New Year's Eve has been my favorite holiday as long as I can remember. Naturally as a little girl I loved the chocolate eggs, chickens and rabbits of Easter, the shower of attention and gifts of my birthday and the good times, feasting, decorations and presents for everyone courtesy of Santa Claus at Christmastime. New Year's Eve, however, had a great advantage. I was allowed to stay up until midnight and then everybody kissed!
Later, as a young adult, I eagerly seized the opportunity to stay up all night any time and especially on New Years Eve, experimenting with drugs that made it even easier to do so. I loved watching the sun come up over bacon and eggs at an all night restaurant and watching pre-dawn religious tv shows presented by Kenneth Copeland, ... often the only programming available at such a tender hour back in the early 80s in Australia, and a facetious hit with me and my punk rock friends.
Once I became a professional musician, the New Year's Gig became a holy grail -- not just because for us musicians and DJs, this is the most lucrative night of the year, but also because I have always wanted to be playing music at the moment of the New Year, superstitiously hoping to bring that energy into the year to come (this superstition has worked quite well). And I love the feeling that a new year is a chance to start over, recalibrate. I love New Years resolutions ... once on a New Years Eve gig, my band Moisturizer dressed up as the vices we were respectively quitting for our New Years resolutions. I wore a gold lame outfit and made a belt of Hershey's Bullets and a bra of Herscheys Kisses, Moist Gina, the bass player, was all in green and wore a crown of rolling papers and the drummer was dressed as a cigarette. (I still eat chocolate). We all stayed up all night and at midnight everybody kissed.
When I was born, the Moon was applying to a conjunction with the Sun in the 30th degree of Gemini. I was born just minutes on the Zodiac AND the clock before the actual New Moon and before the beginning of Cancer season. Once I began delving into astrology, I spent decades believing I was born ON the New Moon, and only since learning about lunar phase cycles have I come to terms with the extremely likely fact that I was born under a balsamic waning crescent Moon ... the end of the old cycle rather than the beginning of the next. There was a period of adjustment here, but little by little, I began to incorporate the suggestions of great teachers and writers and realize that the way I live my life indeed corresponds with the signature of the dark moon - the New MONTH's Eve.
Following the Moon brings many of the festivities of New Years Eve into my life on a monthly basis. I don't need a lunation to stay up late and kiss people at midnight, but the structure of the cycle tends to bring in a joyous aspirational feeling for me once the waning Moon becomes dark in the sky. I organically start to make resolutions and formulate plans for the month (or months) ahead at this time.
This evening's New Moon in Virgo coincides with the Jewish New Year. I'm not Jewish, but I live in Brooklyn and can feel the excitement of my Jewish friends and neighbors in the air. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, always falls on the New Moon preceding the Autumn Equinox and is said to be the anniversary of Adam and Eve (kissing at midnight?).
Since this particular New Moon is in the sign of Virgo, the time could not be more fitting for LISTING our New Moon or New Year resolutions, reflecting upon how we can live more healthily, and indeed, more righteously. The Virgo New Moon is a fine time to set the purest of intentions, taking into account the symbolism of sowing and growing seeds with a view to harvesting a crop. Virgo is an earth sign; consider at this time what it is that you want to make manifest in the physical world.
We are still very much in Virgo season for the coming couple of weeks and I hope you'll enjoy the Virgo themed Zodiac Soundtrack I made for the occasion - songs about process, practice and perfection.
This Virgo New Moon also falls on Labor Day in North America, a day for acknowledging the contributions of our workers and thinking of ways in which we can all be of service. I'm lucky enough to have a New Moon Labor Day Jewish New Years Gig in New York City (come to Union Pool if you're reading this in real time and you're in the vicinity) so I'll definitely be staying up late tonight and partaking of safe, mutually consensual kisses . Tomorrow my New Month resolutions kick in! Goodbye (again) chocolate! Hello get organized! Shanah Tovah!
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