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Why do we often feel like we're living through something that's happened before? How can we deal with our fear of repeating the past? The answer can be found in understanding history's rhymes.

Not to throw shade on digital art forms, but we need to step back and think about why we as artists do what we do, and the importance of making a mess of it.

Vesperisms is back with Season 3! Here I explain my hiatus, what's ahead, and the need for artistic independence moving forward.

As part of this series on Censorship, here is an interview I did with musician, piano professor and all-around bright light Ora Itkin. We discuss The Little Prince, the primacy of story, and the importance of underground artists, especially for Ora as someone who left the former Soviet Union at its collapse. Follow her on her channel, Open Space with Ora: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCekFKRxbOLydvhVCiMvC9vQ

OMG, you guys, is cancel culture even real? Do some people deserve it? What about "accountability" and "consequences"? What even *is* censorship, exactly? Thus begins a new series on Vesperisms examining censorship from a few different angles.

Why do artists often feel like misfits, oddballs, wanderers? Could it be that we have forgotten that we belong in the borderlands, living a life filled with an inner flame, as poet Carl Sandburg said, that "the fireborn are at home in fire?"

Now that the data are in, and we know how to proceed, it's time to make a plan for re-emerging. It's time to plan how we will gather, and to start doing it, because the mental, emotional and social health of our world depends on the small acts of hospitality we engage in now.

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Vesperisms: The Art of Thinking for Yourself is the podcast to help you make sense of your place in this crazy world by reclaiming an artistic worldview. Everything around us is trying to push us into boxes, but that's not how artists' minds work. Let's get off that detour and back on the main road to thinking for ourselves: as artists.

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My newest book, A Cloud of Outrageous Blue, can be found at any bookseller—I recommend your local indie bookstore, who would love your support right now.

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Follow me on Instagram @vesperillustration, and support Vesperisms on Patreon!

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Music for Vesperisms is provided by Ben + Vesper.

Woman artists have specific considerations when it comes to whether or not to pursue motherhood, but we're rarely given a dispassionate look at the factors that go into this important, often emotional, decision.