Most Iconic Duo: Chase Melton and Tamar Sella
Chase D. Melton ’25 could describe Tamar Sella ’25 as the Chandler to his Joey, the Watson to his Sherlock, the Clyde to his Bonnie, Louise to Thelma, Patrick to Spongebob.
But usually he wouldn’t. After all, Tamar grew up without a TV and, faced with a pop culture reference, usually just nods along, feigning understanding.
“Chase will say some name and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, this just happened between some celebrities.’ And I'll just be like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ And then Chase will be like, ‘Do you… do you know what I’m saying? Do you actually know what that means?’ And then I admit that I don’t, because I often don’t,” Tamar says. So, Chase doesn’t.
This became clear from the day they met in first-year orientation in “one of those roaming packs of freshmen,” Tamar says.
The sky was blue and their Class of 2025 maroon T-shirts were freshly ironed. “Masks on, Covid test positive, hanging out, spreading disease,” Chase reminisces. “Tasty Basty, sweating, Waka Flocka Flame ‘No Hands’ playing, we lock eyes across the dance floor.”
“I was like, ‘have you read this book that I like?’ or ‘Have you seen this movie?’ and Tamar’s like, ‘I’ve never read books or seen movies,’” Chase jokes. “Tamar knew literally nothing about anything.”
They became fast friends. Soon, one could rarely catch them — or tell them — apart. “We got hella allegations of being siblings or twins,” Tamar says. Now, as roommates, they have one wardrobe and a shared sock collection. They are slowly incorporating shoes stolen from Chase’s step mom. “She’s a recovering sneakerhead,” Chase explains.
“At first, I just borrowed some of Chase’s boots, and now I’ve absorbed them completely,” Tamar says.
It all started with a party in Hurlbut at which the two arrived dressed in the exact same clothes: velvet pants, white tank top, dark hair slicked back dramatically. One of their friends had “a suitcase full of White Claws from somewhere,” Chase recalls, scrolling through his camera roll to find the memento. In the photo, they’re side by side, wearing identical outfits, striking identical poses, with identical smirks. At this rate, they might as well swap names and see if anyone notices.
Blurring together might just be a symptom of time and proximity. “We did choose to live together in the same literal hotel room for a whole year,” Chase says of the duo’s sophomore year overflow housing accommodations in the Adams House Inn.
Between joining each other’s family vacations and living together in Germany for a summer, they spent a year and a half together every single day, “only being apart for like two weeks, max,” Tamar qualifies.
The milestone involved each scoring an Artists Development Fellowship from Harvard’s Office for the Arts in their twin applications.
“For some reason, the OFA gave the grant to us, even though it was pretty obvious that we were just trying to hang out,” Tamar says. “We each got $7,000. Well, I got seven and Chase got 6.5,” Tamar corrects themself with a wink.
Abroad, they ate simple breakfasts of apples, cheese, and sausage, and prepared elaborate dinners.
“We didn’t know anyone in Berlin, and we wouldn’t really go out on the weekdays that often, so sometimes we would just get a bag of Haribo gummies and beers and sit in Tamar’s bed to watch the Queer Ultimatum,” Chase says. “Berlin’s a great city for that.”
“We would decide we’re hungry at five, go grocery shopping and start at seven, do something really elaborate that’s not ready until 10, and by the end, we’d all be crazy,” Tamar says.
“We really didn’t break any rules. We worked on our projects,” Tamar adds sheepishly.
“Not even air quotes,” Chase clarifies. “Tamar made an awesome painting of a lounge chair that was on the balcony of our apartment, and it was really beautiful.”
Tamar studies Art, Film, and Visual Studies, and Chase studies English.
“Both of the things that we do are kind of lonely, isolated processes. It’s not so often that you get to really delve deep and ask intimate details about someone’s art, because it’s such a personal thing,” Chase says.
In their senior year, Chase and Tamar are taking a class about friendship. It has brought no revelations — in the back row of the lecture hall, Tamar’s cursor is busy flitting around an important-looking spreadsheet, while Chase scribbles in the margins of a book.
Instead, the revelation came in a giant field in Germany, which had been an airport in the Third Reich. “I think we had a spiritual moment there. It was so windy and miles and miles of concrete and grass,” Chase remembers. “That’s one of my biggest visual memories from Berlin.”
But he’s a bit unsure. “Sometimes we remember each other’s memories,” Tamar says.
Tamar takes out a notepad and draws an arc. They say the axes are “self-portraiture” vertically and “level of knowing the person” horizontally.
They both take a stab at explaining it.
“When you don’t know someone that well, you’re not that good at drawing them because you don’t know anything about them. You haven’t studied their face for very long. But then, when you know them way too well, you’re also not good at drawing them because you’ve melded identities, and you’re not sure where they start and you begin. But there’s a perfect sweet spot in which you are able to draw someone, or render them visually,” Chase explains.
“If you don’t know them at all, you’re just projecting based on yourself. Then when you know them a medium amount, you’re really earnest about trying to convey them. But then when you know each other so well, you’ve just overlapped as humans. So depicting someone that you know so well is a reflection of yourself,” Tamar says.
“I’m glad that we remembered this, because who knows whose memory remembered it,” Chase says.
“We were probably here when I painted a portrait of Chase sophomore year, but I’d say we’re much closer to here now,” Tamar says, moving their finger from the valley of the curve up the slope.
They’ve been moving toward the end of “the portraiture parabola” since freshman year, Chase confirms.
But perhaps they’re not at the end yet. Perhaps the parabola will continue up, up, up, forever, until they become one entity — Chamar, if you will.
— Associate Magazine Editor Dina R. Zeldin can be reached at dina.zeldin@thecrimson.com.