How the Fuck is it September?

Also: How astrology works and sundry Kulture Klatch stuff...

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So, astrologers complicate astrology by overlaying a lot of unnecessary theories and explanations atop it. There always seems to be a skittish movement away from stating simply what astrology is and how it ‘works.’ Why? Maybe it would seem too embarrassing to address the question without a lot of high-flown concepts.

When G.I. Gurdjieff’s student P.D. Ouspensky asked him why wars continually occurred on Earth, Gurdjieff said something like: “Some planets get too close to other planets, and then people on Earth go crazy.” I’m paraphrasing wildly.

Later, in one of his public talks, Gurdjieff shared more details:

“The earth is one of the small planets turning around the sun. The mass of the earth forms an almost negligible fraction compared with the whole mass of planets of the solar system, and the planets exert a very great influence on the life of the earth and on all existing and living organisms—a far greater influence than our science imagines. The life of individual men, of collective groups, of humanity, depends upon planetary influences in very many things. The planets also live, as we live upon the earth.” ¹

The Sun, Moon, and planets are ‘alive’; in ways we can’t quite imagine, they’re similar to people with distinct vibes and ‘personalities.’ Imagine an ant attempting to apprehend a human being. It’s something similar when contemplating the lights and the planets. It sounds nuts, but I’m telling you, after working with astrology for over five decades, you notice the richness of the subtleties of the art that go missing when you’re first getting your sea legs.

I prefer not to use terms like archetypes and synchronicity when writing or attempting to explain astrology to the curious. (There’s nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with those terms, but they can distance one from experiencing astrology directly.)

When you go outside on a clear evening and walk in the moonlight, you aren’t experiencing an ‘archetype’ of the Moon. Your body and being is in direct communion with the light of the Moon. There isn’t a Moon archetype involved. Of course, you can describe lunar qualities by referencing various archetypes and symbols constellated under the lunar rubric, but that’s a step or two away from getting a Moon tan.

The Moon and the planets are physical presences; they move around, and their motion impacts the biosphere on Earth, of which people are part and parcel. Astrology is an elevated, more complex form of meteorology with a psychological chaser. That’s my preferred way of ‘explaining’ the cocktail.

Kulture Klatch

WHAT I’M WATCHING THIS WEEK: Chimp Crazy on Max. My fucking god. This is a show about women who raise and sell (and are sometimes almost murdered by) chimpanzees. Imagine if John Waters decided to get into documentaries. What you’d get is Chimp Crazy. It is wildly entertaining and uber-disturbing simultaneously. Two prehensiles up!

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO THIS WEEK: I spun out on a Barry White bender last month; I think it’s because of a guy I follow on TikTok who is always promoting his and other musicians’ disco music. After Motown, my favorite soul and R&B music came from the Sound of Philadelphia label (which championed artists like the O’Jays, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, and Billy Paul) and elevated disco into something way more sophisticated and rich than the standard four-on-the-floor wed to syncopated bass lines. White also mined the TSOP sound—a luxurious, elegant, string-laden funk. Wild facts about Barry White: Just out of puberty, his voice morphed completely into the low resonant baritone he was famous for; in his bio, he noted: “I woke up one morning when I was 14. I spoke to my mother, and I scared both of us.” Also, he smoked approximately 150 cigarettes a day. He died of lung cancer. I’ve added some White to my continually mutating 2024 playlist on Spotify: Titanica. You can follow along here. Set playback to shuffle.

WHAT I’M READING: My three favorite art critics were Time magazine’s Robert Hughes, PBS’s Sister Wendy Beckett, and the New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl. All of these mavens are dead. But, finally, all of Schjeldahl’s post-cancer diagnosis reviews for the New Yorker are pulled together in his book The Art of Dying. Writings, 2019-2022. This collection is worth it if only for the opening essay, which Schjeldahl wrote shortly after receiving news that he had only six months to live (he went on to live several more years and wrote continually throughout). His reviews here feature a liminal perspective that seeped into his syntax—I guess you could say he lived so closely with death during his remaining years that the awareness of impermanence challenged the notion of how works of art remain—like a horoscope—frozen moments in time. He questions this. Another lifelong smoker, Schjeldahl, died of lung cancer (but didn’t regret smoking.) As a former smoker I understand this sentiment totally. There are days I would blood-sacrifice an infant for a cigarette. My favorite line from the book comes from the close of his final essay ruminating about his life's discursive arc (an affirmative, funny, and sad read): “Take death for a walk in your minds, folks. Either you’ll be glad you did, or keeling over suddenly, you won’t be out anything.”

MY SOJOURN INTO TIKTOK: As I wrote last month, I would start experimenting with posting on TikTok to see what it’s about. And, Jesus Christ, what a hybrid panoply of cultural strata. The best way to describe TikTok is to imagine everything unhinged you’ve ever feared about the internet and social media being condensed into a platform that mirrors back a shocking rewiring of the human nervous system. At first, I balked, but then I got into the kaleidoscopic groove. If you go into things judging too hard, it’s going to fuck up what you can learn about an experience. Of course, I was curious to see what ‘astrology TikTok’ was about; for the most part, it’s repellantly awful. A lot of weak gruel is being cooked up for people with attention spans of gnats. Astrologers without any official training are the majority. It’s all regurgitated Sun sign cliches. I took a break to deal with some dental issues, but I’ll return soon. It’s just too nuts to dismiss outright. I love its subversive edge, which provokes all these threats to shut it down (as if China hasn’t influenced Mark Zuckerberg’s decisions with Meta). Follow me here.

LAST WEEK’S WANING MOON IN THE MORNING:

Love,

Opening Painting: Flowers in Front of a Window, Henri Matisse c. 1922 Public Domain

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⭐️ My new book, I Love You Jeffrey Dahmer arrives in the summer 2024! ⭐️

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1. From Views for the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff