recording | The Direction of Intention

Sit On The Horizon [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 10, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

We are the first wave of humans to experience a pace of change so fast that the media of our memories becomes irrelevant – and sometimes inaccessible – even before the paint on the memory is dry. A crank driven film camera caught a toddler version of me running down the hall in my footie pajamas on Christmas morning. Images rare and, at the time, expensive to develop, our technology makes those films seem prehistoric. Kerri and I work on computers that are separated by over a decade. Mine works lightning fast and hers…is teaching her patience.

I’ve recently been pondering a quote attributed to many: “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” Facebook is a tool. Twitter, too. This screen that opens entire universes for me is a tool. These screens that pull us into them are tools. Our stories, our expectations, our experience of time and space and each other, shaped by our tool. This river runs so fast that front page news is less than an afterthought tomorrow. We take so many photos and movies that we can’t remember taking them. It’s a million miles from the days of precious and rare footage in footie pajamas.

Kerri found the bin. It holds many treasures. Movies that her dad recorded of her first album release concert. Early performances. Recording of movies complete with commercial breaks (before tevo was a glimmer in its inventor’s eye). Luckily, we have a VHS player. And it works! Some night, very soon, we’ll plug in the player and I will get to see her, at the very beginning of her career, long before we met, play.

Reaching back. Racing forward. Little miracles of remembrance rendered obsolete by faster and smaller miracles of moment-capture.

We sit squarely upon the event horizon, our memories both a bin found in the basement and an intentional composition – Instagram stories, Facebook memories, a story shaped by our tools, tools shaping us, a creative act.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE BIN

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

Filed under: Creativity, Edges, Identity, KS Friday, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, AS IT IS, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Facebook, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerri sherwood yamaha artist, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, let me take you back, media, memories, memory, movies, musician, recording, stories, story, studio melange, technology, the melange, tools, Twitter, VCR, VHS, vhs tapes | Leave a comment »

Become It [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 11, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

and now songbox copy

Kerri wrote AND NOW for us. For me. It is the piece of music that played as I walked down the aisle. I can’t hear it without being transported back to that moment. Then is now.

The only time I’ve been in the recording studio with her was when she laid down the tracks for AND NOW. It was magic. She was completely in her element, doing what she does naturally and best. I was utterly taken by her mastery, her ease. She recorded it the week prior to our wedding, when the to-do list was endless and the guests were literally knocking on the door. Needless to say the stress was palpable. And yet, she sat at the piano in the studio and played, she stood in front of the mic and sang, and the rest of the demands of the moment simply fell away. There was nothing between her and her composition. She became her music. She lived her song.

It’s what I thought about as I walked down the aisle that day. Eternal thanks. Wonder at a universe that connected the dots. And now? Nothing more or less than living the song in the same spirit in which it was written and recorded. Nothing between us and the music.

AND NOW is available on iTunes iTunes & CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about AND NOW

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, KS Friday, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: And Now, artist, artistry, become, composition, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Gratitude, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life giving, married, piano composition, recording, transported, wedding song | Leave a comment »

Look At The Pictures

Posted on September 19, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

H’s wife passed after a long illness. This afternoon we went to the vigil and Kerri sang Amazing Grace for the service. We looked at the photographs of her life.

This summer, at my grandfather’s funeral, there was a similar board of photographs showing the span of his lifetime. They are a record of moments. He posed for some of the shots. In some, he had no idea that a camera was pointed at him. We are different when we know a camera is aiming our way. We put something on, a kind of mask, an attitude or assumption.

The photographs on the board served as a history of technology, black and white to color film, and then a jump to the proliferation of digital images. What was difficult became easy. What used to need chemicals and processing became instantaneous. This capacity to snap photographs and see them in a moment has changed us. Selfies abound! Once, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, I watched with fascination as people posed to have their picture taken with Van Gogh’s painting, Starry Night. They rarely looked at the painting. They just knew it was famous and wanted their picture taken with it. They primped. They smiled. They mugged for the camera or looked serious. Proof of life? Just like a handprint on the wall of a cave, those photographs shouted, “I was here!”

We are among the first people in the history of humanity to have this extraordinary window into our lives. I looked at the photo board of H’s wife and saw H at age 30, at age 40, and 50 and 60 and 70, 80, and I know him now at age 90. In the photographs I can see the cocky young man, the father, the achiever, the dreamer, the man who stopped resisting, the surrender,…each phase of his (and his wife’s) life. More to the point, he can see it. He can see the progression.

Two hundred years ago a photographic record of a life span was impossible. No one posed because there was no need. An old man remembered his life but did not have the window to see his path. No one had the opportunity to see the growth and process of age through the phases of their life. It changes us. And, it is a sword that cuts both ways. We can see. We can record. We can story ourselves like no other time in history. We can be known to future generations. We can talk to the future and the future can hear us. We were here. We had something to say. We had so much to share, so many rich experiences of living! And, we can miss our moment in the recording of it.

Kerri asked H what was his favorite photograph on the wall and he laughed and said, “I don’t know. We had happy times. Look at how much I weighed back then!”

“You need to eat more, H!” Kerri admonished and gave him a hug. He began to cry.

“I’m trying,” he said, laughing through tears. “I think I just need to drink more Frosties!”

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