Queen Anne’s Lace | The Direction of Intention

Check Your Stems [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on July 19, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Wild Carrot. Queen Anne’s Lace. Throughout every season we find ourselves marveling at the aesthetic structure of the plant. The graceful curves and shapes. They inspire movement and floral symbols in my paintings.

Summoning the Oracle, Google, I learned that a common question asked is how to discern Queen Anne’s Lace from poisonous Hemlock. They are surprisingly similar in appearance. “Poison hemlock stems are smooth, while Queen Anne’s Lace stems are covered with tiny hairs…” The moral of the story? Check your stems.

Check your stems.

The verb form of the word ‘stem’ concerns origins. Comes from. Arises from. For instance, the stem of the word ‘democracy’ arises from ancient Greece. The word literally means the people (demos) rule (kratos). “Democratic government is commonly juxtaposed with oligarchic and monarchic systems, which are ruled by a minority and a sole monarch respectively.” Healthy disagreement, opposing points of view expressed without fear en route to compromise, is the beating heart – the stem – of a democracy.

The stem of the word ‘fascism’ comes from Latin and means, “bundle of sticks,” – the visual symbol evolved to include an axe at the center of the bundle, representing “a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.” Elimination of opposing points of view is the stem of fascism.

“Fascism’s origins are…ultimately centered on a mythos of national rebirth from decadence.” You could find no better or clearer tag line for a fascist intention than Make America Great Again. You could not pen a better blueprint for the fascist overthrow of democracy than Project 2025. The forcible suppression of opposition. Political violence as a necessary means of national rejuvenation, the demonization of the “other”.

As demonstrated in their gathering in Milwaukee, the reds are now a perfect expression of their symbol: a bundle of tightly bound sticks in lock-step – with an axe hanging over their heads ready to eliminate any voice of opposition. It turns out, like their sycophantic VP pick, many of these men and women, who once called their supreme red leader “America’s Hitler” and “a wannabe dictator”, were right. Sadly, they lack the courage of their convictions. They fear the axe. They lack a basic grasp of the necessity in a healthy democracy for genuine voices of opposition.

Is it rule by-the-people-and-for-the-people or a fascist autocracy?

How can we discern democracy from poisonous fascism? Check the stems.

Open your eyes and look, really look. The red hats have wrapped themselves in the flag so they might appear like the Grand Old Party. They are not. To anyone undecided or confused or jaded, I can only offer this advice: it’s important to check your stems before you ingest too much fascist hemlock believing you’re dining on democracy.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora and iHeart Radio

read Kerri’s blogpost about WILD CARROT

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Filed under: KS Friday, Language, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, authoritarian, autocracy, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, dictator, fascism, GOP, hemlock, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAGA, mythos, origin, poisonous rhetoric, political violence, Queen Anne's Lace, singer song writer, stems, story, studio melange, the melange, this part of the journey, Wild Carrot | 1 Comment »

Follow The Map [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 15, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

In the era when I was telling stories at conferences I liked to tell a particular tale of a woman on a quest. She didn’t know it but the many trials she faced on her journey gave her the exact knowledge she needed to confront her monster, complete her quest and return safely to her home. A field of shifting boulders. A dense impassable forest. A thicket of lost souls. She navigated all of them, learned from them, and returned home, changed by her experiences, wiser from her travails.

It’s most often the message in stories about quests. The journey changes us. We rarely understand the purpose or meaning of our passage until its conclusion. We only know we’ve changed after we arrive back from where we started. Then we can turn around and see.

Prior to the Brothers Grimm, there was no woodsman-savior in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. A little girl sets out in life on a winding road to grandma’s house. It’s a metaphor. The little girl becomes an old woman. The wolf is metaphoric of time. The wolf “eats” all of us in the end. No woodsman can save us. No Hallmark ending is possible. What did Red experience on the way to grandma’s house?

It’s hard not to want to rush to the end. To know. There’s the fantastic story of the western businessman who wanted the Dalai Lama to tell him the secret of illumination so he could fast-track enlightenment, to achieve in a month-or-a-minute that which takes many lifetimes. Life lessons pay little attention to the demands of efficiency and effectiveness. Business, after all, is never just business.

Stages of development. Queen Anne’s lace. In its first year it is dedicated to sinking a taproot and developing a “rosette of basal leaves.” Creating a solid base. Only in the second year does it “send forth a flower stalk with blossoms.” It’s impossible to skip step one and arrive at blossoms. In truth, step one and step two are not really separate phases but are a single, gorgeous process of life’s renewal. I imagine that is what the Dalai Lama thought but did not say to the businessman.

In stories, the magic sword fails. Death knocks politely on the front door. The ogre stands in the path. The sphinx smiles and demands an answer. A young girl skips with Time along a winding road. A woman returns home, wiser from her experiences, changed by her journey.

Stories serve as universal maps, like taproots and basal leaves. They ground us. They can help us understand that the arrival we seek, the journey we take, is to ourselves. They can locate us on the winding road of life’s renewal.

read Kerri’s blogpost about QUEEN ANNE’S LACE