"Hole In My Heart" by Cowboy Mouth

Sunday night was the New Moon in Pisces. We're also in the midst of Mercury Retrograde in Pisces. Pisces, as a sign, is one that I find fascinating because it's one that brings together the extremes. It's traditional ruler is Jupiter, which has a tendency to make the qualities it touches bigger and even more extreme. Where its other rulership, Sagittarius, becomes obsessed with seeking intellectual truth and knowledge, this obsession becomes one of emotional and spiritual wholeness. As such, Pisces season has produced some of the best people in humanity....and some of the worst. At its best, Pisces understands the connection between all things and seeks to teach the importance of this connection and its virtues to others, traits personified in Fred Rogers and Steve Irwin. At its worst, it seeks to control the reality and perception of others for its own gain and pleasure. A surprising number of serial killers are Pisces - in particular, the ones who were most successful at evading capture by building a reputation as a community leader (Dennis Rader, John Wayne Gacy) - as well as Harvey Weinstein. Of course, there are many stops on that spectrum - Justin Bieber, Steve Jobs, Dr. Seuss, and Alexander McQueen were also born under a Pisces sun. But you can sort of get a picture of that energy just with those few names - these were people who created some alternate version of reality where they could reign supreme, often rising from humble beginnings. It's a powerful ability, but one that can easily be used for the wrong purposes.

How am I feeling with all this Pisces energy going on? Emotional confusion, in its simplest terms. Acutely aware that I'm not as happy as I should be, all things considered, and trying to swim through this thick soup of vague malaise and discontent. I've been feeling like I've been walking around in a dream, that the things I know are true are somehow not real. Or that they'll fall apart if I make one wrong move. And when I don't feel like that, I feel empty and I find myself reaching for distractions constantly. I've been wandering around for the past week, feeling like I've lost something. Now I know what that was - hope. One of the astrologers I watch mentioned that we have to be cognizant of when we're using hope as a crutch. I guess I always have been. I've said it before - that's how I get through things. It's how I get through reality. Hope, as it's defined, is a feeling of expectation or desire for a certain thing to happen. When you're hoping for the impossible, disappointment becomes par for the course.

I was first introduced to Cowboy Mouth by showing up at a country-western bar, knowing there was going to be a show but not knowing who the band was. Basically the best way to discover something - by showing up some place with no expectations. They played this song that night and I fell in love with it. Cowboy Mouth is from New Orleans and you can kind of hear that in their music. It all sounds kind of bluesy, with just a touch of that darkness that is emblematic of the genre. At the time, they were promoting the album they had just released, "Voodoo Shoppe." Unfortunately, that is the one Cowboy Mouth album that is not on Spotify. In fact, it was difficult to find a clean recording of the album version anywhere, which is why the video I'm using for this post has a random photo of the band. Still, when I felt myself going down this emotional road, this is the song that came to mind. I also thought it fitting to feature a New Orleans band on Mardi Gras.

Bringin' me down to the Mississippi bed

Bury my body and cover up my head

I don't wanna believe in the stars up above

Or the rising of the dead

I don't wanna believe

I don't wanna believe

I don't wanna, wanna, wanna

But I do

I'm done with the tears

Done with the crying

Get busy living

Or get busy dying

That last line in the bridge has always echoed in my head. "Get busy living or get busy dying." It's the choice you have to make when you've lost everything you've been looking forward to. When the rest of your life is essentially a waiting room, until you get another shot. Assuming you get one. If you believe in reincarnation (and, some days, I do), they say the things you leave unfinished in this life will have to be completed in the next. At this point, I know I have at least one thing I'm going to need to complete in my next life. And I feel like I missed out on some key things that I've just plain run out of time for. I think my biggest regret is I haven't lived my life more intentionally. Yes, there's a charm to going with the flow and letting things happen as they may, but I think I would've been happier about where I am if I had planned them out better. It's like living in one of those "Choose your own Adventure" novels except when you make some arbitrary choice that leads to an unsatisfactory outcome, you can't flip back to page where you made the first bad decision. You have to play it through until the end. Of course, if you could do that, go back to a place where you think it could make a difference, there's no guarantee you'd get the outcome you'd want anyway. Maybe it's not in your control at all.

The bridge gets to the heart of it. It's a place of surrender. Especially if you believe that there is something bigger out there - that there is a Plan - this is how it is right now. Stop crying, because tears can't make it better. You're standing at a crossroads with two paths in front of you. You can either get busy living - which I can only assume means that you're trying to live life in a more intentional way, a more joyful way. In a way that's more aligned with your greater Destiny. Or get busy dying, which I would assume is letting things fall apart completely. I imagine it's making a more purposeful choice to die - for example, going all in on your addictions until they actually kill you. Or living in a way that is reckless and disregards the gift that life is. Or maybe it's just choosing not to do anything with your time in the waiting room except complain that you're bored when you're not staring at your phone. I don't know. There are many ways to die. Most people will choose the way that best suits them and then try to drag everyone else with them for good measure.

"Hole in My Heart" Video