questions | The Direction of Intention

Appreciate The Glee [on KS Friday]

Posted on April 28, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

My “word-of-the-day” is bedight. Adorned. It seems most appropriate that this adverb popped in my box on this day of Forsythia. The trail was bedight in Forsythia. A sudden explosion of vibrant yellow.

I always look forward to the first Forsythia sighting. It’s the day Kerri dances in delight, chanting, “They’re back! They’re back!” Her relationship with Forsythia reaches into her childhood and has deep love-roots. My association is more recent: it’s the flower that makes Kerri dance. She runs to the vibrant petals to take a close-up. I stand back and appreciate the glee.

Dogga acts as if we are Forsythia. When we return home from errands – even if we’ve only been gone a few minutes – he jumps vertically at the backdoor, so excited is he to see us. Sometimes I like to go on errands just so I can come home to such a glorious welcome. Who doesn’t want to be greeted with out-of-control enthusiasm!

Yesterday, after a particularly arduous slog through the day, Kerri sat on my lap and declared, “We are successful at nothing!” We burst into laughter. Zero. Nil. Nada. Zip. Bupkis. Nought. Naught. And Zilch. And, into that vast nothing, we pour our good laughter and heart until our nada-cup runneth over.

She did not say that we are unsuccessful. Our particular form of success, apparently, is no-thing. Like Glee. Or enthusiasm. Or music. Or beauty. They are hard to wrap your fingers around. They are even harder to assign concrete monetary value. What is our work worth? What – exactly – is our work? Beyond no-thing?

Yesterday I asked Arnie the to ponder the same question I’ve asked many of my wise-eyes pals: why would people support us? Financially? Beyond caring for us or liking us (trust me, we are wildly abundant in love and friendship), why would someone – anyone who doesn’t know us – support our work? What do we bring of value to the community? For us it’s confusing. Approximately 1,500,000 people listen to Kerri’s music every year through streaming services and she receives nearly-nada. Our blogs and cartoon have reached people in over 80 countries. We love to write together. We love to share what we create. Is there concrete value to what we offer? No-thing? If so, what is it called? What could it be? What shape is graspable? We are sitting on the mountain so we cannot see it. What are we missing?

Mostly, we hope to bedight the life-trail – yours and ours – with the vibrant yellow that lives beyond words and evokes spontaneous dancing. Mostly, if it doesn’t make you dance, we hope it helps you stand back and, like me, appreciate the glee.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about FORSYTHIA

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, KS Friday, Navel Gazing | Tagged: adorn, appreciation, artistry, beauty, bedight, dancing, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, enthusiasm, forsythia, glee, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, music, questions, spontaneity, story, studio melange, the melange, value | 1 Comment »

Lean Into The Questions [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 27, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

A theme that surfaces in my conversations with Rebecca is how unsafe people feel – especially women – to ask questions. At work. At school. Asking a question is too often misunderstood as a challenge to authority. It’s dangerous. Smile. Be silent.

I suppose authority has always been thin-skinned though the idealist in me wants to believe that we’re all in this together. I know without doubt – as we all know – that the way forward is through the field of questions. The best answers open doors to better and better questions. Anyone afraid to be questioned and insisting that their answers are absolute – full stop – should inspire dread.

After eight years on the job, Kerri was handed a contract with the mandate to sign it. She asked a few questions. The description in the contract didn’t align with the reality of the job she was performing or the previous agreements made with her supervisors. Authority did not respond well to her questions. The ensuing assault was incessant. Bullying. Dangerous. For awhile she tried to comply with the only advice offered her: smile sweetly. I wondered, if a man was being similarly pummeled, would he be offered the same advice? When Kerri finally stopped smiling and stood solidly with her questions, she was branded “belligerent” and “uncooperative.”

I doubt a man would be similarly pummeled. To this day, I wonder at all the men and women in the community who watched the pummeling and said nothing. As witnesses to the danger in asking a question, they held-their-tongues. I suppose they learned their lesson. Ask no questions. See no evil. Hear no evil. Look away. Speak no truth.

And, while they weren’t looking, their community fractured and fell apart. All were diminished. Thugs count on division; it’s their secret sauce for establishing control. They engender silence. It’s how they maintain their authority.

And, isn’t that the true danger. We don’t want to bring the the wrath of the gorilla upon ourselves so we “get on board” or “toe the party line.” Smile sweetly. Pretend the bully isn’t beating the woman into submission. Make the assault her fault. She brought it on herself.

Kerri’s experience is a microcosm. The bullies have the microphone. World-wide, authoritarianism is on the rise.

If ever there was a time to lean into the questions, it is now. If ever there was a time to ask aloud, “What are we doing?” and “Why are we doing it?”, it is now. Together, asking questions capable of leading to answers that open doors to better and better questions. We have no shortage of persecutors beating down questioners while screaming that they have all the answers and their answers are absolute.

Perhaps the questions we need to ask together are simple: Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?

read Kerri’s blogpost about SMILING

Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: Answers, artistry, assault, authoritarian, authority, Bullies, bully, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, New Amsterdam, questions, silence, speak up, story, studio melange, submission, the melange, thug | 1 Comment »

See The Frame [on DR Thursday]

Posted on March 2, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

The lake was angry. Had you dropped me in from outer space I’d have sworn I was standing on a beach of the stormy Atlantic Ocean. “I just can’t capture it,” she said, after snapping several photographs. The roiling waves hit the shore with thunderous power and intensity. I felt it in my chest. Distilling the energy within the frame of a photo sublimated the dramatic waves to an everyday image. The frame successfully abolished the fear and eliminated the awe.

On the trail this past Sunday, he quipped that the world as we knew it began its decline when CNN invented the 24 hour news cycle. It’s a lot of time to fill and, to keep people hooked (ratings), the importance has to be exaggerated. When everything becomes ‘Breaking News,’ the really important stories are lost amidst the manufactured dross. Scrolling through our news app this morning I felt as I once did while waiting in line at the grocery store check-out surrounded by the screaming headlines from The National Enquirer. Sorting to the grotesque. Manufactured awe has successfully amped up our fear. A very strange frame, indeed.

The real power of a frame-of-reference is that it is mostly invisible yet it determines the potency of the composition. Focus is largely a function of frame. I’m in the habit of taking “snippet” shots of my paintings. Altering the frame of what I see helps me…see. It promotes inquiry.

A fluid frame is like an open question. It facilitates engagement. A fixed frame does the opposite. It closes the question options: yes or no. A 24 hour news cycle necessarily defaults to a fixed frame. It pretends to be inquiry while promoting dogma. If you wonder why we are at each other’s throats, why we’ve reduced ourselves so severely to a community defined by two primary colors instead of the full palette available in our color-full nation, do an experiment: pay attention to the story-frame you are being fed.

Ice crystals formed on our kitchen window during the latest storm. Kerri rarely takes a single close-up. She takes many shots of the same subject. In a digital age, she is also able to pull a single photo into several different focuses and takes screenshots of the possibilities. A fluid focus. She composes. She questions. She asks. It’s a pure artist’s action. Turning to me she never asks, “Which is better?” Instead, knowing the power of a frame and with full respect for the difference that I might perceive, she asks, “Which do you like and why?”

Two frames. Can you see them? [the new site is like a good wine…taking its time to mature]

read Kerri’s blogpost about ICE

Filed under: Art, DR Thursday, Metaphor, Seeing | Tagged: 24 hour news cycle, artistry, awe, CNN, color, community, composition, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, dogma, fear, focus, focus placement, frame of reference, frames, inquiry, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, perception, questions, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Sip The Hope [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on February 20, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

I keep a Post-It note by my computer. It reads: Grace. Questions not answers. It’s there to remind me to write about possibilities rather than rants. There’s so much in this world that seems upside-down to me; it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. For instance, in preparation for this post I was doing a comparison of the percentage of GDP dedicated to the arts, to education, and to the military. What if we lived in a world in which the percentages were flipped? What might be possible?

And, then, I saw my note. Get out of the weeds! To embrace a world of possibili-teas begins with embracing the world as it is.

Possibilities. Wouldn’t it be lovely if a cup of tea opened hearts and minds to hope? In fact, I believe a hot cup of tea is capable of such a monumental feat. I warm my hands on the cup. I smell the comfort. I sip the hope. There are other, similar, small gestures capable of big-heart-opening: A smile. A hug. A helping hand.

I stared at the word “grace” on my Post-It note. Simple elegance. Refinement of movement. I like this definition: courteous goodwill. Or. combine both definitions: to move in the world with simple courteous goodwill. Intentional benevolence.

As I’ve learned, the flaw opens space for grace to enter. Wabi-sabi. Beauty in imperfection. Compassion in our world is possible, especially if we embrace it as more necessary than lobbing insults or bombs. Friendliness, thoughtfulness, decency…As my Post-It note suggests, I am left with a question: What if we lived in a world in which amity garnered more attention than aggression? What might be possible?

Just like a cup of hot tea: a wee-bit of warming hope.

read Kerri’s blogpost about POSSIBILI-TEAS

Filed under: Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, beauty, big heart, compassion, courtesy, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, decency, friendliness, goodwill, grace, hope, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lipton tea, possibili-tea, possibility, Post-It Notes, questions, story, studio melange, tea, teabag wisdom, the melange, wabi-sabi | 2 Comments »

Ask A Better Question [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 9, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

I just erased the post I’d written for today. We often write a few days ahead so we have time to reflect on or edit what we’ve written. We’ve learned that it’s a good practice to consider what you are about to spill into the world.

It’s a good practice because it affords us the opportunity to ask, “Is this what I mean to say? Is this what I really want to say?” The post that I’d initially written was bothering me. A lot. Sipping coffee, I confessed my discomfort to my chief editor and life-collaborator (Kerri) and we followed the trail until we found the source of my chagrin.

There is a question, a much more important question, behind and beyond clarifying what I really want to say. It is this: “Is this who I want to be?” My post was making me uncomfortable because it was the opposite of what I profess to be. It was the opposite of who I understand myself to be. Of who I want to be.

I’ve often written and taught about “the spaces between.” Relationship. Intuition. Heart. Facts and data require interpretation and live on the spectrum at the farthest point away from wisdom. Focus on the spaces between, the movement rather than the noun, and an entirely different life opens. Wisdom is more like water than stone.

Most cliches touch a truth-root and today that is the case for me: We teach what we most need to learn. Thank goodness my editor was around to gently slap open my eyes and help me ask myself a better question.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SPACES

Filed under: Awakening, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Navel Gazing | Tagged: artistry, clarity, cliche, data, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, editor, fact, intuition, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liminal spaces, movement, opportunity, Opposition, questions, reflection, relationship, revelation, story, studio melange, the melange, the space between, truth, wisdom | Leave a comment »

Choose Awe [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 30, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Of course, it’s not enough to appreciate the cloud-stripes that stopped our motion on the trail. I might have painted them in one of my pieces – for no other reason other than they are a cool pattern. Of course, I would have believed I was making it up. Imagination at its finest. But, in mid-trail, to peer up and see them painted on the sky-canvas sent us into a Google frenzy. You’ll be relieved to know that striped patterns in cloud formations are due to an oscillation called the Kelvin-Hemholtz instability. Phew! Not aliens or Van Gogh run amok, just ordinary old Kelvin-Hemholtz, unstable and oscillating. Again.

Nature continues to astound me. Nature continues to blow my imagination to new heights. As an artist, I am relieved knowing that I will never create anything as perfect or profound as what nature tosses up every minute of every day. There’s nothing left to do but play in these fields and appreciate the conversation. Since I am also a unique-form-thrown-up-by-nature, respecting the conversation, having deep gratitude for the moment, wouldn’t hurt.

Standing on the trail, watching the miraculous lines scratched into the blue-blue sky, I re-realized something important: Google might be able to explain it – which is no small feat – but explaining it, labeling it, putting it into a context-box also diminishes it. It gives us the illusion that we are separate from it; that we can control-it-by-rationalization. Visitors at the zoo.

Sometimes I think awe is a better path than explanation. I imagine that we might approach global warming, weather weirding differently, if we weren’t under the illusion that we could Google nature into submission. Awe is participatory, boundaries dissolve. I-am-that. Life beyond definition, beyond category and sub-category, glimmers.

Next time, I will opt for a few more moments of astonishment before reaching for my phone. Explanations and easy answers can wait their turn in line.

Lost. In the Questions ~ Kerri Sherwood

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about STRIPES

lost. in the questions © kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Language | Tagged: Answers, appreciation, artistry, awe, cloud formations, clouds, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, explanation, Gratitude, Kelvin-Hemholtz, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, KS Friday, labels, musical poem, musician, nature, pattern, questions, rationalization, separation, story, studio melange, the melange, unique | 1 Comment »

Take The First Step [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on July 5, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“That is what marks out the warrior: the knowledge that willpower and courage are not the same thing. Courage can attract fear and adulation, but willpower requires patience and commitment.” ~ Paulo Coelho, Aleph

And so begins my tale of two quotes.

It’s true, I have not been very courageous in this lifetime. I’ve run from most of my demons until circumstance or readiness required me to turn and face them. Left to my own devices I’d be running still.

“I learned long ago that in order to heal my wounds I must have the courage to face up to them.” ~ Paulo Coehlo, Aleph

Luckily, life ran me into a dead-end. It was not courage but conditions that stopped the run and necessitated the turn. Demons are never as big as fear makes them out to be. In fact, turn and face them, and they will often shrink to nothingness. Their job is to make you run.

The real work happens after the demons shrink. Standing in your dead-end, the race from your life now complete, an obvious and disconcerting question arises: now what? Actually, there’s a deeper question implied: in the absence of running away, what will you choose to walk toward?

The deeper question is one of willpower. The deeper question cannot be answered by anyone else and can only be found in the space once occupied by the demon. Facing the demon was merely a prerequisite. Standing still in your dead-end, reaction transforms to intention.

Breathless and vulnerable, it is willpower (perhaps a kind of courage?) that is needed to take that first timid step toward…

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CANOPY

Filed under: Edges, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: Aleph, artistry, courage, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, demons, intention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meaning making, patience, Paulo Coehlo, questions, running away, story, studio melange, the melange, willpower, wounds | Leave a comment »

Lean On Poppo’s Cane [on KS Friday]

Posted on May 27, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Next to the closet where we keep our shoes and old sweatshirts is a bucket. In the bucket are a few walking sticks we’ve plucked from the trail, used and brought home. We rarely walk with sticks so the few that made the trip home are in the bucket to remind us of special walks, the times we needed some stick-aid. And thank-goodness there was a stick available when we needed it.

In the bucket, alongside the walking sticks, is Poppo’s cane.

Poppo’s cane came in handy this week when Kerri broke her foot. She is a circle-walker and our house has square rooms so she regularly arcs too close to the doorjambs. She’s adept at breaking her pinky toe.

This time she broke more than one bone. When the yellow-green swelling hit her ankle we took her to the doctor and then she went for a spin in the x-ray machine. For a few days, I was her mobility prop and then Poppo’s cane took my place and became her trusty stick-aid.

She looked at me this morning and, with knitted-brow, asked the obvious question, “What’s going on?” I had no answer. In the span of a couple of years, she’s broken her wrists, torn ligaments, had fingers that simple refused to bend, lost mobility in her left shoulder, tendonosis, a tendon injury in her left foot, a digestive system that refused to digest,… She’s had a heaping plate of “what’s going on with my body? What’s going on with my life?”

Both are great questions to ask.

What do you do when your questions have no definitive answers? Lean on Poppo’s cane and take another step. What else? Appreciate the stick-aid. Perhaps one day, with a little perspective, while looking at the bucket of useful sticks, the story will make some sense. The questions will find understanding.

In the meantime, I’m considering moving Kerri into a furniture-less yurt. My theory is that circle walkers are safer racing around in obstacle-free circular homes.

Kerri’s albums are available in iTunes & streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about POPPO’S CANE

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, KS Friday, Metaphor, Uncategorized | Tagged: aging, artistry, body changes, broken foot, broken toes, cane, changing body, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, injury, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, questions, sense making, stick-aid, story, studio melange, support, the melange, two artists, walking stick, walking sticks, yurt | Leave a comment »

Call It Realism [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 4, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

This garlic could have been painted by Jan Vermeer. To my eye it looks like the work of a Dutch master, an artist more concerned with realism than the ideal.

Art that reveals the beauty in the ordinary. For a few weeks in my surly youth I studied with a realist painter. I was wowed by his technique but could not yet grasp his dedication to capturing the everyday. Only later did I come to understand that his art was not about the technique but about bringing attention to the experience of the everyday. He rejected the aloof and desired to pull art down from the pedestal so it might reflect the lives of the “common people.” He believed that people needed to literally see themselves in the paintings to have access to the painting. They needed to see their hardship and toil as well as the objects that surrounded them.

Bertolt Brecht believed the opposite. In order for people to have access to the deeper messages of a play, they needed to be removed from their circumstance. So, in his way of thinking, people are more capable of seeing themselves in a piece of science fiction than in a reality-mirror.

David is working on a re-imagining of Pirandello’s play, Six Characters In Search of an Author. One of the questions of the play is, “Who is telling your story?” And, how are they telling it. I reread the play and was struck by how relevant it is to our times.

The beauty in the ordinary. The turmoils and struggles of the everyday. Ours is a time of tumultuous story tug-of-war. I wonder, in a hundred years, what historians will write about our time. I wonder what aspect of artistry – if any – will be considered “realism.” As defined by Vermeer and Pirandello, it’s to reach across a social line, from the privileged to the working class. For Brecht it is spatial: step out to look in.

One thing is constant, while reaching across time and artificial boundary, it is always the role of the artist to help their community ask the questions: Who is telling my story? Whose story am I telling? What is the story that we are telling?

I imagine those someday-historians will write tomes on our messy struggle to sort out what is “real” and what is not.

read Kerri’s blogpost about GARLIC

Filed under: Art, Edges, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Pattern, Perspective, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: artist, artistry, beauty, Bertolt Brecht, class, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, ideal, Jan Vermeer, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, ordinary, painting, Pirandello, plays, questions, real, realism, reflection, Six Characters in Search of an Author, social line, spatial, story, storytelling, studio melange, the melange, theatre | Leave a comment »

Gaze At The Seam (on KS Friday)

Posted on March 25, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Some things are hard to grasp. When that’s the case, it’s a good time to look at the sky. You’ll not find many explanations up there but gazing at the seam between us and the infinite-universe can, in moments of clenched fists, bring some perspective. As Kerri says, “It just keeps rolling.” No problem can remain large when measured against the seam, that fragile ozone layer that makes breathing and every current dilemma possible.

Sometimes when I look at the sky I wonder how many people across the ages have engaged in seam-gazing.

I imagine, one day in Kansas, 1932, as his fields turned to dust, a farmer looked to the sky. All his appeals for rain exhausted.

I can’t imagine how many women looked to the sky over the 100 years of protests and parades before being afforded the right to vote.

Can you imagine how many African-Americans looked to the sky as slaves in a nation that boasted to the world about its freedom and equality?

I look to the sky every time another state in the union passes legislation prohibiting discussions about our history, so fearful are we of critical race theory and the equality that we profess.

I find nothing in the seam that explains anything, but the clouds remind me that it just keeps rolling and, since I believe we tend toward wholeness, I catch a whiff of hope in all the blue and moving puffy white.

Someday, somewhere down the historic road, someone will look to the sky, in a post-nonsense era, and will, perhaps, imagine me staring back. To them, from their perspective, my unanswerable questions will have found resolve. They will have questions of their own, no doubt, but won’t it be nice to have a new set of questions to thrust at the seam?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SKY