Go It Together [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 6, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The problem is that this fluidity is not a choice we are free to make. Despite the unifying patriotic rhetoric that permeates the United States, on some level Americans are not really fooled: at bottom, each person knows he or she must continually “reinvent themselves,” which is to say, go it alone. America is the ultimate anticommunity.” ~ Morris Berman, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire

I laughed aloud when I read this quote. It reduced to a simple phrase what I believe is the collective experience of being an American (U.S.) in the 21st century. Together, we go it alone.

“Going it alone” is, of course a delusion shared by cowboys, republicans, and guys that put big tires on their trucks. After all, someone had to make the tires. And the truck. And pave the road. Using tax dollars since the roads are public and maintained by the collective. All of the chest-thumping expressions of individuality are, after all, firmly rooted in the lives and labors of others.

It only takes a minute to tease apart the loose fibers of the go-it-alone mythos. The problem is that one must want to think it through and, in our current spiral into stupidity, thought is shunned. So is history. At the core of anti-community is the absence of critical thought and a bucket of denial.

[Sidebar: this reminds me of a favorite phrase that, one day, popped out of Jim’s mouth: because you think it, does not make it so. Because you believe it, does not make it so.]

In my current state of residence, the governor, a democrat, asked the legislature, a randy band of republicans, to meet for a special session to discuss the ills that currently plague our community. The randy band gaveled open the session and then, as is its custom, immediately gaveled it closed. Legislators that refuse to discuss issues or policy. Sitting in the people’s house, obstruction is the only card in their deck. Not a single idea or impulse to serve the public in the randy band and their lock-step rugged individualism.

It is the sign of our times. Going it alone together is an ugly race to the supremacist bottom.

The cure for what ails us lives in the space between the gavels. Genuine discussion of the real challenges that face the community. An acknowledgement that driving the big cowboy truck adorned with big cowboy tires is only possible on the public road made viable by the shared effort of hundreds of fellow citizens. All of the Fox-driven drivel and religious right propaganda is never going to change the fact that we are all in this together. We can choose to be a failed state in a dedicated anti-community or we can thrive in the post colonial-era by bringing all ideas, all points-of-view, all people, to the common table for a wee-bit of collaboration, compromise, and long-needed-real-live-bona-fide-communal-reinvention.

read Kerri’s blogpost about MASKS OPTIONAL

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Consider The Symbol [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 30, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Because it is outside, she grabs her camera. Were it inside, I’d hear the special scream saved for spiders and I’d come running. The power of a screen, flipping fear to fascination. “It’s amazing,” she said and cringed.

Spider symbolism – like all vital symbols – carries the power of a complex split-metaphor. On one side of the screen they are toxic, malicious, potential bringers of slow venomous death. On the other side of the symbol, they are world creators, weavers of life and interconnectivity. Certainly, they are central characters in this world-wide-web that we enjoy.

In this era, we attempt to restrict our symbols, preferring them to be absolute, one-sided, either this or that. Symbols never work that way. They lose their power when cut in half. To be potent, a symbol must embody both sides of the moon. Limiting a symbol to only one side flattens it, robs it of dimension, renders it useless. The real power of the symbol ignites when both aspects are understood and embraced. Symbols are polarities.

We would be wise, in our nation, to look at both sides of our symbols. Our history, embodied in our symbols, is both shining and dark. Vapid fear-stories like “replacement theory” fester in a flattened symbol culture, a half-told history. Ugly nationalism grows in the spaces left empty by a cleaved symbolism, a highly-edited narrative.

Gaze through the screen at both sides of the symbol, and a fuller, richer, more color-full story emerges. An honest narrative.

Nations, like people, become healthy when they embrace all sides of their story, the dark side and the light, when they acknowledge both aspects of their symbol, when they take responsibility for their actions, the venomous and the virtuous alike.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SPIDER.

Prometheus: Resurrection, 48x96IN, acrylic on three canvases

Prometheus Resurrection © 2008 David Robinson

Filed under: DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective, Possibility, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Chew On It [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 9, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

The first and most important question of the day is, “What is nougat?” I’ve always been more of a peanut M&M’s guy or, these days, a straight-up almonds, sea salt in dark chocolate lover. I’m currently accepting donations of Chocolove’s Salted Almond Butter in Dark Chocolate. You should be, too.

So, what is nougat? Originally it was honey, nuts, and egg whites but in this era of “it’s-better-not-to-know-what-I-just-put-into-my-mouth-and-called-it-candy,” I wonder what passes for nougat? I only ask because I’d never heard of a Charleston Chew so, to understand the reference, I looked it up. When I read that a Charleston Chew is, “…flavored nougat covered in chocolate flavored coating…” I immediately spotted the word “flavored” twice in the same sentence. If the chocolate isn’t really chocolate then what are the odds that the “flavored” nougat is really honey, nuts and egg whites?

To borrow and bastardize a bit of Hamlet”To eat; perchance to savor: aye, there’s the rub.” Kerri assures me that a Charleston Chew is yummy. Who cares what’s in it if it makes my toes wiggle with satisfaction? It’s the inverse argument of all those nasty foods adults made us swallow as children: who cares if it’s good for me if it makes me gag? Make me go hungry and send me to my room! Please! Caring adults forget that kids squirrel away and hide Charleston Chews beneath the mattress so banishment to the bedroom for not choking down brussel sprouts is tasty a reward.

This is key to understanding why people do what they do: we know what’s in a brussel sprout*. We have no idea what’s in a Charleston Chew. We’ll clamp down our jaws or pitch public fits rather than eat what’s good for us. Yet, we’ll happily binge on mystery snacks that are certainly no good for us but, damn-do-they-taste-good. Insight: humans are not rational beings. We puff up and proudly defend all manner of thought-nougat but can’t be bothered to look up the source or verity of the dreck we’re feeding on.

Of our current dilemmas, there is one thing that is certain: we can’t Charleston Chew our way out of this.

Take heart. There’s always Chocolove.

[*now that I’m rumored to be an adult I love roasted brussel sprouts]

read Kerri’s blogpost about CHARLESTON CHEWS

Filed under: Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Step Off [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 29, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“A tree is not made of wood, it is wood.” ~ Alan Watts, The Watercourse Way

Language is powerful. It’s a drum I have beat for a long time, the notion that we insist that the narratives we wrap around ourselves are somehow “reality.” We are told that 50% of Russians believe the hell wrought on the Ukraine is merely propaganda. A made-up story. Not true. It is the narrative they are fed and, in order to eat it, they must ignore any evidence to the contrary. Their economy crumbles. The ruble falls. How could they not see it? Don’t laugh. 40% of USAmericans still believe the last presidential election was stolen, a plausible story only if wearing blinders with fingers placed firmly in ears. Burying your head in the sand is not a Russian or American trait, it’s uniquely human. We see what we believe, not the other way around. Our language makes it so.

Years ago I read that the word “wild” could only come from a people who believe all things must be tamed. Wild makes no sense without the concept of tame. Wild, bad. Tamed, good. So, a people afraid of their own “nature” must become tamers. A people who think “nature” not only can be but must be managed. To be “above” it all, in charge and atop the pyramid, giver of names. It is the necessary narrative for such tamers of the wild, those who story their very nature as corrupt. Tamed, good. Above it all. Separate. Is it any wonder the intrinsically conflicted human world rarely embraces peace? Our narrative leads us to believe, amidst so much inner and, therefore, outer conflict, peace is something to be created because we are naturally conflicted. What else?

Where, exactly, does wild end and tame begin? Where’s the line that delineates nature from civilization? What if nature is neither good nor bad? What if your nature was neither good nor bad? Perhaps self-love would be within reach and, as a natural extension, the love of others, too. It’s an alternative narrative though not possible in a belief-story that fears the wild. Wholeness begins with a step off the pedestal.

It’s in the language. Somehow separate from the world in which we live, not “in” nature or “of” nature , we are deluded to believe we are made of different stuff. Above it. Divinely manufactured. Made.

Manufactured. Made. Trees made of wood.

And, just what are we made of? I guess it depends on the story we decide to tell. Wild stuff.

read Kerri’s blogpost about TREES

Filed under: Language, Metaphor, Random, Seeing, Story, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Help Them Smile [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 9, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

I howled with laughter when she said it. “You can buy anything that looks like something.” She was referring to the sweet Italian sausage that was not sausage at all but made of plants. I thought she was making a political statement. We are solidly in the age of things-are-not-what-they-seem. Photos can be manipulated. Words that come out of mouths can be placed there, not by the speaker. Propaganda is called news and American cowboy culture does not see its full-lemming transformation. Sausage-not-sausage is everywhere!

“What are you laughing at?” she asked, placing the sausage look-alike in our basket. Linda made us a yummy vegetable hash that included the not-sausage and we enjoyed it so much that we left with the recipe. “The age of enlightenment is officially over,” I thought but did not say. Had I answered honestly she would have told me to “gear down.” The grocery store is no place for philosophical hoo-haw.

“Nothing,” I said, giggling.

Standing in front of the cold not-sausage-section, looking down the aisle at people masked and not masked, some wearing masks on their chins, I felt thrust out of all reality and into the tragi-comedy that is our times. Peter Barnes wrote a terrific play, a comedy called Red Noses about the plague that swept Europe in the 14th century. A priest and his band of fools traveling through the villages offering humor as the only relief for the fear and pain. They wore red noses.

“When people in the future look back at us, I hope they laugh,” I said.

“What?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“We need a band of fools.”

If we could laugh at ourselves, we’d probably have a better time of life during the pandemic, I thought, as an unmasked woman sneered at my fully masked face. I wonder how we’d have fared had there been a red nose mandate? Protect your neighbor by helping them smile.

Kerri stared at me and smiled. “Don’t make me tell you to gear down.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I think we need Dogga food.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about ANYTHING AND SOMETHING

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Random | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Discern [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on August 11, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“For in the end, he [Aldous 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: Public Discourse In The Age Of Show Business

Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves To Death in 1985. Cassandra, sounding the alarm to a community too distracted to listen. Were he alive today, he’d think – but would not say – “I told you so.” All the quotes in this post are his.

I read in my daily-news-horror-trawl a quote from a Wyoming man who believes he’s protected from the pandemic because of the color of his hair. It might sound wacky until you consider that his staunch belief in the virus’ preference for hair color is just one of the many misinformation narratives currently being fed to the angry and easily led. He is, without question or thought, breathing the gas of a political party that wants to keep him distracted, fearful and high.

If you are not choking on the fumes of excessive gaslighting, then you are among those whose eyes are burning from the corrosive air it produces. Are you as tired as I am of reading accounts of deathbed appeals for the vaccine? It is too late, in your final moments of life, to realize you’ve been duped. It’s a tragedy. Are you as disgusted as I am, having been witness to the undeniable violence of the insurrection, of listening to the blatant denials? Despite what your eyes saw, it was just another day of tourists wandering through the Capitol. Gaslight tears.

During the first year of the pandemic an acquaintance latched onto a comorbidity table lifted from the CDC website and circulated as “proof” that COVID was less dangerous than the common cold. It was, of course, taken out of context. A quick visit to the CDC website (seriously, less than 30 seconds), viewed in context and with an understanding of the meaning of the word “comorbidity,” easily debunked the claim. Our acquaintance, enraged, doubled down on his claim of “proof” – though he could not be bothered to spend 30 seconds to check the poison gas that he was gulping.

“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.”

The legal defense has been successfully used to defend both Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow: the courts ruled that reasonable viewers should know the difference between news and opinion. This is news. This is not.

Do we have the ability to differentiate between public business and a vaudeville act? The evidence is not hopeful.

The court’s ruling, then, is likely based on a faulty premise: that people are able to differentiate. That the audience is reason-able or values reason. Able-To-Reason. Reason is the power to think, understand and form judgments through a process of logic. In order to be reasonable one must value reason. One must want it.

Logic and reason, both assume the inclination and capacity to question. Curiosity, real curiosity, does not seek agreement or group think. It seeks to step into the gap between what is espoused and what is lived. It seeks solid ground to build upon so must recognize sand when it sees it.

And, what if “reason” long ago fled the coop? Or, what if “reason,” has never been a dominant trait in the coop in the first place? What if discernment dies in the presence of so much gas?

“Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

read Kerri’s blog post about IT DOESN’T KNOW

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective, Rants, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Tether Well [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 11, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s official. YouTube has blocked forever our channel for the crime of using Kerri’s music. It’s happened before on other platforms so we’ve actually grown accustomed (sadly) to the loss. She is the composer, the performer. She holds all of the copyrights. We’ve learned that it is impossible to fight with an algorithm. I suspect that our appeal never met human eyes otherwise where is the sense? The algorithm wrote back assuring us that our claim was reviewed thoroughly but their decision stands. Vanish-ment.

Our vanish-ment is only one of the many examples of my latest fascination: what gets between you and your soul? What gets between you and your sense-making? What gets between you and your voice? In other words: what is real and what is not?

On a grand scale, we are alive at a time when deep fakes can put words into the mouths of anyone. We are witness to propaganda tv perpetuating fantastic lies, inserting themselves between people and their common sense. It is important to note that just because you believe it does not make it true. In fact, in today’s day-and-age of easy belief in the outlandish, it is a best practice to check everything you hear. It takes a bit of time – but only a bit – to tether yourself to reality. It takes no time at all to swallow the fables, conspiracies, and cotton-candy-illusions, currently blasting fire-hose-style across the e-waves.

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” ~ Socrates

Anger and hatred are great mind foggers. They are easily-fed-fires-fueled-by-the easily-led. Make no mistake, the purveyors of propaganda see their audience as nothing more than firewood and depend upon dedicated ignorance and unquestioned belief. Those who stoke the fires generally revel in standing between people and their sense, people and their souls. Arsonists always have an agenda.

I’ve always understood that meditation and education share the same intention: remove the noise between your self and your experiences. Discernment. Quiet the mind. Open the mind. Artistry, at its best, does the same thing. It exposes you, opens you, to your greater self, to the fields beyond ‘what you think is true.’ Revelation, reveal-ation. At their very essence, artistry, meditation, education…require a full challenge of belief; belief is the final frontier of white noise, a worthy and necessary din to challenge.

Barney, the piano, grows more beautiful with age. The plants and flowers are again growing around his base. Chipmunks and squirrels sun themselves on his lid. One of Barney’s functions in our life is to remind us of what is real. That’s also true of the rusting sunflower that now lives by Barney’s side. After our YouTube vanish-ment, we sat for a moment on the back porch. “Look at the wild geranium!” Kerri said. She jumped to her feet to take a picture. Have I mentioned that she is also a great photographer?

The artist is intact. More, she is full of energy and ideas. A channel may have closed but the essential remains. Nothing can stand between an artist and her artistry. Not really.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blog post about BARNEY

this part of the journey ©️ 1998 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Education, KS Friday, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Get Close And Look [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on December 1, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Get close and look. Really look. Raindrops on the screen. Distortions. Light bends. The shock of organic shapes colliding on a grid. “What do you see?” she asked.

Last night, somewhere in the vicinity of 2am, we were wide awake. We ate rice Chex and reviewed the stressors of the year. It read like a biblical plague. We laughed when we realized that there were/are so many stressors that we’d actually forgotten the local riots, the curfew, chaos. and murder that happened a few blocks from our home. “In any normal year,” she said, “that would have been the top of the list. This year it didn’t even make the cut.”

Get close and look. What do you see? Future PhD’s will apply their magnifying glass to our time and find the tail wagging the dog, the greater falling to the lesser. A political party cowering and conspiring with delusion. They would rather see the system fall than risk their power seats. A populace jousting over wearing masks in a pandemic. Many would rather their neighbor die than have their imagined rights restricted. Propaganda networks, posing as news, peddling fantasy as fact. They would rather worship at the altar of the advertising dollar and feed the division (division sells!) rather than hold fast to the mast of journalistic integrity. It’s all entertainment when the necessary is swallowed in a mouthful of superficial. Gossip and conspiracy are so much tasty sugar!

Rome fell when the chief-toga-team guarded their luxuries rather than attended to the essentials. Millions of people line up for food. The market soars.

Really, get close and look. Little miracles are everywhere. “You were plucked out of the snake-pit,” he wrote. “Get the water boiling and get out the corkscrew. It’s time to celebrate.”

We found wine by the front door. Twice.

“I will sit with you in the dark,” she wrote.

“Do you need anything?” they asked.

Slushy came with smiles. “We thought you might need this!”

“Stand above your circumstance,” he suggested.

A special delivery of vitamin c and zinc brought tears to my eyes. True friends emerge from the pack.

The boys join us on the raft every morning for breakfast. Dogga comes running every time tears fill her eyes.

The shock of organic shapes colliding on a grid, raindrops on the screen. Hard lines, soft shapes. “We’re very lucky” she said, stooping to take a picture of a pine cone, a fallen branch with wispy needles. The day was cold but the sun was warm.

“What do you see?” she asked, turning the camera so I could see her photograph. “Really look.”

read Kerri’s blog post about RAIN ON THE SCREEN

Filed under: Pattern, Perspective, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Get To Work [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 24, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

On page one of the despot’s handbook is this instruction: silence the artists. Mute the intellectuals. Authoritarians have power only when people become sheep. Silence in the face of abuse is tacit agreement. Permission to bully.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve stood before a school board and explained that art is supposed to be powerful, that it plays a very important role in a healthy society, I’d have a lot of nickels. I was generally called to speak when a play or a painting upset the apple cart, when the art made the community confront a truth or look at a reality. Brecht’s Epic Theatre or the plays of Artaud were/are meant to shake the irrational in people, force them into discussion and revelation.

Art can be beautiful, poetry can soothe, but that is only one side of the coin. It can also shine a light and expose an ugly truth. It can give voice to what is not-being-spoken. It can work out problems on the stage instead of sending the violence into the streets. It can ask us to take a hard look at ourselves and our motives. Picasso’s large painting, Guernica, a response to horror wrought by fascists on the people of a town in Spain, is a powerful art-mirror.

The conscience of a community, like the conscience of every individual that comprises the community, lives beyond the superficial, it bubbles in the place beyond words. An artist’s job is to reach into that place, pull the veil for a moment, root or re-root the community in its values.

A despot’s job is to secure a unanimous vote, no questions asked. Sheep.

Art is not superficial. It is not the image or the words on the page. It is what the image, the words, the dance, the music, touch. Hearts. Souls. Conscience.

Without it, what remains is propaganda. Propaganda is never news, it is the opposite of art. It snuffs the question, it prevents the quest for meaning and deep-felt-truth. Without it, communities flatten, lose their center, wither, and fall apart. Silence, eyes downcast or sideways glancing. Permission to bully. Sheep.

It’s time for the artists to get to work.

read Kerri’s blog post about ARTISTS

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Edges, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Dare To Read The Label [on Bonus Saturday]

Posted on September 12, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

I was awake much of the night staring at the ceiling fan and I had a mini revelation.

Earlier in the evening I had a conversation with my mother about medication and the need to check labels. The doctor had prescribed something for my father that would have been harmful for him to take. We discussed the need not only to be vigilant but your own advocate when dealing with healthcare.

And then our conversation wandered into the swamp of politics and current events. Tumbling out of her came a river of Fox News scare topics – “SOCIALISM” she cried! “MEXICANS WILL POUR ACROSS THE BORDER” she howled, “AND MY MONEY WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR THEIR HEALTH CARE!” “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!” she bayed. “WE GOTTA OPEN THIS COUNTRY BACK UP!” she yelped. “THEY’RE PAYING PEOPLE TO RIOT!” And, my personal favorite, “THERE’S EVIL POURING ACROSS THIS GREAT NATION!”

You’ll not be surprised to learn that I pushed back. Mexicans pouring over the border was her response to my question, “What do you mean by socialism?” Someday I will learn that it is impossible to reason with the absurd.

And so, I found myself staring at the ceiling fan, asking myself the same question over and over: why would someone be vigilant about checking the labels on their medication and not apply the same vigilance to the stories they consume? Why would they check the efficacy of what they put into their body but not check the truthfulness of what they infuse into their thought?

That is perhaps the single most important question we as a nation should ask. Why are so many of us so willing to swallow poison?

As I’ve previously written, Fox News will kill someone I love, so egregious is their dedication to misinformation. In a pandemic, it’s only a matter of time. Go here to read the label on their bottle. Here’s a snippet: strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy.

Misleading reports. Influence by appeal to emotion or stereotypes (in other words, scare tactics). Untrustworthy. It’s propaganda, brainwashing, hype, and (my personal favorite synonym) the big lie.

Why would anyone swallow the big lie when the warning on the label is written in big bold red letters? Or, more to the point, why work so hard to ignore the label?

My revelation watching the ceiling fan go round and round: I can’t possibly fathom why. Nor do I need to. I’ve pushed back again and again and whirl to nowhere just like the ceiling fan. I can let it go now. No one is forcing the angry fearmongering down their throats or coloring their sight with so much hate. It’s a choice, their choice, her choice to ignore the warnings so clearly printed on the label.

read Kerri’s Bonus Saturday Donkey Wowza-Paluzza

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