It’s midnight on the dawn of the Aries New Moon of 2020 and I’m partying like it’s 1999 except … I’m in my robe with a cozy cup of golden milk, typing on a laptop at the kitchen table, listening to a slow jams DJ set by Questlove on Instagram Live on my phone, having just watched from the wings a 90 minute solo set by Reverend Vince on Instagram in lieu of our regular Monday night gig at Union Pool, closed until further notice on account of a virus going round. We are all isolated! And yet all together.
The lead up to the first new moon of the astrological year (which started when the Sun entered Aries on March 20), was permeated by the heaviest energy I’ve felt in my entire 2 cycles of Saturn around the Sun. Even my 91 year old mother Elsie told me on the phone she has never known anything as terrible as this. Everything is closed and closing down. Most of us musicians have been silenced. Our nightlife has been snatched out from under us. Millions are suffering horribly and many have already died. People are losing livelihoods, their dreams crushed.
Astrologically, the build up towards this moment in history was filled with signifiers, most notoriously the Pluto/Saturn conjunction in Capricorn which took place around January 12, 2020. Astrologers around the world expounded on this event. This rare conjunction last happened in 1982 (although not in Capricorn - that was over 500 years ago!), around the advent of the arrival of AIDS, another virus which was to change the world forever. Just a few days ago every planet was in a water or earth sign and I certainly felt like I was being sucked downwards in to a quagmire.
But now the Sun has moved in to fiery Aries and is joined this morning by the Moon. Outside the kitchen window the sky is dark AND silent (no planes). Saturn has moved into Aquarius and will soon be joined by Mars and Venus is moving towards airy Gemini. Spring has sprung I optimistically take all this to mean that some relief and release is on the way, and there will be more illumination.
New Moons are times of new beginnings and all the aforementioned Instagram Live activity heralded a new age in nightlife, borne from the surging creative urges of performers worldwide. We quickly succumbed to forced isolation but instantly the music found a new way of getting through us and our technological toys and tools to the ears of those it needs to heal - Chiron is also in Aries right now.
I hope you use your technological toys and tools to receive some music I strung together for you in celebration of this New Moon. Think of what “new beginnings” may mean for you as you listen. Contemplate something you’d like to begin at this time and check in with yourself over the coming month to see where you’re at with it. Even if you haven’t made any noticeable progress by the full moon and through the other phases, just revisiting such an idea with a little attention is bringing it one step closer to concretizing. Some ideas take many moons to eventuate, and even if they never solidify, the more you think of them the more they are part of you, for better or worse. And what better time than an enforced shelter in place to ponder every existential conundrum under the sun and do a little soul searching? Take a second chance at setting some resolutions and without driving yourself mad, try and reveal to yourself what it is you really need and want — maybe it isn’t the same now as it was for the past while. Maybe it’s a new thing for the first New Moon of what seems inevitably to be a New Era.
And of course I made a Zodiac Soundtrack for the Aries New Moon for you to enjoy all month long.
