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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


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the portholes. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

there was this knot-hole in this tree on this trail. i used to stop there each time we hiked – to gaze through it…stand and take in what i could see through the tiny porthole in the woods. always, it was a reminder of the fluidity of time, of ever-present change, of nothing standing still.

the porthole i found in the milwaukee art museum – through one of barbara hepworth’s sculptural pieces – had the same impact on me. bending down, i focused only on what i could see through that porthole. on a different day, at a different time of day, in a different month or season, never static. even minutes from my peeking-through, the wind picked up and the lake’s surface roiled a bit and all from before was erased.

late-late on sunday nights – into the wee hours – we stay awake to listen and watch our son livestream mixes from a club in chicago. he was away for a couple weeks and we missed these late dj nights. they are our porthole – our tree-knot-hole – into what he is creating, producing, learning, feeling. every midnight-hour-sunday we see the changes in the new seasons of his work, his growth, his zeal, his poise at tech controls that evoke curves of mood, layers of sound, textures of music we may not have accessed otherwise. we see his joy.

it’s the same reason i took my first snowboard lesson. at that time, it was a porthole view into our daughter’s life – a peeking window that allowed us to feel the smallest smidge of her professional work. watching her fly down mountains, picking up speed and agility and ever-more skill through our tree-knot-hole on the sidelines and touching her joy-magic with our own feet on a snowboard on a hill.

we can assume things about others. humans do it all the time. broad sweeping generalizations about people and peoples – different because of race or color or gender identity or ethnicity or country of origin or age or disability or socioeconomic status or politics or religion or whatever the prejudice-de-jour might be. we glance over at “them” and form opinions; we claim to be “open and affirming” yet we slam closed the porthole that might give us a true look into their life. we scrub away the transparency of truth and apply the balm of our agenda – totally missing perspective, the possibility of commonality, the gift of community, the connectedness of us all as a species attempting to just keep on keeping on.

were we – perhaps – to notice, to step forward and take a closer look, to shield ourselves from inevitable human failings of assumption and instead to breathe deeply and gaze – we might have a view into the sameness of us all, the things that unite us, the things we need honor and hold in high regard….that we are all one under the sun. that while we cannot walk in another’s shoes, we might learn by looking through any and every tree-knot-hole we can find. that new eyes, new focus may also mean new learnings and new appreciation and new grace. that we should stop and peer through portholes whenever we can. there’s no time to waste.

*****

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


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the softer side of selfies. [two artists tuesday]

it’s the softer side of selfie.

i take many photographs of us in shadow. it lowers the how-do-i-look bar to practically zero. though it does leave me a tad bit curious about why my head always looks bigger than his. i think it’s my hair poofing out; his is pulled back neatly, while mine is helter-skelter flying in the wind. nevertheless, whether we are smiling or not, whether our eyes are open or closed, whether we have a funny look on our faces – none of this matters.

some of my favorite shots of us are in shadow. we are on the dock at northport harbor. we are on trail in breckenridge. we are at the john denver sanctuary in aspen. we are on a frozen lake up-north. we are walking barefoot in florida, carrying our flipflops. we are in the sun on our back patio.

i know i might be accused of over-documenting. so many photos. “1.81 trillion photos are taken worldwide every year, which equals 57,246 per second, or 5.0 billion per day,” according to photutorial.com. at least they are not all mine.

yet i know that it takes many, many shots to get the right one. my dear friend scott is a world-class photographer with a compositional eye to die for. he shoots thousands of shots at a-list events. which makes me feel justified in my overshooting. i have loved being behind a camera since my parents gifted me my first 35mm when i graduated high school. crunch and i would go out and about for hours on end, on escapades, taking pictures and dreaming of what they would look like developed. the advent of cellphone cameras – as they are today – makes it infinitely easier to snap, snap and over-snap. and, though i can confess to that, i will not stop.

because every now and then, when i go through all the photographs i’ve taken on a hike or at home or traveling or with one of my children, i find a jewel. like the lyrics that are tucked into notebooks-upon-notebooks, scraps of paper of melodies, pa pads with ideas for smackdab cartoons and blogposts, sometimes something special turns up. “practice makes perfect,” my sweet poppo would always quip.

so, the other day, while we were hanging out with richard diebenkorn, i thought i would document our time together. not a gem of a shot, but – truly – they aren’t always gems. sometimes they are just reminders of time spent, thready mementos of moments, scraps of lyrics or color samples or heart rocks. they are a diary of time, back and forward, threaded clockwise and reverse.

despite the vast ponderings of art critics and pedantic curators, it would seem that richard might just be trying to create mood, evoke emotion. this ocean park painting – like the whole series – depicting shimmering light and air, his extended time in santa monica sun. he painted and re-painted 145 canvases in this series. a diary of time.

selfies and shadows, smiles and light. all stuff that counts on the way to 1.81 trillion.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


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the icing on the cake. [merely-a-thought monday]

it’s 925 miles from the corner of sixth avenue and west 55th street, but it displaced me in an instant. there i was – back sometime in the 70’s, in new york city, seeing robert indiana’s love sculpture for the first time. i loved love then. i love love now. (could that be any more redundant?!)

a part of sculpture milwaukee in 2018, this sculpture has returned and was permanently installed at the milwaukee art museum in 2019. we saw it for the first time last week. life and covid interrupted our visits to mam. we were really happy to be back. seeing love out the window facing lake michigan’s lakefront was the icing on the cake.

there are nearly fifty of these sculptures around the world. people travel far and wide to have their photographs taken next to the iconic stacked word. it became a u.s. postal stamp in 1973. it has big history. its artist has big history.

the success of this giant – yet simple – sculpture begs questions for me: what musical gesture might be equivalent to this sculpture? what rhythmic or melodic motif has this kind of powerful impact? googling these questions produces a plethora of suggested lists – everything from classical to motown to the beatles and beyond. i suppose it’s a truly personal thing.

any listener of albinoni’s adagio in g minor or j.s. bach’s air on the g string or arvo pärt’s spiegel im spiegel or ennio morricone’s gabriel’s oboe or john denver’s annie song or leonard cohen’s hallelujah or carole king’s you’ve got a friend or aretha’s r-e-s-p-e-c-t or the beatles’ here comes the sun or, for that matter, eldar kedem’s you and i or any piece composed and played or sung by giant artists or tiny independent artists …. any listener of anything arrives at the place of listening – the dropped-down-out-of-the-universe of their own world – individually. we tote along with us our lives-at-the-moment, our busy schedules, our worries, our longings, color and breath and heart, a distinctively different set of ears. we hear and we listen and we are transported by music to worlds away, places and times stored up, a chorus of commentators in us telling silent stories in viewmaster snippets, our hearts grasping the filmy tails of memories. impact. giant impact.

the love sculpture means something different to everyone who poses in front of it; every person’s story has different details, a different emotional spectrum. how we connect to this emotive piece depends largely on where we are when we visit with it, what we bring to it, how open we are to its energy.

the love sculpture stands outside the museum and i know that each time we now visit, it will demand our time as well. we will stand and gaze and visit with it. and we’ll keep loving it. it’s simple. it’s that kind of piece.

*****

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


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getting it. [saturday morning smack-dab.]

i was one of them.

the first time i walked by i was a misunderstander, a glancer, a critic.

i thought – and spoke aloud – that it seemed elementary to display canvasses with the primary colors…large canvasses at that, lots of wall space, valuable real estate for an art museum.

it only seems right that ellsworth kelly, in a conversation with john cage (i mean, who gets to talk to john cage!!) said, “i am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long – to hang on the walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures – they should be the wall.” and so, ellsworth created big multiple panel paintings – murals – to cover walls. they are stunning and i have been enlightened – by sheer experience of his work. you need just stand there a few extra moments and it hits you. his “austin” temple of light is on our list of places to visit. minimalism. color. breath.

we visited the milwaukee art museum and the two of us, ellsworth, richard diebenkorn and mark rothko all hung out together. their notoriety far surpasses anything we could dream of – yes, yes – by miles and miles. but they love hanging out with people who get it and we were happy for their company.

we talked about art and music and simplicity and air and light. we talked about the ocean park series and rectangular color fields and bigness. we talked about communicating basic human emotions in our work. we talked about journeys and life and times of passage, evolution. we rued the difficulty of transitions and obstacles. and then, though sans museum ticket but clearly listening in, john cage stopped by and reminded us, once again, to “begin anywhere.”

and then it was time for us to leave, to go sip wine at the public market and to talk about the magic of getting it.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING

SMACK-DAB. ©️ 2023 kerrianddavid.com


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waterfall stars. [k.s. friday]

we saved an article last sunday: “the best waterfall in every u.s. state”. from alabama to wyoming, we scrolled through to see how many waterfalls we had seen. there were aggressive falls and double falls, falls that trickled from natural springs and, of course, niagara falls. we have missed many. like the articles about the best small towns or best places to retire, it’s all about dreaming. a list of waterfalls.

we hike or walk many miles each week, either on the weekend or squeezed into the rest of the sun at the end of the weekday. yesterday and the day before we noticed a tiny waterfall on our trail. it didn’t make it to the list of “the best” but it gave us pause and we stopped to watch and listen. the sound of a trickling stream, the sound of a minute waterfall…both unquestionably sounds of peaceful flow. we drank it in. we stood together in a silent, still dance.

as i looked at the list of waterfalls, it occurred to me that it is not likely i will ever see all of them. there is much on our bucket lists and, though i can appreciate – very much – adding this list into the bucket, i also know that it’s not the award-winning, the listed, that will always touch us.

the best waterfalls – for me – haven’t been the grandiose waterfalls. though i can appreciate their grandeur, it is the waterfall you stumble upon in the woods, the waterfall that shows up just when you needed a waterfall, the waterfall that will never make the list that negative-ions you into a feeling of well-being.

when i was in my thirties and composing i started to dream. in my forties – composing, recording, performing – i was headed to niagara in my dreams. sometimes i’d watch the grammys and wonder. but the smaller waterfalls – despite their beauty, despite their ability to resonate or to bring peace, despite the number of times on “repeat” – will not likely show up at the grammys. nevertheless, they have fault-in-our-stars impact. even to one.

charts – the top 100, say – are compiled by detecting the songs played on a select panel of top 40 radio stations. this is not objective, nor is it not machinated. many, many integrated, financial and complex symbiotic relationships go into the positioning of a song, the charting of a song. “the best songs” lists beget “the best songs”.

back in 2002 – waaaay back…up the waterfall, upstream, backaways – one of my songs charted on the secondary adult contemporary radio chart. “slow dance” made it up to #13. i was inordinately thrilled but, like many things, it did not come without a price tag. the radio promoter was steep, not to mention a little slimy. it’s a system and, at least back then, those guys had it wired. it wasn’t long before i realized that the charting did not help. it quickly flowed over the riverstones, past the boulders at the peak of the cliff and dropped – the waterfall never stopping for pause.

i don’t necessarily need to see the “best waterfall in every u.s. state”. instead, i think i’d rather see the ones that will invariably touch me, will give me moments to stop and drink them in. i’d rather see the ones that go mostly undiscovered. for even in their relative obscurity they are a gift and they count.

stars. noticed.

*****

RIVERSTONE ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood

SLOW DANCE ©️ 2002 kerri sherwood

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read DAVID’S thoughts this K.S. FRIDAY


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IFTTT. [d.r. thursday]

out the window was a snowstorm. it was february and it is wisconsin. it’s an IFTTT. we had plans for the next few days, not something we oft have…fun things booked with others. we pulled up accuweather and, between that and the ice forming on the window, had anticipatory grief, figuring all would be cancelled. we worried. if this-then that. if a snowstorm, then everything halts.

IFTTT – if this then that – i didn’t know this acronym was a thing, but i see no reason for conditional statements not to have their own acronym. “if you build it [then] they will come” made hugely popular with the movie “field of dreams”.

out the window was a snowstorm. it was february and it is wisconsin, so this is not a surprise. it is an IFTTT. but in these strange climate-changing times, the snow didn’t really stick around much. a couple days later we were out and about at the winter festival in cedarburg, traipsing around with the up-north gang. and the next day we hiked our favorite river trail. i might add – sans miracle mittens.

IFTTT should come with a caveat, some sort of warning. because there are times we may make the worst of assumptions about what is to come. we if-this-then-that ourselves into angst. we can – for sure – envision the difficult, the darkness. but, she reminded me, do we envision the blessings?

it didn’t all halt. on the contrary. instead, the snow fell and it was a magical day. by the time another day passed, most of it was gone. the temperatures were in the 40s and our day’s end on the deck around a couple firepits was dreamy.

out the window was a snowstorm. from inside, we watched it fall. we were warm and toasty. we were immersed in the work we must do right now – the IFTTT of job loss. and we were excited – with some trepidation about cancellations – for the next few days to follow.

kevin costner called and reminded us to stay focused on the hope, to stay the course, to dream of the field of possibilities, to go play after the snow falls.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

from the new website…if you build it, they will come.


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my tiny bonsai. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

if the price tag had not read $9.99, i would have purchased this tiny stake sign. but, at that very moment, despite the it-made-me-pick-it-up marketing, $9.99 seemed a tad bit high for a five inch tall sign. still, ridiculously cute.

our sunroom is filled with plants – everything from an exploding ponytail palm to stalwart tiny cactus twins “the dots”, to charlie, the heart-shaped leaf philodendron to snakeinthegrass sansevieria to kc, my difficult bonsai gardenia. kc is my problem plant-child. i mist kc, i use distilled water, i have fed it and keep the bottom tray filled with moisture, i turn it to face the sun. despite my attempts to have conversation, to really share life – for i talk to it every single day – kc is stubborn. next i will seek specific bonsai gardenia plant food – there are several options online. i’ll probably do some research to really determine the proper way to nurse this treasured plant back to good health. i’m not sure where i went wrong and it means so much to me that kc will be healthy and will grow – unfettered and with wild abandon. my relationship with this tiny plant has become a challenge.

you would think, had i purchased the tiny sign, that i would have placed it in one of the burgeoning clay planters. there’s a posse of plants responding to being nurtured. you would think that the e.s.p. of choice might be one that is flourishing.

but it’s not so. i, for sure, would have placed the stake into kc’s pot. for this plant – despite its complexity – is dear to me and is most definitely my emotional support plant. kc is a tiny slice of real life, a little unrooted, a little nutritionally off. when i got it, there were two buds on it. they never opened and, instead, fell to the dirt. my nurturing is not quite right yet. something is not quite right. feeling a little defeated, i keep trying to figure it out.

one of these days, i hope, i will walk into the sunroom and a tiny bud will have formed. and then – the day it begins to slowly blossom – i will know that i have done something right, something that touched it, something that let this little plant know its cherished place in my heart. its bloom will open and i will know that kc is ready and present – with me.

in the meanwhile, i will just keep on keeping on, trying to be steady and, just off to the sidelines, giving it unconditional love. i’m trying to be patient and let it do its own thing, while i quietly do everything in my heart to support it. i am rooting for this bonsai every day and i know that the bloom that will someday come will be inordinately beautiful, exquisite in every way.

*****

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


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tiny heart. big love. [two artists tuesday]

that babycat would be 14 today. it’s an unofficial birthday because he just showed up and no one was there to tell us all about his birth, about the litter of kittens he was from, about his momma or his papa. february 28 was the day chosen for him and we celebrated it – and him – each year.

it’s been almost two years since he became an angel-cat. and, in the way that our sweet pets profoundly impact us, we miss him every day. our babycat had a big presence in our home and lives. he still does.

i just read an article about love written by neuroscientist Stephanie Cacioppo in which she reminded the reader that it indeed is “better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all”. all love. including our amazing animals, i’d insist.

though his own life was not nearly as long as i wished it to be, babycat saved mine. his tiny heart in the universe changed me.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


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every sound wave. [merely-a-thought monday]

i touch a single key on the piano. depressing it, i reach for the next and then the next. i build a melody, i build the cello line for arvo, i build a blueprint upon which to put lyrics. i touch a single key on the piano. slowly depressing it, i make no sound. instead, it is silent – to our ears. yet i wonder if some tiny bit of frequency escapes and travels away, bouncing off particles in the air, absorbed into light. “the vibrations of the strings are transmitted to the soundboard through the bridges, and a sound resonates as a result of the soundboard vibrating the air.“ (yamaha)

“a sound wave is the pattern of disturbance caused by the movement of energy traveling through a medium (such as air, water or any other liquid or solid matter) as it propagates away from the source of the sound.”

it would seem apparent that we are all patterns of disturbance. every molecule, every atom within, constantly moving, disturbing all other matter.

in the way of the feathering of sound as it travels away, away, from the source, our impact upon another tends the same – energy as it gets further away and there is more surface area. a decrescendo of sorts, our notes turn pianissimo, our voices to whispers. though a quieter din, the nearly silent cacophony is out there, traveling in air. more than we realize. until it is not.

our notes and words and colors and textures dance around the others in our lives, sometimes landing, sometimes repelled by mysterious opposite magnetic forces. they are absorbed, turn into heat and may warm those upon whom they land.

the world will adjust, yes, to our patterns of disturbance. we are all pianos, concurrent notes, synchronous string vibrations, noise ever-traveling.

the universe glances down at us – from its ever-silent timelessness. space, sans air, doesn’t entertain sound. there are no pianos, no notes, no cellos, no voices that can be heard.

so, we must be who we are here – now – doing the best we can to avoid absolute discordance and strident disharmony, timbres of aggression, anger, division. instead, i would hope we would recognize the responsibility of every sound wave we make.

*****

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