Metrical Studies, Astrological Musics and Meanderings...

Lets talk about this chart for a little while since I haven't written in a while. I've been doing a lot of experiments with metrics in poetry, with prosody, and learning how to chart natural phrases. I'm planning a series of sonnets that may be in a sort of ghazal mode, as in they're going to approach themes of love and separation. Some of the things I've been thinking of as hallmarks or points of guidance for it are some of Berryman's Dream Songs (specifically for their use of recurrent characters), Borges' sonnets on some of his literary and other idols, and some Shakespeare. I never read any Shakespeare outside of school until recently and it only just started making sense. Sometimes I feel like the course I've followed for myself, my own sort of curriculum since 2006, has lent me a pretty solid yet amorphous foundation for further experiments.

But lets get back to this chart for a minute. I've also been learning a lot of geometry, I want to learn the calculus, especially its necessity. I'm a huge Borges fan, I read Borges learned Zeno's paradoxes from his father on a chess board. There are so many beautiful and romantic things about that image to me. Follow me long enough and you'll know two of my biggest idols are Borges and Duchamp. I'm imagining myself right now watching them play chess, something about the Ruy Lopez or a Spanish Opening. I tried for a long time to learn chess openings, some tactics and strategies, but I'm not into it enough to practice on a daily basis. Apparently I'm into writing and singing enough to practice those things, I tweet enough to aggravate the living shit out of most people and if you hung out with me I'm constantly either singing or playing Precorder...

I still haven't made it to the chart! This is a post about a nonchart, a nonmap and a nonplan. I been reading this terrific biography on Tagore and it has really touched me. I'm not one for, what seems to me, the forced sappiness of the Lin sect, but I'm all about sincerity in love in the mode of Hafez. I keep wondering about oppositions, the nature of the world in its dualism, how object and subject oppose and all the concomitant polemics. I think I read once about a "passive" oriental mindset, something opposed to the Nietzschean "superman," or active principle. I'd guess its like a Kinsey scale, there is no black nor white, there is merely a spectrum in between. But sometimes gradations and solid degrees are good tools, are good ways for us to frame an analysis.

Lets see how long he can avoid the chart.. I've also done some studies of chakra, though when I say I "study" it usually means about 6 hours or at most two days. I'm pretty keen sometimes, though. I did some drawings mapping out what I perceived as a concordance between 7 scale degrees and Western accepted 7 chakra positions. It made a lot of sense to me when I read it at the time, the seat of voice being 5th chakra, seat of melody in song being 5th degree. I'm working on a cosmology of sorts, ha. I'm always working especially by not working. Maybe I'll look into the etymology of work, Debord said "never work"? Reed wrote a song about Warhol, about Drella, and the lyric was "the most important thing is work." I guess that's why I find myself writing this today, weasel words and all.

Finally lets look at this chart! I promise! Vernal equinox was about 10 days ago, we see Sun a little past 10th degree Aries. Aries is the initator, the beginning of the cycle. Vernal point because it begins our Spring, Aries is associated with the head and with the sprouting of the seed. Here we see a conglomeration of luminaries. Mercurial intellect just turned around (retrograde) and initiates communications; expansive Jupiter sits mid-Aries opposed to Saturn, we get a fiery expanse; Sun soon conjoins Jupiter in this opposition, putting benefic, good luck, ego across from the scythe, Father and karmic ender Saturn. I wrote a little analysis once about the recent revolutions and how it's curious that Uranus (the Revoluter) is at Aries point for these events. Still we see Mars soon conjoining Uranus, so the conflict does not end soon, it stays martial.

Essentially the chart stays stressed. Pluto runs the T-square from 7 degrees Capricorn. Cardinal signs are shook by a series of squares. When Sun hits 8 or so degrees Cancer we'll get another flux of energies as it completes a Grand Cross. All of this is vague and awful. Astrology takes the truth of astronomy and grafts a traditional method of interpretation. We take the Moon's cycle and use it as an analogue for longer cycles. I feel a bit demoralized? The magic of my art is my vulnerability. I'll keep working through these metric studies and then the sonnet (song) cycle with the Buddha, with Ibn Arabi's Her, with all the love and heft of attachment/detachment will emerge. It's my malware, I assume the most innocuous form to infiltrate the system. Sorry I meander, stay lovely all. Especially those who don't read.