Cream Scene Carnival

December Audio Astrology

To my hobbyist eyes, December’s astrology is a little dicey. Neptune is retrograding in the same house that Saturn is tearing up & Mercury’s dance with the sun has some tricky footwork. But I’m not an astrologer, I’m an idiot that hears elevator music in my head while I research the transits & pulls a couple of tarot cards to make sure I’m bullshitting on the right vibe.

The month’s coda is a full moon in the og emo of the zodiac, Cancer. So, it’s a good time to examine your emotional baggage & jettison anything that isn’t at least inspiring you to write bad poetry. As a cancer-rising, poetry is my bread & butter & a man’s gotta eat, but let’s face it — poetry is probably only contributing to that gnawing sense of hunger you feel both physically & emotionally. But Stolas said something like “Stay hungry, stay alive” (“Losing Wings” from “Allomaternal”) so let’s call it a wash.

Look, after the 21st, every day gets a little longer & that’s something. I personally think it’s bad biological design that we don’t hibernate over the winter. But since I have to keep waking & working & paying bills – I’ll play Echoes of Eternity’s “Circles in Stone” at sunrise & squint until the world is shining & beautiful. Arguably, it already is.

Aries

This month there is likely to be some tension between your wish to travel (physically or mentally) & your budget. But while you probably should curb intense urges to buy plane tickets or so many books, there is only so much you can do whilst living in capitalism. We all tumble out of the womb with our throats cut to one degree or the other. & unless you own your means of production, you’ll never not wonder when some motherfucker will come & yank the stitches out. You can never say for sure & it’s probably better not to worry. We only have one brilliant, dazzling life on this earth & while there’s logically no way to see, feel, know, & experience it all – I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try. Go for it.

December anthem: Future, Buddy – Rx Bandits

Taurus

There’s a pervading sense of nothing making sense that you’ve answered by putting your head down & simply pushing through. But now while nothing is looking particularly familiar you can’t help but feel a yoke around your neck. You’re the proverbial bull in the china shop, ripping space-time because you couldn’t be bothered to stop – you pulled the guts out of the universe and they ride on your back like streamers, but now the terrain is unfamiliar & you’ve got to make something of all this damage. Luckily, you’re quite good at spinning a yarn, what should the world look like & how should you move in it? Yes, you get to decide & surely you’ll make it beautiful.

December anthem: Lost it in the Lights – The Wonder Years

Gemini

With Gemini energy, there’s a strong tendency to pursue the things that light you up in a relentless fashion – be it creative projects, career or academic pursuits, relationships, knowledge gathering, whatever. & you don’t seem to know when to stop – you’ll scatter yourself a thousand different ways & then look up & wonder not only where everyone else has gone, but where the hell has the rest of you gone? Maybe you left your hand sketching away on something, your right eye scanning a novel – gather yourself up, give yourself a moment, & only attempt to catch up with everyone else as a whole person. It’s likely they’ll answer differently once they realize they have the whole of you.

December anthem: Rule of Nines – Spiritbox

Cancer

As a certified sleepy bitch & a cancer rising, I took a little umbrage to this month’s transits. It’s almost as if we’ve lost control of the narrative around us so we’ve pulled back to the only thing we can truly control – our own bodies. & even that seems like it’s becoming sand between our fingers because losing grip on mood always seems to snowball into tripping up physically. There’s a lot to be said about framing here, our perception is a light, it is spilling out over a page filled to the margins with words that have meanings that we are responsible to determine. Take umbrage or take a nap, but whatever you do, do it with intention. The habits we form are hard to break.

December anthem: LARGETHROBBINGPOSITIVEMINDSET – Bilmuri

Leo

There may be a feeling that you want very much to indulge this month despite the judgment of people in your direct orbit. While it’s always good to be a righteous dude & do right by the people around you – only you know the width & breadth of the story unfolding between your ears. The best you can do is try to articulate it all, even the very things that defy language, & hope people understand. & if they don’t, understand that the breakdown is in the language, it’s in the world, it’s in a perspective that willfully refused to line up with yours. It’s not in you. You are not language, you are an unblinking eye seamed into the atoms of a blinking, shitting human body. & you will do better next time.

December anthem: Slander – Hail the Sun

Virgo

Home is where the heart is this month, but once the focus shifts from settling in for the season & getting cozy, you may find yourself asking where do I go next? At that point even the warmest home, the most solid relationships may start feeling a little prison-y. But before you start sounding like Foucault, pull it back. Your dreams are always waiting for you, draped across the foot of your bed like a quilt made of insanity & purple. Realize that you have to wake every morning before you go off to pursue your dreams. You may as well wake in a place you love.

December anthem: Tourmaline – The Mars Volta

Libra

There’s balance & there’s measure & they aren’t necessarily the same thing. The right measure can set the balance perfectly without the need for persnickety adjustments or to weigh the pan again & again. You may feel pressure mentally or even physically to take a stand or action toward something that you’ve been assessing but the energy of the moment demands a little reserve. Even if you believe that you have all the information needed to make the call, are you internally good with it? Does your hand shake when you raise it to drop the last coin on the pan? Steady it. Make sure your conviction is rock solid this month.

December anthem: I.W.W.I.T.I.W. – Polyenso

Scorpio

Serendipity is not planned, synchronicity is not carefully calculated, existence is messy & sometimes slightly off from the way you expected it to be. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a beautiful experience to be had. Your planning energy is best spent on the long-term, the big picture, the things that will someday come to be. The rest is the art of the universe, so sit back & expect lovely things – the most beautiful people often have the most interesting flaws, & so will the most beautiful life. Don’t look for it, just expect it.

December anthem: The Collapse of the Great Tide Cliffs – The Dear Hunter

Sagitarius

You know exactly who you are & you are 100% in control of that knowledge. You can be a sweetheart or a monster, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s authentic. Yet you know that authenticity is a flexible thing, it’s an abstract — you can’t dig it up and examine it, you can’t measure its facets against your own. Still there’s something comforting there, the universe is written in relative code & you can exist in various states relative to who you want to be, slowly shifting, integrating into who you know yourself to be. There’s no shame in being anyone you feel like being in the moment. The only measure is internal & fudging it a bit in your own favor is expected.

December anthem: If You Light the Way – Rody Walker

Capricorn

If you happen to have astigmatism you know that an otherwise beautiful, clear night can easily be ruined – a little sprinkle of rain, a light in the distance – things can get messy fast & confusion is a reactive state, quick to degrade into frustration & anger. & with volatile emotions in the mix, you can hardly expect successful synthesis without a little finesse. Remember, we do not see anything as it is, but how it appears in relation to the light that shines upon it. & while the truth of the universe lies in the heart of every particle, our senses are often suspect, & there is more than one way to split an atom. Experiment all you like, but make sure you’re using good science & not deceiving yourself.

December anthem: Incessant Mace – Soundgarden

Aquarius

You may feel like everyone is out to get you this month & you may be right. But if they’re out to get you it must be because you have something worth obtaining. People are slow to waste energy outside of themselves without good reason. So either you’ve cultivated something that makes everyone want a piece of you or you’ve snatched something from someone else & it did not go unnoticed. Regardless, if the attention bothers you, assess the situation – determine your bandwidth & what you have to offer the world, & send it out. Cut your pursuers off at the pass, refocus their attention, a gal’s best move is always to confuse.

December anthem: You asked for this – Halsey

Pisces

An artist becomes themselves by crawling through their work, through their feelings, through the work of others. You are building a voice through that experience & oftentimes it won’t sound like your own, nor will it resemble a sound at all. Sometimes you’ll cultivate a color, a pattern, a word from a dead language with a pronunciation that has been lost to time. But it’s important to know that you’ll never lose yourself in exploration. & while recently your grip on your identity may feel tenuous, you’re just as yourself when you’re not sure of who you are, when you feel the most at peace repeating the words of a poet that died a hundred years before you were born. You are a syllable in the language of humanity, you’ll sound different in any number of dialects, but you’re still unmistakably you.December anthem: Monochrome – Between the Buried & Me