The Fool | The Direction of Intention

Make A Unique Mark [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 3, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Take a moment and write your name on a piece of paper. Your name, captured in lines made by your hand. No other hand in the universe will make those lines in exactly the same way. No other hand will have the connection to the scribbled name quite like you do. It’s yours. It’s you, expressing your unique signature, done so often as to be unconscious. Do you remember the first time you made those lines?

Expression. That connects. You.

My parents kept a box for me. It has samples of my first quaky lines. It has crayon drawings, scribbles that had yet to meet the notion of containment. No knowledge of should.

I have many, many times been asked to make a case for the arts. Make a case. Amidst the assumption of no-value. I ask the people sitting behind the big table if they have children or grandchildren. I ask them if they ever giggled with pleasure to watch their child smoosh paint with their fingers. Why? Did they tape the smoosh-mess to their refrigerator? Why? Did they store the first scribbles, the first crayon drawing, the first finger painting in a box? Why? Are they hoping that their someday-or-now-adult children will remember their march to unique expression? What price would they, sitting behind the big table, place on those little hands making prints on paper? What is the value of the infinity that those little hands find?

The freedom of expression. Yet unhindered by a life-message that your unique and personal expression must achieve some-thing. What is the value of finding that freedom again, as an adult? Expression sans hinder. No fences. No expectation. What is available when adult fingers are free-like-a-child to wildly smoosh through paint or sing with abandon? What is the value of expression?

I remember the first time I sat in the audience of a theatre and sucked back my sobs. I was so deeply moved by the performance yet aghast at how freely (and loudly) I was about to express my feelings.

I remember the day the woman came into the gallery, saw my painting, and stood before it as if slapped. She cried. And cried. And cried. I cried seeing her see me-in-my-painting.

Have you ever stood on a mountaintop and felt a part of something bigger? Have you ever closed your eyes and let the aria wash over you? Have you ever, driving to somewhere, turned up the volume and sang loud and passionately, the song stirring your soul? Have you ever watched a child play with abandon and feel with utter certainty life stretching beyond your time-on-earth?

Have you ever not given voice to your questions? Silenced your thoughts? Withheld your voice? What would you give, in those moments, to understand the power of playing the fool? The necessity of not-needing to-know-the-right-answer? What would you give to know the courage of taking a step simply because your footprint, your unique print, might help someone, someday, do as you are doing, take a new path that will guide them back to themselves? Back home? What would you give to smoosh your hands with abandon through the metaphoric paint?

What exactly is the value of making the unique mark on the page? Yours? Or the song played that lifts you out of your despair and fills your heart with light and hope?

read Kerri’s blogpost about ART

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday | Tagged: art, artistry, connection, connectivity, courage, creativity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Ethan Hawke, expression, feelings, freedom of expression, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, passion, story, studio melange, The Fool, the melange, voice | 1 Comment »

Start Walking

Posted on June 24, 2016 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Tell Me. How can I be a learner?”

My mind went absolutely blank, and I heard myself saying, “It’s simple. To be a learner you’ve got to be willing to be a fool.” ~George Leonard, Mastery

I used to do a lot of work in education. My career in the theatre took a sharp left-hand turn when I started consulting with schools. The puzzles that plagued educators seemed to me easy to address. To be human is to be curious. Tickle the curiosity, begin the story and get out of the way.

Tom once told me that teaching is about relationship (not control). He also told me that the best teaching/learning needed to be directly applicable; it had to be immediate. It had to be real. It had to matter – to both the teacher and the learner. The trick is to extend the mattering into greater and deeper levels of abstraction.

An emphasis on testing is an emphasis on knowing. Great learning places the emphasis on not-knowing. It reinforces the pursuit and dispels the notion that knowledge is something achievable. Worthy questions always open more worthy questions. To be human is to be curious. To be alive is to wonder what is on the other side of the hill and then take a step toward it.

The fool George Leonard references isn’t “ the unthinking person,” it is “the carefree fool in the tarot deck who bears the awesome number zero, signifying the fertile void from which all creation springs, the state of emptiness that allows new things to come into being.”

Emptiness. Not knowing. Relationship. Mattering.

The question, “How do we/I do it?” is a great step-stopper. It is the leading edge of every personal and organizational stagnation excuse. We don’t know how. I’ve come to believe that it isn’t a natural question but is learned behavior. It is an emergency brake installed by a system that values right answers over great questions.

My wife and I have a short-hand phrase, Beaky’s Wheelchair, to remind us when we stall, that “how?” is something that can only be known after the fact. No one knows “How?” at the beginning. Beaky needed an electric wheelchair to be mobile and the world of insurance/medicare was standing still. After months of waiting, with no clue which direction to begin, we started making calls. We met every “no” with a “why not?.” We asked a multitude of foolish questions. We learned. And learned some more. Within a matter of weeks, Beaky had her wheelchair.

How do you play the guitar? Paint a picture? Bridge a conflict? Transcend a limit? Know one knows. Tickle the curiosity, let go of any notion that you need to know how, and start walking.

the text from Krishnamurti as it appears in my painting

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Edges, Perspective, Story, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: asking how, curiosity, emptiness, fool, knowing, learning, mattering, not knowing, schools, story, testing, The Fool | Leave a comment »

Be The Fool

Posted on November 11, 2014 by davidrobinsoncreative

The Fool card from The Radiant Rider Waite deck

Each day I open The Bible of Mankind (sadly, now out of print) and read a phrase. It’s a form of daily meditation for me akin to throwing the I Ching; I pick from the reading what seems relevant. Some days the phrase is confusing, some days it is curious, some days it is profound. Every day it is significant. Today, the phrase was from the Buddhist tradition and under the subtitle, Foolishness & Wisdom:

“The man who has learned little grows old like an ox. His flesh grows but his knowledge does not.”

I delighted in the pairing of foolishness with wisdom. I suspect there is only one path to wisdom and it requires a good deal of foolishness. I googled the meaning of the Fool card in the tarot because, as I recollect, when upright, the Fool is about beginnings and bold steps into the unknown. From my search I found other words and phrases like unlimited potential, purity, and innocence. The Fool is ever present and has in his (her) bag all the tools and resources necessary for the journey through life. The Fool came to this earth to learn.

Another phrase that caught my attention was this: the Fool is always whole, healthy, and without fear. He is the spirit of who we are, the spirit expressed and experienced as wonder, awe, curiosity, and anticipation.

Recently, Bruce and I had a great talk about how life looks different at 50 than it did at 30. The main difference is that you know without doubt that it is limited. And, because the big death is visible, all the little death passages, the steps into the unknown, take on more import. Yearning is more electric when mortality is undeniable. All of the belief and investment in outcomes and achievements dissipate. This life is an experience, nothing more. It passes. And, it is dealer’s choice whether the experience is expressed and experienced as fear or expressed and experienced as The Fool: wonder, awe, and curiosity.

The wisdom path is the Fool’s path. The ox, to become a fool filled with knowledge, need only step out of its pen, into the unknown, and be filled with new experiences.

Go here to buy hard copies (and Kindle) of my latest book: The Seer: The Mind of the Entrepreneur, Artist, Visionary, Innovator, Seeker, Learner, Leader, Creator,…You.