stability | The Direction of Intention

Come Down To Earth [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 7, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Oh, NO!! You have the curse, too!” he laughed and shook his head. The curse is perceiving life from 30,000 feet, global thinking, looking down on the landscape-of-life, seeing possible connections where other people might not. Although life in the overview has its usefulness, I now understand to my core the dilemma of Cassandra: no one believes you when you tell them what you see.

I’ve also learned, through too many experiences to count, that looking down on the landscape distorts what is perceived. What seems to provide a clear overview also generates a warped vision; just as a tree looks very different from the ground than it does from above, so too does an organization or a nation or any form of relationship. It is very useful to come down to earth. “Gear down!” Kerri regularly says to me. She knows that I often have my head in the clouds.

I just cut the post I wrote for today. It was a Cassandra-rant. I wrote about billionaires like Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, Elon Musk…men who’ve climbed to the tippy-top of the pyramid of democratic capitalism, and, once on top, somehow come to believe that capitalism is incompatible with democracy. Completely ignoring the fact of their own success, they espouse – and actively work for – the abolition of democracy so that a select few might determine the course of the nation and of humanity. Of course, no surprise, they believe that they themselves are the select few.

This belief is a step backward to feudalism. It’s a step toward fascism. Dictatorship.

The view from the tippy-top of the pyramid is not the same as the view from the ground. The reality at the tippy-top is not the same as the day-to-day reality from the ground. To the tech-bros who would be kings, who believe that capitalism is a form of governance, I’d like to suggest that they gear down. Come down to earth and hang with we-the-people. Attend a barbecue with folks in the park. Although it probably feels nice to cast yourself in the role of king, please consider that no one dreams of being a serf.

Besides, the world has been-there-done-that.

I’d also suggest that they read and consider the data in Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature: although it might not feel like it, violence in the world has declined dramatically with the rise of democracy. Stability is a necessary ingredient for functional capitalism. It turns out that capitalism flourishes where the seeds of democracy are planted. Civil rights and the protections of individual rights are intertwined. Individual ownership is not contrary to governance by the people and the rule of law – they sprout from the same seed.

The American dream is built upon the vision of equality-for-all. Although the dream sometimes seems impossible, it is not pie-in-the-sky and is very easy to see from the ground, from the place where people work and collaborate and learn and communicate and recognize the value of debating differing opinions – of considering other points-of-view. It’s easy to see when values like honesty and humility are respected – and expected, especially from our leaders.

Here on the ground, we-the-people dreamed into existence a government – known as democracy. In the dream prosperity is within reach of everyone. In the dream basic human rights are not only valued but central to who we know ourselves to be. We protect them for everyone, citizen or not. We invite you, the morbidly wealthy, to take a break from the lofty heights of your Gatsby Party, come down to earth and sit for a spell. Put your feet on the ground. It’ll be good for you to remember that the very system that you are attempting to dismantle is the foundation of your pyramid. We are the pyramid.

*****

about this week: there is a peril, it seems, to writing ahead these days. we had decided that this week – the first full week of a new year – we wished to use images of light as our prompts, we wished to linger on the possibility of light, of hope, of goodness. though our blogposts might stray from that as we pen them, it was without constant nod to the constant updating of current events – a mass of indefensible, unconscionable acts. we pondered what to do about these blogposts we had written and decided to keep them. we hope that – whether or not any absence of the happenings of the day, whether or not the chance these written words seem somewhat inane at this moment – you might know that those events – of corruption, illegality, immorality – do not distill or distort our intention – to bring light and hope to this new year – the first days of which bring more insanity and unnerving instability. we are still holding space for light.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE OVERVIEW

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, capitalism, Curtis Yarvin, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, fascism, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Peter Thiel, stability, steven pinker, story, studio melange, The American Dream, the melange | Leave a comment »

Voices Of Clarity [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 14, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.” ~ James Baldwin (via The Marginalian)

We picked our window of time perfectly. We needed to walk, to get out of the house and breathe yet it had rained much of the morning. Antsy, we took a chance when there was a small break in the weather and headed for the trail.

We walked slowly. We kept an eye on the sky. We watched the next band of storm clouds roll in. It was beautiful. It was ominous. The rain came a few moments after we completed our loop, just as we were getting into the car. We laughed at our good fortune.

Some people take photographs to record events. Kerri, like all artists, takes photographs to feed her spirit. She sees beauty and the photo is way to connect or harmonize with the beauty. It is akin to a hummingbird drinking nectar. I watched her take photos of the coming storm. There was a fierceness in her posture. There was joy in the face of the tumultuous clouds. As I watched I remembered a conversation I had with Brad about the reason artists create. There is a precise moment for the child-artist that a spark lights a soul-fire. In my moment I desperately wanted to see clearly what was happening behind peoples’ eyes; behind my own eyes.

“Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify.”~ Iris Murdoch (via The Marginalia)

Later I looked at her photograph of the rolling storm and thought it a perfect image for our times. The storm is coming. Lydia wrote a comment musing about the surprise rise in prices the maga-faithful (and the rest of us) will experience when the people who pick our crops are deported. I responded darkly that the artists and intellectuals will pick the crops from their place at the corporate farm detention camp. Despots always have to eliminate voices of reason, voices of criticism and opposition. Voices of clarity.

Today, now, more than ever, I want to understand what-on-earth is happening behind peoples’ eyes. As I understand it, this is exactly the time, when chaos and deception rule the day, that artists get-crackin’ to clarify.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE COMING STORM

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Edges, Perspective | Tagged: art, artistry, balance, chaos, clarify, clarity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, instability, Iris Murdoch, James Baldwin, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, stability, story, studio melange, The Marginalian, the melange, tyrants | 1 Comment »

Hold The Vision Lightly [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 29, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Тhe gentle overcomes the rigid.
The slow overcomes the fast.
The weak overcomes the strong.”
…
“Everyone knows that the yielding overcomes the stiff,
and the soft overcomes the hard.
Yet no one applies this knowledge.” ~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

If there is a metaphor on this day – or a lesson – it is that a plan or a goal held too firmly is…not useful. Tom Robbins wrote that stability is not rigidity. Stability, like all aspects of balance, is dynamic, constantly adjusting. How’s that for a paradox? Stability is fluid.

My clan is gathering. We are driving a long distance to attend so have plenty of time to talk, to think, to remember. Kerri has lost both of her parents so I have many questions about the river of complex feelings running through me. Joseph Campbell said in an interview with Bill Moyers that “No one lives the life they intend.” I wonder what life my father intended? I think he was more capable of rolling with his circumstance than I, at first, understood.

There are no straight lines in nature and it turns out that we humans, we storytelling animals, are a part of nature and not above it. Our story of dominion is just that, a story. My dad loved to be outdoors. He tried to be a school teacher but there was not enough air in a classroom. He couldn’t breathe so he made a life out in the elements. His skin, at the end, was so sun-baked that it was brittle. He achieved his desire and his desire was simple.

I am, at this point in life, ecstatic that I didn’t achieve what I set out to do when I was 20. I actually thought I was a train on a fixed track and learned through derailing (a few times) that I needed to let go of my notion of the track. I found my artist when I let go of my artist. On this drive, en route to the funeral, I fully appreciate my wanderer heart and my compulsion to step off of edges. I could have done with a bit less chaos but am now of the mind that life has given me a master class in balance. It continues to teach me to open my hand and not hold so firmly to my ideas, my beliefs.

I am currently working with software engineers. They are building a system. It has rules and boundaries and limits. It has a guiding principle. It will do what it is designed to do. And yet, it will never be finished. It grows and changes almost daily. There is a master plan, but the vision does not blind the visionary or the developers to surprises. To changes. They learn as the software emerges. On one hand it is a foreign land to me and on the other, I know intimately how this land works. There are no iron tracks. No straight lines. The movement is in cycles and circles and every time we try to force it into a line, we impede the process, we inhibit the growth.

The lesson is always the same.

We awoke this morning exhausted. And, rather than push our way back onto the road, we sat and sipped coffee. We watched the sunrise. We decided not to put our day on an iron track. We appreciated our moment. So, there is some hope, some small evidence – some – that the lesson is taking root.

read Kerri’s blog post about TRACKS

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor, Navel Gazing | Tagged: artistry, balance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, death, father, fluid, funeral, Joseph Campbell, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lao tzu, lessons, life, metaphor, stability, story, studio melange, Tao Te Ching, Tom Robbins, vision | Leave a comment »

Feel The Change [on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 21, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

And, in one day, a single day, it’s changed.

In general, we like to write our posts a day or two ahead. This week, we knew that we wouldn’t be able to write Wednesday’s post until after the inauguration. The Capitol was a military zone. There were looming threats of attack and violence. In recent months, the chaos-of-the-day often left us feeling that we wish we’d have written something different.

And, that is precisely what changed. Mayhem flew south and stability was sworn into office. Good intention (with a recognizable plan) took the helm. It’s as if a cleansing wind blew through and, in a moment, swept away the dark corruption. The adults are back in charge. Poetry stood strong and tall and spoke directly into the heart of the matter. Suddenly, after years of numbing reduction, words mattered again. Vocabulary was restored.

As we reviewed the day I told Kerri that there is only one thing more powerful than a dark wizard and that is a good man. A good person. Good people (side note: I confess to blubbering a bit when Kamala Harris was sworn in. Sometimes change is very hard to see and sometimes – like yesterday – it is impossible to miss).

This morning, for the first time in years, I did not dread to read the news. The sun was shining. BabyCat found a good spot and crawled into the warmth and purred. DogDog chewed contentedly on his bone. We sat in bed sipping coffee.

“You can feel it, can’t you,” Kerri said. “It’s palpable.”

Yes. Yes I can.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE SUN