Taurus 11° (May 1) May Day

As may come as no surprise I have a lot on my plate again today. But, given the amount of headway I’ve made this past week already, I should be in fairly good shape if I just stay focused. The morning starts with putting the festival website into enough order such that sponsors can go there and start to give some moolah. I will then run to Provincetown to do some quick banking. Then I pack for an hour and write through a few of my Haute Astrology 2020 chapter openers, adding some more flavor with each go-round. Then I will send those Pleas to would-be sponsors. Meanwhile I’m going to continue to write blurbs for my NEFA final report. I have to double duty so I’m going to write them directly into the Blague (as I did yesterday). Think of it as a voyeuristic way of knowing what I’ve been up to with a certain project. I need some new board members. I’m thinking Terry Kates. Anyway here are some thoughts for my grant writing

Yes there is. Unfortunately it seems (at this juncture) that it will not include any of the NEFA participants from the Idea Swap or those that appear on the organizations roster. It is an investment we realize for venues and we have been informed by NEFA directors that we didn’t get the full budget we requested because the application didn’t make the grantors swoon; likewise, we assume, that we didn’t exactly wow the venues particiapting in the Idea Swap either. (We will consider this in our next choice for projects for which we might apply for NEFA planning grant.) It is possible that Gravitational Fool is too niche for many presenters (perhaps even too LGBTQ?)—we will never know the reason why NEFA participants were retiscent to work with us or even further discuss the possibility of collaboration. So we will mainly be going off the NEFA grid to find venues throughout New England to tour the piece, mainly targeting those that have a strong LGBTQ community. In the process, we would like to take the opportunity to tell venues who don’t participate in the NEFA organziation and specifically the dual Planning/Tour grants that they should reach out to NEFA and get involved with the organization as it bridges to artists and supports them in their developmental process. We will likely present at Mass MoCA and the MFA, for starters, in the coming months. I’d like to do major community outreach in both instances to LGBTQ groups (Fenway being an obvious choice for MFA) and try to get some major press featured on the piece to add to our promotional packages in the securing of additional venues. And to bridge into New York state, for starters, as the Berkshires and Hudson Valley share much in their experience, and I’ve already had chats with directors at Bard College on that score. I also want to target more urban environment in New England like Lowell, Laurence MA; Providence, New Haven, and other New England centers of higher population.

There seemed for us to be a disconnect between the artist and the work on one side of the equation and the venues that participate in the Idea Swap. Surely that isn’t everyone’s experience, but it was ours. Perhaps NEFA could take a more hands-on approach to matching works they’ve awarded Planning grants and venues where they (NEFA) feel the piece might find success. Perhaps this process already exists but we didn’t have a strong sense of that. Also, next time around we would solicit more advice on how to get a larger grant amount awarded us. Unfortunately, the fact we weren’t fully educated on the requirements of getting the next grant was “our bad”. The directorship (specifially Adrienne Petrillo) was incredibly helpful in the process and I can’t imagine improving on their/her guidance and professionalism which was superb. For a non-brick-and-mortar non-profit like ours, NEFA might want to institute a “buddy system” of sorts that might connect folks like us with lots of energy and no real estate with venues that have the space but no creative/administrative bandwidth, so to create a symbiotic relationship that could spell success for artists and their works in the setting up of a tour. I think more communication and solidarity between venues, too, so that a more “circuit” feel might be established would also be beneficial to everyone involved.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 10° (April 30)

And so the last day of the fourth month of the year now ends. Maybe Marthe Svenjördt should be Marthe Svenjørd instead. Was thinking of making it Trip’s drag name. I have lots of thoughts and feels circling my head and viscera. Speaking of Trip I accidentally friended Rufus as Trip yesterday and then had to write him to say “no!” friend me as Quinn. I realize I have some re-writing to do of headlines and want to transcend all the nastiness of the past. Changing the world one creep at a time. I’m going to just make myself visible and available. I’m just going to act as if there are no problems. I’ve called out those I need to call out and I have nothing left to say. What I need do is count my allies and turn as many of the world’s so called enemies into friends. I just don’t want any more agita from any corner at this point. There is so much fun and beauty to be had. So it’s happening a little later in life. I’ll just have to live longer. And to do so means changing some ways and means. Poor John Singleton. High blood pressure is a killer and I for one am keeping a more keen eye on it as I get older. There is no reason to be stressed. It is all an illusion. What needs to happen is the getting out of the way of natural health. We have such an opportunity to get a great many ideas into works now and so it’s time for a major Prince Hal moment. Today is the last day of April so I can hopefully switch gears without grinding them too too hard. I’m actually grateful for a cloudy day. It is rather gloomy though and still so very cold, which I guess isn’t weird considering where I live. I don’t have a client until 2PM and I want that to constitute the end of the day for the most part. We have a tithing we are doing too.

Anyway on the docket today is creating a to-do list for finishing out the NEFA grant for the year. Here are some notes:

The planning process mainly fell to Brian King (and Nathan Cohen) and Quinn Cox, the director of 333 Inc/Afterglow Festival/Glow Festival (and 33 board of directors who helped with various functions, from participating in meetings with venues and artists, accounting and other tasks and functions). It was the artist, Brian King, who approached us to apply for the grant. Originally there was a consult on board to handle much of the work at the outset. However this individual dropped out before the grant was even awarded. The artist didn’t have a full understanding of the function of the grant—specifically, that most organizations in our position  as grantees are brick and mortar, while we are not, and therefore needed a hosting partner for the actual tour; nor that actual NEFA tours were partnerships with a minimum 3 partners all of whom would be spending money to be receive a NEFA tour grant. That said, we participated in the Idea Swap and followed up not only with organziations that expressed interest but we also outreached to every single venue participant in the data base. Sadly, of all the venues we reached out to and followed up with, only one returned our correspondence. We had meanwhile expanded our outreach to non-NEFA participants like Mass MoCA and other prominent arts centers, museums, theater companies, universities, etc. including the Museum School/ MFA, Portland Stage, Trinity Repertory, Provincetown Theater Company, Yale Repertory and the Vermont Artists Exchange, Bennington College, Endicott College, creating an expansive data base of venues of our own, a number of which we visited and dropped information in person. We produced a showcase at Endicott Collegein the autumn and invited every venue in the data base, including all venues on the Idea Swap list. We currently have interest from Nancy Bauer at the Museum School, Sue Killiam at Mass MoCA, having had comprehensive meetings/talks with both, and more albeit vague interest from other venues. The subject matter of Gravitational Fool is such that it appeals most to venues that have a solid LGBTQ audience and community for conducting ancillary workshiops and educational programs to go with the piece. With the Endicott showcase, the artists also conducted daytime workshops and programs for students, as we wanted to exercise this component and hone some ideas on that score for tour purposes.

As mentioned previously, the artist (Brian King) who approached us to apply for the Tour Planning grant was unaware that the subsequent NEFA Touring grant required partnerships between (333 Inc.) as the primary presenter and at least three (to seven) partnering venues, each of which would have to budget for and invest in the piece and then be supported by NEFA touring grant. We (specifically Artistic Direct Quinn Cox) was made aware of this in his process working with Adrienne Petrillo at NEFA; so our planning approach changed tack a few times. First we cast a wide net of our own, working under the assumption that if we had three commitments minimum we could apply for the next grant in the next cycle. Once it was made clear that we had to be a presenter, and not having brick and mortar, and that we needed three partners minimum to apply for their own grants to support the piece, we sought to partner with a hosting venue (Museum School, Provincetown Theater, Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theater) and to secure three partners as directed by the NEFA requirements for the following grant. We expected some interest from the Idea Swap but received none. And we were rather shocked by the fact that all but one of the venues we reached out to had the courtesy to even acknowledge our emails or return our phone calls. Pretty shocking actually. We were thrilled to secure a showcase with Endicott and to have the opportunity to promote to press, venues, regional audience and so forth. Having previously produced the piece in two different settings (night club in Provincetown and black box at A.R.T), we were able to adapt the piece for a tradition proceneum theater which we felt would make the piece more portable and accessible to traditional venues of the sort. And, again, we go to exercise our muscles with student programs, workshops and talks about the piece and what goes into making a work like this. So, planning wise, we actually managed to do more than expected and the title, artists and timeline remained the same. We stuck to our projected budget, making adjustments between what we requested and what we received, and feel we made great inroads in the development of the work and the various ways that it can be presented. It is a wonderful piece and is always enthusiastically received by audiences, students and communites.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 9° (April 29)

It’s about 3PM in the afternoon and I hope to get enough of an interesting Blague hammered, here, with some speed and accuracy as I have myriad to-dos on my list today. What I’m most interested in doing is communicating to myself what marks I must hit on a daily basis, from May to September, as this is the time of year where I add a huge chunk (producing my non-profit theater and performance festival) to my quotidien grind, which by rights, should be anything but. I must admit I don’t feel particularly unshaky as my inner ears continue to have a mind and life of their own. But it does come down to more than that. There is a certain level of sobriety that I feel needs to be achieved; not in the traditional sense (although certain abstainance is always a good idea at intervals during the year) but moreso in light of my interpersonal relationships. I’ve pretty much spoken up where and when it has been necessary; and I’ve surely given both B. and D. (oh, and Sven, too) a snootful to suck on (and up); but beyond that I really don’t feel as if I am at war with anyone, or need be. I mean I never want to be at war with anyone, but that has not been my fate overall. When you are working in any kind of public arena you will brush, bounce, bump up against others who will (try to) use or exploit you in some way. I have had artists come to festival for instance and purposefully tell their friends and other would-be audience to stay away because they are “working in progress” and otherwise collecting the same stipend I fundraise for them, disallowing us from recuperating any monies that we do put out. I find that sort of thing reprehensible. Just as I find people at other venues poaching artists to be a sleaze move.

And then 3pm becomes 4:30 and you find you strayed away to make beds and vacuum the whole house and get the chicken stock going and shoveled the ashes out of the fireplace and flossed your teeth and put a sweater you need for New York into a delicate cycle and called Barneys New York in Boston to see if they can recommend a place to mend cashmere. And in that time you’ve also tried to further hammer some performing artists into slots for the coming festival and series seasons. A kingsized mattress was delivered. Did you know they come in boxes now? And so I’m having someone come and take the exiting one away. Also I think I found a service in New York City where I can ship my moth eaten cashmere to be fixed and they will ship it back. Something called AlterKnit. I have to ready the festival website for givers. I need to work through a casting list and get these shows booked. May is going to be a combination of reading through old Blague entries, writing a new one, working on rejigging the proposal, getting brain around sample material and format for all of the signs. Only on weekends and in the evenings can I work on the festival I think. There are only so many hours in a day. By June the rejigging and the sample content should be complete. And there should be notes on what might make a good show. And then June will be piecing that show together into some kind of script for myself and then I have all of July and August and a third of September to get the rest into works. I should be able to finish the HA books completely in July as my daily work on the boat which could be a lot of fun. August will be all about rehearsing and hopefully getting some musical accompaniment going. Maybe I can have Drew or someone come up and visit. But probably better to get a player here that can handle it or see if Matt would like to do it. The point is that we have a number of possibilities for pulling this all off.

I won’t even be thinking about the new circuit, either, until May or June. And that can be in the course of any given day. I will reach out to Becca at Endicott and see if she would like a repeat performance by one of our artists. I need to also put a letter out to the artists to tell them what I’m on about. September would be a great time to start talking to the corporate folks about fundraising for my “circuit.” I need to build allies systematically. And it’s all about units of time. One of the secrets of success. The difference between multitasking and seamlessly juggling is a very fine line that much is certain. Anyway thanks for letting me vent the disparate thoughts in my head today. (And spewing some resentments I’ve felt over the last couple of days) It’s been most helpful, dear reader, and I promise I’ll get back to more cosmic things soon. But some days I need to just be a human being.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 8° (April 28)

I’m feeling my inner Penny Arcade today which means I’m a bit sickened by sycophancy and the loss of true artistry to the cult of worship and venal reward. Continuing the good fight to help truly progressive, emerging and veteran performing artists find more and more audience in a sea of gentrification. Translation: Time to crank up the fudraising machinery for our non-profit festival, series, and overall presentation work. To that end I will be working on this as a starter, editing it, massaging it into place. Something like:

Happy Spring 2019! I hope this finds you well and thriving. As the daffodilsclose out their seasonal performance here on Cape Cod, I too am in a spirit of renewal and thus reaching out to you and other hopefully returning Sponsors of the Afterglow Festival. This will be our ninth year; and there  has always been something magical about that number for me. So much so that, back in 2010 when I started this endeavor, I named the parent non-profit company of theAfterglow Festival, 333 Inc., nine being the number of the muses. And in our first year (though we comped many sponsors, colleagues, students and seniors) we ended up selling exactly 333 full price tickets! This was more than a fun fact for me—it still feels like something of a sign. And here we are, nine years later, hoping to continue to make some real magic.

In the ensuing years, the Afterglow Festival has preserved Provincetown’s birthright as the birth place of modern American theater and performance. The festival has premiered and developed scores of solo plays and pieces that have moved off-Broadway and to famed stages around the world—musical, comedy, dance, opera, hip-hop, cabaret and uncategorical genres—by artists who make headlines for their art and social narratives.

We have presented over seventy artists since 2011, many of whom have gone on to stellar career success on the stage, in film and on television. It was at Afterglow that much of our resident and visiting audiences first heard of artists like Bridget Everett, Cole Escola, Our Lady J, if not members of our own advisory board like Taylor Mac, Penny Arcade, Justin Vivian Bond, John Cameron Mitchell and other now more renowned performers. Afterglow has created a home in Provincetown for these vital artists who feel a spiritual bond to the town, to its theatrical heritage, and to our local audiences who embrace them.

Over the years, Provincetown has increasingly attracted big-name acts in season that garner desired revenue for the town’s for-profit venues. Then, suddenly late summer, the Afterglow Festival takes stage. And for the past eight years, Afterglow has won audience trust for its curation of superb live programming by performing artists they’ve probably never heard of, as evidenced by the steady growth in the festival’s annual attendance. Likewise, over the years, the costs of producing a festival like ours (including venue rental, travel and lodging for artists) have also increased, but with your help we may continue to bring tomorrow’s headline performers to Provincetown every September.

Afterglow is supported by Joe’s Pub @ the Public in NYC, where we have presented, for the benefit of our non-profit, group performances by the Afterglow “family” of artists. And in collaboration with the American Repertory Theater, whose directorship was impressed with our reputation and achievement, we launched our Afterglow@Oberon (formerly Glowberon) series, now entering its fifth year, bringing our artists to Boston-Cambridge audiences as well. The series has contributed to Afterglow’s overall outreach and praise by the media, from the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, PBS-WGBH and others.

Under a new 333auspice—Glow, “A Moveable Festival”—funded through separate grants and support, we began creating ancillary performances and small tours throughout New England for our arists who aim to entertain audiences with their works and seek to expand and evolve social consciousness more ubiquitously with their message. All of our artists, as it turns out, are activists of sorts who proliferate positive change in our communities, from local enclaves like Provincetown, to the global one at large.

As we champion the Afterglow performers whose careers have begun to soar since first appearing with us in festival, we continue to introduce and incubate new crops of gifted artists, giving them the opportunity to create, present, premier and develop new theater and performance works here in Provincetown; making for them an artistic home; and providing them sacred stage space to experiment, express and explore their art and craft.

I sincerely hope that you will return this year as a valued sponsor of Afterglow; and that we might welcome you to our shows, introduce you to our artists, and otherwise share in the joy that your valued patronage provides for our hardworking, devoted and talented performers, be they emerging or established, whom we are humbly privileged to present in festival. Afterglow 2019 takes stage September 10-14 at the Art House Provincetown, with special opening night festivities, on September 9, for artists and sponsors alike.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 7° (April 27)

The summer plans are starting to firm up. And we found out we’ll be traveling mid to late July for our overseas jaunt. Looks like we will be sailing from Sicily which is kind of amazing. It won’t be the usual crew this summer which is a bummer but one should always remain open to new experiences and people and at least we will know a few of the folks. It is pretty great to have these milestones because you can see how much things have changed. For years it felt like not much ever did, but as we move forward, I see an acceleration in my accomplishments. In the meantime I have some major axes to grind. Here is a missive I just sent off.

As you can see from some correspondence below, the Afterglow Festival had several talks over the years about creating a Playwright’s Residency at the FAWC and to fundraise $30K to that end as directed by M. Actually the conversation dated back to a meeting I had with MM before M even took over. I met with M twice in person and he had suggested we raise this $30K and then, when I began to follow up, he changed the story on me (it was in fact like he forgot our whole conversations or at least that was his stance to avoid, I guess, following through on what was a solid plan.

Since D has taken over the Provincetown Theater, he has created a solo-play festival (which is the main thrust of our Afterglow Festival) and has even booked upwards of four artists (some performing the same works we premier) in effect poaching these artists from Afterglow which is a thing one learns to avoid in Tiny Town. Now I see that he is creating a Playwrights Residency with you along the very same lines as what Afterglow and FAWC discussed doing over the last five years. Our Playwrights Initiative already had bothDW and TK on board as advisors to the would be programming (and residency) we sought to collaborate with the FAWC on.

When I tried to get back on track with M and get an understanding of how it is our plans could be “forgotten” or go by the wayside, he became very defensive, and (the symptom becoming the cause) seemed to blame me for my reaction to his sudden reversal of our plans. Anyway, I wanted to go on record with these emails. And you can check any past log books to see the actual four times I visited the FAWC to discuss this. Once with MM, once with S.V., and twice with M, who finally green-lighted the endeavor and then conveniently back-tracked.

I know there is nothing you can do about it. And that you will continue to do this thing I proposed to FAWC, now, with the Provincetown Theater. But I thought you should know of all the hard work and planning I had already put into this and the Pulitzer Prize winning professionals I already on board as the Advisory Board of this Playwright’s Initiative. I will add that over the years I have cast D as a reader in Afterglow shows and even allowed him to direct a solo play that we premiered. I have involved him in what were our Theater Forums (which did in fact result in the positive overturn of the PTC Board and ultimately led to his being appointed Artistic Director. D has been well aware of our programming as well as our future plans. He surely knows our roster of artists. And mention of our plans for a Playwrights Initiative with the FAWC was announced in past outreach to our own board and sponsors, which is something I ran by Michael Roberts in 2015. It was ONLY when I ASKED Robert by email (again see below) if I could specifically say to possible donors that we were raising a separate $30K for this residency he said we should model on the Ohio group that he seemed to forget the entire two in-person conversations and back-tracked, proposing a watered down September event (which was impossible since it was the EXACT same time as our annual Afterglow Festival which happens each September.

You will hear years-old frustration in my note here today. And I must say that seeing a notice of your collaboration with D and Provincetown Theater has certainly stirred my passion. Because I have passion about this and I’ve worked hard on this idea over the years and engaged top people to help me and, as you know in non-profit world, so much of ones free time and energy goes into upwards of eighty hours a week at certain points in the year just to pull of the miracles we do with fundraising and programming and all the rest of it. As we have no brick and mortar, I was so happy that the FAWC had been interested in working together. And it was one thing to have those promises dashed by Michael four years ago, it’s quite another to see my idea now emerge between you and another entity.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 6° (April 26)

So Brian is apparently going to visit. This should be interesting. I don’t recall having a conversation about this but he must have reached out and arranged it and so it should be fun. I know a number of people named Brian. It isn’t a Gertrude Stein name, still it is better than Bruce. I will use that time to isolate some things that require going over. And I will certainly start to work the circuit as I imagine it. Today is something of a transition day. We had a lovely long walk and stopped for some oysters (for me) and some cava (for me) and a refreshing mocktail for S. at Mac’s Shack. This is the first time ever in all the years here that we have done this sort of thing. I’ve started to put in the screen windows and the cherry blossoms have begun to appear. I don’t want to miss a moment of Spring this year. I have a heavy to do list but I know that if I pace myself and prioritze exercise everything can and will happen in a calm collagist way. I need to get some foreign information to our agent this week, and so I just did. Also made a bunch of doctor’s appointments which I’m always a little bit reticent to do, being the hypochondriacal fellow that I am. We await word about depositions on the twenty-fifteen accident as well. And I’m feeling a need to get back to physical therapy on that score too. And I should get the sponsor thing going starting with the boats. I’ll write something like the following:

Hard to believe it is that time again! We had a successful year with all our non-profit work and again we are so grateful for the support of Bay State Cruise Company as our official transportation sponsor helping us bring artists, directors and designers and sponsors to Provincetown during festival week (as we aim to fill your boats with audience members coming from Boston) and for helping us to liaise with our performance partners, notably, at the ART in Cambridge (to which many of our Provincetown audience also travel, the other way, on recommendation of your boats! I did already reach out to the hotel so I will give that another few days before I circle back.I always say I’m going to target the realtors but they are such a dire bunch; still I should give it an old-school try this year. And also to reach out to management of Harbor Hotel and other establishments where a room might be provided.

The subject is logos. We decided to go for flesh and nude tones this year although it is looking kind of melon-y. But, I’m told, that is like the Pantone color of the year or something so I guess I’m being either chic or too on the nose. I dunno. But that’s what I decided to do. I did ask JCM if he would participate this year but he’ll be in Portland shooting. And I have a note out to JVB to perform but I haven’t heard back yet. I will also ask Taylor. My hope is that one of the original triumverate will come through for me. Otherwise I’m perfectly happy having all unknowns and raising that much more money. I am feeling optimistic overall. I’ve proud of all that I have accomplished so far this year and am very grateful for my collaborations, chief among them being with the lady a couple rooms away. It is going to be a fun and creative Spring (knock wood) we are one month down and two to go and this really should be the most restorative time of year, if one lets it be. I for one would like to travel a bit lighter, in every sense of the word, and I’m determined to get myself sorted on that score. I do need to go through my finances—I’ll need a full day in my schedule for that—just as I have other projects to slate in: the finalization of the NEFA grant, the writing of a new fundraising plea, which is one and the same as writing up all the boons and benefits and inroads that we have been making.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 5° (April 25)

I have drafted most of next year’s Haute Astrology books. To be honest, I could put the entire enterprise into works within a fortnight come September. And that’s pretty much what it is I intend to do. Next on my plate this week is to tackle outstanding grant things. To get all foreign rights information to my agent for review. And then begin to reshuffle the new book proposal based on notes I have for doing just that. I have only one client this week, someone whom I feel I haven’t spoken to in so long, actually. Such that I’m really eager to reconnect. As I am to all the people. I will be putting things out. This is the time of year where I can start to be social and that feels really good. Just wearing t-shirts and jeans and a simple jacket. Yum. Everything I bring to NYC is going to be lightweight and roll. I bought the smaller size Away suitcase (in green) to match my bigger one; and now, because I’m determined to use it, I have to trick myself into wearing nothing but the same thing for days on end. Which, let’s face it, is what I end up doing in any case.

It’s fine to call myself an actor but it has been so many years since I’ve actually acted in a straight play and I’m a bit nervous about putting myself back out there. It will be fun to get together with the theater folk again, not just in NYC, but Boston too. And to see what might be affected by some determined action and attitude. I talk about feeling behind in my schedule but, truly, I don’t know anybody who is more hardworking and directive than I am. I hope that doesn’t sound boastful. But really I mean it. Truthfully, truthfully. We are on the brink of making a necessary city move but I’m not exactly sure where it needs to be exactly. Anyway I need to rethink some Pisces thoughts

Pisces is the final sign of the zodiac and, as its opposite facing Fish suggest, it is a sign of complete paradox. It is all and nothingness, the alpha omega, the womb tomb of existence. Pisces is the mutable-water sign, symbolized by mists, fog, foam, (French: écumefrom whence derives scum) and, thus, both potent life-giving primordial ooze and the miasma of dead and rotting matter. The twelfth astrological house has been called the dust bin of the Zodiac; but, we would add, with a focused imperative on recycling, as befits list last turn of the wheel that Pisces portrays. When Pisces George Harrison wrote and sang that life goes on within you and without you, he was expressing from an archetypally connected place. This misty mystical, mutable-water sign portrays non-material existence, something which we scientfically now know is the whole of all existence, so-called matter only truly being various densities of said energy. Ruled by planet Neptune, named for the god of the sea, portrays the cosmic energy of dissolution. In Pisces we are dissolving, seeing and venturing beyond the seven-hued veils of Salome, over Iris’ rainbow—both, among the archetypes of the previous sign of Aquarius—having now entered into a magical place, a lucid dream world, a blissed-out state of Nirvana, or some other such transcendent realm. Neptune and Pisces at once represent the estate of purest imgaination, and also delusion and hallucination. Lest we forget that magic and imagination share the same etymology as imagery, any sort of which is ruled by the twelfth astrological house, that of asylum or theasylum depending how you look at it.

In our book Sextrology, Pisces woman and man are called The Dreamand The Drifter, respectively, and, of all the individuals on the astrological block, they are best at giving in or over to life on life’s terms, dissolving into the here and now of their circumstance, if only sometimes treading water, seeking foremost to avoid struggle (all of which requires a great sacrificing of ego). At the same time, paradoxically, the are most able of people to sustain a belief in certain transcendence, whatever their particular brand of sublimity might be. No wonder the sign’s motto is I Believewhich is more than just a spriritual knowingness, it is a power, Pisces’s super power, that works it’s magic on reality, making it malleable. This is the true meaning of the mutable-water assignation, and of Neptune’s dissolving force: If all we perceive isn’t truly fixed, but fields of energy blending, one into another, than the so-called substance of being is determined by the energy we are, and that which we are putting out there via our belief. If we dissolve the impediments to them—circumstance and limiting thoughts—and we remove the notion of space and time (trusting in inevitability of the manifestion of our belief) that which we belief in, primarily our self, is already coming into being. We all have this power. For Pisces people it just happens to be frontloaded. They more readily give over to the plot of life as it is already happening, like a lucid dreamer must do if s/he would have the dream continue (any lucid dreamer will tell you that if you try to impose your will on the dream it will dissolve before your mind’s eye).

Pisces are the most accepting of what is and thus able to make the greatest changes toward what could be. Acceptance is the threshold to Love. Not the personal or romantic sort, but the truest, purest spiritual form of Love as the animating force in the Universe. The great primordial goddess of the sea, from which she emerged, is Aphrodite (Roman: Venus), later demoted to a lower-case love-and-beauty goddess when she enterered the patriarchal pantheon that struggled to place her. We also see her, in emanation, as the wife of Neptune, Amphitrite, his famed trident originally being her symbol as the triple goddess, as is the shamrock, the lily (Aphrodite’s sacred flower), the fleur de lis. Another name for Aphrodite is called Mari (the sea) and she is thus cognate to Mary, Stella Maris, the star of the sea. Both Aphrodite and Mary have sons, Eros and Jesus, who are embodiments with Love. Eros, which means love, like Jesus, is the eternal babe, yet he is also the oldest, most primordial of the creation gods, just as Jesus is one and the same with the father-creator. Aphrodite and Eros took fish form and we know all about the Jesus fish from certain people’s automobile decoration. All this to say that the philosophical concept of Pisces is thus: That if you were to remove all physical manifestation from the world (which isn’t physical but energetic or spiritual anyway) what is behind it all, the very backdrop of existence, is, essentially Love. And someone once supposedly said something like: blessed are those who believe without seeing.

Pisces rules feet which, metaphorically, speaks to Pisces people being parapetitic. Of all the signs, Pisces are the least moored to their origins, both in terms of their actual home and family rearing, but also in the assignations that go along with it. From birth, nearly, Pisces people move in a desired direction of character and bearing, most often fancying themself to be erudite, if not encyclopedic in their knowledge, with a certain lockjaw upper crustiness. They are indeed fancy. And we don’t use the word lightly. For Pisces people it is an actionable verb whereby they art-direct their own personality and, really, they’re very being. They always embody a departure from their roots and they will stay in motion (unless, paradoxically, they isolate and roam around an inner world of their own making instead). It is the belief that they can be anything they want to be and, to look at the feet, again: before we can walk on water we best believe that we can. Science ultimately proves many a belief. Like: all isenergy; and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So the primordial soup, expressed by Pisces, is all that is and will ever be. Pisces people seem to personify this notion. They are not attached, as a rule, to people places and things; on the other side of the paradox, they are the most empathetic of beings. In Sextrology we joke that Pisces woman, in particular, rely on the kindness of strangers, being embodiment of the Blanche du Bois archetype (she wears della robbia blue which is the color of Mary’s robe); but Pisces people, regardless of gender, are at home with people, strangers, even as they travel the world. They tend to treat everyone equally, which might seem strange to their significant others or even their children. It’s as if they understand the impermanance of existence better than the rest of us.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 4° (April 24)

We tackled the budget today which was great. What a fruitful meeting numbers might provide. It’s so unvague to balance and divvy and project, when, even in numbers later changes entail entering new digits and that’s it. The creative meetings are far more challenging though ulitmately more fun. We have a Skype with our friend Pete today to which I really look forward. The trick as ever is to get ahead of that thing we call the eight ball. I don’t need maybes I need yesses. I mustn’t tolerate certain people because they are part of the so-called community. If I rub people the wrong way that’s always code for me calling others out on their bullshit. Those who seem more tolerant are typically more fawning and looking for some kind of pay-off, making compromises so to get what they are gunning for. I’m not that person. I must go higher and lower. I think I mean that. I must go deeper not lower! That’s the difference. When I say deeper I mean into my own creative performance career. It is the thing that I am most uniquely engineered to do (but for reasons I haven’t given full focus) while I let go lightly of people, places and things. I plan this summer to know a great many of them, new folks that is. I also need to get some new people on my board of directors. Anyway let’s talk about some Aquarius bric-a-brac.

Following Capricorn, cardinal-earth, which correlates, among other things, with the old-guard and the edification of tradition, comes the eleventh sign of Aquarius breaking through all that with avant-garde aplomb. The energy is both revolutionary and evolutionary. The sign’s ruler Uranus is the awakener, sudden and sweeping. Named for the god of the universe it points that which is ahead of its time—the eleventh astrological house rules the future—and and all that is new to explore, and what uncharted territory, metaphysical or otherwise, one can boldly get into. That Aquarius people are known to be quirky or freaky is more than pop-astrology, it speaks to the mutant energy of the sign. Aquarius is the future in the present, the sudden and sweeping mutation, the oddity, by which, nevertheless, the future unfolds and, literally, all species evolve. Darwinism is thus encoded into the ancient Zodiac—those crazy Mesopotamians! The male and female Aquarian chapters in our book Sextrology are called The Visitor and The Vision, respectively. The former refers to the alien quality of the men of the sign, in particular, as if they are visitors from outer time-space; while the latter speaks to the revelatory energy of the sign, something which women of the sign, especially, embody.

Even the fact that Uranus is named for the Greek god of the Universe, while all the other planets bear the Roman verions of their mythic namesakes, suggest something of a departure from the norm that characterizes the sign of Aquarius. Uranus, meaning sky or heaven, has many a debatable and probably composite etymology. We derive the modern word urine from the name, and most root words have watery origins and associations, like “to moisten”—it is said that Aphrodite emerged from the sea fertilized by Uranus’ castrated bits (Saturn struck him down just as he was later struck down by his own usurping son, replacing him as chief god). Uranus is associated specifically with dew, which parallels Aquarius woman’s association with the goddess of the dawn. Ruled by this starry god the universe, and placed opposite Leo (ruled by the Sun) on the astrological wheel, Aquarius is associated with distant suns, a single star, if not the infinitely sparkled heavens filled. In the Tarot, the Star card depicts the astrological Water Bearer. s

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 3° (April 23)

Right there was this guy in my dream last night who was kind of priestly looking. I think he was from Chatham or some place like Cornwall or some dream composite of the two. And I felt this mixed vibe from him, like he was crushing on me but also this disciplinarian figure that had some kind of power over me. Whatever. I never want to have to fully interpret any dream. I love robin’s egg blue. I’m on call this week for clients. I’m looking forward to waving some wands over people this year. It is time for some graduate-level self-actualization. Meanwhile little by little. I have many thoughts swirling today after the talk with our agent and what work needs to happen to get to where we want to go. I also have to do a little reconnaissance on the foreign rights side of our history and see where we are with everything. I think that’s enough to ask of myself in the coming days. Sneaking in little moments is a very good idea when it comes to any activity on the signs. So today I’m delving the world of Capricorn.

I

The Capricorn Experience

Capricorn is a correction itself to the excesses of the previous sign of Sagittarius. It is the cardinal earth sign, one symbolic interpretation being a mountain, something conical offering containment with alone or in a range. The horn too, akin to a mountain (the Matta Horn, or mother mountain), as befits this sign of the goat. Capri-corn literally means goat horn, the cornucopeia, or horn of plenty and the container of said bounty. Coming off the sign of Sagitarius which is expansion, growth, more, more more. Capricorn says enough is enough (Donna Summer is born under the sign). Capricorn is the energy of containment and restriction and thus of preservation. Mountains symbolize permanence if not the eternal itself. This fits the sign’s rule over the astrological tenth house which rules traditions. The planetary ruler is Saturn, named for the deposed god of the good ol’ golden age, (Greek: Cronus), who carried a scythe or sycle, with the planet symbol itself, even, recalls; he’s the prototypical old father Time, his Greek name linked to the chronological. His wife Rhea (Cybele or Ops, mother of the gods) is the mountain goddess in her mountain fortress, her diadem a turret; and she took god form, as Amaltheia, the mythic goat whose horns contained ambrosia, which she fed to her infant child Zeus, whom she hid away, so he might escape the fate of his elder five siblings who were swallowed at birth by Saturn who had a prophecy of usurpation by his offspring eternally hanging over his head.

Rhea means ease and Cronus is a deposed god, now, over the hill. Capricorn energy is retiring, retreating, restoring, reserved. It is the power of restraint, one such superpower Capricorn people possess. Capricorn is quality over quantity, a mountain of personal reserve. Talk about staunch character. The golden age which the Titans Cronos and Rhea ruled was thus called because it was a paradise devoid of any vice or lack where gods and men lived together, the latter for a monumentally long time. Arcadia, the hilly home of the goat god pan, remained a sort of bucolic remnant, an echoing of the golden age. There was no ambition as the world was endlessly bountiful and provided. At their best Capricorn people embrace a similar mindset, refusing to struggle, though nobody works harder. Their emotional landscape is steep and rocky and not without some major landslides, but this inspires their development of sure-footedness and stamina. Endurance is the Capricorn way, which is the true metaphorical take-away of the sign’s grand-parental energy. We save up for retirement, just as we keep our reservoirs pure, whether real or symbolic of own resources, or those of our cultural tradition.

The Capricorn motto is I usewhich is to day I don’t waste, neither time nor energy, or fritter away that which is worth preserving on that which doesn’t take, but might only get, one higher. The goat is built for the ascent but here’s the rub: Capricorn is the Sea Goat, and it has this fishy bit, which carries paradoxical meaning. Water sybmolizes intuition something Capricorns have in abundance, it also signifies emotion which we hope will fuel the Capricorn, not drag them down. The Sea Goat is also the perfect being to inhabit a metaphorical moutain-lake environment, the reservoir formed by restrictive power. Shan-gri-la, like golden-age Arcadia, where nobody ages. Just as the cardinal-water sign of Cancer, the axis-sign opposite Capricorn, is the source, Capricorn is the resource; and just as Cancer is associated with the archetype of Cinderella, so is Capricorn personified as the fairy god mother, a female personification of one’s higher power. Capricorns, whose birthright energy is faith, tend more than others to be one and the same with their higher power. And on the male side, we associate going to the mountain with, among other archetypes, old Moses, who let’s himself go grey via the experience, just as baby Moses, going from mother to mother along the (cardinal-water) river, is associated with Cancer, ruled by the Moon, the mother principle in astrology. Just as the fairy godmother comes with strict instructions (the sign of Capricorn at the very top of the Zodiacal wheel, at twelve o’clock, the stroke of midnight) so too does Moses receive and thus deliver a list of rules and regulations, restrictions—shalt nots!—to lay on us, ten to be exact, the number associated with Capricorn. God also told Moses to build his tabernacle out of goat hair, one might guess, because of it’s enduring, eternal qualities.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Taurus 2° (April 22)

Of course Earth Day is Taurus. Somehow that makes me happy. What happened on this day was that we had ad hoc meeting moments most of the day. We sometimes schedule and postpone actual meetings about specific business concerns or, say a budget meeting, but somehow have these bouts of brainstorming where neither of can turn it off, which is always fueled by a busy schedule, as if you’re just sneaking in thoughts in something of a panic. While I”m thinking of it. Oh I just wanted to say this aloud. It occurs to me. And all that jazz. Been watching FosseVerdon and it really is a treat. Michelle Williams is everything and I never use that turn of phrase because I think it is stupid. We had a shared meeting with our new agent and S. spoke to Alice earlier. I think we should head to the UK as early as possible. I looked into flights to Sicily and there is nothing direct. So I think we might choose to go through the UK. Anyway we can save money and piggy back where the piggy backing’s good, we will.

The Sagittarius Experience

The third quadrant of which Sagittarius is the third sign is all focused on the mental plane, Libra being highly conscious and Scorpio deeply subconcious, then comes Sagittarius which is expansive enough to include the two. All mutable signs (again, the third in any quadrant), somehow combine the energies of the preceding two signs. Here Sagittarius blends the brilliantly concious with the cavernous subconcious into a superconscious or supraconcsious (I really do need to look those two words up). Only William Blake, a Sagittarius, would write a Marriage of Heaven and Hellor Sagittarius Samuel Clemens rename himself Mark Twain, a play on the words, the mark (or point) between. Sagittarius is mutable fire which translates to wildfire, particuarly the kind one finds in the sky, that is to say, lightning. Named for the wild-eyed lightning wielding king of the gods, Jupiter is not only the chief planet size wise in our astrology, all other planets fitting super comfortably in it, it also signifies the energies of growth, plenty, generosity, optimism and expansion in all forms, but especially that of the mind as it relates to the spirit. Fire symbolizes spirit so all the fire signs focus on the metaphysical level. It’s the most shamanistic of signs. It’s the stream of consciousness. It’s psychedelic and bent on breaking beyond boundaries of perception. It is about connecting the mind with the spiritual plane and is thus associated with visions and the pineal gland, the seat of the third eye.

Knowledge, philsophies, belief-systems all belong to the Sagittarian estate. “Knowledge is Power,” said Auntie Mame, a modern emanation of the female archetype, the sister-wife of Jupiter, Juno (Greek: Hera) who was goddess of women, but of power and knowlege too (as e’er this particular twain shall meet?) as it was her divine gift to bestow omnipotence or omniscience (or both) upon Paris who didn’t choose her best-in-show in his eponymous Judgement. Supreme power is what makes Jupiter/Zeus and Juno/Hero the couple to beat on Mount Olympus. And like Jupiter who can shoot lightning fire from his finger tips, Juno, too, possesses the ability to radiate outward from her entire being in such brilliance that it blinds and sometimes completely combusts those who behold her thus beaming. And speaking of knowledge: Historically, Sagittarius women in the greatest number comprised the list of most successful, world-renowned women writers to achieve global recognition. Austen, Dickinson, Cather, Wharton, Sand, Alcott, Emily Bronte the list goes on and on, proving how the proliferation of knowledge, to be an author who catches like wild fire at a time before the telegraph, and not that long after the printing press, is tantamount to greatest power and influence over the minds of many. And how else could a woman become a global sensation but to radiate outward in the expression of her creative intellect. The sign shares an “opposite” axis with Gemini, the buzzy mutable air sign of information which feeds into said Sagittarian knowledge. It also takes the dual energy of Gemini and combines it into somethint tertiary—again, that mark ‘twain.

One such person Hera burnt was Semele, the pregnant mortal mother of Dionysus. But she didn’t have to do it herself this time; instead she tricked her into asking Zeus to revel himself in full glory, which had the same combustive result; and Zeus had rescue the unborn Dionysus, sewing him into his own thigh (the body part ruled by Sagittarius) to finish his gestation. The thigh is the body part ruled by Sagittarius and the myth speaks to the struggle for power between the sexes, too. Jupiter gives birth to his own son, now, usurping the most feminine power to bring forth life. And Juno detests Dionysus more than any other god. Her dislike for him symbolizes the uneasy power strugle between the traditional ancient force she embodies and the would be usurpation of this power by the patriarchy whidh is personified by this “new” male god, inheritor of Jupiter, or his own youthful (re-)incarnation.. Dionysus is a most Sagittarian archetype in his own right, being the god of extremism in a number of forms. He is the ecstatic god of the orgy and, of course, wine, the classic drug of choice for expanding ancient minds, debatably associated with disorder.

We do see his character in famous outré male figures like Nero, Blake, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Ludwig van Beethoven and of course Twain who came and went with Haley’s comet. There is something of the wild man in every Sagittarius, a nod to being the sign of the Centaur, thus half beast; while Dionysus represents nature asmale, he is god of ritual madness and religious ecstacy, a liberator and rule breaker and the only Olympian god to have a mortal parent. He isn’t pre-civilization wild, but rather embodies liberation from the restraints of existing society, the return to a natural state. Thus his rites entailed the drinking of his wine and frenzied dancing, opening up the consciousness to altered arguably higher states while recapturing the wild animal state of being as well and a return to primordial nature. Though it mightn’t have appeased Hera, Dionysian cults and rites were mainly associated with, and driven by women, along with slaves, outlaws, foreigners and the otherwise marginalized. The rites included dancing to rhythmic beats, flinging ones head back, so to break on through to the other side. Sagittarius is the energy of lightning flashess of genius, where it borders on madness, blowing ones own mind. We still see this same triggering of ecstaticism in evangelical churches, in voodoo practice, and in native american rituals. Sagittarius is the sign of the jazz, rock ‘n roll and the Beats (itself a combined duality of being beaten down and also beatific, raised high, all at the same time).

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox