See The Magic

Posted on February 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

713. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Today I saw thousands of geese fly over the fields at sunset. They were going back to the river for the night. From a distance in the pale blue winter sky, they looked like shimmering strands, forming and reforming, I had the impression that I was looking through a microscope at DNA in flight. And then they flew closer, took on another shape, more dense, all the strands coming together en masse, morphing like magic into a congress of geese. Flying directly over my head their wings took on the gold and purple of the setting sun, shocking me in their transformation. Their direction was specific, intentional, with no visible leader or apparent decision maker; they were of a single mind.

Magic is not the illusion of sawing a person in half; it is not a man who seems to disappear from a locked box. Those things are tricks. Magic is a relationship to something vital and alive. Who would choose to have a relationship with an illusion when it is possible to have a relationship with the setting sun or to participate if only as a witness to a migration that is centuries old? This is why we go to the theatre or visit an artists’ studio; the arts are not illusions they are a relationship to something ancient, a deeply unique human impulse that reaches back millennia. The arts are at one moment both a personal and a shared experience. There is a reason why dictators clamp down on the arts when seizing power: a community with vital living art knows its direction and intention with no visible leader; the decision makers are the stories we tell relative to the actions we take: there is no gap between interests and values. The arts hold the center and when they are lost, the community begins to legislate rather than communicate. Entertainment is, after all, the least of the functions of any art form and become ascendant when rules have replaced stories as the societal glue.

Filed under: Art, Perspective, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

Allow The Silence

Posted on February 5, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

698. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” Aldous Huxley

There are few things more satisfying to me than closing the studio door, picking up a large brush, turning the up the volume on the music, and giving over to the forces that want to find expression through me. The night before my latest trip, without really meaning to do it, I turned from my computer, saw the canvas stapled on the wall, and the next thing I knew several hours had passed, the music was rattling the windows, and both the canvas and I were covered in paint (it’s why I stopped buying new clothes…). It had been too long since I gave myself over to the call.

I used to draw everyday. It was my practice, my imperative. In recent years I’ve moved on to other practices. I write. I facilitate. I walk. I find the quiet. And then, like a starving man who stumbles into a feast, I disappear without warning into a painting gluttony. It is a different kind of quiet, ferocious, vibrant, and necessary. There is no thought; my body takes over and the painting comes through: silence in the center of a hurricane of movement and sound. When finally I step away from the canvas and come back into my body, I discover an image in front of me. It is less correct to say, “I did that,” and more correct to ask, “What just happened?” I’ve spent hours of my life standing in front of paintings that I just painted, thinking, “Whoa. Look at that!”

Once, many years ago, Jim looked through all of my recent work and asked, “What is the significance of the three balls in your paintings?” I had no idea what he was talking about so he pulled out of the rack ten paintings, lined them up, and showed me that each had three balls as if some unseen figure was juggling them. I was gob-smacked. I studied the paintings for a few minutes and said, “Whoa. Look at that!” Jim laughed.

The silence is not empty; it is full. It is rich and vibrant. The silence is what happens when we get out of our own way, open to the forces, and let them come through. Words like “art” or “transformation” or “perspective” or any other word can’t contain all the meaning that becomes available when we learn to step out of the way and allow the silence.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Perspective, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Die To The Past

Posted on January 21, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

683. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Today, Diane and I talked at length about dying to our pasts. She shared a potent meditation image – looking from her grave and in death no longer being invested in the limitations and attachments that previously confined her life. Her fears no longer mattered. She let go of her past and in so doing opened the way for growth and a new relationship with her future.

In story cycles, a character must leave behind all that they know in order to step into unknown territories. It is the movement away from the known, the comfortable, and the safe that is the metaphoric threshold to adventure and transformation. Leaving behind what you know is “story language” for dying to your past. Frodo will always return to the Shire but he will be a greatly changed. The Frodo that leaves on the adventure is not the same Frodo that returns. He knows too much about middle earth and himself to resume his former identity.

The caterpillar’s body does heroic battle resisting the cell replication that will eventually bring re-formation to a new way of being called butterfly. The caterpillar’s body reads the sweeping tide of change as cancer and fights back. This classic struggle within the caterpillar’s body of change meeting the conservative impulse ends when the resistance ends; the caterpillar can fight no more and surrenders the struggle. The imperative for change overwhelms the old identity; the caterpillar’s body releases the known and collapses into mush. Only then can the new form materialize and the new form is beyond the caterpillars capacity to imagine.

Diane’s meditation, Frodo’s journey, and the caterpillar’s process of transformation are the same metaphoric image. Each had to die to the past to step into the possible. The lesson over and over again, whether in story cycles, nature or human transformation, is that the new identity will always be greater than our wildest dreams. The only requirement is that we surrender the struggle, leave behind all that we know, experience the little death, and take a step.

Filed under: Metaphor, Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Choose Your Words

Posted on January 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

677. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The walls in the bathroom of the Blue Moon are covered in quotes. I’ve spent a fair amount of time passing through that little room over the past four years and I am always pleased to find new quotes. Today this one jumped from the wall:

“One must be leery of words because words turn into cages.” Viola Spolin

I’m working on the chapter about the power of language. I was just writing about how the alteration of a single word can change a person’s perspective. Change one word in your inner monologue and you can change your world. That principle is the point of the classic children’s book, The Little Engine That Could (I think I can, I think I can); how many little engines out there are repeating, “I think I can’t, I think I can’t!”

I meet many people in my travels that tell me they are seeking their purpose. I wonder how their lives would change if, instead of seeking their purpose, they swapped the word “seeking” for “creating;” purpose is not something we find, it is something we fulfill. Purpose is not something that exists separate from us; it is something that exists within us. Imagine how your life might transform if you altered your premise of separation (my purpose is something that I seek) to a premise of generation (my purpose is something that I live). The entire arc of your life might change if you simply altered a single word in your field of expectations. Viola had it half right: words can turn into cages or words can set you free.

Filed under: Language, Power, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Sit With The Tsunami

Posted on September 25, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

565. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I have lately been craving coffee. Dark and sweet, I find myself staring out the window dreaming of my next cup. This is a phase. Coffee for me is like comfort food. When great change is in the wind, when I am feeling off center or the tsunami coming, I crave coffee.

It is possible to drink too much. Once, while in college, a doctor looked at my finger nails and told me I was close to poisoning myself with caffeine. I wondered why my jaws were always so tight, why I couldn’t sleep at night, and why people thought I was intense. Hours at the drafting table with endless pots of comfort brewing did a number on me. I was always off center when I was younger so I lived on comfort food. It was a great day when I learned that center was something I create, not something I drink.

Now days, when the craving comes, I know enough to brew an especially dark pot, make a cup good and sweet, and take my chair to the beach, and welcome the tsunami. I need do nothing else but welcome what is coming. No running around, no panic story, no avoidance techniques and especially no escape fantasies. Sit, sip and welcome the new. Comfort food is supposed to bring comfort, not evasion.

I read somewhere that when faced with discomfort we will distract ourselves, we will clean the dishes, vacuum the house rather than face our dilemma head on. I’m learning that these distractions are an early phase of the coming storm, necessary preparation, creating readiness, so that when the coffee craving comes, there is nothing left to do, nothing left to clean, but sit in a nice chair, sip the sweet dark brew and enjoy the transformation.

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Step Toward Your Dream

Posted on September 24, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

564. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The opportunity comes when the artist is ready. Horatio made a single pitch to fund his next film and the money came roaring in. “Oh God!” he wrote. “Green light! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear….” Tamara will perform her first public gig. She is an extraordinary musician, prolific, and as she stepped toward her dream, the pesky dream stepped toward her. “Oh!” she wrote, “I know I can do it, but….”

Step toward your dreams and your dreams will step toward you. And when you touch, for the first time, the thrill of contact, like meeting your true love, will always evoke trepidation and doubt. You will shake and say to your self, “I can’t believe it.”

Once, just after I signed a lease for a studio, a friend said, “Uh-oh, now you have to show up!” My great directing mentor, Jim, surprised me when he confessed that before every new rehearsal process, prior to the first read through, he would get sick to his stomach. He told me each time he was certain that he had nothing offer, that he had no idea how to direct a play. Jim directed hundreds of plays and each time was certain he knew nothing.

What impresses me most about artists and seekers of dreams is that they feel this fear and do not turn and run. They feel it and keep walking. Their dream opens its arms and despite their certainty that they will be a disappointing lover, they step into the embrace and offer the world their gifts. We fling around the word “transformation” like we used to toss about the word “paradigm;” it has come to mean something generic. Mark, and Tamara and transforming; they are feeling it, the dream, the step, the doubt, the embrace. Consequently, neither they, nor their dream, will ever be the same.

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

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