Posted on August 21, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative
There is no greater torture for Kerri than having to pack for a trip. Her packing-panic begins weeks before we leave. The stress of trying to plan for and cover multiple clothing scenarios – infinite possibilities given weather, unknown and unplanned formal affairs, nail polish color and shoe requirements… all to fit within the limited space of a suitcase (or the back of the car) is unbearable. The torture lasts long after the trip begins, long after the trip actually ends. “I should have thought to bring…” is a common refrain, sometimes weeks after we’ve come home.
On the other hand I pack in a few minutes with almost no thought. My formal clothes and my ratty clothes are often one-and-the-same. My unintentional packing strategy has been to reduce my choices to one: black on blue jeans. As 20 says, “Easy Peasy.”
I have learned that it is sometimes helpful to pretend that my packing is more difficult than it actually is. I fret over my choice of t-shirts. Do I bring both pairs of boots or just one? Sometimes help looks like indecision. After all, no one likes to suffer alone.
Posted on August 14, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative
My favorite early Chicken Marsala sketch was of an angel delivering Chicken to his new assignment on earth. The angel says, “Get in there, champ! You can do it!” And a very resistant Chicken cries in desperation, “But they are BOTH artists!” Kerri and I are artists with all that term implies. Passionate opinions. Quirky (okay…volatile). Often in need of a perspective-giver. What Chicken didn’t know is that the two artists in his assignment, namely Kerri and me, are great soothers of each other’s storms. We have the gift of never ranting at the same time. When one of us becomes a rocket, the other becomes grounded earth. There is a beautiful equal-and-opposite equation, too. When one of us enters into a creative high, it pulls the other up.
Chicken had a great assignment and just needed to look beyond the wrapper. That angel knew what she was doing.
When I first moved to Wisconsin, Kerri barely let me into the kitchen. One night, Craig and I literally had to remove her from the stove so we could make her dinner. The kitchen was her domain. I knew I was “in” when she “let” me make dinner and didn’t pace behind my preparations. The real score came the night 20 and I made her dinner and she sat at the table, ate snacks and sipped wine. Angels sang. Hell froze over. Dinner was delicious.
Let’s just say that it’s been a process. Mostly, we cook together. I am an excellent sous chef. It gives me great pleasure to chop ingredients and put the readied vegetables in little bowls; Kerri imagines she is hostess of a cooking show. One way or another, we’ve always managed to make our meals into fine dining experiences – or just fun experiences.
Here’s the truth. I hardly ever have trouble sleeping. Where sleep is concerned, I am easily detached. Thought-less. When I awake in the morning, I pass through a phase that I lovingly call, “The Garbage Layer:” all the thoughts and worries and lists and…stuff-of-the-day. It’s the stuff I left behind when slipping into sleep. I’ve come to realize that the garbage will be waiting for me in the morning so there’s no need to carry it with me to the world of my dreams. I suppose that’s a guy-thing though 20 assures me that he rarely sleeps through the night.
If I’m awake at night it’s because Kerri has poked my shoulder, asking, “Are you up?” My thoughtless and detached male response is always, “Yes. Are you?”
I’m the guy at the party that doesn’t mingle. I generally fall into a deep conversation with one person who is polite enough to fake interest in what I am saying. Kerri is trying to help me with my ineptitude. She tells me to “Gear down.” We’ve even developed hand signals so that she can communicate across a crowded room that I need to release my too-polite-listener from my diatribe.
At home, we need no hand signals. I know when I’ve crossed the line because I invoke an immediate hot flash in Kerri. It is my cue to hush up, lighten up or perhaps look up and note the weather.
Just after we met, we dug a small pond in the backyard. It was a party that Kerri called The Big Dig. People came with shovels. We drank mudslides. I met many of her friends and neighbors. We laughed. It took less than ten minutes with so many people to dig the hole. The liner went in and rocks placed around the edges. The pump was placed and the water rushed in. It was a marker in time. It was meant to be a marker, a ritual of passage into the new and the unknown.
She’d planned The Big Dig before we met. Originally, it had nothing to do with me. It was serendipity that I could be present for The Dig. Serendipity or design. Who knows.
The morning after the party, sipping coffee, we sat in lawn chairs on the muddy ground surrounding the now bubbling pond. Kerri used the “M” word, married, “When we are married…” She realized what she’d just said. She blushed and apologized and backpedaled. I was, at the very moment she used the “M” word, doing something I’d never done before: imagining myself married. To her. I was seeing it and, laughing at her anguished retreat, I confessed what I was seeing. We sat by the pond and stared at each other. A ritual passage into the new and unknown.
The pond has always been mine to care for. This marks its eighth year. We just replaced the liner. We had to put flagstone around the pond because DogDog was cutting a deep velodrome path around it, racing in excitement every time John and Michele let their Dachshunds out. Each day we walk to the pond to try and catch a glimpse of the frog-in-residence. This year we named the frog Magic.
Just a few days after The Big Dig, Kerri took me to the marina where the 4th of July celebrations are staged. Bands played. There was a carnival. Too much food. The dog jump is a big attraction (dogs running and leaping into a pool of water in a distance-leap competition). After dark we sat on a blanket and watched the fireworks. Sitting on that blanket, vibrant color exploding in the night sky, I imagined myself living in this town, so far from the west coast that had been my home most of my adult life. “Can I live here?” I asked myself. The answer was immediate: you can’t live anywhere else.
DogDog was born on the 4th of July, probably while we were watching the dog jump. We will celebrate his eighth birthday on Sunday with a rowdy race around the pond. His favorite thing. And then snacks. Also his favorite thing. And then a visit with Unka-John. His really, really favorite thing.
A step into the new and unknown. Ritual passages. You have no idea where they will take you or what the reality of the step over the threshold will bring. You cannot know. You can only step.
“This looks like fireworks,” she said, showing me the up-close-photo of the plant. “I love it,” she smiled.
“Me, too.”
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora
I’ve often pondered what to call our middle-of-the-night meals. Lately, we call it our “3am banana.” I used to call it my “life preserver.” Over time, as my capacity to anticipate the feeding-moment has improved, middle-of-the-night-meals have become much less dangerous.
As Shakespeare wrote, “The truth will out.” Kerri makes certain that I remain humble. Keeping me in proper perspective is a difficult job. I, for one, am delighted that I won out over the parakeet.
Posted on January 24, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
We spent some time last week talking about our beginning. We’d written a post and it prompted us to remember. It was surprisingly necessary to recount our story. To revisit our genesis.
In the guest room in Kerri’s parent’s house was a wall of family photographs. Many were pictures of weddings. A proud man in a uniform about to leave for the second war to end all wars, arm-in-arm with his bride in her wedding gown. A generation back in time, stiff collars, seated brides. There were more recent grooms and brides, too. Kerri’s sister and Bill. Wayne and Jan. Wendy and Keith. Heather and Brian. Beaches and rains of rice. When we stayed in that room, I’d sit on the bed and study the pictures. People standing together on the threshold of a new life. All of the unknowns, the triumphs and tragedies, the obstacles and stories of overcoming, waiting to be lived. But, in this one photographic moment, the vow, the unsullied togetherness, shines: we will walk hand in hand through thick and thin. I promise.
I loved looking at those photographs. The people in them are focused on all good things. There is not a hint of future fear. It’s as if the camera crew at the edge of the mystery was taking snapshots of the bold adventurers on the day the expedition set sail. Anticipation. Hope.
Our photograph is on a wall now. Not Beaky and Pa’s, but on our wall. In our picture, we stand toe to toe. In another, we are skipping out of our ceremony just as we skipped out of the airport the day that we met. Ours, we remembered last week, is a story that began with skipping. With wine on a roof top. With burgers and champagne. With a mystic Taize.
Kerri wrote this song for her niece’s wedding a decade ago. So much life is being lived! So many roads walked. So many adventures ahead. What would the camera crew at the edge of the mystery capture in their photographs today, at this stage in the adventure? Anticipation? Hope? Holding hands, squeezed in affirmation. Let us take another step together, my best friend.
the single, MY BEST FRIEND is available on iTunes & CDBaby
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” ~Pablo Picasso
Every artist knows that technique is necessary but artistry is not the application of technique. Artistry is transcending technique. Technique is tangible. It is possible to practice scales and study color theory. It is possible to grasp that different brushes do different things. There are bottom lines in technique, reductions and rules and complications.
Artistry is intangible. It is flow. It is expansive. It is simplicity and simplicity is so hard to achieve. It is one of those paradoxes I love to write about, the zones where truth bubbles precisely because it cannot be contained.
The first night we met Kerri played her piano for me. I will never forget it. This slight woman stepped up to her piano (she rarely sits when playing) and all reality shifted. She grew. She filled the room. I swear I saw her send an energy-root into the earth and she opened. What came through was…enormous. What came through was simple.
This lullaby, Kerri’s original piece, I Will Hold You (Forever & Ever) from her album AND GOODNIGHT, could certainly be played by a technician and you would appreciate it. Now, for your KS Friday from the melange, listen to what an artist can do. Sit back and give over to the simplicity.
The Direction of Intention 