reminisce | The Direction of Intention

Light A Candle [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on July 17, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Often, when archiving her photographs, Kerri gives them a title. This one she named Delicate. “Like life,” she said.

Today we light a candle. We light them when we are commemorating an anniversary of loss, the passing of someone we love. The light of remembrance. “He’s been gone 31 years,” she sighed as we placed the candle in the jar, touched fire to the wick. Today we remember her big brother Wayne.

Our remembrance is rarely maudlin. We tell stories. We laugh. I’m particularly grateful for this candle-day because I never met Wayne. He was gone years before I arrived on the scene. But I feel as if I knew him because Kerri’s stories of her brother are rich in memory-texture. Visceral. Deeply rooted. And all roads lead to his love of coffee ice cream so I’m certain he and I would have been great pals.

As I’ve written in the past, the first words that Kerri spoke to me were “I don’t do nutshells.” It’s true. If you desire brevity you’ve come to the wrong place. She layers detail on top of detail in her storytelling of the world. And, she assures me that she is nothing compared to her brother, Wayne. His detail of details had details. An engineer’s mind. An inventor’s heart. An epic storyteller.

In the past few weeks we’ve had more than one reminder of life’s fragility. Dear ones wading through sudden, momentous and scary health challenges. A cousin passing. News of a friend too soon gone. More candle-days.

There’s the stereotype, old folks sitting on the porch recollecting days gone by. When I was younger I thought rocking chair reminiscence was inertia, life winding down. Nothing else to do. I had it all wrong. It turns out that elders tell stories of the past because they are verbally lighting a candle. They are keeping alive the memory of someone they loved. They are feeding the river of life. They are passing love forward.

Thirty one years ago. Today we light a candle. Today we tell stories of Wayne.

read Kerri’s blogpost about WAYNE

[Bonus track]

like it. share it. comment on it. supp ort it. we appreciate it.

Filed under: Family, Love, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: anniversary, artistry, brother, commemorate, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, delicate, fragile life, fragility, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, loss, memory, remembering, remembrance, reminisce, reminiscence, story, studio melange, the melange | 2 Comments »

Learn A Thing Or Two [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 12, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

A decade ago I wrote and self-published a book. I called it The Seer. The see-er. A few days ago I pulled it off the shelf and began a slow-read-through. It’s a good book! I’m actually learning a few things from my younger self.

Yesterday I made a spreadsheet (I’ll never again confess to making a spreadsheet so appreciate this moment). The purpose of my spreadsheet was to build a database for Kerri of the cartoons that I’ve drawn for work. She takes my pencil drafts and digitizes them, colorizes them, and adds some quirky dynamics. They begin as mine and complete as ours. To finish my database it was necessary to open every file and look at each cartoon. They made me laugh. I’m proud of those cartoons, our work. I’m excited to share them beyond the small circle of eyes that currently see them. I know I’ve learned a few things because they are so simple.

We have a few sparse analytics on our blogs so can see when someone reads a post from the deep past. Lately, when someone reads a post from several years ago, we read it, too. “Where did that thought come from,” Kerri asked herself after rereading her long-ago-post. Often, after I dive into the archive, I want to rewrite what I read. I’m a much better writer now that I have a great editor reviewing my posts every day. The grammar police should have sent me to the gulag years ago. I am fortunate now to have a daily read through and revision with the-daughter-of-beaky-who-won’t-tolerate-improper-grammar. It’s too soon to know but I might be learning a thing or two.

We had occasion to revisit 2015. We didn’t mean to but were looking for a picture of a lanai and a pizza. It was the year we produced and performed The Lost Boy, illustrated and produced the first of Beaky’s books, we lost her a few weeks after the book release party, we were married in the fall of that year, we inadvertently created our first cartoon character, Chicken Marsala. “We’re content-creating monsters,” I said during our reminiscence. “We’ve learned a few things,” Kerri replied.

We walked to the channel. The last time we took this walk was before Covid. It seemed like a stroll into the past. A walk into a former life. So much has changed. We stopped at the waterpark to take some photographs. Children danced in the fountains. Parents smiled. Innocence at play. Elders occupied benches.

“Look at this,” she said, showing me the picture of the fountain. “I think maybe I’ve learned a thing or two.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE FOUNTAIN