Love Note #1.5: Something Like a Note/ Manifesto
a reflection on a new moon, soft bodies in hard places, and recasting revolutions
Image by Nick Scavo
Hey there,
Craving newness in my client work and writing, I’ve merged different parts of my creative practices to explore how artmaking and astrology can meet, mix, and mingle.
My friend, writing partner, and creative accomplice, Benedict, who is brilliance personified, had a vision and asked me to contribute with a note and one-on-one readings for the talented artists featured in revolutionary new moon in aquarius (rnma). rnma was the first in "soft bodies in hard places," a series of trans-disciplinary events circling planetary events over the 2019 season at ISSUE Project Room.
In the piece below, I attempt to write without/ beyond a lot of “Astro-speak.” I say this to prepare you and also to invite you into a kind of manifesto for a new moon past.
Where was your heart in the days leading up to the Aquarius new moon (Feb. 4th)? Where is it now?
What required your inflexibility and what were you unnecessarily fixated on?
What ideas about yourself do you still hold onto because you’re prepared for the world’s rejection? With or without proof.
Identify the places in your heart that need softness and forgiveness from those that require rigor and relentless dedication. Be willing to let those that live between find solace or reprieve.
I’m realizing there is no formula for experimenting and newness beyond putting yourself out there. Once you’ve done that, the other part is a willingness to shape-shift and the courage to admit you don’t yet know what you don’t know.”
Well, that’s it for now. Check out Love Note #1.5 below and let me know what you think, or not. Love Note #2 (coming soon, I promise!) will make a lot more sense with this as a prelude.
Anyways, may you soar, beam, and thrive.
Love,
Steph
revolutionary new moon in aquarius
For soft bodies in hard places, I worked with the extraordinary artists of revolutionary new moon in aquarius, Benedict, Ambika, Katrina, lily bo, and Tara using astrology to uncover self. In our sessions, we dug, dived, and delved into seas of self and selves with the goal of excavating creative possibility. Along the way, I discovered ‘creative possibility’ was simpler than making and merging — it was about being. It is a kind of being that requests we inhabit our bodies with such ferocity our love becomes a weapon in service of liberation. It is holding on long enough to know our bruises will heal and our open wounds will become scars. To keep on keeping on in place; resisting the urge to run, and instead,embracing the revolutionary possibilities of staying.
Casting most charts in astrology requires that we locate ourselves in time and space. We determine a place of origin, our genesis. Place tells us where we begin. It maps the horizon of our pleasure and purpose. It foretells the foundation of our legacy. In the Saturn-ruled signs: Capricorn and Aquarius (January and February) we reckon with doors, thresholds, walls, and borders attempting to keep winter at bay. Saturn represents rooms that cut into the foundation of the earth: cellars, basements, and dens; churchyards and burial grounds; abandoned buildings and ruins. Brick by brick. Alone. Weary. We feel the weight of where and how we begin and end.
With the moon leaving Capricorn and entering Aquarius we move from:
family to society
structure to (re)order
pragmatic to innovative
ambitious to rebellious
discipline to revolution
history and tradition to firmer futures
Capricorn teaches us: what good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul? Aquarius comes along and asks what world and soul do we have if we are not all free? For those of us who understand how easily ‘tradition’ can be wielded as a weapon for hegemony, this shift from Capricorn to Aquarius pushes us to move from believing there’s security in playing by the rules to being bold about breaking out of the set system and subsystems and finding our tribes along the way. This new moon in Aquarius wants us to honor the overlooked networks of care spilling into the streets, erupting, flourishing and opening up new pathways.
As water bearers coming from the margins to attend to the spirits of outcasts, we can choose to rebel for rebellion's sake or we can choose to let our love and care be an insurgency. We are being offered an opportunity to cultivate pleasure under duress. With faith as love, and believing as relating, we must insist on tenderness as a creative practice. However clumsily we begin, we must not stop. Side by side we can liberate shadows and clear inheritances, we can wage war in the underworld. We are whole together.
Hope warriors. We assess the places of the possible. Homebound yet connected across times and space. We rise on the shoulders of ancestors whose faith ushered our dawning. Where we once climbed ladders, we are now jumping off. We are breaking through illusion, stepping off the ‘man-made’ wheel. Emergent.
Bolder with our care, pen, and bodies, we are ready to unravel and uphold what is on the line in this work — people. We nurture the wounds we’ve inherited that tell us that freedom can wait. We refuse to accept these debts. We are clearing ancestral wounds, shedding husks, and forging new intimacies. We conjure joy as a weapon. We have come to bury oppression in the ashes and plant seeds of liberation.
On this new moon in Aquarius I ask you:
What if the revolution isn’t just breaking out of the structure? What if it’s planting new roots and refusing to be buried.
Are you ready?
This is a reproduction of text commissioned for revolutionary new moon in aquarius featuring Ambika Raina, Katrina Reid, and lily bo shapiro and curated by 2019 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow, Benedict Nguyen. The 2.2.19 event was the first in "soft bodies in hard places," a series of trans-disciplinary events circling planetary events over the 2019 season at ISSUE Project Room.
Originally posted via Substack on Feb 16, 2019.