reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: creativity


by 1 Comment

squeaking. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

“squeaking with joy, ” cousin kate wrote – all in caps – “the turtles are back!”.

at the exact time she sent that, we were on our trail, on the bridge over the river, gazing down at the turtles. we had seen a couple earlier in the spring, but then it got cold and they disappeared. now, they are back – seemingly for good – and we, too, are squeaking with joy.

earlier in the winter, i had written:

“i think about the turtles. they are there in the warmer months, sunning on logs and rocks that jut out of the river. but, when it dips below fifty degrees or so – and stays there – they disappear. apparently, they dive down to the muddy bottom, their metabolism slows down, they require less oxygen. their mucky homes keep them safe as they bide time, these wise, long-lived creatures of the water and the land.

we know they are there – somewhere – in hidden spots, places they feel sheltered and secure. i think about what they might be doing. they are silent and the fallow is long. i trust they are sorting what is next, kind of like us.

time keeps moving, though, and i keep hope that when it warms up and the turtles have a more secure sense of themselves in the world they will reappear, out of the suspension of presence. i’m hoping for an early spring.

and waiting. and the river freezes. and then it thaws.“

and then i had this idea walking down the hall the other day. it was a the-turtles-are-back idea.

in my mind i named it “out of fallow” or “out of the mud” or even “the relevant challenge” or “on the fly” but the name is fluid. the idea floated around and landed tiny feet on my brain, so i eventually told david about it.

it’s relatively simple. we choose ten destinations – in wisconsin, in the midwest, on the northeast coast, in the high mountains, on quiet southern beaches, in the canyonlands, in the grand national parks – all different projects. taking a yamaha portable battery-operated keyboard (with recording/disc drive capability), ten canvases and paint, both laptops, and a couple spiral notebooks – we go to each destination for a pre-determined amount of time (say, three hours). while there, i compose on the fly – what that place feels like – and he paints on the fly – what that place feels like. on the fly – spontaneous creation – is not for the meek at heart. it requires focus, has a terminal product necessary at the end – a short time after beginning – and necessitates a degree of letting go. it pushes us back into the active-art-place and pushes us past edges. it gets us out of the muddy bottom. it produces the raw pieces of an album to be orchestrated and a collection of paintings to be framed. it needs some support to get off the ground. it has me pondering, swimming to the surface with the turtles.

our snouts will pop out of the river and we’ll look around some, trying to figure it out. we would definitely need some encouragement, some warm sun, some help.

and, if we move forward, out of the suspension, we – turtles, too – will definitely be squeaking.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

turtles love coffee.


by 1 Comment

green eyes and creativity. [merely-a-thought monday]

“workers might want to consider these top 10 skills, which employers say are rising in importance over the next five years: 1. creative thinking.” (jane thier – fortune magazine)

mm-hmm. yup. #2 is analytical thinking. i’m pretty certain that without creative thinking, analytical thinking would hit dead-ends every time. and self-destruct.

the other night, in the middle of the night, the wee hours of the night when one is supposed to be sleeping, i was – shockingly – wide awake. we had a long conversation, chatting about places we had lived way-earlier-on, jobs we had way-earlier-on. i talked about eating lots of kellogg’s cornflakes and he talked about mountains of pbj sandwiches. we have both had histories of piecemeal, making-it-work, scrappy artists weaving a tapestry of living with rough-hewn shreds of granola-cotton, jute, hemp, fabrics not fine or finished but with torn edges and maybe a little holey.

larkfield road in east northport made it possible. many of my jobs – early-on – were on this road. i worked at the music store, the camera store, the dive shop, one of the churches – all on this road – before i left long island. i bought my cornflakes at the king kullen and my gas at the corner citgo, splurgy pizzas down the road and sub sandwiches next to the post office. i drove all over teaching piano lessons and saved whatever i could at the bank that gave away plates for deposits on the corner of larkfield and clay pitts. none of it was fancypants. but it gave me a different expectation bar and it was all setting the stage for a creative life.

it’s funny to me that it takes a fortune magazine article to espouse the merits of creative thinking. the number 1 top skill rising in importance – as if it’s something new. ahhh. but, perhaps it is.

for we know, better i’d say than many, the difference in actually choosing a creative path. creativity, artistry – these lead you in a direction that is unrevealed, a direction that is vulnerable, a direction that has no guarantees.

an accountant, say, knows that any amount of time spent on a project will be remunerated. time spent = time paid for. it’s really a lovely equation. and both of us have had positions in our lives when this equation was in place.

but the instant we list back to the artist side, all equations dissipate into a fog and people – the same ones who turn to the arts in watershed moments of their lives – suggest we might consider exposure of our work our form of payment. i imagine writing to the wisconsin energies company – “i’ll give you ten exposures for this $326 bill.” more so, i imagine their response. yikes!

and so, here we are. the workworld – so to speak – is catching up a tiny bit. employers are beginning to recognize the value of creative thinking…maaaybe. the COO of fortune, dan shapero, is quoted, “the long-term trend is pretty undeniable that the demand for skills outpaces the supply of skills.”

perhaps he – representing employers everywhere – is not looking in the right places.

creative thinking is found in creative people, the ones exposing their work to the world, the ones who scrimp and bring to fruition projects that started in a thought bubble, the ones who don’t have the same organizational principle applied to their vitae and whose vitae, perhaps, would go the way of bot-trash, but who have a thru-hiked life (sometimes many, many years of life – decades even – making age yet another employment challenge) – with creativity their north star.

as people-with-active-resumes we note that our schooling is bachelors and masters degrees – framed and unframed- in bins in the basement somewhere. our work experience is a little bit of that tapestry i was talking about. it’s been garnered in educational settings, in corporate settings, in public service, in non-profits like theatres and churches, in software startups, on stages and on radio, in studios with canvas and studios with microphones. our creative output is found in albums, in paintings, in books, in blogs, in cartoons, in plays, in workshop projects.

we get creative thinking.

i passed green eyes down to her. he got his eye color from his dad. both of them are wildly creative. their lives have already been a tapestry of edges. i couldn’t be more proud.

“the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” (mary oliver)

*****

happy birthday to my beloved girl.

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

coffee or share or follow or chat with us if you’d like 🙂


by 1 Comment

we are all in our underwear. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

with great fervor, he said, “we are all desperate to make sense out of this life.”

“play the fool,” ethan hawke’s words of wisdom.

every day of this mysteriously unknown-unrevealed-unmapped extended journey of life we have been granted – we are seeking to make sense.

and – in the moment of moments – the ones when the abyss is evident or the peak is present, the ones when confusion reigns supreme, the ones when you cannot imagine any more bliss or any more dread or any more ardor or any more devastation, the ones when complexity is the starting gate, the ones on the roller coaster you wish someone would stretch out flat – in those moments none of this – any form of art – any medium, any life-giving expression of creativity – is a luxury. it surely does sustain, heal, breathe life into the motionless heart of fear or sadness. it is the music, the paintings, the photographs, the lyrics, the poetry, the clay pot in your hand, the dance. it is what the pads of your fingers touch just simply by seeing, hearing, reading, smelling, tasting, watching. necessary. of the essence. crucial. fundamental.

“give your heart to everybody you meet. the rest is pretense.” (e.h.)

and – the creators – each of us – stand by, fools all of us. humankind. finding who we are, what we love, expressing, connecting.

“showcasing a piece is allowing it to come to full bloom, to let it breathe in the world, to share it. but showcasing a piece is not for the meek at heart.

in the way you would likely feel standing in your underwear in a town square, introducing the world to some new piece of your heart is raw. on old wooden stages with a piano and a mic, centered on a wall with a tiny price tag placed nearby, during poetry-reading night in the corner of the general store, sharing with the novel-writing club every first thursday, skating the first performance on ice, tapping “publish” on a blog each day … pieces of your heart float shakily about as you try to hold onto sisu and stay grounded. it matters not how many times you have done this. your heart has been unbridled and you are allowing others in. each and every time.” (the underwear moments* – kerri sherwood)

“but then i thought about beauty. i thought about how artists dive below the surface, try to find the depth of meaning, try to hear and see that which others might pass by, not noticing. i thought about stages and boom mics and connection and standing in front of a diebenkorn – or a robinson – deep inside, marveling. i thought about arvo pärt and his absolute tug on my heart. i thought about john denver and simplicity. i thought about recording studios and soaring string sections, cello lines that make clouds rearrange to allow in light. the weaving of intricate relationship between people and nature, between people and art in any form.

there have been moments – and i can actually remember them – when i have been driving and listening to a song and i weep or hiking and seeing something so stunning i stop and cannot move. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that it was right to turn down the business-school-accounting-program acceptance. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that i will not have the same security as the person-i-would-have-been following that route. moments when i feel a sense of pride to be a tiny part of the tapestry of what people turn to in time of rejuvenation, of rest, of crisis, of pure bliss. these moments when i know, without a doubt, that somewhere along the way what i have done with my time has touched someone, has opened them, has taken them diving with me. below the surface of this great big world – to beauty.” (the gig economy tapestry – kerri sherwood)

“…boldness. the uninhibited freedom of expression – artistry come to fruition in the moment of utter sharing. terrifying and liberating. raw and real. the underwear moments.”(*)

this great big planet earth. sedimentary layers of beauty. we are all in our underwear.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

www.buymeacoffee – a link or this QR code – if you wish


by 1 Comment

the pony. [k.s. friday]

and – up close – if you choose – you will see the foreleg of a winter-dressed pony, the extra cold-weather-coat trapping hair next to the skin of the horse, keeping him warmer. he is stopped, gazing at the distant field, ready to canter into it, the exploding of freedom of movement.

and you blink and it is a cattail. one of many in the field, waiting in the marsh through autumn and winter for early spring. as many as 250,000 seeds, white fluff sailing and transported by birds and breezes. and the life cycle continues.

it is winter in my studio. the rhizomes are gathering underground, together with the cattails. maybe around the spring equinox, maybe a bit later, the shoots will rise out of the ground – like a phoenix out of ashes – and new sprouts will grow and grow. the cycle germinates and pollinates and seeds will fly again. the birds and the wind and i will play for you – seeds and notes flying.

in the meanwhile, i wear my winter coat. it is keeping the heat in. it protects me. insulation for shelter in this long and cold winter, to shield in the storms, to brace in this fallow.

but soon, soon, with the sun and fresh air, the pony will run free.

*****

UNTITLED INTERLUDE ©️ 1995 kerri sherwood

download music from my little corner of iTUNES

stream on PANDORA

read DAVID’S thoughts this K.S. FRIDAY


by 2 Comments

beyond the edge. [d.r. thursday]

this installation was beautiful. stunning. olafur eliasson’s rainbow bridge was in a room full of light and the spectrum of color was immediately striking. and then, we walked into the room further and all the color disappeared, instead spheres of glass reflected the windows and the water outside the museum. “the appearance of the spheres is unstable, slipping between clarity, colour, and blackness in response to the slightest movement of the viewer.” (olafur) if you stand right in front of one of the twelve spheres, you can see your reflection upside down, teasing you to make faces and play. we could have visited with this piece all day – moving around the room, standing still, watching the light waltz and dip as the hours wore on.

“its [the extraordinary] concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.” (mary oliver- upstream)

and so, when we finally moved on, past the sunlit rainbow, i’m quite sure we were both in that dreamy place – the place where you linger in all the vast possibilities that are out there – combinations of color and sound, notes joining together, brushes brushing, harmonics floating above you and bass notes stabilizing your foothold. it is a place of creation, where you feel the tendrils of ideas, of paintings, of songs, of melodies of piano, of sweeping strings and mournful french horns, of spattered acrylic, of photographs with intense depth of field. it is the place we visit on the trail, on the mountains, on the seashore, in our studios. it is beyond the edges of billpaying folders and mortgages, student loans and job searches. it flies past all the details of everyday mundane. it is nebulous and it is visceral.

we moved out of the room – newly equipped with dream – refreshed because someone else had “put it out there”. someone else – also – had vision and the impulse to express it. someone else – also – had stood for long hours, sat for long hours, pondered for long hours in front of canvas or a piano or on a wooden dance floor or waiting for the perfect snapshot. someone else had composed – the extraordinary – from out beyond the edge. and its whisperings fell on our ears, encouraging our response to it and reminding us to jump.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

earth interrupted VI

visit the ongoing construction on david’s website


by 1 Comment

rooting for midwest express. [two artists tuesday]

it’s exactly how i draw horses. back in the day i had a book that taught me how to draw them. i was horse-crazy and i studied this book and practiced over and over. i did not retain much of all that study – or all of the other books i read about horses – but i can still draw a horsehead. so when we flew over this island on our approach to the tampa airport, i was astounded to see the first vestiges of my own drawing. i named it van gogh horse – for obvious reasons. high tide and angle and an active imagination helped, but i sure do think it looks like a horse.

it had been three and a half years since i had flown. we’ve read many articles about aggressive passengers and, i must admit, that doesn’t sound too enticing. i can’t imagine being rude to people who are tending to your needs as you zoom through the sky. not to mention all that recirculated air and the folks in the seat behind us hack-coughing. ahem. so it was a little nerve-wracking.

but it was also magical. you forget. i spent a lot of time looking out the window, mesmerized by the cloud formations and the landscape below, checking the flight plan on my phone to see where we were (technology is pretty amazing!) and taking photographs. i looked – i am sure – like the quintessential tourist-on-the-airplane. but i didn’t care. we have driven everywhere in the last years so it was like a small miracle to jaunt from milwaukee to tampa in two hours and forty minutes.

i remember days i flew often. midwest express airlines and real plates and real silverware and gourmet meals and mimosas in the morning or wine in the afternoon. and, the pièce de résistance…warm chocolate chip cookies. it was an experience – a whole experience. i flew midwest as often as i could, flights to los angeles and nashville and south and out east.

the most memorable experience was the – only – one time the airline lost my luggage. i had concerts and appearances in boston and all my attire was in my suitcase. a midwest express representative – jimbo – who is still my friend on facebook – immediately set to helping me, told me to go buy some necessities, including concert attire, and send midwest the bill. i am mostly a jeans-wearing performer – though there were some exceptions that particular trip – so that kept the costs down a bit, but they covered every last thing i needed. customer service at its best. i called all those items “my midwest express collection” and flew midwest loyally until the airline was no longer.

in a memory-filled moment with the smell of baking chocolate chips in my mind’s eye, i googled the milwaukee-based airline and was jazzed to see it is hoping to make a comeback one of these days. i wish them well. here is the best news:

“the airline plans to bring back the cookies if it starts flying again.” (milwaukeemag.com)

i know that can take some time and some luck. but warm chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the airline’s tiny kitchen could encourage me to start flying more again. i mean, people can’t be ornery with cookies.

if i had to draw an airplane experience – even though i am clearly not gifted at drawing – i would draw people in cushy two-across-seats, trays down, real plates and silverware, coffee cups and mimosas, warm chocolate chip cookies, linen napkins. smiles and horses out the window.

i am rooting for midwest express.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


by 1 Comment

the splurge. [two artists tuesday]

it would appear that a giant angel was hula-hooping in the clouds and dropped their hula hoop, which landed in the upper branches of a tree at the botanic garden. or, perhaps, that a spaceship -with no defined interior- had dropped down for a visit. or, maybe, there was a filming of sesame street’s “the letter ‘o'” about to do another take. brightly lit hula hoops of neon light suspended in trees, they cast an eerie glow onto the frozen ground, onto the path. michael bublé sang “walking in a winter wonderland” and we found ourselves inside the magic.

there is definitely something to wandering paths amongst many other people all oohing and ahhing. i had vowed to myself to leave my camera in my purse, but it wasn’t minutes before i failed at this. there were just so many colors and textures to remember, so dreamy. vast installations of creative lighting.

we had hoped to go. the ticket cost was a little prohibitive but we decided – when we woke and new year’s day was to be a little more mild than it had been – to splurge.

we were stunned even at the entrance to the garden, the trees wrapped in lights, every single branch and twig gleaming. we moseyed along the path, pulling over to let groups of people by so that we could be somewhat alone as we strolled.

but this wasn’t a silent and solitary hike in the woods. it was a performance piece we all took in together. each person’s glee added to ours and, dropping all expectations and all analysis of how-do-they-do-that, we were caught up in the captivating displays.

we already have a plan for next year. there are snacks and beverages and fire pits, places to linger, places to immerse. i could stand and watch the water and light “all i want for christmas” over and over and over. i allowed myself to wonder what a garden would look like lit to a piece of my own music.

we talked about our favorite displays driving the backroads. though spaceship fantasies are not my thing, hula hoops definitely are in my wheelhouse and the hulahooplights made my list. by the time we got home we realized that we had listed all of the displays we had seen, each design extraordinary, a celebration of the marriage of color and light and and sound and garden.

our late-night snack had a different air. the gift of being outside in the cold. the gift of beauty. the gift we had given ourselves – permission to splurge a little. a new year and its new intentions.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


by 1 Comment

a chicken and a cow in autumn. [two artists tuesday]

my nephew called. i guess technically he isn’t my nephew now but neither one of us cares about the technicality of it. we talked a couple years ago but not since. no matter. he was ironing and he thought of me. he described how ironing makes you just kind of slow down and lets your mind wander. and so he followed his instinct and dialed. i told him i was glad he wasn’t thinking of me as he was washing the floor. he agreed and said that a washing-the-floor conversation wouldn’t be as whimsical.

whimsical.

i loved how he used that word. we slowed down our hiking, shuffling our feet through the leaves on the trail, david encouraging me to chat. my nephew and i laughed and told stories, asked questions, laughed some more. later, in some text-reminiscing, he asked me if i still had the beer cap earrings he had bought me when we were together up-north many years back. he said, “you’re one of my favorites.” i walked slowly into flashes of another time of life. it was a gift.

from the deck it looks like a chicken. suddenly a chicken leaf fell from the maple tree and landed squarely on our little curlicue-fence. i stopped at the top of the steps and drew d’s attention to it. “look at the chicken back there!” i insisted. we laughed at the chicken on our fence. ok, not exactly. but imagination is a funny thing. we make castles out of refrigerator boxes and gazelles out of cumulus puffs. we create out of thin air.

“have you noticed that autumn is like a yellow cow?” (pablo neruda) “have they counted the gold in the cornfields?”

we are not alone in our imaginings. pondering leaves, clouds, swirls in the lake’s surface, rocks on the trail, i wonder what it would be to not ponder these things. i feel like i might laugh a little less, like there would be a little less whimsy.

i’m not sure how autumn is like a yellow cow, though i am sure that is valid for pablo. it’s all good. it makes the world go round with a little more pizzazz. there is gold everywhere.

right now i’m just wondering where exactly my beer cap earrings are.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


by 1 Comment

a tall spikelet. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

she was a coloratura soprano. her leaps, her trills, her range were atmospheric. bell-like and of angel quality, rayna sang effortlessly.

i have no idea if she is singing now. the last i heard – after i graduated with a degree in composition – she left and was in med school, seeking a degree outside of the arts. she must have had a wise mentor along the way. someone who told her she could always sing “on the side”. like rice pilaf.

“on the side.”

it’s the ever-present albatross of artists. even those who stand out in a crowd are thrust – by a society that doesn’t place as much value on the arts – into the yin-yang of opposing forces: stay. go. full-time. on the side.

every now and then there is a whitetop sedge spikelet in the field that is strikingly more successful than the rest… the mariah carey, the ariana grande, the beverly sills, the joan sutherland. delivering exquisite bel canto, they do not render the other spikelets any less important, nor should they be. each voice is unique in the meadow and this spikelet is just a little taller.

before i finished my bachelor’s degree i was accepted into the business school at usf. “accounting,” i thought. “i love math, therefore accounting.” the “normal-job” world was taunting me. but i declined the placement and continued on my merry way, writing music. i did not have rayna’s mentor and i believed there was a way to stand out, somehow.

it took some time just to get around to writing. life and its put-the-art-making-on-the-side-and-get-a-real-job-and-make-a-living had me directing and teaching. but not writing. i dabbled a bit relatively early on, did some recording and visited nashville – but didn’t move there. i don’t think i recognized the garden there when i saw it.

it wasn’t until a decade later that the muse caught back up to me. and when it did, it was with some gusto.

and now i’ve seen “the fault in our stars”. and i’ve witnessed mortality. i have loved and lost and changed and learned and made giant messes and have ridden the tide in and out, in and out.

and i’ve written some of my best and some of my worst. and it all counts – whether i – or you – are a tall spikelet or not.

i wonder now if rayna is practicing medicine. i wonder if she is singing.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY


by Leave a comment

the stuff we see. [two artists tuesday]

we cannot help ourselves. we see stuff. i usually don’t suppose that’s unusual, until someone stares at us – with that blank look on their faces that betrays the “oh-sheesh-they-are-SOOO-weird” thought they are having. and then i realize we might be a little unusual. i shrug it off. “we-are-all-worthy-we-are-all-worthy” i repeat.

the shark was on the side of the trail. lurking. all crusty and gnarly, his face. he was obvious. he was cause for conversation, tales of scuba-diving in cold long island waters and off the coast of tropical islands. we can’t help but see and we laugh and gasp out, “look! it’s a ……..!”

seeing. it’s a burden every artist carries. it’s in the backpack with the parmesan cheese and the twizzlers and the tiny box wine and the kind bars. it’s probably good that we are mostly alone during these moments; our imaginations fly wild and free and we crack ourselves up.

and isn’t that the point? the laughter? i can’t think of anything better than laughing together, even at our own expense. we tell stories to friends, emphasizing the goofy, the silly, the utterly-profoundly dumb, self-deprecating and reveling in it. getting my hair cut and claiming the highest forehead in the guiness book of world records of foreheads. having a pedicure and claiming the biggest big toe in modern history. even, recently, at the doctor’s office, asking, please, for a sticker or a gold star for passing my bloodwork. just silliness. we can’t help it.

but to walk with him and find the sharks on trail and the ducks stuck in trunks (see below) and the tree mooning us (see below) and the desert hills from space (also see below) is to walk inside laughter. it’s to have maybe learned – at long last – not to take everything quite so seriously.

it’s to learn how to get older and crusty and gnarly ourselves and to hold it all lightly.

because in truth, the shark tree was beautiful.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY