vitality | The Direction of Intention

Walk Toward The Vanishing Point

Posted on January 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

679. 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 other day in Melissa’s class, the students were drawing pictures. They were learning about perspective. Most were drawing according to single point perspective: all lines meet at a single spot called the vanishing point. In the drawings, roads and train tracks ran toward the horizon, telephone poles and barns all followed the lines disappearing into a single point.

The lesson will continue for a long time. Now that the students have drawn lines to a single point they will begin exploring the greater implications of perspective. They will discover for themselves that things look radically different according to where you stand. They will learn that you can never occupy another person’s perspective so you will never be able to see what they see (imagine the implications); they will discover that perspective is personal and as varied at there are people on the planet. The possibilities of an exploration in perspective go on and on. We forget that at one point in history artists were mathematicians. Artists were scientists. There wasn’t the separation or the story that we tell today. Imagine the implications for education if we weren’t so blinded by subject separations and so singly prejudiced against the arts. Music is math, after all. Color is either chemistry or optics depending on whether you are mixing paint or light.

The next day, we met with other teachers, each sharing their experiences in the classroom. Beth (an amazing educator) listened to Melissa’s story and said, “I love the term, ‘vanishing point!’ There’s a whole world happening beyond that point and we just can’t see it.” She was lost in thought for a moment and then exclaimed, “Beyond the vanishing point anything is possible!”

Beth deals in possibilities. She is one of the few people I’ve known who recognizes that we actually live at the vanishing point though most of us pretend that we know what’s going to happen. Beth courts the vanishing point. She plays with it. She tries things just to see what will happen. Hang out with Beth and you will jump in puddles, race through tall grass, and take a turn down a road just to see where it leads. She knows that when you walk toward the vanishing point you walk into possibilities. Beth knows that life is vital in the direction of the vanishing point; the foreground of the picture is the present; it is where we currently stand. Beth knows it is the deepest human impulse to say to your self, “I wonder what’s over that hill?” And then follow the impulse. Beth knows this greatest of human impulses is at the heart of great education. Beth knows like Melissa knows, it is so simple and so possible when they are allowed to walk with their students toward the vanishing point instead of being forced to turn away from the horizon and pretend that there is something standardized about learning.

Filed under: Art, Education, Perspective, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: art, learning, perspective, power, teaching, vanishing point, vitality | 2 Comments »

Go Up!

Posted on January 8, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

In airports, people are often racing to catch a plane. I have, more than once, sprinted through a concourse trying to catch my connecting flight before they closed the doors and captured me like a bug in the airport pickle jar: no way out. When I was in the Philadelphia airport, having more than enough time between flights, I found a nice perch and watched other less fortunate travellers race to their liberation. “That’s what I look like,” I thought as I spied a man wearing his too intense face, trying to reconcile his need to sprint through the crowd with his desire to not trample other people.

Coming from opposite directions, entering a knot of people, two wheelchair bound travelers, each late for a connection, spurred their airport attendee to go faster. It was like watching an old-time film clip of two trains roaring toward each other, unaware, an imminent head-on collision. They couldn’t see each other through the throng of people. The sea of travelers parted, the wheelchair riders caught sight of each other, eyeballs bulged, eyebrows raised, hands came to protect faces, and time – as it does in a spell or a moment of presence – came into a sharp, clear focus. At the last moment, in an impossible maneuver, the pushing attendees, as if choreographed, altered course. The chairs kissed, the spell was broken, and neither chair slowed down; grins of relief broke across the faces of all concerned. Mine, too. “That was well done!” one of the riders hooted to her wheelchair pusher as they sped off into the distance.

There are moments on the stage when an actor forgets their line and all pretenses fall. It’s called, “Going up.” Eyes bulge, eyebrows rise, their mind double clutches in panic, locks up, and for brief moment, without thought, they are intensely present, vitally alive. It feels like a mini-spell as time expands. And somehow, inexplicably, the words show up, moving the mouth without the assistance of the mind. The moment passes; the spell is broken, presence retreats behind the notion of control; waves of relief crash on the sandy shores of the actor. And yet, when the evening is over, the actor will tell you that moment was the most honest moment of the whole play. It was the most “alive” moment of their performance. It was the only moment that was not controlled, constrained, premeditated. It is what they attempt to master: presence on stage.

In watching the near wheelchair collision and remembering those brief moments of vitality on the stage, I couldn’t help but think that we (or I) have it backwards. The spell is not those moments of intense presence; the spell is a life that is rarely present. In those moments of near collision, when we lose control or are snapped into the immediate, the spell of the mundane is, for a moment broken, time no longer matters, nothing is measured or contained or controlled, and we enter life as we exit the predictable. I’m delighted that the wheelchairs did not collide and yet what a gift! Just like the rider I was left thinking, “For a moment, I was here and nowhere else. Well done.”

Filed under: Awakening, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: alive, presence, vitality | 2 Comments »

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