Posted on August 17, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative
Until today, I’ve never been compared to a good english muffin. For that matter, I’ve never been compared to a bad english muffin. In the end, whether a good english muffin or bad, I am a festival of nooks and crannies and plan on celebrating each new addition. When you’re falling, dive!
You may have noticed an appearance change in this addition of smack-dab. Unlike me, it’s not new nooks and crannies. We are having technical difficulties at Smack-Dab International. Namely, Kerri’s computer died mid-Smack and took this week’s cartoon with it. While I was readying a post of apology for our smack-dab-hiatus, she produced this strip in record time on her ancient iPad mini! Moral of the story: while I look more and more like breakfast food, she is rapidly becoming the queen of the work-around. She never ceases to amaze me.
Posted on February 22, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative
Nicholas Wilton flipped back and forth between an image of his recent painting and one completed a decade ago. He wanted to show that the recent painting is, in many ways, a close-up view, a morsel of the ancestor painting. Look closer-in. The seeds of today’s work come from explorations of the past.
I’ve been thinking about color. A tour through my gallery site reveals a very narrow band of color. I’m filled with the impulse to break it open. One day soon, after the BIG HOUSE CLEAN moves out of my studio, I’m going to mess with color. Paint with my fingers. Fully explore the new tools that Master Miller has sent my way. They scrape and pull and smoosh. They are not recommended for nuance and that is exactly what the art-doctor ordered.
More than once I’ve recounted this story: early in our relationship I told Kerri that, “I don’t sing and I don’t pray.” The other day, because of this story, I had a good hearty laugh at myself. In our reorganization of the basement I was moving my paintings so, I had a good look at every single painting. By far, the theme in the majority of my paintings? People praying. People in moments of touching something bigger. Or trying to. I howled at my unconsciousness. I may not pray but my paintings do.
Look closer-in. I started my life as an artist by drawing eyes. Hours and hours of drawing eyes. I was not attempting to draw realistic eyes; I was attempting to get behind them. Through the eyes, the mirror of the soul.
Perhaps I found my way in. Perhaps not. This I know: color is pulling me just as the eye used to pull me -either further inside or perhaps it beckons me to come out, to return to the place where I started. This time, instead of #2 pencils and typing paper – my seeds – I have scrapers and pullers and paint and old canvas. I look forward to what I might find there.
Posted on December 19, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
Left to its natural state, Kerri’s hair is as curly as curly-ribbon or the curling leaves of this winter grass. It’s gorgeous though someone, somewhere, convinced her that her curls were passé. Her mom and I waged a not-so-secret campaign to stop-the-straightening but we had little to no impact. Every so often Kerri lets loose her curls and always receives raves but they somehow bounce off the image-shield of straight hair.
I have an image of myself. Lately, when I look in the mirror, I see something other than the image that I expect. It’s something to play with! I appreciated the early days of acting school because it demanded a constant change of image. More than once I had to cut off all my hair for a role. There is a power in studying character, realizing that who we are is not a noun but a process. Character – personality – is how-you-do-what-you-do and not “who” you present to the world.
Also, as a teenager I had an image of who I would become. I am surprised to report that I’m not the cross between Leonardo da Vinci and Joseph Campbell that I intended. No amount of straightening the road could alter my wandering (curly) path. I realized, none-too-soon, that to achieve my image I would have had to betray my nature. I am – and always have been – the steward of a “beginner’s mind.”
Kerri has a theory that people do not change, they become more of who they really are. The layers of imagined-self drop off. The core is revealed over a life-time of shedding images. Self-discovery a la paring down.
I grew my hair (again) after moving to Wisconsin. When I met Kerri I was still sporting the short-short hair that my clients expected of me. For some reason, my clogs were acceptable as an outsider invited into the hallowed walls of the corporate arena but long hair was too much. Long hair was a bridge too far. So I cut it. Now, the longer it gets, the more Kerri (and 20) tell me that I look more myself. I’m not sure what that means to them but I agree. It fits my image of me. I always use the opportunity to tell Kerri that when she allows her hair to go curly, she looks more herself, too. After all, her mom and I have not given up our campaign. Although Beaky is on the other side of the veil, I feel her poke me. That’s my cue to lobby Kerri to shed the image-of-straight, to become more of who she really is, and sport those gorgeous naturally curly locks.
(The title track of Kerri’s very popular X-Mas album, The Lights. She’s inserting into her post so I wanted to also drop it into mine. Happy Holidays!)
Last week was unusual in that I had a sneak-peek at my end-of-life-review. When a trusted doctor looks at you and says, “This is bad,” when tests that ordinarily might be scheduled a few weeks out are rushed into the next few hours, when the palette of available options are mostly shades of black and all include the word “dire,” the life-movie-reel begins to roll. Mine did.
I’ve known for years that among the few choices we really have is 1) where we choose to focus, and 2) where we choose to stand as we focus. Point-of-view, labels slapped onto experience, the story we tell is a story we project onto the world. Rolling through the CT-scan doughnut, I looked at the story I’ve called into the forest. I listened for the story it reflected back at me, as me.
“Take a deep breath,” the machine instructed, “and hold it.” Holding my breath, I saw a single story comprised of many, many chapters. There are the life-pages that I lived in confidence, and pages that I wrote confusion. The shattering, the story of the pieces of my life scattered in four directions. Kintsugi. The pages of the phoenix. Pages written running from my art and the matching pages of running toward it. The chapter of standing still. The pages of betrayal and the balance pages of being betrayed. “Release your breath,” the machine chirped. “Breathe naturally.”
The forest will show me fear. The forest will offer grace. The forest will reflect back to me peace if peace is what I bring to it. Someday, rather than project onto the forest, I will walk into it, become it. A reflector of projections.
Take a deep breath. I’ve never been so appreciative of breath. Hold it. What a gift. Breathe naturally. Call awe into the forest.
Posted on October 14, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative
“The mind has the power to do the most extraordinary things…But the mind cannot create truth. What it creates is not truth, it is merely an opinion, a judgment.” ~ Think On These Things, Krishnamurti
Last night at a gathering with our pals, we had a hysterical conversation about looking into the mirror and not recognizing the wrinkled, aging face looking back. The image in the mirror does not match the image in the mind. We agreed that we feel much younger than we appear.
Mirrors are mysterious and magical devices. They are surprisingly powerful. They merely reflect an image, yet, it is impossible for a human being to look into a mirror without launching a fleet of judgments or hosting a party of comparisons. “I look old.” Old? Relative to what?
A quick glance into a mirror is most often an image-check on how we think we appear. And, here’s the kicker: the quick glance is an image-check on how we think we appear to others. In other words, mirrors are excellent for feeding the fantasy that we have control over what other people see. None of us truly knows how we look. None of us has any control over what other people see. Mirrors inspire illusion illusions.
We do, however, have control over what we see.
I have rarely met the person who has made the choice to look in the mirror and see beauty staring back. I’m not referring to the ego-beauty, the magazine-model-concocted-beauty, but the inner-light-beauty. The recognition that life-is-a-miracle-beauty. The nothing-is-broken-and-nothing-needs-to-be-fixed beauty.
There is a beauty that is the truth; it bubbles just beyond the opinions and judgments and comparisons. We see it in others. Last night I looked around at my pals laughing and sharing stories and each and everyone was brilliantly beautiful. Now, looking in the mirror, I ask, what prevents me from seeing ‘what is there’ instead of ‘what I think is there?’
A few years ago Morris Berman wrote a book, Coming To Our Senses, that jumps with both feet into the complexities of mirrors. Believe it or not, there are societies that are not singularly obsessed with self-image.
What do we see when we look in the mirror? What image do we think we ought to project? Create? Reinforce? What image do we think we ought to match? What do we think we need to hide? What about that hair or those crow’s feet? What do we look for in the image that stares back? Have we ever considered that the image in the mirror is the reverse of what’s actual? That we will, in fact, always see the opposite and never see ourselves as we are?
What amazing power do marketers possess when crafting the images that sell stuff? Models with perfect profiles, men with Greek bodies, all of those images filtered through the magic of Photoshop to heighten, hide, or somehow manufacture a more desirable perfection, an unattainable you. That is the point, after all: to create a perfection that no mere mortal can attain. To create a purchase path, a product possibility of attaining the ideal, even for a moment.
On the island, there is a terrific little coffee house, The Red Cup. Someone at The Red Cup must have read Morris Berman’s book or at least caught on to the power of a mirror. They know, even after a few cups of good coffee, when washing your hands in the restroom, you are likely to look in the mirror and find something that needs changing, something lacking. And so, as a counterbalance to the programming, they offer a simple alternative, a suggestion, in fact, a possibility for what you might choose to see in the mirror: you are so cool, and intelligent and strong and fierce.
Posted on February 20, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative
I love this image. It works as a subtle infinity mirror, two parallel mirrors that create a ripple of ever smaller reflections that seem to extend into infinite space.
Be Kind. The first and most obvious mirror is an ideal and like most ideals it is unattainable. It is unattainable because it is not a fixed state, a grasp-able thing. It can’t be bought. Kindness is not an achievement. Instead, it is a way of being, an aspiration, a flowing river. Like most things unattainable, it is easily tossed into the dustbin of cliches. Why be kind in a dog-eat-dog-business-is-business-every-man/woman-for-him/her-self world?
Be Kin. The second mirror, the parallel that creates the ripple, is not an ideal, it is a simple reality. It is also not attainable because it simply is. It cannot be attained but it can be ignored. In fact to ignore our innate kinship requires a serious dedication to denial, an elaborate fantasy of control. It seems we humans, we makers-of-belief, have a choice to either recognize or deny our kinship.
With inclusion, with the recognition of like-ness, comes the desire to reach for the unattainable kindness. The desire to reach for a greater spirit, a better nature, our natural state.
Exclusion, on the other hand, is a sad and scary state. It is a lonely single mirror, self-directed, single-reflective, a “me” space, and, thus, it is incapable of seeing or participating in the infinite ripple.
740. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.
Etched in the mirror behind the counter of the Cherry Street coffeehouse is this thought: Love and Kindness work everyday. On the wall opposite the mirror, so that it reflects in the mirror, is a large bright red heart. Heart reflects heart. Kindness begets kindness.
Last week, during a difficult moment, Megan-the-brilliant told me that she silently repeated the Buddhist loving kindness meditation, “May I dwell in my heart,….” After the moment passed she told me the meditation helped. Instead of defensiveness, she chose to breathe in and reflect loving kindness. Love and kindness are intentional acts, especially in difficult circumstances.
It seems so simple. What we put out reflects back onto us. Today as I rode on the light rail to my studio I imagined the riders as mirrors of each other. I saw small acts of kindness: a woman gave up her seat for an elder, a young man helped an older woman with her luggage, a security officer made sure a tourist knew how to get a ticket and pointed her in the right direction; it went on and on.
I wonder how much of the kindness we see? It happens all around us but do we see it? I hear about the other stuff, the complaints, the obstacles, the abuse; I see it, too but it is less frequent than the generosities. I hear less often about the small acts of kindness but I see them everywhere I look. They are literally everywhere. I wonder what world we might create if we told the story of our acts of kindness as often and with as much gusto as we tell the other tales?
The Direction of Intention 