, according to all indicators, our mythology is mostly dead [as Joseph Campbell said, for evidence of our mythological demise, all you need to do is look at the news]. So, the younger version of myself wanted to understand the purpose of my life as an artist if, indeed, I was in service to a dead mythology. Heady questions, yes? Relevant questions?
In the early 1990’s I was invited to a photographer’s studio to see the “newest thing” in photography. The photographer had a new “program” called Photoshop. Before my eyes he “photoshopped” me into a picture, a place I’d never before visited. Today, all of this seems commonplace. Now, any 5 year old can manipulate an image but at the time a photograph stood for proof that something had actually happened. A photograph could not lie. It was evidence of truth. That day, standing in the photographer’s studio, I realized that the old reliable anchors for truth no longer existed. What was our anchor?
The truly significant events in our lives rarely come in with a roar.
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about fake news – as if this was a new phenomenon. It brings to my mind a terrific book written in 1985 by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death. Here’s bit from the first page:
“Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”
I suppose fake news refers to something wholly concocted but I’d argue that when news agencies pander and promote themselves to conservative or liberal viewpoints, when ratings drive content, it’s all fake news. News with an agenda is…not news. It is, however, dangerous to a democracy and no longer free (as in free press, a cornerstone of our democracy). Historically, newspapers have always had a point of view but there was some attention paid to what was printed as news. Opinion was confined to an editorial page. When the line between true and concocted is blurred, when a populace cannot discern between entertainment and substance, it no longer has the capacity to make sound (read, “informed”) judgments. Worse, it is gullible, gossip-eaten and infinitely manipulate-able. It is, as Neil Postman wrote, entertaining itself to death.
I recently wrote about the absence of recognizable communal anchors (mythology) and the dangers of a community with nothing but the soft soil of belief and opinion as its driver. Is planting a personal-truth flag and defending its territory all that is left to us?
What else can we do? Now, there’s a relevant, open-ended question! Roger once told me that he would never be able to understand suicide. He said something like, “In that moment, rather than take your own life, why not do anything else? Why not make any other choice?” Another relevant question!
What else can we do? In the face of our own entertainment-driven suicide, why not do anything else? Turn off the blather, go outside, meet your neighbor, tell stories of your children or your ancestors. If common ground can’t be found it can certainly be created. Inhabit something bigger than opinion. It’s less entertaining but certainly more useful. Great art – no matter the form- lives in those bigger fields.
Posted on November 1, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative
a sketch: Dancing At Crab Meadow
Kerri works on her “un-cantata.” She plays a short section from a piece and it captures my attention. I put down my pencil, close my eyes, and listen. I am inking a cartoon, preparing a proposal. It is mechanical work, rote. I have learned to use this stage of the process as a kind of pay-attention-exercise. It is only tedious if I slip into the illusion that I’ve drawn this line before; I have not, just as I have not lived this moment before.
Artistry is often like laying bricks. Repetition is rarely sexy but beautiful creations come from it. I know that in my repetition I am “putting the lines in my body,” building muscle memory.
I have not heard Kerri play this piece and I find myself savoring it. I love it when she plays. The first time she played for me I was stunned into silence. “Something came through you,” I tell her. “It was enormous.” I often tell her the story of the first time I heard her play. I tell her the story so she will play more. I tell her because I know that music wants to come through her like images want to come through me. “You have to go to the piano,” I say. “Let it come through you.” She responds, “Let’s take a walk.” And we walk. Life comes through.
Neither of us spends as much time in the studio as we ought. Our walks, however, are extraordinary.
We went to a funeral on Saturday. We will attend another funeral tomorrow. There have been many, many in the past few years. I suspect that we are of the age that funerals become common. I have been paying attention to the eulogies with some fascination. They have become life-giving or at least revealing of what actually gives life (and what does not). In the many eulogies I’ve heard, the lives recounted, I’ve yet to hear about the big house, the luxury car that was bought, the clothes or jewelry that the deceased strove to possess. I never hear about the accumulations, the stuff or achievements. I hear warm stories of relationship. I hear of family dinners, trips to the lake, walks in the woods, laughter and lessons. I hear stories of life’s repetitions, the holiday feasts, the coffee sitting, the small moments, the messy moments that amount to time spent together. The walks.
The Direction of Intention 