maps | The Direction of Intention

Lose The Plan [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on October 12, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Plans are maps of territories that do not yet exist.

Working in a software start-up, Skip has taught me a new phrase: infinite regress. The next step is determined by the last step and there is both no end to the steps and no way of knowing a destination because there are so many possibilities. Every step is a plot twist. The Plan would go wrong on a daily basis – an hourly basis – if the expectation to follow it was rigid.

In infinite regress there is no arrival. There are decisions. There are choices. The plan is to take another step.

Taking another step is a good plan! Live another day.

Think of the stress reduction if plans were held lightly, in cupped hands. It’s great to have a destination in mind. It’s not so good to step over the treasure-of-the-moment en route to some imagined gain. Some idea of control or fortress-safety.

Today, as an exercise in reality, every step I take I intend to yell, “Plot Twist!” Kerri will quickly put an end to my yelling, so I’ll transform my exercise into a mental experience. I’ll keep it to myself. That’s the plan, anyway. A mental experience. Hey! It’s an infinite regress.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PLOT TWIST.

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective, Possibility, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, choice, control, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, decision, destination, expectation, infinite regress, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, maps, plan, plot twist, possibility, presence, story, stress, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Let Go And Fly [on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on August 6, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Learning and unlearning can only take place in the context of decision making.” ~ Russ Ackoff, On Learning and Systems That Facilitate It

I was reading this phrase in the article when Kerri showed me the Smack-Dab cartoon for this week. Uncanny. The decision to change. Unlearning who you think you are in order to learn who you might become.

There’s a lot of unlearning going on in our house.

Here’s a secret about maps: you can only draw them after the fact. “Knowing how” comes second, after “not knowing how.”

Unlearning, facing the unknown, it’s not linear or easily traced. It’s a tug-a-war between the safety of what you know and the absolute necessity of getting lost.

There’s a photograph I often think about: my uncle Al, in the last months of his life, dying from cancer, fulfilled a dream to fly on the high trapeze. In the photo, he’s released the first swing, sailing through the air, reaching for but not quite touching the second swing. The look on his face, eyes wide open, full delight, utter freedom. Elated. Fully alive in the space between.

There’s a lot of that going on in our house, too. The decision to let go and fly.

read Kerri’s blogpost about MAPS

Filed under: Heroes, Identity, smack-dab | Tagged: aarp, artistry, cartoon, change, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, decisions, fully alive, inspiration, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, knowing, learning, life maps, maps, middle age cartoon, new beginning, not knowing, Russ Ackoff, second chances, story, studio melange, the melange, the space between, trapeze, unlearning, yamaha artist | 1 Comment »

Embrace The Frenzy [on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on July 9, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’ve written before of Kerri’s brochure addiction. She’s been in and out of treatment but nothing has helped. Her vivid imagination and roadtrip imperative collide in the common brochure. There’s nothing to be done but lean into it. During trips I stash paper sacks under the seat of the car to contain the newest editions to her already mountainous collection. I am – I have become – her brochure enabler.

I confess that I like feeding her imagination. As we drive from the welcome center with the paper bag full of newly acquired possibilities, she tells me of where we might travel and what we might find there. She nearly lifts off her seat (another good reason to buckle up) recounting what she discovered in her brochure frenzy. Her enthusiasm for life and its limitless destinations warms my heart.

All that remains is the logistics. When enthusiasm meets brochure, all things become possible.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BROCHURES

Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: aarp, artist, artistry, brochures, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destinations, discovery, enthusiasm, imagination, intention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, maps, musician, painter, possibility, roadtrip, story, studio melange, the melange, travel, two artists | 1 Comment »

Follow The Twine [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 18, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

[Day #2 of no image upload capacity so, for the melange image, see Kerri’s post or visit the Melange]

Follow the thick neon pink twine, winding through the park, and you’ll eventually come to a giant ball of string. I delighted in the thought that an enormous barn-sized Kitty, had recently been at play. Across the park giant flowers towered into the blue sky. Strolling beneath the stems and petals gave us an ant’s perspective.

Imagination. It’s working all of the time. And, sometimes it takes a giant ball of pink neon twine to make it visible. When we look forward to an event or dread a meeting, we are in full imagination. What else? When we desire a certain future or run fast from an opportunity, we are deep in our imagination. Kerri’s toes curl every time she drives under the train trestle while a train passes overhead: she imagines disaster.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard in my life, from students or clients or friends, who’ve said, “I don’t have a good imagination.” The greatest figment of imagination is the notion that there are greater or lesser degrees of imagination. Sense making, personal story, idea generation, brainstorming, hypothesis checking, retirement planning…are all processes of imagination. We sense the world and then story it and the story always begins with the generation of an image. To be human is to be a wild. imaginer.

I’m privy these days to many thought models and process maps. I’ve spent the past 48 hours in a deep conceptual exercise. Emerging from my office at night I squint at Kerri and say, “My brain is tired.” The lovely paradox about the models and maps and conceptual paths is that they are not real. A map of the city is not the city. A model for product development is not product development, it is a map at best, a place to locate the imagination. The imagination uses itself to discover itself.

And, therein lives the paradox: imagination is as much about “discover” as it is about “invent.” We imagine our future so we can walk toward what we already see. As every artist knows, the canvas tells you where to go, the character tells the writer where the story turns. We discover ourselves in our imagination. Follow the pink twine far enough and you’ll eventually come to a giant ball of string.

read Kerri’s blog post about PINK NEON

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, brainstorming, Chicago Botanical Gardens, conceptual, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discover, future, idea, imagination, invent, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, maps, models, past, senses, story, story. sense making, storying, storytelling, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Take A Wrong Turn [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 19, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

CO to WI copy

As a wanderer, I am sometimes envious of those rare people in my life who have always seemed to know their destination and have appeared to walk a clear path to it. They have lived life according to a road map. Director, doctor, producer. Sometimes I want the comfort of a straight line but then I come to my senses. I remember that straight lines do not occur in nature.

I am given to taking side roads. Exploration trips. As Master Marsh once asked, “Why do you need to take a run at every cliff that you see?” Curiosity makes for a more colorful path than the taupe-existence of ‘knowing.’ It is more honest, too.

When I was a teacher it always irritated me when the adults placed enormous pressure on their students to “know where they were going.” Over-serious adults pretending that life required hard, unflappable predetermination. “The decisions you make today will impact you the rest of your life!” Well…when is that not true? Tom used to roll his eyes and mutter, “Why is it that adults feel the need to threaten young people with advice that they could not, when young, take themselves?”

Things change. Hurricanes come. Minds go. We age. We discover ourselves or, as Kerri likes to say, “We become more of who we are.” It is comfortable to believe in our powers of control but it’s rarely our destiny that we actually command. The Greeks wrote more than a few good plays about the I-control-my-destiny-confusion. So did Shakespeare.

It is nice to have a map. It is great to have an intended target. It is worth mentioning to young people and old that life is not found in the target but in the walk toward it. Targets change. And, how rewarding would it be, when young, if all of the old walkers admitted that their paths were rarely straight, known, or easy. In fact, when I hear the tales and tell my own, it is the unseen forces, the happenstance, the wrong turn, the accidental bumping-into that gave the walk its riches.

read Kerri’s blog post about MAPS