Author: joshua chamberlain
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what to keep, what to leave out
I’ve been a Bon Iver fan for over ten years now. Justin Vernon’s work as a musician and artist is unparalleled, from the emotive experience of For Emma, Forever Ago to his collaborations with Kanye West and Taylor Swift. One of my favorite things I’ve seen Vernon do is perform…
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a pocket companion
When I was inEurope a few years back, I bought copy of Kerouac’s On The Road at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. I carried this book with me across France, through the Netherlands, and then into Italy. It stayed in my pocket on a flight across the Atlantic, back to…
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the gift of self
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made is doing my creative work for other people–trying to get produced, to impress, to prove something. Art shouldn’t be personal, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it for yourself. One of the secrets no one ever tells you: we don’t ever get…
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nothing personal
I’ve been writing a lot recently. It’s going better than usual and here’s why: I’m not being precious. I don’t throw a parade when I’m happy with the work and I don’t fall on my sword when I’m not. I show up each morning and tell a story–sometimes it’s good…
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the infinite playlist project
In my last semester of high school, I decided to make a mixtape commemorate each of the four previous years. The result was one of my favorite projects I’ve completed, a soundtrack to a few of the defining moments in my life. “The times you lived through, the people you…
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succeed on your own terms
Every so often, in a half-hearted attempt to engage in a conversation, my parents will ask me about “selling out”: “Did [insert name of a band here] sell out when they released this song or this album?” My definition of selling out had changed quite a bit over the years,…
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the shape of things
I spent a while at the art museum the other day, studying Saul Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati. While trying to recreate select bits and pieces in my notebook, I remembered a drawing teacher I met once who was fond of saying “Everything is made of simple shapes.” It’s easy to…
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drawing as seeing
I went to the museum yesterday. Instead of using my phone to photograph the things that struck me, I took out my notebook and tried to draw them. It allowed me to really focus on what I was seeing, to absorb every detail. Have an afternoon to kill? Go to…
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swimming upstream
I’m currently reading Alan Jacobs’ Breaking Bread with the Dead. It’s a tough read, but absolutely worthwhile. In one passage, he advocates for “reading upstream,” which is to say looking to those who influenced your influences: I took a couple of classes in medieval literature but I came to adore…
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water your vine
Like everyone else in America, I’m still swooning over Amanda Gorman’s performance of her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at the Presidential Inauguration this week. But a one line stood out to me above the rest: Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and…
joshua chamberlain 