truth | The Direction of Intention

Take It Back [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on October 4, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Last evening, watching the sky transform from brilliant pink to deep purple and orange, we ate an entire bag of Lays Wavy potato chips. Kerri called it, “political angst eating”.

20 told us that he had to stop watching The Handmaid’s Tale because it was too close to the reality we currently face in the nation.

This morning two relevant-to-the-moment pieces of art rolled across our screens and collided. The first is Lighthouse, a new song by Stevie Nicks. In this mind-boggling time that women’s rights are under attack – that women are under attack – it is a call to action. “Is it a nightmare?” she asks. “It is unless you save it/ and that’s that/Unless you stand up/And take it back…”

The second, ROED, a short 10 minute documentary film by Dawn Lambing. It takes a page from Project 2025 and imagines what the nation will look like for women if the authoritarian maga get their wish. While watching it I realized that it is already the present reality for women in many red states. Watch it. This is no longer an exercise of “what if”. It’s here.

The Atlantic recently published an article, The Republican Freak Show: Like the man who leads it, the GOP is not just incidentally grotesque. It is grotesque at its core. In the article, Peter Wehner writes, “Since 2016 they have been at war with reality, delighting in their dime-store nihilism, creating “alternative facts” and tortured explanations to justify lawlessness and moral depravity and derangement of their leader…None of this is hidden…No one who supports the Republican party, who casts a vote for Trump and for his MAGA acolytes, can say they don’t know. They know.”

They know. It is the answer to the question we ask each day after our daily horror-troll of the news: “How can they not know.” It’s time to ask a better question. It’s time to stop pretending that they are ignorant or continually justifying their unwavering support of their depraved candidate with generous excuses like,” They just don’t see it”. They do see it.

They know. It is what they want for our nation. Women stripped of their fundamental rights. Mass deportations. The suspension of the Constitution. Book bans. The gutting of Medicare and Social Security. The elimination of the Department of Education. It goes on and on. Dangerous stuff worthy of a dystopian novel. Yet here we are. If you believe the polls, nearly 50% of our nation think the freak show is the way to go.

They know.

It is what makes Kerri and me eat entire bags of Lays Wavy potato chips. It’s why 20 stopped watching The Handmaid’s Tale.

“Is it a nightmare?” Stevie Nicks asks. Yes. Yes it is. “And that’s that/Unless you stand up/And take it back…”

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about PINK

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Filed under: Art, KS Friday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, authoritarian, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, depravity, derangement, freedom, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lighthouse, lighthouse by stevie nicks, MAGA, Peter Wehner, reality, rights, ROED, Stevie Nicks, story, studio melange, The Atlantic, The Constitution of The United States, The Handmaid's Tale, the melange, The Republican Freak Show, truth, Women's Rights | 3 Comments »

Ponder Pure Action [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on September 27, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” ~ Rumi

Although now it’s ubiquitous in the social media sphere, to be an “influencer” is a relatively new term of in the canon of aspirations. To affect, to sway, to direct, to shape, to guide… Someone recently suggested that Kerri and I should attempt to become influencers and we both cringed. For us, there’s something shallow about that word that makes us recoil. We write everyday because we enjoy writing and are very aware that our love of writing does not necessarily mean that we have anything new or of value to say. We like to write together. We like to share what we write.

I recently read a Taoist tenet: cease trying to influence others or to be influenced by others. It’s a notion meant to speak to the pursuit of happiness. Essentially it recommends stopping the pursuit. Happiness is not a thing to be caught. It is not something to be attained. The tenet is a suggestion to stand still, to act purely according to what presents itself in the moment. To act without thought or desire of any imagined gain. Happiness is bubbling in the present moment, expressed through pure action. Taoists – as I understand it – call this non-action (as opposed to inaction). Wu Wei.

Pure action. Effortless.

When Kamala Harris became the Democrat nominee, we wondered what we could do to help. Previous to her entrance into the race, the ugly-red-tide seemed impossible to stop. She brought light and new energy. We read – somewhere – that in order to help her, people should do what they already do, do what they do best. And so, in this present moment, we write. I cannot claim to be pure in my action since I hold the hope of influencing a few hearts and minds out there, somewhere in the nation, to fully understand the power of their vote and the need to know what they are voting for.

Yesterday on our walk we crossed paths and had a chat with a friend and, of course, talked about politics. As a professor, he said each day, regardless of the topic or the lesson, now more than ever, he is trying to teach his students critical thinking skills. “They no longer know what is fact and what is made-up. They have to learn to question,” he said, “They have to learn to think for themselves, beyond what they are hearing in social media.”

Pure action. I told him that the imperative to teach critical thinking places him on the frontlines. A thinking person could not – would not – vote for the maga-candidate. There is plenty of desire in the red-tide to remove critical thinking from higher education – from all forms of education. To narrow rather than expand minds.

After we went on our way I realized that Kerri and I are doing in our writing exactly what our professor friend is doing in his classroom: attempting to inspire critical thinking. Pointing the direction to questions and to discernment, challenging those swallowing whole-cloth the dangerous-maga-fox-misinformation to open their eyes, to pop the info-bubble.

“I tell my students that it’s easy to find the truth,” the professor said. “You just have to want to see it.”

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE RAIN

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Filed under: Art, Education, KS Friday, Perspective, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, critical thinking, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, education, happiness, influence, influencers, Kamala Harris, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, misinformation, non action, pure action, questioning, questions, story, studio melange, tao, the melange, truth, voice, writers, wu wei | 5 Comments »

Right Before Our Eyes [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on September 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

If you are like me, this image took a moment to grok. All the elements are apparent yet, at first, my brain couldn’t pull the pieces together. Kerri, standing outside the front door, took the photo of Dogga on the inside staring out. What is reflection? What is image-through-the glass? It reminds me of those famous drawings that can be seen in completely different ways, the old crone and the young woman. One drawing, two possible images. An optical illusion.

After the image of Dogga-in-the-glass came into focus for me, Kerri exclaimed, “I can’t believe it took you so long to see it!”

MC Escher made a career of creating optical illusions. Stairways to nowhere. Hands drawing hands. The mathematics of art and design. We are rarely aware that our brains assign rather than discover meaning, selecting and assembling pieces in order to sense-make. Like well-worn paths through the woods, our sense-making carves default channels: we see what we expect to see. We see it because we believe it, not the other way around. That is to say, we rarely see beyond what we think. Thinking paths-of-least-resistance render us blind.

The pursuit of truth is to see beyond our well-worn paths. Escher knew that. His images play with our expectations. His images, for a moment, shock us into seeing beyond our expectation.

Factors like age or cultural orientation create biases in the making of meaning, in the assembly of the illusion. For instance, in the drawing of the old/young woman, older people will more often see the old woman while younger people will almost always see the young woman. If you happen to come from a culture that is not inundated with images (there are a few remaining on the planet), it is likely that you would only see scribbles on a page. You would see neither the old or the young woman.

Your normal is not my normal. Your well-worn thought-paths are different than mine.

Given identical experiences, your sense-making will differ from mine. It is the genius behind our system of governance. That two opposing points of view might come together, discuss what they think-they-see and compromise on a best path forward, is the foundation-stone of our democratic system. The genius begins when allowing that one party sees an old woman while the other sees a woman who is young. Both can be valid. Both can exist on the same page.

Allowing for and valuing differences of perspective leads to common ground, shared action.

On the other hand, the same system collapses when what is immediately apparent to both parties is summarily denied by one side of the aisle. It’s another type of illusion altogether: the negation of the obvious. For instance, our last presidential election endured 65 challenges in court and all were summarily thrown out for lack of evidence. Both sides knew – and know – without doubt that the election was valid, free and fair yet the red-hat team continues to fearmonger, pounding the drum of corruption, wearing another kind of thought-path in the minds of their constituents, rendering them blind.

There is a clear distinction between sorting out differences and creating them to exploit fear.

Coming together, in an attempt to see beyond expectations, respecting differing perspectives, valuing the multiple perceptions of a diverse nation in order to stand on common ground is democracy at its best. Creating division, whipping up disunity, negating and devaluing the perspectives and values of others spells the end of democracy. It intentionally pulls the nation apart.

Democracies pursue truth. Autocracies thrive on falsehoods. The choice we face is abundantly clear and right before our eyes. As a nation, all we need do is step off our well-worn thought-paths and open our eyes.

read Kerri’s blog about ILLUSIONS

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Filed under: Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, autocracy, belief, common ground, culture, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, difference, division, expectation, illusion, image, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mc escher, optical illusion, perspective, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, value | 1 Comment »

Simply Say, “Enough.” [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 2, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

She snapped. I watched it happen, the moment when there was no more room for tolerance, no more space for grace. Had she spoken she simply would have said, “Enough”.

You can’t make up this stuff.

A hot mic on the Access Hollywood bus should have ended it.

Being found liable for sexual assault (rape) by a jury of his peers should have ended it.

Being accused of sexual assault and misconduct by 25 women should have ended it.

His recent repost of repugnant tweets about Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris should end it. But it won’t. As a survivor of sexual abuse she’d had enough. She snapped.

Misogyny in the United States is not only alive and well, it is being celebrated by at least half of the voting population. The man-who-would-be-king has no bottom to his baseness. How is it possible that so many are so willing to follow him into the pigswill? How is it possible that this miscreant* is the person the red hats have chosen to emulate, to support, to uphold as an example for their children, as the standard bearer to lead them into the future?

In a recent interview James Carville warned that this miscreant “under-polls” meaning that the people who support him are ashamed to admit that they support him and his reprehensible views. So they hide their support. They mask their truth. I suppose being so ashamed of your beliefs that you lie to conceal them implies at least some small shred of self-awareness. A gutted morality. Or perhaps it is plain cowardice.

Misogyny: the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy.

Running a campaign on hatred. Contempt. Amplifying prejudice and sexism. In other words, the miscreant and his hate-party are empty of vision and ethics. This paucity of heart and thought leaves them with no recourse but to demean others – as it seems their single goal is to maintain at-all-cost the rusty social roles of a collapsing patriarchy.

Strumming the strings of those who fear equality, whipping up a crowd terrified that they will come up short on an even playing field.

This is what I wanted to tell her when she snapped: drowning men push all others underwater to elevate themselves.

Those who support the miscreant, like the miscreant himself, are drowning. It’s easy to see: working to restrict voters, gerrymandering maps, desperate to change voter laws and procedures so they can tilt the outcome in their favor no matter the result of the election. The miscreant has proclaimed that, once in office, he will “fix things” so we need never vote again. It’s the statement of a sad little man and his party swallowing water, afraid to compete, afraid to say, “This is what we believe.” (see Project 2025 and the lengths they now go to disavow it). It betrays a fundamental disregard – and disdain – for the system they proclaim to protect. If they truly believed in our system of governance, if they truly believed in the values they purport to conserve, they’d not fear an even playing field. They’d defend it. They’d welcome it. They’d arrive at the table with a fierce dedication to protect the right of all citizens to freely vote. They would not tolerate so crude and base a man as their leader.

If his party will not hold him accountable or at least condemn him, if the law -as it seems – is incapable of holding him accountable, then the voters must. We need to end it.

Never mind the impeachments, the felony convictions, the dozens of indictments awaiting trial, the evidence-free claims and incessant whining of an election he lost, the violent attempt to stop the transfer of power…with the once-stiff spine of the republican party now a swampy puddle on the floor, it’s time for this nation to snap and say “Enough.”

His repulsive rhetoric is not locker room talk. His party’s “boys will be boys” excuse needs once-and-for-all to be swept into the dustbin of history with the miscreant and his privileged-hate-speak.

There is no excuse for misogyny. It’s way past time for the old boys to man up and learn to play on an even and equal playing field. American woman are not stupid. And that’s exactly what the old boys are afraid of.

*miscreant (noun): a person who behaves badly or in a way that breaks the law.

read Kerri’s blogpost about MISOGYNY

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Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: Access Hollywood, accountable, artistry, cowardice, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, election, equality, ethics, felon, hate, Hillary Clinton, honesty, James Carville, Kamala Harris, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, miscreant, misogyny, morality, patriarchy, paucity, prejudice, privilege, sexual assault, social status, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, vision | Leave a comment »

For The First Time [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 11, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

As I have previously written, probably ad nauseam, I am a fan of the mythic tale of Parzival (not the opera) mostly because I sometimes feel that I am living the story. Completely bungling the opportunity in the Grail Castle by doing what he was taught to do, feeling full responsibility for the ensuing wasteland, fighting every ogre in pursuit of redemption, his trusty secret weapon shatters in a crucial moment leaving him unprotected and vulnerable to death. Stripping off the armor – his “role” – he walks away grieving the full-realization of his folly. Now, completely lost he follows a hermit who has no answers…and in his lostness, no longer trying to be found, he finds himself for the first time. The Grail Castle returns; he enters to meet again the Grail King, this time without armor or title or role or status or expectation. Fully exposed.

We walked a beach that merely a year ago was rocky and secluded. In a miracle of modern machinery, in record time, the state covered the beach with tons of sand and built a protective breakwater. It is transformed. Now, much more friendly for families and safer for swimming, for boats and jetskis, it is popular and populated. We strolled it as if we’d been transported to another era. It was at one time the same beach and a wildly different place. It is beautiful and protected, its natural rocky state completely covered over with appearance. “No worries,” I thought, “time has a way of washing away the facade, revealing the truth of everything.” In the meantime, the joy-squeals of children racing into the water was a delight.

“Can you see the dinosaur?” she asked, showing me the picture of the tiny breaking wave.

“A Tyrannosaurus Rex!”

“Yes! Look at its tiny arms!” she said, laughing.

Our feet in the sand, lost in time, nowhere else we’d rather be.

“Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.” ~ Eckhart Tolle.

A Day At The Beach, mixed media on canvas 38″ x 52″

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SHORE

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Eckhart Tolle, facade, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lost, role, say yes, status, story, studio melange, surrender, the grail, the melange, the wasteland, title, truth, vulnerability, vulnerable, wasteland, Yes | 1 Comment »

The Greatest Weapon [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on July 8, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

The timing was uncanny. While on a slow walk in the park, deep in a conversation about our discouragement – no, our despair – for loved ones sucked down and seemingly lost in the dark, angry MAGA hole, we passed a group of girls engaged in an emphatic conversation and overheard the phrase, “I don’t know you like that!”

The phrase came like a slap. Kerri took out her phone to capture the slap in her notes. “That’s exactly it,” she said. “That’s precisely what is so troubling. It’s what I want to say: I don’t know you like that.”

I am lately haunted by the words of H.G. Wells: “Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

There is a reason that the template outlined in Project 2025 includes the elimination of the Department of Education. There is a reason that governors in red states are (and have been) waging a war on education. Educated people ask questions. Educated people check the veracity of statements hurled their way. They take time to check facts and sources of information. In a democracy, an educated populace would never sign on with an autocrat exploiting their anger. They’d ask questions of their anger -and so would be impervious to exploitation. An educated populace would demand ideas from their leaders, respectful debate, reasonable compromise, adherence to the Constitution. They’d demand the same of themselves. An educated populace would see through the ugly name-calling and victim-squeals of a would-be dictator. An educated populace would pay no heed to the cries of “fake news” because they’d have learned to check it out for themselves. They’d hold news organizations to a higher standard. They’d care enough to question and verify information before jumping onto a hate-train. In fact (hear those two words) they would not so easily jump onto any train other than the truth-train because they were dedicated to living-in-facts that transcend bubble-gossip and tribal tittle-tattle.

This morning I had an HGTV revelation about our current political choice. It’s my latest metaphor illuminating the dangerous nonsense running around our nation in a red hat. I’ve learned in my HGTV viewing that demo-day feels good, takes very little time, very little thought, and requires only a sledgehammer. Anyone can do it. Destruction is easy. On the other hand, building the house is hard. It takes ideas, time, thought, planning, cooperation, collaboration, flexibility, knowledge, well-researched choices, skills, process and patience. Wisdom. All are the results of education.

Destruction is not complicated. It asks no questions, requires no learning. Destruction is the center of the red hat campaign.

Creating something beautiful and long-lasting is hard. It takes skill, the capacity to question and learn from mistakes. It takes a plan, forward thinking, and complex considerations, not fantasies sought in the rearview mirror of some imagined sitcom past. And it is never done. Building a better house is the center of the blue team’s campaign.

The red hat and company certainly espouse a plan, Project 2025, but an educated person would only need to ask the authors of the plan a pair of questions before rejecting it outright: 1) Why would you tear down the shining-city-on-the-hill and replace it with a dark prison? 2) Why are you trying to hide your plan from voters?

People I love, those caught in the undertow of the red swirl, empty of fact but full of shared-victim-anger, gulping and then spewing mouthfuls of toxic-fox-swill, waving their flags, raging with a dedicated ignor-ance…I don’t know them like that. I wonder how they came to know themselves like that.

“Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

Let us learn about truth: Truth is not what we hear or see in the stream. It is not something verified by people passing memes around our social bubbles or validated because we share the same opinion and invest in the same misinformation sources that cater to our opinions. Truth is what we find when we question what we hear. It is verified by exiting our bubbles and questioning what we think we know, examining the foundation of our likemindedness. Truth is learned when we fact-check our own opinions and especially challenge our rigidly held beliefs. Rigidity is a red flag, a marker that something false is hiding.

I have learned to remember this: an opinion shared with great passion or rage is still just that – an opinion. Any strong belief held without question or reflection is, in fact, weak and makes us easily exploited, easily led. Lemmings. Fools. Learning the truth requires constant effort and personal responsibility – especially in our age of easy misinformation. In learning truth, our greatest weapon, there is never a need to fill the communal cup with fear-mongering. Truth dispels fear. It dissipates gossip, and, because it demands personal responsibility, affords no room for blame.

Truth is a common center. Education, the art of questioning and discernment, is the compass that gets us there.

read Kerri’s blogpost about I DON’T KNOW YOU LIKE THAT

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Filed under: Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, choice, civilization, collaboration, Compromise, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, education, exploitation, fact checking, gossip, H.G. Wells, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, knowledge, learning, personal responsibility, politics, questions, respect, respectful, responsibility, story, studio melange, teaching, The Department of Education, the melange, truth, veracity, verify, verity, wisdom | 3 Comments »

The Essentials [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

The interviewer asked me to name three things I love and three things that piss me off. “Ah, here’s the trick question,” I thought. Tom Mck once told me that, when conducting interviews for teaching positions, he’d ask a trick question, “Tell me about your experiences with a bad student?” If the interviewee answered the question, he would not hire them. “There is no such thing as a bad student,” he said. I knew better than to answer the interviewer’s question but I did anyway: “I can’t see my dad anymore and sometimes that really pisses me off.” Of course, I did not get the job.

I read The Little Prince, first to myself and then aloud to Kerri. As I turned the last page I saw that she was silently crying. “I forgot how it ended,” she said. So had I. In the book, after the Little Prince is bitten by the yellow snake and dies, the narrator searches the sand but cannot find his body. The author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a year after he wrote the book, crashed his plane over the Mediterranean Sea. It was 1944. His plane was later found but not his body.

Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985. It is more relevant today than when it was written. He predicted our indifference to lies. It’s not that we cannot discern fact from fiction, it is that we do not care to. It’s much more entertaining to spew self-righteous bile and shared discord within the confines of the social-bubble. A free press, the mechanism meant to function as society’s lie-detector, has collapsed and become a terrific magnifier of falsehood. Entertainment. That which can be seen with the eyes but is nowhere detectable with the heart. Wild lies, outrageous claims and blame, blame, blame, blame, blame are much more captivating than essential truth. It’s about numbers: grotesque behavior attracts more audience than genuine discourse so completely dominates the info-stream.

The body politic fragments, like pieces of an airplane tumbling from the sky.

Lately, I hear often – and speak – this common refrain: “I just can’t understand how people don’t see it.”

“Oh, people do see it,” whispers The Little Prince, sweeping clean his volcano, adding, “With their eyes.”. He winks, “Closed hearts are not concerned with the essentials.”

The wind shifted so we sat outside and enjoyed the evening cool after a hot day. Just like my dad used to do. Now, when I close my eyes, I can see him. We made dinner with 20 and ate under the waning light in the sky. It was the solstice. The stars made their slow entrance. Gazing up, I wondered if perhaps Antoine de Saint-Exupery found a way to join The Little Prince on his planet so together they might attend to the vanity of the rose. I hope so. For a moment, we sat in silence and appreciated all that our open hearts could see.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SEEING CLEARLY

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Filed under: Awakening, Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor | Tagged: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, artistry, closed hearts, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, entertainment, essential truth, essentials, fact, fiction, free press, heart, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lies, Neil Postman, seeing, solstice, story, studio melange, The Little Prince, the melange, truth | 3 Comments »

Beautiful And Prickly [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on June 21, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Thriving in an unlikely and inhospitable place, this thistle served as a sign, a testimony to possibility, the rugged beauty available only through dogged perseverance. Stretching up through a tiny crack in a busy sidewalk outside aging buildings in a bustling city, these thistles stood nearly five feet tall. Their colorful flowering heads brought us to a full stop. We set down our knitted-brows and absorbed their vibrant pink and purple stick-to-it-ed-ness. “Gorgeous,” she said, reaching for her camera.

More than beauty-through-resilience, these hardy thistles spoke to me with the veracity of an oracle. As I watched Kerri take photographs, the oracle whispered in my ear “Both beautiful and prickly,” she said, “Her prickles protect her against herbivores and others.”

“Ahhh,” I sighed. A well-rounded plant, indeed. No shrinking violet could possibly survive in this environment, let alone thrive. Bloom.

For a moment I stood watching the passers-by. Few took notice of the gorgeous thistles. Some scurry-ers glanced sideways at Kerri cooing and snapping photos of what, I imagine, they thought of as weeds for someone else to pull. No time for beauty. No time for responsibility. On-to-the-next.

“I’ll bet those people think I’m crazy,” she said, tucking her camera inside her purse.

“Yep,” I agreed. “You are definitely more like the thistle than you are to the people passing-by.” She gave me a sideways glance but decided to accept the compliment.

I winked and whispered to the thistle-oracle. “All the time in the world for beauty. All the time in the world for responsibility. Nowhere else more important to be.” Beautiful and prickly. Resilient to the core.

Kerri’s music is available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora and iHeart Radio

read Kerri’s blogpost about THISTLES

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Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, beauty, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, divine intervention, hardy, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, oracle, released from the heart, resilience, responsibility, singer songwriter, story, studio melange, the melange, thistle, thistles, time, truth, veracity, weeds | 1 Comment »

Look-At-Me-Look-At-You [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on May 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It struck me that as the crowd gathered to watch the family of foxes, the foxes, in turn, gathered to observe the rabble of humans. Look-at-me-look-at-you. I wondered if they thought of us as wild, uncultivated. I know they were delighted that a makeshift fence stood between us and them.

The mother fox leapt onto a stone and seemed to pose for photographs but I was certain she was drawing attention away from her brood. Look-at-me-not-at-them. She knew how to make her frolicking children disappear. And they did. Once safe, she stepped off her platform, no rush, and also disappeared.

A local woman walking her dog saw the crowd and asked, “Is it the foxes?” I nodded. “Thought so,” she said and nonchalantly continued on her way. A family of foxes in the center of town. Nothing new. For her it happens every day. For us, passers-through, it was a surprise. A delight. A family of foxes have never rollicked on our street at home. I may never see this again. She will see it again on her stroll tomorrow, just like yesterday. Thus, the power of perspective.

I read that foxes are observers. They easily meld into their surroundings. They vanish so they can watch. So they can see. “If Fox has chosen to share its medicine with you, it is a sign that you are to become like the wind, which is unseen yet is able to weave into and through any location or situation. You would be wise to observe the acts of others rather than their words at this time.”

Tom Mck told me that as he aged he felt that he grew invisible. I feel much the same way these days though my encounter with the foxes has made me realize that I have mostly lived my life as an observer of others. Like the wind. I much preferred coaching people over the phone: I could listen purely – no negotiating of image – and easily hear the message behind the words. Perhaps I have not grown invisible but am only now fully realizing the truth of one of my gifts. Weaving through any location or situation: Look-at-me-look-at-you.

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

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Beyond Words [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 2, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Truth, like time itself, is a product of a conversation man has with himself about and through the techniques of communication he has invented.” ~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death

I’ve felt for months the need to apologize to J. We were having a conversation about truth – and notions of god – and in his current place-on-the-path he’s necessarily seeking absolutes. For him, relative truth smacks of falsehood or some loosey-goosey scary philosophy. He’s looking for a hard rock on which to build his house of wisdom. I was flip rather than helpful. How do you begin to discuss truth as a cultural orientation or a fluid marker that changes with time? When I was J’s age, truth could be established with a photograph. Not so anymore.

Breck, our little quaking aspen tree has come to represent a form of truth for me. Breck almost didn’t make it. We brought her home from the high mountains of Colorado and for a few years she lived and struggled in a big pot. She barely survived the first place we planted her. It was not a good location so we moved her to different soil where she’d enjoy more sun. And now she is flourishing. Last year she grew more than three feet taller.

Breck’s truth/health has very little to do with hard answers to abstract questions. For her – and me – truth is found in relationships; her environment. The right spot. Good soil. Rejuvenating sun. She brings an impulse to life: perseverance. Tenacity. Adaptability. We love her and I believe she “knows” that, too. Love is a truth that knows no absolute. I couldn’t explain that to J because I was playing with him, bringing levity to his seriousness.

And, in truth (what other word can I use?), I have become a doubter that any serious conversation about truth or gods can happen through something so limited as language. That’s what I should have expressed to J. I should have taken him outside to see the stars.

Now, when I want to have those conversations with myself, when I am seeking a better question, I walk on the trail next to the river. I turn my face to the sun. I try to detach myself from the clocks and lists and tv debates. I look at Breck quaking in the wind. I await each spring for the buds to appear on her limbs. There’s truth-beyond-words in her life-cycle, the return of her leaves and her captivating shimmer dance with the breezes.