FEEL Like your creative life is a bit of a fight?

You're not alone.

A Beautiful Anarchy is a heart-felt kick-in-the-pants podcast for everyday creators and anyone who's ever mud-wrestled with their muse. Hosted by photographer and author David duChemin, these 15-minute podcasts are an honest and sensitive exploration of the joys and struggles of the creative life.

Scroll down to listen to the 80 episodes. Since the end of the pandemic I’ve hit Pause on the podcast. I’m still trying to determine whether there’s more yet to say, but for now you’ve got 80 episodes to keep you inspired.

 Want to make 
something amazing? 
You’ve got to start ugly

The poet Goethe is credited as saying, “What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it, and the work will be completed!”

If only it were that easy.

In any creative effort, the beginning is the hard part, filled with fears and procrastinations, and­­—often most of all—the paralyzing desire to get it right on the first try (which almost never happens). Creativity is evolutionary; it begins with bad ideas and crappy first efforts and the moment we embrace this idea, not eschewing the ugly beginnings but mining them for possibilities, our everyday creativity flourishes.

Start Ugly is a celebration of the messy creative process and a call to face the obstacles of that process with mindfulness and humanity. This is a book for anyone who has ever wished they were “more creative.” It’s a plea to stop looking for the muses and inspiration before you do your best work. Equal parts needed encouragement to dream big and practical advice for getting your hands dirty, Start Ugly is a soulful, at times irreverent, reminder that creativity is more the stuff of hard work and courage than it is the stuff of magic. And if there is magic at all to be found, it’s in starting.

Love the podcast?
Get the book.

The creative life used to be the domain of the muses, those astonishing Greek Goddesses responsible for inspiration and creativity. If they showed up, our work in these areas would go well, ideas would flow, and creativity would abound. Lucky us. But what if they didn’t?

The Problem with Muses is that we could wait forever for them to appear (there were only nine of them!), and most of us have work to do. This is only one of the challenges facing anyone longing for a life of everyday creativity. Pulled together for the first time for those who prefer the written word, The Problem with Muses is a collection of 28 of the essays and stories that make David duChemin’s podcast, A Beautiful Anarchy, so relevant and inspiring.

Candid, wise, deeply human, and speaking from a lifetime (so far) of wrestling with the muses and a creative life that has taken him from professional comedian to humanitarian photographer to best-selling author and podcaster, duChemin speaks to the prevailing, and all-too-common challenges of the creative life, including doubts and fears, imposter’s syndrome, the pursuit of authenticity, the inevitability of distractions, the urge to compare ourselves with others, feelings of directionlessness, the desire for relevance, and more. If you struggle with the creative life as much as you love it, you are not alone. 

Uh, Why the Fish?

The latin name of the Siamese Fighting Fish is betta splendens, meaning "beautiful warrior." This podcast is not about fish, but making art is often a struggle, if not an outright battle, and though I didn't want to resort to tired images of cameras and paint brushes and the tools of art-making, I very much wanted something that represented both the struggle, as well as the joy and freedom—the beauty!—of the creative life. So fish it is. Here's to you, you beautiful warrior.