A Dream Itself [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on June 14, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

I awoke this morning with a line from Hamlet running through my mind: “There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” What dream, what night-wander was I following that made me bob to the surface with a line from Hamlet as my first thought of the day?

Sometimes I use Google like I use the i-Ching. A divining tool. I called up the phrase from the mighty Google and read two opposing opinions of the meaning of the line. Of course. Divining tools generally cast a broad net. The first writer interpreted the line to mean that the human imagination has limits; there is so much that we don’t know and cannot yet imagined. The second interpretation was stated with absolute authority. This is what Shakespeare meant! “One must believe what he or she sees. Even if they previously did not think so, the real evidence should change their mind.”

Evidence or the limits of imagination? Evidence as the limiter of imagination? I was no closer to answering my dreamtime question but I was affirmed in the dynamic nature of perception and interpretation. What a great play!

Living as we now are, in the advent of A-I, one must not believe what he or she sees. I have no idea what Shakespeare meant – we never discussed it – but I am certain that what one sees is no longer evidence of anything. What one hears requires vetting. There are more things on heaven and earth than Shakespeare could have possibly imagined. Our world is beyond his dreaming or he might have suggested to Horatio that he must question everything he hears and challenge everything he sees.

And, about my dreamtime question? I’ll leave that, too, to Hamlet: “A dream itself is but a shadow.”

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE NIGHT

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Wine Shadow [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 18, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

And with no warning, Cat Stevens was suddenly holding a concert in my head: Oh, I’m being followed by a wine-shadow, wine-shadow, wine-shadow. A leapin’ and hoppin’ on a wine-shadow, wine-shadow, wine-shadow…

Carl Jung wrote that “Everyone carries a shadow,…” I suspect Carl chose his verb carefully. Rather than being followed by it, everyone carries their shadow. The absolute weight of weightlessness. The next part of his thought goes like this: “…and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” The moral of his story: get to know your shadow.

I had a long talk with a high priest in Bali. He explained that, according to their belief, they see no need to run from the dark as we do. They strive to make peace with the dark. Keep in mind that their construct is not built upon the hard rock of heaven-or-hell. For them, there is dark energy and light energy. The two dance and balance each other. They are necessary to each other. Our work, he suggested, is to walk between them, hold them both as meaningful and sacred. Getting to know the shadow is about having a relationship with the light.

“Don’t sit down!” she said, jumping up, camera in hand.

“What? What?” I asked looking around. She rarely jumps up like that. Only in the presence of bees.

She pointed enthusiastically at my chair. “Shadow! Shadow!” she whispered, as if her voice would scare the shadow away. She focused her camera on the weighty-weightless.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, just in case she was right. I’ve ruined a shot or two in the past by using my outdoor voice. I didn’t want to get “the look” if I caused the shadow to flee before she could snap the picture.

It was during her photoshoot that Cat Stevens popped in. And Carl Jung, not wanting to be out-sung, offered his quote.

“I look forward to getting to know this shadow,” I said.

“What?” she whispered, aiming and re-aiming.

“Never mind,” I smiled.

“Did it take long to find me?
I asked the faithful light
Oh, did it take long to find me?
And are you gonna stay the night?” [Moonshadow, Cat Stevens]

Pray Now (John’s Secret), 48″x24″ acrylic on canvas

read Kerri’s blogpost about WINE SHADOW

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Walk With Shadows [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on September 27, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

These are not the pine forests of Colorado. The trails in North Carolina are a crazy cross-hatch of roots and shadows. Rhododendron explosion and cedar. Kudzu. “This is a Hansel and Gretel forest,” Kerri whispers.

“Luckily for us,” I reply, “we are too old to taste good. No witch would have us.” She punches my arm. I laugh, but not too loud.

This forest is different than our ideal. That is why we come here. It opens us. It challenges our “should-be.” New experiences and unknown places dissolve expectations and elevate awareness of “what is.” It shakes the stone fortress of imagined security. Each step is alive and unexpected.

Renewal. It’s a special branch of the slow-moving-river called curiosity.

After many miles we arrive back at the car. We emerge from the Grimm Brother’s forest and step onto the comfort of paved parking lot. Exhausted, we are thrilled with our hike. The forest sprites retreat back into the dark recesses of our minds while the new shapes and smells and colors and sounds energize our spirits.

“We did it!” She is elated. Then, “Do you think that crashing sound was a bear?” she asks.

“Could be,” I lie, certain that we were followed – and rejected – by a hungry Ogre. Too boney. There are, after all, certain benefits to aging.

read Kerri’s blogpost about ROOTS AND SHADOWS

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Imagine The Shadow [on KS Friday]

Posted on September 23, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.” ~ Grandma Moses

Among the many reasons I love autumn is the color of the light. Looking out of the kitchen window this morning I was bowled over by plants resplendent in orange and pink. I was so taken by the color that I forgot I was cooking and nearly burned breakfast.

We hiked yesterday. The trail was steep and rocky but, thankfully, the trail wound under the canopy of the forest. It was a hot day and the shade made our path bearable. We stopped often to breathe and enjoy the remarkable shadows cast by the trees. The leaves glowed and waved, backlit by the sun.

Imagination. The capacity to make images in the mind. It is the most basic of human capacities. We spend our lives imaging ourselves in tragedy and in triumph. Yearning and fear are both shades of imagination. “What if…?” is a question borne of imagination.

“Wait!” Kerri suddenly instructs, stopping me in my tracks. When the sun is low in the sky and our shadows make us skinny giants, she likes to capture our distortion. Shadows do not resist the curvature of the earth. They do not try-to-be. They simply conform to the circumstance and, inevitably, moving through a festival of color changes, blend into the purple dusk.

While she focuses her camera on our shadow, I appreciate the glow of the negative spaces, the yellow-autumn warmth heightened by our grey-blue silhouette. I giggle imagining we are as skinny-tall as the shadows we cast. “Hold still,” she whispers, not realizing my giggle is making the shot impossible. While stilling my shadow, in my mind, we reach and pluck the reddest of leaves from the tippy top of the maple tree.

Waiting (from Joy)

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about SHADOWS


waiting/joy © 1998 kerri sherwood

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Heed The Call [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 21, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“There must be more to life than having everything.” ~ Maurice Sendak

They are sent to bed without supper and sail to islands with monsters. On the island, they conquer their fear and return home to a hot supper.

They push through the wardrobe to discover magical worlds. Before returning home, they save the world.

They journey to where the sidewalk ends. They enter the 100 Aker Woods to find kindness and Pooh.

They are us. Telling our children tales of magical lands, adventure, and hope triumphant. They are us giving full reign to the imagination.

Peter lost his shadow and Wendy wakes. She helps Pan reattach it. Her gift of story garners an invitation to adventures in Never-Never-Land.

The call comes from the shadows. The pull of imagination lives in the image-shapes cast upon the wall.

I’ve heard countless people insist that they are not creative. I ask them if they’ve ever told their baby-child a story? I ask them, as a child, did they alert their parents to the scary monster scratching around the closet or hiding beneath the bed?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE WEST WALL

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Cast Great Shadows [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 23, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

There is a small statue on the bathroom sink upstairs. It’s from another era. Inscribed on the base is the phrase, “I love you this much.” The little figure stands wide-eyed with outstretched arms. I use the outstretched arms to hold my hair-pretties. Hair-pretty is a technical term. Kerri tutored me on proper hair terminology when I decided to once again let my hair grow long. I always had long hair until I started facilitating, consulting, and coaching. My clients could handle the clogs but couldn’t see beyond my hair.

I have grown fond of the little statue with outstretched arms. Sometimes I talk to it. “Hand me one of those hair-pretties,” I say, or, “Do you really love me that much?” Occasionally I’ve asked the statue for an opinion or advice but he remains silent since his inscription is a universal answer. Pay attention to what you love. Love without bounds. Love without borders.

One of the qualities that I love in my life is how playful Kerri and I are. Barney the piano is dissolving in the backyard, so, with great excitement, we ordered a chandelier to suspend above Barney. When the chandelier arrived, we decided it wasn’t a good fit for Barney so, for a few nights, it lived under the table umbrella. It cast great shadows so we sat beneath it and cooed and ahh-ed. Kerri took photographs. I loved our moments. Dogga slept through it all and I loved that, too.

It isn’t that complicated. Pay attention to what you love and let the rest go. Of course, like all simplicities, it’s easy to say and hard to do. That’s where the little statue comes in: it reminds me that love isn’t something you do. It’s something you are. It’s something you allow, especially when the borders and rules and boundaries and expectations and self-inflicted limitations aren’t clogging the view.

How much? All in.

[Kerri just told me she bought the little statue for her dad when she was a teenager. And, at some point, it found it’s way back to her. An even better story!]

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CHANDELIER

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Stroll [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on June 14, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Yesterday, for some reason, I revisited days of early childhood. I played four-square in the driveway. I threw dirt clods at the site of new home construction. I raced my cars off the side of the abandoned building above Del and Dorothy’s house in the mountains; the cars tumbled and I ran to retrieve them so I might send them flying again and again. I ran home in a panic the day I learned that Nancy’s little sister had drowned in utility hole that was filled with water. It was on the route I walked to school and passing the hole filled me with trepidation, it was a dark portal, my first experience of death. I didn’t really understand it.

Late at night, Kerri and I sometimes talk about everything that has happened in the short time of our relationship. We’ve lost parents and lost careers, spiraled in a free fall of uncertainty, had surgeries and broken bones. We’ve also climbed mountains, watched sunrises and meteor showers, we hold hands when we walk, we write together every day. We dance in the kitchen. I am the sous chef to her cooking artistry.

I’m not sure if we practice paying attention to our moments or it’s something that has come naturally to us. She is rarely without her camera, noticing the smallest flower, capturing the angry sky. I hold the space and hope someday she stops apologizing for stopping again to take a photo; I love watching her discover the shapes and colors of this world. Besides, I get to see what she captures in her lens with an excited, ‘Lookit!”

Today the plumber comes. Yesterday we appealed to the company that destroyed our yard replacing the waterline to come back and strip off the top layer of soil, now filled with hardware and concrete and asphalt. Slowly, we are digging out, repairing and replacing all that was destroyed or delayed in our free fall. Our lessons seem to be about stress – or, rather – not stressing. We are having experiences, rich and varied. Some things we can control. Most, we cannot. The best we can do is hold hands and stand together in each experience. Appreciate them no matter whether they look like tragedy or comedy. We’ll make meaning of them later down the road.

The artist dances with death. The appreciation of the fragility of life. Each day I walk by that metaphoric utility hole, only now it does not fill me with trepidation. It makes me squeeze her hand and fills me with gratitude for this life, this moment, this shadow we cast together as we take our time strolling through the garden.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SHADOW

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Gratitude, Identity, Love, Metaphor, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

What’s Now? [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 1, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

After a fairly contentious conference I co-facilitated in The Netherlands, Kerri and I took the bullet train to Paris. It was early in our relationship and our first time abroad together. We couldn’t afford to get to Paris otherwise, so tagging a small vacation onto a work trip seemed foolish not to do. It was the perfect place at the perfect time. I released the conference friction the moment we stepped off the train. I didn’t know it at the time but on the streets of Paris I left behind a skin that I’d badly needed to shed.

We had limited funds so we bought baguettes and Camembert cheese, fruit, tarts from vendors and bottles of wine. We ate in parks. We wandered the streets. Climbed the hill to Sacre’- Coeur, visited Rodin, and tried to get lost. We fell exhausted into bed each night, full of art and sound and color and delicious wandering. One night we sauntered to the Arc de Triomphe and barely escaped a riot. Bus loads of police in riot gear appeared on the street and, wide-eyed, we slipped out of the crowd and hustled to find more peaceful rues. Paris now serves as a marker. There was before Paris. And after.

“This shadow looks like that picture I took of the Eiffel Tower,” she said, showing me the photo of the shadow. The angle is perfect. The shadow is appropriate. Shadows. What was. An outline of the people we were, reflected on the snow. And, the series of photos, shadows along the way, the surprising people we have lived-into since we wandered those streets, shedding old skin, and boarded a plane home with a a question, “What’s next?” What’s now?

read Kerri’s blog post about SHADOWS

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Cast A Shadow [on DR Thursday]

Posted on February 25, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The soul has no limits.” ~ Heraclitus

It was a hot summer night, humid and sticky, and the community was gathered in the outer ring of the temple. The Wayang Kulit master, shadow puppet master, was performing a play. Part ritual, part entertainment, the Balinese have not yet banished their arts from their worship. Laughter is welcome in the temple. Although the puppets are beautiful, ornate, the audience can only see the shadows they cast on the screen. It is a metaphor for life: in consciousness, we see only the shadows. We are the shadows. Our life-stories are illusion.

We walked in silence. Watching our shadows on the snow I thought of that hot night in Bali, of my astonishment of the skill of the master, manipulating all of the puppets, voicing all of the parts, a lamp of hot oil burning on his head – the light source to create the shadows. If that were not enough, he conducted the orchestra, seated behind him, by tapping the ground with a piece of wood wedged between his toes. He was a priest. A storyteller, not a preacher. Words and laughter swirl in the outer ring. As you progress to the inner ring, the most sacred place, language falls away, no words are spoken. No words are necessary. Kerri and I, while we walk, often occupy the inner ring. We hold hands. We listen to the sounds in the forest. We cast shadows.

Sometimes I feel far away from that hot summer night. Sometimes I sit right next to it. Our walks bring me closer to it.

It was a revelation to me to sit with people that experience no division between what is sacred and what is not. They do not worship on the weekend and then leave their holy place. To the people watching the shadow puppets, it is all sacred. It is all temple, even themselves. They know themselves as sacred. It is all holy, even to the forks and spoons in their drawer.

The separation they experience in this life – as individuals – is the shadow. Separation is the illusion. Fears and foibles are without lasting substance. The puppet master plays his rowdy tale to remind the people seated on the ground in the temple, that the truth of their existence is beyond the projection on the screen of their minds. Forms are fluid, not fixed. Souls have no limits.

read Kerri’s blog post about SHADOWS

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Let It Catch You [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 8, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

the shadow of division copy

a morsel of Earth Interrupted IV: shadow of division

Sometimes you have to stand still to let what you seek catch up to you. Kerri said that to me one day. Her words found their way into me and then became a poem and then the poem found its way into a painting, Earth Interrupted IV.

This week the painting found its way into a morsel for Studio Melange. A wisdom inspired a poem, became a painting, became a morsel called Shadow Of Division. Today, it becomes a post. Which, I am sure, will inspire another poem or a song (anything is possible in our house).

Art begets art. The well of possibilities is bottomless. And, rather than chase the possibilities as was once my strategy, I am learning to stand still. A wisdom, a poem, a painting, a morsel, a post about cycles and all things life giving.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about SHADOW OF DIVISION

 

shadow des plaines river trailwebsite box copy

My favorite thing about shadows? They blend divisions. They make cool new and surprising shapes out of seemingly separate things. Transformation is so simple and just a small shadow away.

 

shadow of division/earth interrupted IV ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

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