suffering | The Direction of Intention

A Closer Look [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on June 6, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ~ Thomas Merton

A closer look at the dandelion reveals a fractal. Each level a repeat of the same or similar pattern at a progressively smaller scale.

Listen to your inner monologue. It is the story that you tell yourself about yourself. Listen to the stories in the news or racing across your social media screen. They are the stories that society is telling itself about itself. Any good novelist or playwright will tell you that conflict is the motor of story. Note: conflict need not be violent. Longing is a conflict. Unrequited love is a conflict. A search for meaning is a conflict. A closer look at humanity reveals a fractal. Each level a repeat of the same or similar pattern at a progressively smaller scale.

Robert Olen Butler defined story this way: “When a yearning meets an obstacle.” I believe words matter. I have always appreciated Robert Olen Butler’s definition of story because it does not use the word “conflict”. It is the fractal of the human experience.

The Buddhists teach that desire is the cause of suffering. I giggle every time I consider that marketing is essentially the creation of desire so it follows that it is the engine of suffering. The peace found in possession is fleeting. My Buddhist cartoon: retail therapy is but a single stop on a continuous cycle of suffering. If I was a teacher of story-writing I’d send my students to the outlet mall to study shoppers. My bet is that they’d eventually recognize themselves in the shoppers; then they’d have something essential to write about.

Picasso said, “Every painting is a self-portrait.” His sentiment is a fractal. We watch movies to see ourselves. We attend concerts to transcend ourselves – to lose and then find ourselves in the music.

A closer look at us reveals a fractal. We are both the yearning and the obstacle. A repeat of the same or similar pattern no matter the level or the scale.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DANDELION

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Story | Tagged: art, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fistful of dandelions, fractal, heart's desire, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, longing, pablo picasso, pattern, Robert Olen Butller, story, studio melange, suffering, the melange, Thomas Merton, yearning | 8 Comments »

Live Another Day [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on September 28, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s taken me some time to learn but I now know exactly what to do. Stay. Out. Of. The. Way.

The length of the trip does not matter. My man-brain defaults to simplicity and allows me to pack in a few minutes with minimal thought and no stress. That is not true for Kerri. For her, packing takes weeks. Weeks. She suffers. She angsts. She frets. She loses sleep. In fact, it is common for us to complete the trip, be home unpacking – and she will continue to roll doubt through her choices. “Oh, I should have taken…”

The worst thing I can do is try to help. The second worst thing I can do is to finish packing before she zips her bag. So, while she climbs this mountain, fords this river, bears this burden…I will remain unhelpful, purposefully scarce, eerily quiet and strategically unpacked, yet I will live to travel another day.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PACKING

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: aarp, angst, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, doubt, helpful, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mars and venus, middle age cartoon, middle age romance, packing, relationship, simplicity, smack-dab, story, stress, studio melange, suffering, the melange, two artists, unhelpful, vacation | 2 Comments »

I’ll Leave It To You [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on February 29, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Yesterday we sat in these chairs, ate lunch, and took a few minutes to close our eyes, faces to the sun. And then, late last night, the temperatures stepped off a cliff. The snow you see on the chairs is not really snow. It is encrusted ice. If I hit the chairs with a hammer they’d shatter.

I took down the chimes in anticipation of the wind gusts. The arborist tells us that the tall pine tree standing outside of our bedroom is strong but his assurance does not keep us from laying awake on the nights when the wind roars. We imagine the worst. Last night we lay awake listening to creaks and groans of the swaying pine, readying ourselves to roll off the bed in a desperate act of survival.

We are both artists. There is no lack of imagination going on in our home. There’s no lack of drama when our imaginations entertain certain demise.

I probably made up the part about the chairs shattering. I wanted to test my theory, the product of my imagination sometimes referred to as a “hypothesis,” but Kerri intervened. She stood between me and the backdoor. “You can’t hit the chair with a hammer,” she said. She was calm and also she knows my weakness. “Besides,” she added, “It’s really cold out there.” She knows how much I hate the cold.

Okay. I made up the part about Kerri standing between me and the popsicle chair. Plus, I was only thinking about getting a hammer to test my theory. I imagined what she’d do if I actually gave into my imagination and went for the hammer. She suffers me.

Okay. I didn’t make up the part about her suffering me. That’s not my imagination. Call it observation. To be fair, she is given to improvisational madness, too. I’ve had to stop her from testing an unreasonable hypothesis a time or two. Or at least try to stop her.

Okay. I made up the part of trying to stop her. I imagined it. I know better than to get between her and a theory. She’s more dangerous than the pine tree. At least in my imagination. And my experience. Believe it or not.

Okay. I’ll leave it to you to sort out what’s true and what’s imagined. It’s a snow day so we have to stay inside. Imagination is the way we keep ourselves entertained. Or terrified. Or confused. Or filled with gumption.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SNOW DAYS

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buymeacoffee is not a figment of your imagination.

Filed under: DR Thursday, Random | Tagged: artistry, change, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, drama, entertainment, gumption, imagination, improvisation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, madness, making it up, Random, story, studio melange, suffering, the melange, weather | 1 Comment »

Drop The Condition [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on April 27, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

suffer gloriously copy

Anyone who tells you that people are not fond of suffering has either 1) never experienced love or 2) never loved an experience. Kerri assures me that giving birth to her children was at the same time the most painful and most joyful experience of her life. It is why humanity, throughout its diverse cultural variations, all bandy-about some version of the phrase “unconditional love.” As they say, love is a sword that cuts both ways. Or, to use a weapon-free metaphor, love is a lemon, both bitter and sweet. All inclusive. No conditions.

If we are lucky, we do what we love. Whether climbing to the mountaintop or walking the path of an artist, both come with a fair amount of suffering. They also come with an inordinate amount of elation. Moments of passing fulfillment. It is just as I have been taught: the secret to happiness in this life is to do what you love simply because you love it. Walk toward your love and the suffering will make sense. It will make sense because the suffering-in-love is always transcendent. All inclusive.

Walking toward your love with an added layer of condition (i.e., it has to make money) and you lose what you love. It contorts or goes to dust.

The Buddhists have a phrase: joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. This world is filled with sorrow and suffering and injustice. To be fully alive is not to protect yourself from feeling the sorrows or from experiencing the suffering, but to stand in them. Participate. Engage. Drop the notion that life is an achievement and you will open to the full experience. Colors on the palette.

This is not an abstraction or a dose of idealism. If you are not walking toward your love you are, in all likelihood, walking away from what you fear. With fear as a motivator, the natural destination is a fort. Separation. Self-preservation. Exclusion. Living in a fortress makes for a very small world, a narrow band of experience, lots of rules and a multitude of dull and angry days.

We are living in a time of overwhelming challenge. This pandemic mountain is steep. There is undeniable suffering. Fear is being fed. Conflict nurtured. Division fueled. Fear drives people to gather at the governor’s mansion and demand to open the economy. In their blind-fear-madness the protestors rave about acceptable losses. The mind can be a dull angry fortress when the heart is lost in the conditional. Souls twist.

Love, on the other hand, brings nurses and doctors, after attending to the sick and dying, to stand silently in the midst of the fear protestors. Their message is simple. Go home.

Do not doubt that these nurses and doctors are suffering, climbing a very tall and dangerous mountain, but it all makes sense because their love is without condition. They are asking all of us to do no more than think of the suffering of others. They are. Love without condition is simple. All inclusive. No loss is acceptable.

read Kerri’s blog post about SUFFERING GLORIOUSLY

held in grace series: surrender now

Filed under: Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, exclusion, fulfillment, happiness, inclusion, joyful participation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life lessons, love, pandemic, protests, suffering, transcendence, unconditional love | Leave a comment »

Deny It [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on October 16, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

picnic anyone copy

Were I to give this image a title it would be called ‘Denial.’ It smacks of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: a holiday obsessed Chevy Chase pretends he is having the perfect family Christmas even as the house comes down around him. Of course, in Hollywood, denial has a happy ending for everyone but the snotty neighbors. Their suffering makes us laugh.

These days I think almost daily of the phrase Roger tossed out a few decades ago: denial is the most powerful of human capacities. He is a director of plays, a great student of human motivation. People are great at denying what they don’t like. People are great at having one too many drinks and getting behind the wheel, or texting while driving because, after all, bad things happen to other people. People are masters at pretending that they are not involved, above it all, or what they see is not happening. Ask the NRA.

The important detail that Roger understood is that denial is never passive. It abdicates responsibility. It assigns blame other places. Chinese hoax. It minimizes the impact. It paints pretty pictures of ugly situations. It throbs with intention.

Denial: the action of declaring something untrue.

Here’s the question that Roger’s observation invokes in me: at what point do we wake up and realize that we are all the snotty neighbors?

[now, don’t you wish that I’d just written about Hieronymous Bosch like I intended?]

read Kerri’s less pessimistic blog post on the PICNIC TABLE

the picnic ©️ 2019 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Random, Rants, Uncategorized | Tagged: climate, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, denial, denial climate change, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, laughter, NRA, pretending, studio melange, suffering | Leave a comment »

Start The Ripple [on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 25, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

MayYou copy 2

The mantra goes like this:

may you prayer copy

Actually, it is a meditation of ripples. The second round, after the “I”, someone very close is named. On the third round, someone a bit farther out, and so on until the wish is for all the world to dwell in its heart. The universe. And then, the ripples return, layer by layer, arriving back to you.

It is a peace mantra, a meditation on connectivity that runs through the heart, the place between I and you, us and them. It is the “and.”

This is one of those paintings that jumped onto the canvas fully formed. It is either disturbing to people (“Why is she falling?”) or intensely comforting (“I wonder what she is reaching for.”) It is, in that way, very much like the meditation, an exercise of thought control or an aspirational prayer.

read Kerri’s blog post about MAY YOU

may you, 55x36IN

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: buddhism, buddist, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, heart, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mantra, may you, meditation, peace, peace prayer, ripples, suffering | Leave a comment »

Give Over The Melody Line [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 1, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

as it is songbox copy

Spiritual teachers across traditions suggest that the reason we suffer is that we focus on what we think should be/supposed to be instead of on what is. The dedication to being someplace other than where you are will split you every time! The notion that you can be someone other than who you are (at this moment) will cleave you in two. And so, we have traditions of mindfulness (be where you are) and acceptance (be who you are) and forgiveness (be at peace with who and where you are). The cliff notes version: stop hewing yourself in two and you will stop suffering.

This is the seed-idea that inspired AS IT IS. This is what is supposed to be. All is as it is, as it should be.

I delight when Kerri tells me the story behind a composition. This morning, as we listened, she asked me to pay attention to the melody line. The flute mostly carries it. The keyboard – what she is playing – is in a support role. She said it this way: the keyboard gives over the melody line. The flute gives it back. The keyboard returns it to the flute.

No resistance. Relationship. AS IT IS. These, too, are spiritual suggestions for mending the hew. I’ll add to my canon as a practice for presence: give over the melody line.

AS IT IS on the album AS IT IS, available on iTunes & CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about AS IT IS

Filed under: Creativity, KS Friday, Transcendence, Uncategorized | Tagged: acceptance, AS IT IS, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, focus, forgiveness, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meditation, mindfulness, no resistance, practices, presence, relationships, society6.com/kerrisherwood, spiritual journey, spiritual practice, spirituality, split, split focus, split intention, studio melange, suffering | Leave a comment »

Two Artists Tuesday

Posted on February 27, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

I knew from a very young age that I would never have children of my own. I knew. It was an intuitive knowing, not an intellectual resolve. My life, I knew, would be a wandering through the wasteland. I would tilt at windmills. I would seek for things that can never be found. Children, I believed (and still believe), needed the kind of stability that a restless seeker like me would never have been capable of providing.

Last night we went to the foreign film festival and saw an inspiring, funny and poignant Irish film called Sing Street. The ingenue explains to her suitor, an aspiring musician, that love is happy-sad. To love is to experience both.

I now have two amazing step-children. They were adults when I came into their lives and both live far away. I am slowly developing relationships with them, creating memories with them. I listen with fascination (and sometimes horror) as Kerri converses with her friends, mothers all, about their children. There is so much suffering, to want to be near their children and yet want them to fulfill their dreams and fly. They want to be present and available BUT not too present or available; those wacky offspring want full support AND they want mom to stay out of their business. Motherhood, I’m learning, is a bottomless yearning, a constant ache, and there is nothing better. There is nothing more fulfilling.

Fathers, I’m observing, are mostly confounded. They shake their heads, not so much in agreement, but in concession. Their spouses are capable of reconciling and celebrating the ambiguity of parenthood. Fatherhood, it seems, is a surrender to the unsolvable. A submission to the mystery. The ache is no less profound. The joy is no less intense.

Happy – sad. A full spectrum of living. Love. From studio melange on this Two Artists Tuesday.

CHILDREN ARE THE BEST THING merchandise

kerrianddavid.com

read Kerri’s thoughts about this Two Artists Tuesday

Filed under: Love, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: ache, children, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fatherhood, fathers, joy, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, motherhood, mothers, parenting, parents, society6.com/twoartists, suffering, surrender, the melange | Leave a comment »

Simply Listen

Posted on September 1, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

I call this one Pieta with Paparazzi

I am standing in a lobby listening to people compare their tragedies. It is more than comparison; it is a festival of one-ups-manship. “If you think that’s bad, my niece was just diagnosed with a terrible cancer….” The first speaker, now crestfallen, reaches into her story-bag of pain as another member of the group competes, “That happened to my brother just after his daughter was hit broadside by an enormous truck!” The group coos in sympathy, each in a hurry to make their personal story of hurt the center of the conversation. I wonder at their need to outdo each other in tragedy.

I suppose it is human, this feeding frenzy of drama. I want to reject my supposition outright. Suppose it is not human? I wonder if this dis-ease is cultural, an expression of the fragmentation that comes from the too-busy, the clan that avoids internal quiet at all costs, filling every moment with television, gaming, texting, emailing, gossip-news. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in Gifts From The Sea, it is impossible to know who you are without dedicated inner spaciousness and quiet. To listen to your self is the only way to really know your self. Filling the quiet space with incessant noise withers the root.

Maybe.

All stories require conflict to move forward but it is also true that the point of all storytelling is transformation. Through the conflict we are transformed. Perhaps that is what bothers me as I listen to this pain frenzy: the emphasis is on the suffering. The investment, the identity, is in the wound, not the transformation.

There is a simple Buddhist prayer that I like:

May I dwell in my heart. May I be free from suffering. May I be healed. May I be at peace.

The prayer is like a musical round that progresses from the “I” to the “You” to the “We.” The emphasis is on the transformation. It begins with dwelling in the heart.

Maybe.

What bothers me most is the absence of the capacity to listen. The first speaker needed to be heard, not outdone. I wonder what might have happened if the group had simply said, “Tell us.” I wonder what might have happened if they had been able to be present with another’s pain. To listen, simply to listen, must be a route to free each other from suffering, to heal, to create peace.

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