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Come See
Posted on June 29, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative
Filed under: Art | Tagged: art, contemporary, contemporary figurative, david robinson, figurative, gallery, grace, held in grace, opening, paintings, Sacred, sacred paintings, yoga, yoga paintings | Leave a comment »
Curate With Us
Posted on June 29, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative
Filed under: Art, Uncategorized | Tagged: art, contemporary, david robinson, figurative, figurative contemporary, gallery, grace, held in grace, opening, paintings, Sacred, sacred paintings, yoga, yoga paintings | Leave a comment »
Love To Laugh
Posted on November 11, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative
my bride on our wedding day.
Today marks our one month anniversary. Kerri and I were married one month ago at 11:11am. There are two things that probably best define our wedding: 1) the very first thing we bought for use in our reception was a wiffle ball set and a kickball. It’s taken me a long time to learn that ‘sacred’ and ‘fun’ are essential to each other. Love without laughter is empty, indeed, and I cannot now imagine anything more sacred than love. We wanted to laugh and we wanted our guests to laugh with us.
There is, I’ve learned, a very good reason that the Hopi include tricksters in their important rites. They know that laughter lets the god in. It is a paradox. If you take the god too seriously you will inhibit your relationship with it. You will abstract yourself from it. You will abstract yourself from what is most essential. Laughter is a great facilitator of relationship. Friends laugh together. Kerri often talks about the Amish quiltmakers building a flaw into their quilts. The flaw allows the grace to come in. The laughter, the fun, plunks relationship squarely in the center of the sacred. It makes it real. It makes it relevant. It makes it personal (the three most oft used words to describe our wedding: personal, real, relevant).
To that end, 2) of the wedding week, Jim said it best, “You do know how to throw a great litter of parties.” Truer words were never spoken. We threw 5 consecutive parties in 5 consecutive days, each growing in size and scope. We wanted the people we love to have ample opportunity to meet, talk, and grow to love each other. It took a litter of parties, multiple touches, multiple opportunities, to sow our new garden. More than once Kerri and I watched as the circles of our lives crossed and recrossed, a new tapestry of friendships and stories emerging. Linda taught folks Irish dances on our back patio. Jim and Jim met and played a spontaneous mini-concert. It was gorgeous and spontaneous and rich, rich, rich in laughter (see #1).
This morning Kerri sat with coffee in bed and talked about our wedding (“Can you believe it’s been a month?”). We told stories and compared notes. We laughed. “My one regret,” Kerri said, “was that we never played kickball! I wanted to play kickball!” It’s true. The wiffle ball set and kickball never made it to the beach. There was dancing, so much dancing. The hula hoops even found their way to the dance floor (the bride had four going at one point). So, the kickball remains unrequited. However, the plan for our first anniversary is now set: October 10, 2016, a game of kickball on the beach. An after party of wiffle ball will follow with any and all comers. It will be casual, like the wedding. No need to bring anything. Simply come prepared to laugh.
Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Love, Play, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: dancing, friends, friendship, kickball, laughter, love, marriage, relationship, Sacred, wedding, wiffle ball | 4 Comments »
Laugh More
Posted on September 12, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative
my idea book for our coming-soon cartoon, Chicken Marsala
There is laughter coming from the next room. Across the way, a woman bursts into tears and a man with a ponytail leads her away from a group. They whisper. He tries to calm her. He makes her laugh. She wipes her eyes and they walk back to the group and all act as if nothing had happened. And, maybe nothing did happen. I am too far away to know the circumstances of her tears. I know the circumstances of her laughter.
Today it rained. I sat at my drafting table and worked on a cartoon strip. Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog sat at my feet. For the first time in over two years I streamed NPR and listened to the day’s news and some other stories. There was a story of a hunger strike in Chicago over the closure of a school. There was a story on public figures and apologies. There was an age-old story of the division in congress. I felt the same way listening to the news as I just felt watching the woman in tears. I am too far away to know the circumstances. I am too far away to know with certainty the truth of any of it. I’ve developed a healthy distrust of news reports. All I know with certainty is that truth is relative, truth is a point of view. I inked my drawings and listened as I might listen to a book-on-tape.
There is more laughter. It is coming from a meeting. I find comfort knowing that a committee in charge of anything can laugh. I hope that they are laughing at themselves.
Ann once told me that they key to success was to find a need and fill it. This world seems to have no shortage of needs. It does seem to have a shortage of laughter.
Recently, David shared with me his thoughts of Plato’s analogy of the cave. Perception as projection. It’s all shadows. Once I watched a Balinese shadow puppet master perform. The performances always take place in the outer ring of the temple and are meant to remind people that what they see in this life is a shadow, a projection merely. One of the messages: we are too far away to know Truth. Another message: our projections are worthy of our laughter and not much else. The puppet master had us rolling on the ground. His characters were mostly tricksters, stooges, and in their over-serious pursuits they were hysterical in their folly. Another message, perhaps the most important: the quickest route to the divine, to the connective tissue, is through laughter.
Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, entrepreneur, Family, Gratitude, Perspective, Play, Possibility, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: change, divine, laugh, laughter, mastery, meaning, meaning making, perception, plato, projection, Sacred | Leave a comment »
Make Quiet
Posted on March 13, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative
A sanctuary
It is Thursday night. Kerri is attending a meeting at the church and I have tagged along so I might sit alone in the sanctuary. I’ve always loved entering the quiet spaces. Once, a lifetime ago in Sedona, John called me “guru dude” because I sat for hours nestled in the quiet of a vortex. It felt like minutes to me. I think it unsettled him that I was so completely settled. I know it unsettled him that I would rather seek quiet than make noise.
Sanctuaries, I’ve learned, are everywhere.
My task, my mantra, and my delight of a few years ago was to realize that all the world is my studio. I had some amazing help and more than one universal dope slap before that realization sank in. I used to believe that in order to create I had to escape the world to find the refuge and quiet of my studio. I felt like I had to go to my studio to find my creative place just like I felt like I needed to go to a vortex to experience deep quiet. I had it upside-down. A studio, like a meditation practice, is meant to bring us into communion-with, not reinforce our isolation-from. It is not a place of escape. It is a place of joining. Quiet is not something we find as much as something we allow.
To me, the word “studio” and the word “sanctuary” are now equivalents. They are the places that creating happens and creation is a quiet process: the inner chatter stops, channels open, and something comes through. A few weeks ago, in the second performance of The Lost Boy, we stepped onto the stage and everything was quiet inside. There was no past and no future; there was only the moment – and it joined us, audience and performers, in a single, shared story. Something came through us; together we created. There was no effort, there was no striving; there was, as Jim Edmondson used to say, “a dance of giving and receiving.”
This “joining” is the dirty little secret and great power of the arts. It is something that school boards will never understand but something that dictators across the ages have feared. Artists are the vortex of joining, of shared identity, of explosive quiet, of laughter that crosses lifetimes. The arts do not separate; when at their most potent they unite. They clarify. They delineate substance from chatter en route to a powerful common center that is as holy, as quiet, as it is creative.
Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, Identity, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: art, communal, communion, creativity, holy, presence, quiet space, Sacred, sancturay, studio, the arts, unity | 1 Comment »
Truly Powerful People (467)
Posted on June 19, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative
467.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.
Saul-the-Chi-Lantern turned his back to us. He settled, ready to start the form. We readied ourselves to follow. Just as he was about to take the first step he stopped, turned and said, “A lot of marriages would be saved if only the man knew what color of toilet paper to buy.” It was either a Zen koan or a fragment of his internal monologue and either way we fell on the floor laughing.
“No really,” he continued, as if we weren’t howling. “There’s a right kind of tissue, a right color of Kleenex box and men seem completely oblivious to this fact. It causes a lot of strife!” And then he turned back to the beginning position as if he’d said nothing. We wiped the tears of laughter from our eyes. Wondering what just happened, we followed him into the form. Our hearts were light, our concentration was easy and I suspect we learned to stop being so serious in our approach to our Tai Chi. We certainly found a flow and rode a current when we started from laughter instead of knitting our brows and thinking our way through.
One of my great lessons from Bali was that the sacred is filled with laughter. The holy is ripe with giggling and joy. In addition to reverence, prayer, sermon, hymn, (such heavy words) humor, play, fun, and frolic are forms of worship. The gods might have a better sense of humor if we did. There’d be less road rage. Men would not wear ties and take themselves so seriously. We might not need a 24-hour entertainment-cycle-disguised-as-news to keep us occupied. Of this I am certain: we’d have a better flow of chi.
Filed under: Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: holy, joy, Sacred | 1 Comment »
Truly Powerful People (455)
Posted on June 7, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative
455.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.
(continued from 454)
Alan: The point of meditation is to be more fully present (life is a meditation).
Diane: Imagine yourself as sacred and watch all the separations disappear.
Judy: We are nature observing itself.
Ana-the-wise once told me that my goal should be to make all the world my studio. In other words, to drop the notion that there is a single place where I create or am most creative; that my artistry is my being and not in my doing. This is a more powerful thought than it might first appear. It is a thought with serious traction especially when you are ready to drop any notion of separation – when going to church on Sunday does not a worshipper make. In other words church/synagogue/mosque etc. is not a place to go – it is every place and how you are in it matters. I cannot leave my studio and believe I leave my creative impulse behind without a serious cleaving of my self from my self. If all the world is my studio, if I am always in a sacred place, then the relationship I have with myself must be primary; the story-I-tell-myself-about-myself and the world needs to be conscious and intentional.
Diane’s lesson of developing a better relationship with your self (entertain the realization that you are sacred – try it), ignited within me a chain reaction of thought: 1) If I truly pay attention to the relationship I have with myself and give it as much nurturing and attention as I give other relationships, I learn that 2) my thinking matters. My thinking is how I interpret my experiences. I learn that my thinking can continue swirling in the reactive whirlpool (science tells us that the vast majority of the thoughts we think everyday are the same thoughts from yesterday – don’t ask me how the good folks in the lab figured that out but they did) or I can 3) learn to direct my thought. I can place my thought on what I choose. I can choose my thought. This is a muscle to be exercised not a bit of magic from a hat. You’d be amazed how many times a day I catch myself spinning in a drama-loop and say to myself, “Is this where I want to place my thought?” The answer is always “No.” And, when I ask the question my preferred thought placement is always crystal clear and easily available. 4) Where I direct my thought matters because it determines the world I see and how I am in it. It is a creative act.
When I am in my studio I rarely “think.” I am in a quiet space, a still place, clear and alert and something “comes through.” Why would I limit that potent powerful way of being and confine it to the room I call my studio? Why would I not craft my life to be 100% in the studio?
Ana-the-wise is aptly named: All the world can be your studio. Diane knows it begins with the realization that you are sacred and should treat yourself as such. Alan understands that the point of this life (cradle to grave meditation) is to be fully present so you can do as Judy suggests: revel in nature observing itself.
Filed under: Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: artistry, relationship, Sacred | 2 Comments »
The Direction of Intention 