woke | The Direction of Intention

What’s In A Name? [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 26, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

When at long last the humidity and heat broke, when the evening air was cool, we took a slow walk along the lake. It was a reprieve from the heavy air that seemed to me a metaphor for the state of the nation. Oppressive. Incessant.

Walking is for us an act of re-balancing. When it is “all too much” we walk to re-enter the present moment. For me in particular, walking gets-me-out-of-my-head or at the very least slows the pace of thought to something graspable. These past many weeks we’ve rarely walked. The heat and humidity was too much.

As Kerri took photos of the pastel sky, I breathed in the cool evening air, breezes from off the lake, and I thought of The Crucible.

Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, was written during the hysteria of the McCarthy era. At the end of the play, John Proctor has a choice, to sign his name to a lie, or to be executed. Wrestling with the untenable choice, he ultimately cannot bring himself to sign away his name:

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!'”

He could not live with himself if he signed his name to a lie that was being used to justify the murder of his neighbors and friends.

It is a play as relevant today as in 1953 when it was written. Joseph McCarthy eventually lost all credibility – he lost his name – when much of what he claimed was proved to be false.

Call it witchcraft. Call it communist hysteria. Call it woke socialism…Every single horror enacted in the past several months is built upon a lie. There is no national emergency at our borders. The crime in Washington D.C is at a 30 year low. The voter fraud in the United States is statistically zero. Mail in ballots are among the securest ways to vote. There was no emergency necessitating the president to take away congress’ power of the tariff. The 2020 election was not stolen. Democrats are not rabid socialists attempting to ruin the nation. “Waste, abuse and fraud” was – and is – a straw man for gutting our government and our standing in the world.

It’s all a lie just as McCarthyism and the communist hysteria was a lie perpetuated to justify political repression and a power grab.

It is bracing that so many willingly sign their names to the lies that are now being used to justify the murder and abuse of our neighbors and friends – here and abroad. Looking at the pastel sky, grateful for the return of the cool, I wondered how long it will be before the heavy lie catches up with those so eager to sign away their names.

It always catches up. Lies collapse on themselves: they eventually turn and feed upon the very people who perpetuate them. Just ask Rudy Giuliani. Witness what he did with his name. The only question is how many people of integrity, how many John Proctors or Kilmar Abrego Garcias will be disappeared, how many decent people will be vilified, their good names smeared and erased, before the heat breaks, before the manufactured hysteria retreats, before cooler heads and competent minds reclaim the democratic ideals and the power of the nation?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PASTEL SKY

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Power | Tagged: Arthur Miller, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, hysteria, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Kilmar Agrego Garcia, McCarthy Era, name, power, power grab, repression, reputation, story, studio melange, The Crucible, the melange, woke | 1 Comment »

Re-Right The Un-Real [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

She teased herself, saying, “Look how many posts I’ve written lately using the word “Real” in the title!” There were 3 in the past few weeks.

“Of course you have.” I said, “We’re living in a time that reality is just damn hard to believe.” For instance, our current president has his very own Wikipedia page listing the numerous accusations of sexual assault against him, dating back to the 1970’s. It’s a lengthy list. One of the women on the list was thirteen years old when she claims he raped her at one of Epstein’s parties. Of course, this page, these accusations, have been available for all to read for years. How unreal is it that he is being protected by the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, those who call themselves Christian – all the while the red-red-party loudly proclaims moral authority and trumpets their mission of “protecting” our sons, daughters and wives against the evil Woke?

Un-real.

It is one of the reasons why we planted the sweet potato vine. First, I was awed by its color and luminescence. Seriously, I’ve never seen a plant glow or grow like this vine. Each day I step out back and stare at it, saying, “Unreal.” It’s more beautiful than I can believe. In an upside-down era it re-rights the world. It is real.

Recently, as if it intended to delight me to my core, a single caladium leaf emerged from the field of sweet-potato-vine-vibrant-green. “Look! An outlier!” I called to Kerri.

“Just like us,” she said, admiring the misfit. We poked around the plant to make sure this lone caladium leaf was really emerging from within the sweet potato vine. It really is. It, too, is real.

Real (adjective): 1. actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.

What’s real? Our current president is an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, a serial liar with a wiki-rap-sheet of sexual assault accusations that takes more than a single sitting to read. Those are facts, not imagined or supposed. Even so, his sycophants are doing back flips to keep we-the-people from seeing what is really in the Epstein files. They claim – as they have for over a decade – that what’s real is fake and what is fake is real. Apologists for the unforgivable. Apparently, accountability is nowhere in their party, nowhere in their plan, nowhere in their president, thus we are hit each day with a tsunami of conspiracy, chaos and blame, a festival of the fact-free, the supposed fantastic, the un-real.

Is it any wonder that each day we shake our heads and huff, “Really?” And then we head outside to check in with our sweet potato vine and outlier caladium leaf in an attempt to re-right our topsy-turvey world, affirming for ourselves what is actually real – and what is blatantly not.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE CALADIUM LEAF

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Seeing | Tagged: accountability, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Epstein files, fact, felon, fiction, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, outlier, rapist, real, reality, serial liar, story, studio melange, sycophants, the melange, upside down, wikipedia, woke | 1 Comment »

Our Human Purpose [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on May 10, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

It really boils down to a mistake in purpose.

The purpose of business is profit.

The purpose of government is public service.

When government serves a profit motive – the motive of business – it loses sight of its unique purpose: service to the public. It fundamentally loses its reason for being.

We on the woke-side-of-the-spectrum believe the maga-movement to be misguided because they rallied behind a business motive to solve the problems of government – thereby making the problems worse. A government that prioritizes profit motives over public service is destined to fail.

What the MAGA-mob doesn’t see is that we are all pissed off for the same reason: public service has been co-opted by self-interest. The top 1% now own and control more wealth than the bottom 90%. The solution is not to throw gasoline on the fire. The solution is not to tear down democracy. The solution is to reclaim the purpose of government.

On the trail, people are beautiful because they support each other. They share a common purpose. They inhabit a common story. They know that success on the trail is a team sport. It is an infinite game rather than a win/lose contest. It favors generosity rather than meanness.

We will know when we’ve recovered the purpose of our government when we – all of us on this national trail – favor generosity rather than revel in unkindness. Service to others – supporting and being supported – is what makes us beautiful specifically because it fulfills our human purpose.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BEING HUMAN

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, generosity, government, human, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, motive, purpose, service, story, studio melange, the melange, woke | 1 Comment »

Our National ABOUT Page [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on May 2, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

This quote by Reynolds Price has been on my ABOUT page since I began blogging:

“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to us – second in necessity after nourishment and before love and shelter.”

Since I already know what I am about (mostly) I rarely visit my ABOUT page. I’d all but forgotten this quote was a constant presence on my blog. It is the flag I planted, as much for myself as for others, so I might always have a north star, a way to locate and find my way HOME. I carried it in my pocket long before I enshrined it on my site. I remember typing it into the little “about” box – it felt like a declaration.

Lately the quote has been poking at me. It wants further consideration. It has renewed relevance in our current circumstance.

The disparate bubbles that we occupy, MAGA and WOKE, are stories. Although the characters are different in the respective bubbles, the overriding story is the same: there is a threat to our way of life and the threat is the other bubble.

Although I believe the MAGA bubble is filled with dangerous fascism, they believe the WOKE bubble is socialism run amok. Occupants of both bubbles follow their news-of-the-day as if it was essential, true. Both narratives fuel the division. Both bubbles tell the tale of a heroic fight for good over an evil villain.

This is the third time in our history that these bubbles have formed; irreconcilable narratives housed under a greater umbrella-story, ironically called The United States of America. Robin Diangelo wrote the story of white supremacy requires black inferiority. Conversely, the struggle of equality-for-all is pitted against the story of white supremacy. It is nearly impossible to reconcile the combating sub-narratives: the Manifest Destiny story of god-given superiority (MAGA) with the All Men and Women Are Created Equal (WOKE) story. Our national narrative, our essential umbrella story, is of this struggle for identity: superiority for the few or equality for all. So, here we are.

A need to tell and hear stories is essential to us because stories are the glue that hold us together. Stories are essential because they define “belonging”. In a nation of immigrants, with a long history of bloody fighting over this question of belonging, what might it take for us to recognize that this fight is the greater story that defines us? It is the legacy we perpetuate in our grappling; it is the trace we leave in time. When will we see that the loss of freedom, the collapse of love and shelter is the cost of our shared narrative of seeming irreconcilable difference?

We’ve built our house on a volatile fault line.

However, there is a greater narrative available. It has been on our national ABOUT page since the beginning of our nation. It is our motto, our north star that will guide us HOME. It is printed on our currency. What might it take for us to rise above the bubbles and embrace the story at the center of our rhetorical ideal? What might we need to reconcile to live fully the nourishing story of e pluribus unum?

[this may be my favorite piece by Kerri. If you’re feeling angst or overwhelmed, do yourself a favor: take a short life-break, close your eyes and listen]

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about TRACES IN THE SKY

The Storyteller emerges from the forest.
Lucy & The Waterfox
http://www.kerrianddavid.com

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Story | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, e pluribus unum, equality, fascism, freedom, identity, info bubbles, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAGA, Manifest Destiny, Robin DiAngelo, story, studio melange, the melange, white fragility, white supremacy, woke | 1 Comment »

Mutually [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Objects are such only with respect to other objects, they are nodes where bridges meet. The world is a perspectival game, a play of mirrors that exist only as reflections of and in each other.” ~ Carlo Rovelli via The Marginalian, April 27, 2025

The tree stands beyond our back fence, its limbs spiral and twist, sculpted by time and the force of the winds roaring off the lake. Looking at her photograph, a silhouette against an evening blue sky, I remarked, “It’s a Jackson Pollock painting.” She looked again at her photograph through the lens of my remark, nodding.

Nature sculpts the tree that catches the photographer’s eye, her photograph invokes images of a drip painting. “…interaction is the fundamental reality of the universe, that there are no entities as such…”

We do ourselves a great disservice ignoring interconnection in service to our separation.

It’s human: we need to make sense of things so we compartmentalize. We object-ify, detaching tree from time and wind from photographer, assigning all to discrete little box-identities, placing emphasis on the noun rather than on the interplay, the intertwining verb. In our minds we stop the motion, sever interrelationship into distinct pieces, so that we might convince ourselves that we have a grasp on “reality”. In creating objective “reality” we blind ourselves to the greater mutuality.

Science dissected the world-body into parts which led to the smallest objective part, called a quantum, and discovered it’s a slippery devil, energy, that can only be described subjectively. It can only be known through its relationships. Mutuality.

I’ve yet to hear an adequate definition of the word “woke”. Maga world flings it liberally and with sharp derision to describe all manner of “progressive” ideals, yet stutters when asked what it means. It’s an umbrella term, a catch-all, like the grainy photograph of the Loch Ness monster, shaky proof of something to be feared but mostly unknown. In fox land, this Loch Ness monster is called “socialism”.

To Maga world I offer this definition of Woke: greater mutuality. Woke, like a quantum, cannot be objectified just as compassion cannot be fully defined. It can be experienced. It is an energy, connective tissue.

Woke flies the flag of equality. Woke understands that the suspension of due process for any single person is the suspension of due process for all people. Woke understands that prosperity reserved for the few means poverty for the many. Woke intends shared prosperity, an equal playing field, helping hands. “Float all boats” is a Woke ideology. Woke is not a hand-out, it is a help-up. A moral center – also known as mutuality – is Woke; we can be our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper or we can be their persecutor. Keeper or persecutor: both describe a kind of relationship.

Woke is what defines Maga just as Maga is now clarifying Woke. Maga desires separation. It strives for elevation above others; legislated privilege. Woke desires equality. It strives for a more perfect union: legislated inclusion. The promise of possibility.

We do ourselves a great disservice: we are neither red nor blue. We are not conservative nor progressive. We are not Woke or Maga. Those terms are boxes that ignore the fundamental truth of our – or any – nation. We are interconnected. We are a relationship.

Remove environmental protections and all of the air we breathe and the water we drink will be polluted. Remove election watchdogs and all of our elections will be corrupted. Remove a commitment to truth and lies will define us and pull us apart.

After all, Maga is a made-up-media term just as is Woke. They are boxes meant to give us an enemy, the illusion of separation.

Democracy is not a “thing”, an object. It is a movement, a quantum. We know it by our interactions as defined in our Constitution. We know it as a place where bridges meet. Where people from many places come together.

Whether Maga or Woke, we will feel the loss of democracy equally just as we feel the disintegration of our values, our shared narrative, our aspiration for justice-for-all; mutually.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREE

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity | Tagged: artistry, Carlo Rovelli, compassion, connective tissue, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, equality, interaction, interconnected, interplay, interrelated, intertwine, Jackson Pollock, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mutuality, objectivity, quantum, relationship, story, studio melange, subject/object, The Marginalian, the melange, woke | 1 Comment »

This Drivel [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on March 5, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Straw man (noun) 1. an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument. 2. a person regarded as having no substance or integrity.

“…Americans use 500 million drinking straws every day.”

Actually, there is some debate about the actual number of straws used each day in these un-United States. The number falls somewhere between 175 million and 500 million. In any case, that is a ton of straws. Literally. I know this is a scintillating topic and you cannot wait to read on but keep in mind that among the mountain of executive orders pouring from the pen of the rapist-in-chief was a “an end to the procurement and forced use of paper straws.”

Some actions are symbolic. Language matters. Within the phrase “forced use of paper straws” is found the symbolic epicenter of the red-hat movement against “woke”. Apparently children and executives across the nation have been tackled, strapped into chairs, and forced to drink through compostable straws. Of course, as reported by the fox, after the horror of their involuntary straw encounter, they were bustled down the hall for an inescapable sex change operation. Now, legislators across the land are moving to slash the rights and liberties of the masses of straw-traumatized-unwilling-newly-transgendered. Trauma heaped upon trauma all due to the brutal mandates forced on the good-righteous-christian-red-hat citizens, simply trying to save their wives and daughters from the evil woke.

It’s a stinky victim tale.

Forced use of straws. “They’re eating the dogs!” Windmills are killing whales. Even as I write this I think to myself, “No one could possibly believe this drivel.” And yet…

Dedicated victim stories need enemies. Enemy creation is the oldest motivational tool in the authoritarian handbook. The enemy need not be real. It is equally powerful if actual or imagined. History is rife with fake-enemy-creation as motivation for a gullible populace to embrace. As victims, it is a small step to inflicting righteous pain on behalf of the tyrant. And feeling good about it.

That’s the point.

The entire narrative of the current administration is an imaginary battle waged on the evil woke who are busily deconstructing the American way of life, forcing horrid paper straw use and whisking away children for sex change operations without prior parental consent. It is ironic. “Woke” is a straw man used by the authoritarian-wanna-be (a straw man, definition #2), so weak and incapable of legislating his unpopular Project 2025 agenda that he must issue mountains of executive orders – all meant to consolidate power in the executive branch while also appointing loyal doormats to the justice department and military. In the meantime the gleeful DOGE, in the name of waste, fraud and abuse (yet another straw man) hastily dismantles – well, neuters – the powers of congress. It’s the textbook creation of a fascist state.

A note to victims: please keep your eyes on the evil-woke-left as the great leader saves you from forced use of paper straws. In that way, you won’t see – until it’s too late – the conservative right hand magically dismantling democracy, stripping away your rights and torching your liberties. Any good autocrat, like a good magician, knows the power of misdirecting focus.

It’s beyond ironic: a straw man using straws as a straw man. No one could possibly believe this drivel. And yet…

read Kerri’s blog on STRAWS

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, drivel, enemy creation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, language matters, story, straw man, straws, studio melange, the melange, victim, victimhood, woke | 3 Comments »

Wound Together [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on November 27, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

In my mind it is a toss-up. Whether we are witnessing the collapse of our system or the reaffirmation of the system, doing exactly what it was designed to do.

We listened to an interview with Isabel Wilkerson. She said that through the lens of caste, this divisive time, maga and the election make perfect sense.

Perfect sense. Our system was designed and constructed along a distinct line of division, black and white. Initially, the division kept the indentured and the enslaved at each others’ throats so they didn’t turn their eyes and ire on the ruling class. The army protecting the elite was an ocean away. Division was – and is – protection. It’s the first chapter in the colonialist’s handbook. Divide the people. It’s discussed at length in our nation’s colonial legislative record.

And so, here we are again. The system is doing what it was designed to do. Amplifying the divide, keeping we-the-masses distracted by focusing our ire on each other instead of the burgeoning oligarchy currently salivating to exploit us and our cheap labor.

Systems are living things and will fight to the death when threatened. As Isabel Wilkerson suggested, this is the system reasserting itself. Unity threatens it.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? A true paradox. This caste divide works like dna strands, fibers wound and bound together by their opposition. The force that binds us is division. We are a fractal of disunity.

The strands:

The maga right spits the word “woke” but to date has failed completely to define what that means.

The progressive left spits the word, “ignorant” and has no doubt what that means. I am guilty of wielding this word.

The “woke” believe in equality and unity.

The maga right is hyper-protected against “woke” notions of equality and unity because their media has steeped their minds in the bogey-man-word, “socialism.” I am certain, just like the word “woke”, they have no idea what socialism means or how it is as distinct from equality as lived in a democratic society. I am also certain they don’t want to know what the word means.

It’s “woke” to know what words mean. It’s un-woke to obey without question.

The woke want to know. The un-woke do not care to know. The woke want to dissolve the caste system. The un-woke do not. The woke see societal gain in unity and equality. The un-woke see personal loss of privilege and power. Woke and un-woke wound together by the gravity of their division.

The flashpoints in our history – like the Civil War or the Civil Rights movement – happen when the people, the indentured and enslaved, begin to question the falseness of the division, when they dare to turn their eyes away from each other and turn their unified eyes toward the ruling caste, and begin asking questions. The flashpoints occur when we-the-people step toward the promise of a more perfect union.

The flashpoints are aptly named. Civil (adjective): relating to ordinary citizens and their concerns…Civil War. Civil Rights. Ordinary citizens attempting to challenge the gravity of their false-division. I wonder what historians will name our current flashpoint?

Systems are living things and will fight to the death when threatened.

Is the fascism fast approaching the death of the system? Or, is it the caste system, threatened by the actual promises of democracy, liberty and justice for all, reasserting itself? Or both?

The path toward the promise of our democracy begins with curiosity and questioning, an openness to ideas and others. It requires a populace dedicated to learning rather than book-banning and indoctrination. It facilitates opening eyes rather than closing hearts.

I look forward to the day that the un-woke awaken and see how completely they are being exploited, suppressed and taken for a fascist ride. Maybe then we can unite, turn our eyes and focus our ire where it belongs and, once and for all, turn the page on this hateful colonist’s game.

read Kerri’s blogpost about FIBERS

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, caste, civil, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, division, equality, ignorant, isabel Wilkerson, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, story, studio melange, system, the melange, unity, woke | 3 Comments »

I Wonder [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on October 25, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” ~ James Baldwin

Our Melange posts generally begin with a visual prompt, usually one of Kerri’s recent photographs. Today, for the first time in our Melange history, she offered me a quote. The photograph, the stone heart, came second.

My dad used to tell me that I’d educated myself into stupidity. He was, of course, regurgitating the sentiments of his fox-news source; those were not his words or his thoughts. He was an educated man, early in his life a schoolteacher, yet his entire life he yearned to return to the simple life he remembered, growing up in a small town in Iowa. His yearning was sincere and pervasive. He was kind to his core and generous to everyone he met. He had no idea what to do with the complexity of the contemporary world and so he found solace in rejecting it.

One of my cherished memories of my dad was the day we spent in the cemetery of his small town. He was far down the road of dementia and wanted to visit his beloved small town one last time. I was taken aback that he had no desire to wander the streets but wanted, instead, to wander through the graves – so that is what we did. He’d point to a headstone and tell me the story of the person buried there. To him it wasn’t a graveyard, it was a reunion. He could not remember what he ate for breakfast but he remembered in vivid detail the people that populated his young life, the names on the headstones.

My dad worked most of his life as a foreman of a concrete construction company. His crews were mostly illegal immigrants. For a few summers I worked on his crew and I have never been more proud of him – or learned more from him – than I did watching his dedication to the men who worked for him. He understood their plight, he valued their hard thankless work, and they were as loyal to him as he was to them.

I can only imagine what he would think of the rhetoric of mass deportation, the radical dehumanization of the men he spent his life working with, the racist lies. I wonder if his yearning for simplicity would cloud his perspective or would he recognize the ugly authoritarianism masked in the maga mass-deception.

He was, at his core, kind. Generous. I cannot imagine he would sign on to the oppression and denial of basic humanity that runs rampant through the maga rhetoric. And, since I am “woke”, a progressive, a man dedicated to learning and asking questions, a believer in open minds and hearts, I am now one of the vermin populating the fox-maga-storyline. I doubt he would sign on to that.

I wonder, if we were sitting on the patio drinking a beer, if he’d question, as I do, how his rural America, his imagined simplicity, became so ugly, so lost in the rantings of a fascist. So un-American.

I wonder if he, from his resting place in the graveyard, wishes now for a better story for his small town, for all small towns – the story of generosity and kindness he remembered as hallmarks of the people who populated his early years, the people and narrative who shaped him, his goodness, his life.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about OPPRESSION

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Story | Tagged: artistry, authoritarian, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, deception, generosity, goodness, humanity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, learning, loyalty, MAGA, narrative, open heart, open mind, progressive, simplicity, small town, story, studio melange, the melange, woke | 2 Comments »

Be Woke [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on June 8, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Tonight we will go to Pride-Fest Milwaukee to see our son Craig perform. He’s an EDM artist. His star is rising. This night, he’s performing with his friend and collaborator. Together, they perform as The Doggpound. We couldn’t be more excited or more proud.

This morning I read an angry response to a post (not mine). As a conclusion to her tirade, the woman wrote, “Aren’t you ashamed to be woke?” I admit to being perplexed to the point of mystification. Why should I or anyone be ashamed to be alert, aware, and concerned about all forms of discrimination and social injustice in our nation and the world? My idea of a better world means “liberty and justice for all.” Equality. It is the vibrant promise of this nation. It is the ideal behind our struggles. It is, after all, our pledge. Indivisible with.

I would be ashamed if I wasn’t woke. I find nothing to be proud of in dedicated ignorance.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PRIDE

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Filed under: Perspective, smack-dab | Tagged: artistry, Barker, bloggers, cartoon, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dedicated ignorance, EDM, equality, gross ignorance, ideals, ignorance, indivisible, justice, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lgbtqia+, liberty, middle age cartoon, middle age romance, Milwaukee Pride, painter, pride, singer songwriter, smack-dab, story, studio melange, The Doggpound, the melange, two artists, woke, writers | Leave a comment »

Steward The Radical [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 26, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m reading Gordon MacKenzie’s brilliant book, Orbiting The Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide To Surviving With Grace. There’s plenty to love in this little book that extrapolates beyond the corporate cubicle. This morning I laughed heartily when he compared two organizational systems, the pyramid and the plum tree. Traditional versus Holistic. Mechanistic versus Organic.

For me, the point of his Fool’s argument, sketched on yellow-pad-paper, comes down to this: the traditional pyramid, a hoosegow of compartmentalization, kills collaboration and snuffs the creative. It is purposeful division. The holistic plum tree, an integrated dynamic continuum, enhances collaboration and stimulates the creative. He draws an arrow pointing to the words “Enhancement of collaboration,” and writes, “This is radical.” [his underline]

It might seem radical to suggest that a system that intends collaboration is radical until you consider our current state of affairs. The latest attack on “the woke” by “the traditional” is, in essence, a pyramid that fears a plum tree. Pyramid people have an investment in exclusion, in standing on the top. Supremacy, white or otherwise. Keeping the cubicles intact, keeping the hierarchy in place.

Plum tree people, the proudly “woke,” reach across and eliminate division because they recognize the truth and power of the continuum, “integrated in a single creative ecology” otherwise known as a “community.” It is the opposite of supremacy. Float all boats.

There’s a race to the bottom in these un-united united states: the recent scrubbing of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the banning of books, red-legislators knocking themselves out trying to bleach our history, bury our past, snuff a questioner’s right to question (i.e. to learn), eliminate a woman’s right to choose; to squeeze gender-identity into a too-tight-airless-box…

In this environment, to suggest a system that intends collaboration, a system that enhances collaboration, is radical. Of course, democracy, by definition, is a system that intends collaboration. It is a system that needs collaboration to survive. It is a plum tree. The real and present danger of the pyramid, as Gordon MacKenzie points out: a pyramid is a tomb.

Democracy is radical. That people of diverse backgrounds and orientations might come to the table together with full respect for their differences – in fact a celebration of their differences, and intend to create “a more perfect union” is-as-has-always-been, a bright star to follow. It is a radical dream that demands open eyes, the capacity to ask questions of ourselves and each other, to tell our full history, to consider the perspective of all the human-beings sitting across the shared table. A radical dream, an ongoing creation stewarded into the future by the radical collaborators, keepers of the dream, the proudly woke.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PROUD BUTTONS