Cancer 7° (June 27)

 

I am slowly turning the page today and it feels pretty wonderful actually. At least it doesn’t feel terrible. The truth will be the truth and all this too shall pass. Getting money in to give out to artists. Connecting with my teenaged boy friends, that is to say my friends who date back to teen age. Life was going so well and I was so inspired. We were working hard but also loving it all. I might have been enjoying myself a little too much, I dunno. But I’m certainly paying for it now. It is, as they say, all good. And I am making a break for happiness. I am so saddened by the death all around me. I finally learned about Charles I. It was a bit of history of which I was never really that clear. I have had friends reach out to me because they find me unduly angry on social media, which is pretty much bullshit. If you aren’t angry there is something wrong with you. Certain people can post their narcissistic rants over and over again, day in and day out; but if I so much as utter a sound people tend to pounce. That is going to change this year ahead as I fully remove myself from the fabric of this particular land. I was contacted as part of the community:

 I appreciate having been included here. Stella and I read your email with care and interest. Many thoughts come to mind that I won’t immediately express here. Bottom line: We would definitely welcome inclusion in a larger discussion (of the Zoomish variety) were you to organize something of the sort.

For starters, as performers who aren’t solely reliant on performance as our means of survival, we aren’t struggling the way others receiving this email might be. The performative aspect of our larger body of work has always been an integral part thereof, whether solo or as a duo, and we might be of service in shedding light on how to add more spokes to artists wheels as they move forward in all of this. But let me back up. Presenting and fostering other artists has always been a part of our larger relationship with the stage…

With the Afterglow Festival (which was to celebrate year 10 in Provincetown in September) and its Afterglow-at-Oberon series at A.R.T. in Cambridge both on pause (not to mention any appearance we might do at Joe’s, any proceeds from which we always donate to the festival in any case: I quickly switched gears and redirected my fundraising efforts, in effect, turning Afterglow into a “relief fund” mechanism for artists. So now, through the end of the year (and let’s face it, probably beyond) money we bring in is swiftly being sent out in check for to artists raising their hand for support.

Our (not so boring) day job, as you may know, is consulting people and our clients mainly hail from the creative worlds of entertainment, art, fashion, design, publishing, etc. (with some top level academics thrown in for good measure). As hoaky as :”being astrologers” might sound on knee-jerk level to those who don’t understand the more rounded service we offer our clients (Stella actually is a psychiatrist, bringing the science, while I do have certain gifts on the other end of the spectrum, which makes the entire experience rather metaphysical), we have nearly 20 years experiencing helping people be the best iteration they can be. This is in large part steeped in how to make their professional/artistic lives more rewarding and a source of thrivation.

So what am I saying? I guess that though we are surely not the most house-packing members of the Joe’s Pub performing community, we nonetheless have experience, both for ourselves and in our practice with private clients and in our non-profit work fostering other artists, in generally supporting and fostering upward-spirals in people’s experience. I always say that blazoned upon the umbrella under which we do all we do, our careers as authors, too, included, is the single word: Uplifters. 

It is as such that we offer ourselves up here if and when you need us!

 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 466-470. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.  (For thirty days this paragraph will include this parentheses to say: I realized that in the summer of 2016 I actually didn’t post for some time, such that for the expanse of two months, I will continue to number the past Blagues, as above, five at a time, but there will be nothing to post from that period.)

(Crickets)

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Cancer 6° (June 26)

 

We have a client today. But, otherwise, as I say, these next few days are a hodge-podge of random thoughts and notes and emails and such. I will let myself enjoy and even indulge this week, taking beach walks and otherwise voicing my feels and opinions. There will be those who will find me harsh and I truly don’t give a damn. I’m speeding through with lots to do. Sending artists checks and helping where I can. Someone went on the attack and I rebuttled.

Thanks for reaching out and no need to apologize. i obviously didn’t mean my reproach as an attack on Julia. I found the tone deafness of her post alarming and I admit my reaction might have been more urgent, sounding the alarm, than it needed to be. but in our cancel culture, and given the fact that Julia, whom I’ve tried to reach by email to discuss and who blocked me amid a chorus of folks turning this all around on me (not on Danielle I might add), nobody wants to listen to the white guy who flew on a private plane with a name like Quinn. unfortunately your comment about the plane, which, I don’t even know how you know about that because I only recall putting up a picture of the plane on instagram, got taken up by total strangers. I only know this because I have gone to Julia’s page through a separate account which she hasn’t blocked. So-called friends have added to the chorus against me and “hearted” every other negative comment. Julia immediately went into victim mode instead of dialoguing about it with Danielle and me and the pile on began. So be it. For the record, Helen, we were working in Europe January (and meant to be) through April on a self-started project that we have saved and raised money to create, plus writing, plus doing our day job of consulting clients which we do virtually. I work ten hours a day. I don’t post pictures of my working. I post pictures of the stolen moments when I might have gotten to a museum once a week which is easy to do in Paris. When France shut up shop we packed all our bags and gave away all the stockpile of food awe had bought over the previous weeks and some of our actual belongings and we got the last Eurostar out of Paris back to London. Our flight from London was not scheduled for another month. We happen to know a successful person who has been our closest friend since we were all poor students together in the 80s. She lent us her house as we tried in vain to figure out a way to get our flight moved up a month so we could return home. The airline was unreachable. We couldn’t even book a new flight never mind move our existing flight forward. We tried travel agents, everything. Finally our friend said she was going to foot the bill to fly us home as a gift. Flying on a private plane like this was something I had never done and ffrankly it wasn’t a joy ride as the surrounding circumstances were so stressful. We were exhausted and had been on the run from this virus. That is the truth of the matter. But that’s not the story that got told. I’m a rich white guy (I wish) of privilege who has no right to talk about privilege or to urge a friend whose art I actually purchase to take a look at her post because it seems off to me given the fact she doesn’t have to leave her house the way others do. And to use phrases like “I love quarantine” and “call me when it’s over” and “I love people up to a point” seemed so off. But it’s okay. I am unfortunately used to being cancelled for speaking up or out. Could have spoken more softly, probably. But I’ve read what I said and I think it might be pointed but polite. Up until yesterday I was friends with Julia. But now she can’t go back and say “oh it’s cool, Quinn and I are good” because she has now played the victim card so frigging hard she would lose face. That’s how this works. I don’t see Danielle being raked over the coals. Nope, just the douchey rich white guy who people seem to assume has money and privilege which is laughable. Maybe people assume because Stella and I carry ourselves with confidence or something (or because I have a side hustle non-profit that has actually contributed to the artistic/social landscape of the town and its heritage) that I just walk around eating caviar sandwiches or something. Anyway, it’s still morning and I have to conserve my energy. I was really saddened yesterday to awake to a litany of hate when my only intention was to alert Julia to the fact that her post was tweaked. It shed some light though on certain folks whose suspected opinions of me have been confirmed. Happily these FB “friends” aren’t the real friends whom I care that much about and the takeaways are, as you say, about gauging tone and rhetoric in the knee-jerk world of social media. Paradoxically that was what I was addressing but I was crucified for my own expressions thereof. Thanks for reaching out and for the opoportunity to vent back!

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 461-465. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.  (For thirty days this paragraph will include this parentheses to say: I realized that in the summer of 2016 I actually didn’t post for some time, such that for the expanse of two months, I will continue to number the past Blagues, as above, five at a time, but there will be nothing to post from that period.)

(Crickets)

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Cancer 5° (June 25)

 

Lawyers. Agents. That what the last twenty-four hours have been about. Venus leaving retrograde? I dunno. I realize Marc Maron will have my same boomerang yod, poor bastard. There is no way he would believe in astrology but if he sat down with me I know I could crack that veneer. Doors like to slam in the house I’m in with the wind blowing through all the open windows and portals. I am taking one more day to regroup here and getting all the little duckies in a row. There is talk now of going on the boat after all, but my spidey sense says that unless we stay in the U.S. we won’t be able to join the floating fun as I cannot see the Canadians, who have all but eradicated this virus, letting in we diseased Americans, which is such a shame. We do our part as citizens, but because of that obese melted circus peanut, decent caring Americans like us have to suffer. I cannot wait for him to self-implode. I awoke quite rested, which is the good news, not having woken up once last evening. And yet I’m still in a procrastinating place, which isn’t good for my spirit. I feel saddened and cancelled. But what else is new.  What I don’t know at the time of this writing is that I will have let thirteen entries of this Blague go by since the day. I don’t know why it is exactly but I will get it all on track. The plan will be to work some real magic between the next two Full Moons, and it will happen, that is a promise I now realize (hindsight here truly is twenty-twenty). The writing over the next fortnight, here will thus be a hodgpodge of yesterday, today and tomorrow, all out of order and mixed up and I have no real desire to make it clearer for you. I’m that beatch.
I am absolutely fine. Awoke to a bunch of apologetic DMs from people who had gone on attack against me for voicing my cautions and opinions. I don’t take those personally to begin with. My anger and frustration is more of the universal sort. Meanwhile, through a behaviorist lens, it is interesting to spy the speed and manner of which others who mightn’t have the courage to address issues directly find their passive-aggressive means of derision. This isn’t new. What I’ve come to learn is that people think that I’m some privileged rich white dude myself who floats around buoyed by book royalties eating caviar sandwiches and dabbling in the arts. Stella and I were in stitches over some of the messaging I’ve been receiving on that score. I can always tell, too, when people have had a few (drinks or joints) and suddenly get the courage to pile on. It’s fine. I suppose the most vivid and instantaneous iteration of cancel-culture is the block button whereby the piling on can continue but you are disallowed from addressing it or defending yourself. I’ve snuck onto social media through other accounts to witness such vitriol in the wake of my expulsion. It stings but I can take it. Though I do draw more ire, I notice, than women expressing my exact views.

Thanks for caring! Much love to you both and again great thanks for the sponsorship. We have a nice rhythm going getting some assistance out to Afterglow artists in need. Part of the agreement with them is that they do need to make some shout outs (I actually put this in writing for once) of appreciation which will hopefully inspire more interest in what we are doing. Honestly, I have no real confidence that 2021 will be any different. Both Joe’s Pub @ The Public and the A.R.T. have requested meetings with me to help me/themselves to help artists, so that feels in a strange way quite validating. I’m glad that peers at that level are looking at Afterglow as a model of sorts. Meanwhile, did you see that MC and RM are co-presenting V!? (An unholy alliance if ever there was one.) And speaking of being tone deaf, whose big idea was it to call V’s show Super Spreader? I can’t!

We are continuing into a dry July but maybe we can meet here sometime for a socially distanced watermelon juice mocktail! No rush on that, of course, as we aren’t going anywhere. Our private plane is grounded at present. Ha!

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 456-460. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.  (For thirty days this paragraph will include this parentheses to say: I realized that in the summer of 2016 I actually didn’t post for some time, such that for the expanse of two months, I will continue to number the past Blagues, as above, five at a time, but there will be nothing to post from that period.)

(Crickets)

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox