At this point, it’s possibly the most generous response we’ve heard to a fox news watcher, a maga-mind. It quickly goes downhill from there.
read Kerri’s blogpost about STUPID NOT STUPID
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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Fox News, ignorance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, propaganda, Republican party, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »
It was a rare treat to climb the stairs to the rooftop deck and gaze into the night sky, unobstructed by city lights. Years ago I worked with kids in Los Angeles, teenagers, who had never seen the stars. Standing on the roof, overwhelmed by the Milky Way, I thought about those children, now well into their adulthood, and hoped that they had, at long last, found a way to peer into the endless universe.
What else might adequately provide them the understanding of the impossibility of their existence, the enormity of their lives? What else might open their eyes and hearts to the necessity of community, the recognition that their lives only have meaning relative to the people who share this planet and this moment-in-time with them? Relationship is purpose.
We have seven days. In biblical terms that’s how long it took the metaphoric god to differentiate light from dark, land from sea, moon from sun, animals from humans. Rest from work. Humanity’s role in this story of creation is to appreciate the enormity of their unlikely existence. To steward. To name. To discern between merit and the meritless, between truth and lie. To distinguish good intention from ill-intention.
We have seven days until we vote. Although we might pretend this is normal, this election is like no other in our lifetimes. The issues have taken a back seat to the question of our existence as a democracy. We are determining whether or not we are still capable of distinguishing truth from lie, whether or not we are willing to toss away our freedoms and replace them with authoritarian rage, whether or not we will serve the needs of the greater community or the power-lust of an individual.
Seven days. We will either step forward as champions of light and truth or we will turn our backs on what we know to be true and fall backwards into the dark fascist promises of Project 2025.
Under the stars we have a choice: to continue our quest to realize the dream of a more perfect union, with liberty and justice for all – or to exchange our constitution for the autocratic craving of an angry despot. To honestly name what we know to be true.
There’s still time to climb the stairs, peer into the starry sky, and realize the power of our choices, what is at stake in this, our time, our moment.
read Kerri’s blogpost about STARS
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Filed under: Identity, Metaphor, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, autocrat, choice, choices, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, exclusion, existence, inclusion, justice, Kamala Harris, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liberty, lie, Project 2025, relationship, stars, story, studio melange, the melange, The Milky Way, truth | 1 Comment »
If you’ve not yet bumped into Piet Mondrian’s paintings of trees, this is your chance. Not only are the paintings beautiful but if you’ve ever scratched your head at his more famous abstract/geometric paintings, you will find the forest through his trees. Things are not always what they seem and, in the era of contemporary art, it is necessary to grok the context in order to fully appreciate the content. Of course, that rule also applies in this age of info-tsunami: content rushing across the screen is regularly embraced whole-cloth – sans context – so truth and lie have equal standing.
In the art world, placing content (an individual painting) into context (the historic era, the long-body-exploration of the artist’s work, the source of the exploration) is called “gaining perspective”. Because things are not always what they seem, it is drilled into every artist to regularly stand back, to clear their eyes, to get perspective on their work-in-progress. It is also (or used to be) drilled-in to offer the same courtesy to the work of other artists. Stand back from snap judgments. Check the sources. Understand the exploration. Grasp the historical context. It is never as simple as “liking” or “not liking”; appreciation opens a vast color palette beyond the numbing mindset of thumbs-up or down.
Gaining perspective and learning are the same thing. The most well-educated people I know are not lawyers or doctors. They are actors, directors, dancers, and painters. Gaining perspective takes a lifelong dedication to questioning and researching and double-checking. It is to peek behind the curtain of popular and not get caught in the current reality spin. It is to know that things are not what they seem. It is to know that reactions are easy answers; questions take time. Gaining perspective takes time.
Sometimes she stops so quickly that it propels me forward a few stumbling steps. While I tumbled forward she knelt at a puddle and aimed her camera at a leaf. Or so I thought. I have learned (daily) that she sees things that I do not. I have learned that my assumptions are almost always wrong. She smiled when she stood up. “Look,” she said.
I gasped. I was terrifically wrong. The leaf was nowhere in sight. The reflection of trees in a puddle on the asphalt trail. A festival of texture. A masterpiece of illusion. Piet Mondrian must have knelt at a puddle reflection just like this! “Trees through an icy window,” I said.
Things are rarely – if ever – what they seem.
read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREES
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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Education, Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor, Seeing | Tagged: abstract art, abstraction, artistry, assumptions, contemporary art, content, context, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, easy answers, education, gain perspective, illusion, information age, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, learning, lie, perspective, Piet Mondrian, Piet Mondrian's trees, questioning, questions, reality, research, seem, seeming, story, studio melange, the melange, trees, truth | Leave a comment »
“That men do not learn the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” ~Aldous Huxley
You may be as amazed as I to learn that Dogwood is not Doll’s Eye. They have a similar creepy Seussian stare but are not kin. In this brave new world, all we need do is aim Google Lens at the question, “What is that?” and, voila! An answer!
I delight that I am living in the time of easy access to information. I could not write as I do without instant access to synonym and antonym, the lighting fast check-of-fact or spelling, the interesting variations-on-a-theme that pop up the minute I jump down a thought-rabbit-hole. Technology has made it possible for me to be a writer. Were I confined to pen and paper my output would be minimal and certainly impossible to read.
Easy information means easy misinformation. It means easy mass-misinformation. If I were the wizard of the universe I’d provide everyone with a Google Lens for information. All we’d need do is aim our magic lens at a pundit, news-bit or politician and, voila!” Accurate or Absurd or somewhere in between! It would make it fairly impossible to toss a lie into the commons and get away with it.
It’s not that I am enamored of just-the-facts. I’m not. I write stories so I prize a good dose of imagination. But in our time, knowing the difference – or caring about the difference – between fact and fantasy – is tantamount.
One of the great challenges of our brave new world is the intentional passing of fantasy for fact. For instance, Florida. If you are a student of history you’ll recognize in Florida (and, now, sadly, other states) the resurrection of the Lost Cause narrative, a history bending education initiative driven hard by the Daughters of the Confederacy at the conclusion of the Civil War. White supremacy sweeping its dark-side under the rug. Lipstick on a history pig.
I’m capable of imagining that my magic Google Info-Lens would put a stop to the cycle of non-sense but it’s starting to dawn on me that Aldous Huxley had it right: at this moment in history, we have the capacity to check every story, to look up every assertion, to scrutinize every source. It may not be as lightning fast as my imagined Lens but it’s close. We simply choose not to use it. It’s so much easier to believe without question than it is to question a belief.
“Huxley feared the truth would be drown in a sea of irrelevance.” Well.
Today on the trail I learned in a nanosecond that a Dogwood is different from a Doll’s Eye. I know it is possible to assert that slavery was on-the-job-training but it takes a dedicated-head-in-the-sand – and a heart full of ugly intention- to drown the truth of history in a sea of utter non-sense.
No lessons learned. No questions asked. Oops. Here we go again.
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Filed under: Education, KS Friday, Perspective | Tagged: Aldous Huxley, Amusing Ourselves to Death, artistry, belief, Brave new world, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fact, fantasy, Google Lens, history, imagination, information, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, Lost Cause narrative, misinformation, Neil Postman, nonsense, questioning, questioning a belief, questions, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, white supremacy | 3 Comments »
Malidoma Somé wrote that a society with locks on its doors is a sick society. Something has broken down when a home needs protection from the other members of the community. Acquiring stuff takes precedence over honoring your neighbor. Can you imagine living in a community built upon mutual respect and trust, that valued and protected its members over its acquisition of stuff? Pie-in-the-sky? That might be the problem: we can’t imagine it.
Societies betray themselves. Despite the values inscribed in library cornices, despite the commandments we hold up as sacred ideals, we lock our houses against each other. We turn away when we see a person in need, their cardboard sign an appeal for help. The gap between the espoused and lived value-set is wide. In a society that claims greatness but practices mediocrity, is it no wonder that so much energy is dedicated to perpetuating a big lie? The lie is not the exception, it is the norm. The lock on the door.
Apparently, there is so much road rage on a particularly beautiful stretch of road rolling into Aspen, Colorado, that signs are posted giving travelers the number to call when the need for help is dire. Societies betray themselves. Why would a road through so much beauty, a road that dead ends in to some of the world’s great ski areas, a place where the elite retreat for some peace and quiet, why would there be so much rage on the road to such a place?
It must be a metaphor.
We tell a good story, that all are created equal, but we fight like hell to keep the full story untold. It’s happening now. Again. Still. Why are we so afraid to tell the whole story of a nation touting equality but built upon slavery and a rolling metamorphic racism? Like an individual, a society can’t address its problem until it admits it has one.
Gaps between espoused and lived values usually fill up with rage. Our gap is textbook. So many guns, so many locks on the door, so many patterns of violence and suppression that repeat over and over again.
Can you imagine living in a society that was proud of its story and need not dunk it in a lie? Or feast on an orgy of guns in order to feel potent and protected? Or post signs warning of the ubiquity of rage? That just might be the problem: we either can’t or won’t imagine it.
read Kerri’s blog post on ROAD RAGE
Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: aspen, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, espoused values, history, imagination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, lived values, Malidoma Some, racism, Rage, respect, road rage, slavery, society, the big lie, values | Leave a comment »
“As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists, who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny, ‘failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”‘ ~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death
Any day now I’m going to watch the 1976 movie, Network. It’s the film equivalent of a crystal ball to our current predicament. A veteran news anchorman loses it on air, threatens to kill himself, but instead goes on a full-blown rant. The network’s ratings skyrocket. An ambitious producer recognizes and exploits the opportunity by creating more and more outrageous programming. Fact falls prey to profitable fiction sold as truth. Ratings imperatives eclipse the north star of accuracy-in-reporting. Roger Ailes created his Fox News Network on the same premise; no veracity necessary. People like a good train wreck, just ask Jerry Springer. It is why the nation is so divided. The blues use news to sort out the lies; the reds use lies to siphon off the truth.
“Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley [Brave New World] and Orwell [1984] did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley‘s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” ~Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death
Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves To Death before Facebook and Twitter were glimmers in their inventors’ eyes, before the internet hit the personal computer, before multiple channels on cable networks. We have, as Postman wrote, an infinite appetite for distraction with nary a need for honesty. And, as we are witnessing, distraction has arrived in the halls of Congress. We’ve now a party in government that actively shuns verity and raises funds on peddling fallacy.
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death.
We are a nation that finds itself at risk. In my post yesterday I wrote that I no longer wonder how a society can willingly and knowingly take itself down. We have front row seats. And yet, the road to our recovery is as simple (and as difficult) as a collective valuing of the truth over ratings or poll numbers or bubbles. We worship at the wrong altar. We are inundated with info-dross. We would be better off if ratings plummeted every time a pundit ranted, a politician bullied, or a commentator lied. We’d be better off if thinking, if fact-checking, was a prerequisite to posting or tweeting or speaking. We’d find ourselves in a shared center, a place of possibility built on a generous commitment to probity.
“For in the end, he [Huxley] was trying to tell us what afflicted the people in ‘Brave New World’ was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” ~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death
read Kerri’s much more positive post on LEARNING FROM TV
Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Education, Identity, Perspective, Possibility, Uncategorized | Tagged: 1984, Aldous Huxley, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Brave new world, culture-death, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, distractions, George Orwell, honety, Jerry Springer Show, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, Neil Postman, Network, probity, Roger Ailes, thinking, truth, verity | Leave a comment »
I read in my morning horror trawl that 80% of republicans think democrats are socialists and 80% of democrats believe republicans are racist. There you go! Socialists and racists running amok. Society reduced to elementary school antics. Blame games, name calling, stereotyping and over-adamant claims to know-the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth. We see each other by gaslight.
There’s a little secret about truth. It is very patient. It will sit and wait until all the shouting and belief-flinging arguments are exhausted. It is quiet. It will not prevent us from diving head-first down the rabbit-hole-of-conspiracy. It will let us claim that we possess it – that we are the single owner of it – no matter how ridiculous the face we attempt to paint on it.
Truth will not intervene. If lie and madness are what we desire, truth will, like a good parent, let us learn our lesson.
Truth honors choices. It is the still center and will wait until the whirling stops. It will wait until the lies spin off and we desire to once again turn our gaze to the still-calm-center.
Truth is not an enabler. Truth will let us put our hands on the burner. Truth will let us choke on COVID even as we cough-and-claim that it’s no worse than the flu. It will sit quietly while we protest and profess and propagandize. It will not intercede when we discard evidence or demonize other points of view. It will watch patiently as we give away the farm.
Truth cares not for what gossip fills our bubbles and brains and bank accounts. It will not stop us from acting as the termites to our very own timbers.
Truth watches as we bicker on the playground. It honors our choices. It is patient. It knows that someday we will tire of snarling-fearmongering. It knows we will, one day, lose enough to at last shut-up and once again turn together and listen beyond our noisy protestations.
We will of necessity turn to the quiet center. Truth will be patiently waiting.
read Kerri’s blog post about TRUTH DECAY
Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective, Seeing | Tagged: bubbles, conspiracy theory, covid 19, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, evidence of truth, gaslighting, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, madness, patience, racists, socialists, truth, truth decay | Leave a comment »
“A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” ~ Mark Twain
From the national department of absurdity, I read in my morning news trawl that people-on-the-right were fleeing their tried-and-true social media platforms because they are tired of having their facts checked. They’re tired of being flagged for hate speech. They’re moving to a new platform that allows them to claim as true any old thing that fuels their fantasy. Of course, their new platform purports to have standards. In the absence of truth, they will be monitoring and censoring pornography and nudity. Bare bodies are shunned but bare lies are encouraged.
Google the question “Why Do We Lie?” and you might stumble across this phrase: lying is a ‘maladaptive coping mechanism.‘ Why are the good folks on the right fleeing from fact-checkers in search of an inadequate coping mechanism? Why are they – and, therefore, we – so deliberately racing from the truth? Truth is, after all, supposed to be the glue that holds a society together.
Perhaps, in our case, truth is not the glue that has held our young nation together. Perhaps the current hunger to lie is because we are [once again] confronting our truth? Division, not truth, is our glue. We know it. And we pretend it isn’t true. Denial of the truth is a lie by another name.
Plato reminds us that Zeus feared the power of the original humans so he split them into two separate parts. Our forefathers feared the power of a united working class so, taking a page from Zeus’ handbook, they split their budding society along the color line. And, in an “improvement” on Zeus’ original recipe for division, our god-fathers, in a single action, as a single action, reduced the black faces to less-than-human while simultaneously granting extra privileges to the white faces. They linked the privilege of the whites to the suppression of the blacks. White supremacy and Black Lives Matter are inextricably linked. It is the sad gravity that binds us.
It’s the truth we have never been able to face and, historically, when we dare to part the veil and have a look, there is a concerted effort by the working whites – those on the other side of the diploma divide [so many false divisions…] to run for the comfort of the supremacy-lie. It’s a safe space.
We embrace our maladaptive coping mechanism because we are afraid of facing the consequences of our truth. Great fear of status loss drives the wearers of red-hats to the lie-saloon where they can drink their fill, amp their anger, and fight progress. Fact-checking gets in the way. It’s how the system works.
Fueling the supremacy-lie is the central appeal – it’s the only appeal – of the outgoing titanic Liar-In-Chief. Supremacy stories, after all, require the supremacists to think they are victims. Facts become assaults. News becomes fake. Deep states and conspiracy theories abound. A good victim story is necessary for an Us and Them world. A good victim story is necessary to hold onto the promise-lie of white supremacy.
Division by design.
“The lie” crumbles in a social media space that checks facts and flags hate speech. What could be a better alternative than a gossip-circle-social-media-space where lies are called truths and truths are branded as lies?
Division, running from truth, pretending the division isn’t there, has worked well as a national glue if you are a god-father. It kicks the can down the road. Perhaps it’s time we sent Zeus and our forefathers a note. If we want to grow up as a nation, if we want a united people dedicated to ideals like freedom and justice for all, we need to look at our shadow and seek shared truth. Unity is a much better glue than our comfortable age-old division.
We need to cease fleeing into our maladaptive coping mechanism, look at ourselves, our leaders, and, together, begin telling – and expecting – and guarding – some truth.
read Kerri’s blog post on HUNGRY FOR LIES
Filed under: Identity, Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Pattern, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: Bacon's rebellion, black lives matter, coping mechanism, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, fact check, hate speech, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, maladaptive coping mechanism, Mark Twain, plato, social media, truth, white supremacy, zeus | Leave a comment »
“…gentleness can be a greater force for transfiguration than any political, economic, or media power,…” ~ John O’Donohue
Here is my utopian fantasy: The protesters put down their signs, the police put down their shields, the militia drops their weapons, the citizens of all races, creeds, colors, political identities and economic stripes come out of their houses and hold hands facing into a circle of their creation. Nothing need be said. What are we protesting FOR if not this?
We are excellent at pushing against what we do not want. We are practiced at screaming in rabid reactivity. Finger pointing and blame is among our most popular Facebook pass times. We like to make noise and bluster about the violation of our rights and ignite fearmongering fires warning of imagined assaults on our amendments. Propaganda and lie make for good reality television ratings. They provide permission to smash glass, loot, denigrate “others” and give cover to murder in all its forms, but are lousy foundations for a civil and civilized society.
Truth is intentional, not reactive. It steps toward an ideal. It provides a national focal point, a guide-star that will not cotton with lie and propaganda.
We seem utterly inept, absolutely incapable at walking toward what we profess. Our ideal is printed on our dollar bills and chiseled into the facades of our buildings: e pluribus unum: out of many, one. Our division is chiseled into our history.
My utopian fantasy is not so hard to realize but notice it requires a common first step: a putting down of weapon and rhetoric and dedicated division. The second step is also not difficult: reach out, take the hand that is closest. Circle up with those who you most disagree. The third step may be the hardest: say nothing. Defend and justify nothing. Prove or claim nothing. Face in, not face off. The greatest intentions, like the most profound truths, are often silent. Step four: live the circle.
We can figure it out. It’s no greater matter than walking toward what we want, what we espouse, instead of forever pushing against what we do not want. Perhaps our first truth is to admit that there is a lie built into what we chisel in walls and what we actually live. We need to intend oneness if we are to realize our central ideal.
Doc Rivers, a black man and coach of the LA Clippers said this yesterday: “It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.” Love. Love back. There is no better or simpler statement of intention. Walk toward it.
He also famously said, “Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.” His dictum applies to nations as well as players: great nations want to be told the truth. Average nations want to be left alone.
FIGURE IT OUT on the album RIGHT NOW is available on iTunes
read Kerri’s blog post about FIGURE IT OUT
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Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, KS Friday, Love, Possibility, The Direction of Intention, Transcendence, Uncategorized | Tagged: circle, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, Doc Rivers, figure it out, ideal, intention, John O"Donohue, Kenosha, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, love, propaganda, right now, silence, transcendence, transfiguration, transformation, truth, utopia | Leave a comment »
To anyone who entertains the mistaken notion that they are not creative, look no further than your thoughts. Thought is a creative act. It leads to the chicken-and-egg conundrum of creating. Do you create your thoughts or do your thoughts create you? Either way, what happens between the ears ripples with creativity.
We live within our thoughts and our thoughts live within us. We feed our thoughts with our fantasies and fears. Universes open or close. For instance, focus on contention and you will see contention everywhere. That is, you will create contention.
It is, and has been the dirty little secret of governing people since before Machiavelli: keep the masses focused on division and they will be easily manipulated. Create difference whether it exists or not. That way the good people will fight with each other and not focus on the actions of their leaders. It’s a magic trick. A sleight of hand. It is a strategy, not a conspiracy.
A people united as one is a very potent force. A united populace is dangerous to a corrupt and fearful leadership.
Before you roll your eyes with my esoterica, put your highly creative thought on this: is it true that our nation is deeply divided? Yes. Do we create division ourselves without question, eating heartily the divisive narrative we are being fed? Yes. We are daily meditating on division and daily claiming it as truth. We create division together.
Narratives are powerful and just as capable of obscuring as they are of revealing. Obscurity is a creative act. So is deception. Propaganda. Denial. Conspiracy theory. Lie.
It is the definition of ignorance to embrace a narrative without questioning it. Which brings us back around to the chicken-and-egg conundrum: do you close your mind or does your mind close you? Yes. Hate has no home in a questioning mind.
Are we capable of questioning? Of telling a common story? It depends on what we decide together to create. Yes.
read Kerri’s blog post on NO HOME FOR HATE
Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Pattern, Perspective, Possibility, Power, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: conundrum, create, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, deception, division, hate, ignorance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, meaning making, narrative, people united, questioning, story, storying, strategy, thought | Leave a comment »
The Direction of Intention 