Virgo 25° (September 16)

Thanks for getting back to us so quickly and for letting us know about Karen. We suppose it’s not unusual for players to change in this process, especially when going back to the drawing board on concept. That said we not only remain super excited about this project, we are increasingly creatively inspired. Remember that we are writers first. We have never written for film or television, but in addition to our books we have written live shows that we have performed solo and as a team and performed at places like Ars Nova and Joe’s Pub at the Public in NYC, and at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA, etc. We are not saying that you should think about having us write the show, but we do think that we should brainstorm with you for starters, as we have some solid ideas about what would make a good show in regard to the world in which we inhabit in real life and how that world would translate into a successful television show. At the very least we have a great many ideas you might want to chew on, if not take up or shoot down.

Our feeling is that we can really help you shape the concept and even bring some characters to life. We won’t go into great detail here for reasons of space and time, but why don’t we try to get on a Zoom call in the coming weeks. Our own backstory and journey toward becoming Starsky + Cox includes working as writers and fashion designers and actors and magazine editors and performance artists and authors, and of course astrologers, wearing so many other hats as we have, has a number of benefits: First, we have a great many stories to relate and we have writing expertise to do so. Second, when we “became” Starsky + Cox, we not only had a great network of friends and colleagues in the fields of entertainment, publishing, fashion, art and advertising and media where early adopters and influencers hold sway, who helped us make our brand known, these folks also became our clients, many of whom we have been consulting for over a decade. As metaphysicians we have helped people reach their goals and potential in their personal and professional lives, while, in the process adding a bit of magic to their lives. In practical terms, Stella being a psychologist especially, we are effective therapists; but there is also a psychic element that comes into it which is “extra sensory” for which there is no explanation though it happens with frequency. This special sauce inspires clients on a different level, amplifying their faith in some divine/cosmic forces at play, as inexplicable as they may be.

So, even though the show could be sliced and diced any which way you as producers fancy. We feel strongly that you might consider basing the show on the reality of our lives and work. Starsky + Cox exist in the real world and there are many spokes to their professional wheel. They also have complicated lives in their own right—I realize I’ve switched to third person here LOL—which could be an area of story to mine. Or not. Or sometimes not always. We have used the example of “The Guy” character in High Maintenance who is sometimes just the catalyst for a story line that focusses on folks he brushes up against, and sometimes he is the main character in an episode, and sometimes in between. If the core of the world of Starsky + Cox is their consultancy and their clients include actors and directors and academics and fashion designers and tech hotshots and studio heads and famous painters and photographers and top editors and sports or music stars BUT ALSO “regular folk” from all over the world who find their way to us and who, more often than not, are as if not more interesting than our more high-powered clients—if all of this is real life for us—wouldn’t it make for fertile creative soil for the made-for-TV version of our world and experience?

I’ll reel this in and we can talk more when we see you, but we wanted to take this opportunity to say that we feel we can be more of a resource in this project than consulting on the personality traits of characters of a certain sign; we think we can actually help you shape what this show is about and offer ideas for making it compelling story-wise, overall, for the life of the show, and of course, episode to episode. We can draw inspiration from the thousands of people with whom our work has brought us in contact and come up with a great many story lines (loosely based on reality and disguised enough of course not to mess with our client confidentiality, especially, when drawing from that part of our professional experience. At some point perhaps Stella and I would take a crack at writing actual episodes—again we’ve never done it but we feel it is something at which we can excel at some point. Meanwhile, we can craft the concept with you and provide character ideas and plotlines and all of that. I will add as a footnote, that the book we are currently working on is heavily themed on the “personal development” angle of the astrological characters which we have over time delineated in our larger body of work. That is to say, the thinking caps we are currently wearing would only contribute to the work of fully realizing this show, getting it sold, and making it a smash.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 851-855. 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.

I want to stay very close to the bone today and rather close to home. My day entails driving into Provincetown and putting up posters and circulating postcards with the wrong information on it. But never mind. I will do this in the afternoon, now as I have other things that have invaded my morning plans. Like talking to the “manager” (I think he’s an accountant) of the first ever individual to break a contract.

That conversation was okay. I sort of knew the guy. Anyway didn’t feel like going to Provincetown, the weather is too iffy. Went into town for the daily pound of fish and fresh vegetable. Really nothing as grand as this place in summer. Well there are other things but this is pretty good. I do love the open ocean and I do love the beaches on Cape Cod. There’s nothing like them anywhere really. So I’ll have to come up with a formula for keeping a strong foothold here. I might just look around for another year-round rental when the time comes. I’m in such a groove here I really am. And in just a matter of hours Stella will be finished with school and we’ll really be on the same page, working together, other than with clients, for the first time in a long time.

We’re going to take a trip. First we’ll go to Boston for a couple nights. Then we’ll hang out in Provincetown for my birthday. Then we head to New York later that week to stay at the Marleton while Stella does her show at Dixon Place. Then back to Wellfleet for Oyster Fest and then off we go to London, with a side trip to Suffolk, Edinburgh and Paris. We’re going to stay at the Portobello Hotel in our old Notting Hill hood. The Cow is still in operation. I wonder if it’s still good. But anyway, that whole area is such a treat to walk around in. We’re going to have such fun there after spending a long weekend in the countryside with close friends, we can see clients and meet on our creative business projects at the Portobello. I definitely need a whole new wardbrobe, but not before I shed a little weight.

On that score I have put us on a diet after our calories debaucle in Maine. So we are eating salad and salmon for lunch everyday, pretty much, and different variations on a celery-soup theme at night. My body is currently playing chicken with me, refusing to show weight loss on the scale, but my clothes are already fitting better and my face is no longer a fully inflated red rubber ball, though still only slightly deflated. It’s all of a piece: This sense of gearing up for something—for preparing for ones good. I’m readying myself for the rentrée, and I do have quite a lot of city hopping to do. For this I must go shoe shopping, which I will, in New York, in October. That’s going to be a bit of indulge. I deserve it that’s for sure. That and weekly massages. But it’s all coming I can feel it.

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I feel that I’m once again getting down to the nitty gritty and that everything else is gravy. How to explain? Life has never felt less dramatic. I’m not sure exactly from what that is resulting. I guess I feel secure emotionally and financially and that I am, for the most part, representing myself in such a way that I feel proud. I feel detached, autonomous and not under any scrutiny. I don’t feel particularly creative perhaps, another reason why forcing me to write these Blagues every day can be a boon. I don’t feel like venturing to far forth. I want to stick with the same territory. Which is why I’m so happy with the trips coming up. I don’t need to go back to Maine as yet. I’m happy to explore the Cape this Fall, but that will be so fast and fleeting. And then away for three weeks. Not only are we staying in our old familar London neighborhood but also in our old familiar Paris one as well, near the Pantheon, in walking distance to Bikram Yoga Rive Gauche and the Luxembourg Gardens and our favorite, and I mean favorite, cafe, probably, of all time, where I plan to eat two meals a day, at the least, every day I’m there. You think I’m kidding but I’m not.

Meanwhile, however, and I’m glad it happens in this order, we have a costume party to attend in Edinburgh on a dystopian theme. I’m confused too. Besides going as a Zombie or some character in 1984, I suppose we could come up with something original. But it’s hard to think costumes while traveling with a medium sized suitcase. One must be clever. I suppose I could just find some proletariat workers jumpsuits or some cast-off costuming from a Janet Jackson video, or do something vagule Mad Max ish. I don’t know. I have a few joke ideas up my sleeve that involve minimal baggage, real or emotional. Anyway that happens in the highlands of Scotland which will be bookended by nights at the Edinburgh Residences. There is quite a good pubby restaurant right in that area, a kind of basement grotto witchy pagan Scottish kind of place with a soupçon of Presbyterianism.

I do plan on being rather thinnish by the time the party rolls around; and then I plan on letting myself completely go. I jest (not really). But, from Edinburgh we will take train to London then Eurostar to Paris all in one day to arrive at our tiny flat in the fifth. Je cannot wait. Well I can. I have to be clear about what I’m taking with me and what I’m not taking with me. I have to have all of my 2018 Haute Astrology Books finished and designed and ready to go. I must also have any Christmas show we’re planning to do at Joe’s Pub all mapped out. We will return mid November to Boston to see Bridget Barkan, whom I’m producing perform at Oberon/American Repertory Theater—I first produce John Kelly in September—as party of an expanded series, now in its third year, that I do there. Which is quite fun, I must say. So we return mid November meaning I should probably have the new Christmas show mapped out if not before, than while, I’m away. If we have a magazine feature to write, as well, I will write that before I go away, between end September to end October.

I know I have to start working on my own solo show this year. And my musicianship and improvisational talent. I think about that time I wrote about here, year one, of the Cosmic Blague, about playing the piano at The Bell Caffe. I have quite a bit of story now, here, under my belt. Several thousand screenplays probably. We will one day unpack it all. But for now I have some entrepreneurial plans to hatch and hatch them I will.

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We didn’t “watch” the eclipse in the way people with type-A personalities might do. I don’t have a type-A personality per se. I am an INFJ in Myers-Briggs terms, as is Stella. As are some close friends like JK Rowling and Justin Vivian Bond. We are the rarest personality type making up less thatn 1% of the population. We are dreamers, but not idle ones. We do in fact have quite a power of manifestation. So watch out.

Anyway I was talking about the eclipse. Although I have a feeling I’m going to veer into INFJ territory. Who can know. I know I’m going to Paris and London soon and I’m pretty happy about that I must say. So this is so us: We didn’t really know the exact time of the eclipse because we didn’t really care I guess. Also we are not the ones to make lenses or glasses or camera obscura. In fact we were having lunch and spontaneously decided to have a meeting about finances, business plans and dreams. This is something we haven’t done in months due to heavey separate schedules—she finishing school, me legistating the law of diminishing returns in trying to stage yet another festival. Pin in that.

Anyway we thought we’d put on the news—CNN—as a backdrop while we talked just to see what was up with the eclipse. As it turned out we were just about to see the first totality occur on the West Coast and move its way across. We went outside for a brief five minutes when we “felt” things were at getting dark. We could see the reflection of the sun bouncing against our car and could see the reflection grow dim. And the chickens shut their noisy beaks for five minutes. And the birds took to the trees thinking, hmm, should we roost? And then it started getting lighter.

We went inside finished our meeting and just as we did the last totality was being seen off the east coast. It was pretty cool, in the sense that, for us, this was one big new moon ceremony and it felt pretty fun and great to have had a meeting about our plans and dreams during this powerful new moon. It was also super fun to note that in our plans and dreams involve a few trips to old favorite places like Paris and London. In the coming years we hope to visit more environs more exotic to us.

As INFJs we come across as subtle extraverts but the fact is that we suddenly withdraw. I can get stuck in withdrawal mode that’s for sure. My hero Jimmy Carter is a Libra and an INFJ. It strikes me that he is still seen as ineffectual. He was the total opposite. He was preventative and nobody likes Chicken Little, who (weirdly) I now realize as I’m writing this was one of my favorite literary characters growing up.

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So we bid adieu to Leo and say howdy Virgo. Entering Virgo typically makes my heart race, not for any other reason than it means that the Afterglow Festival is drawing nigh. Indeed in just three weeks from tonight plus ninety minutes Phoebe Legere will take to the stage. I love Phoebe she is unique talented and I truly want her to have a good show. I think I’m usually most nervous this time of year because I too must write half an hour of show and have two songs to sing. I’m not doing that this year. No performance from us. Well, not from me. Stella is going to reprise her Birth of the American Baroness show, which will be great, I’m sure; and a good rehearsal for her leading up to doing it at Dixon Place in October. So that’s pretty great. These will be the fourth and fifth venues where she has presented (and I’ve produced) the show.

I’m sad about not performing of course. But I’m looking forward to taking some inventory of my own stage stuff. I need to work on my solo play which will have music. Gosh I hope it’s recorded somewhere. I’m sure it is.* And that I’ll stumble upon it again the moment I most need to. It’s probably sitting in that pile over there on my desk. In the meantime. I do need to inventory songs as well. That’s always fun in any case. I asked myself today if I”m jealous of someone like, oh I dunno, name a person who has a shop, Josh Patner and at his lovely shop, Loveland. Not at all really. I couldn’t stand in a shop all day touching things. But I do like the idea of having ones own world and being surrounded by ones own creations. Being more conceptual rather than tactile a person, I lack the physical representation of taste, order, beauty, grace—but I’m nigh on getting into it. I’m nigh on getting into it all. I just need to stick to a schedule now that I (again) have the chance to be one and the same with words and pictures.

[a day passes]

*So first thing this morning I started puttering and, sure enough, I stumbled on that document I created outlining my solo show. I’m not saying it’s a sign but I’m going to start scripting it sooner than later. I’m sure you’ll see a lot of it. In fact his Blague got a bump back in April when I started writing every day on the boat in Belize. A lot of that material was meant to become the show. I don’t even know if it’s worth mining through all that—what I wrote then was meant to be show material—now I remember: I was going to try and see if I could write the entire show on the boat and if I could I was going to perform it this year Afterglow—how could I have blocked that out? Anyway, the writing didn’t go in that direction and I am not one to keep any writing, particularly my own, go in whatever the fuck direction it wants to. All to say that this Blague was really powered this year by personal story I thought would be show, which may still be show, but in any case has brought me to this spot where, at least, I realize the coming-full-circleness of my performance writing, if not immediately embark upon its execution.

On today’s list to do are putting together folders with visuals of some things I find inspiring. At least I’ll get that ball rolling. And also taking stock of many different projects whereby knowing exactly at what point I stopped and what the steps are moving forward. That’s kind of fun. I’m also up-to-date with this Blague. And am about to embark. Will explain tomorrow.

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.
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