Photo Credit: Youtube
Last week we wrote of one Gemini twin, it would only seem fitting to write about another for balance : Alanis Morissette.
I remember being 5 years old and my parents asking me what I wanted for Christmas or my Birthday, they fall within 11 days of each-other. I’m almost certain it was my birthday. Anyway, her 3rd album effort Jagged Little Pill was taking the music world by storm.
My earliest memory of Lilith energy was probably Alanis Morissette now that I think about it. I remember watching the You Oughta Know music video on the Coca Cola Top 20 countdown on Sunday morning. It was rare for me not to be at Sunday School at church but for whatever reason I had missed it.
I remember the carrying of the guitar. The desert. The long-haired majestic brunette screaming down the microphone. When you’re a child at that age, you don’t understand lyrics of songs or what they mean. You’re 100% living off the energy from the strings, drums, and vocals.
When reading the lyrics to You Oughta Know these days I giggle because the song is SO inappropriate for a 5 year old to be listening to! And of course the “Parental Advisory” sticker on the front was totally the reason why my parents didn’t end up buying me the album for the 6th birthday. Probably a choice for the better in retrospect. I don’t think my Dad would’ve actually cared. They brought me Grand Theft Auto: Miami Vice the video game at 14, and we always went to the video shop with my Dad because he never cared what titles we chose or the restricted titles. I’m inclined to say it was more my Mother than my Father whom was bothered by the mature label sticker on the album front cover.
What’s funny is that I remember my mum seriously contemplating buying the album for Christmas. I remember we were at St. Luke’s Mall doing Christmas shopping at the CD store behind the Wendy’s Ice-Cream shop on the bottom floor. In retrospect, I think my mum herself was curious about the album and music. I think she too was drawn to the Lilith energy of this music.
I remember her standing there looking at the front cover and I was pleading, nay, begging her to get it for me for Christmas! Had I been more socially savvy I would’ve said: “Get it for us for Christmas!” And then it could’ve been our cute little bonding moment. Instead her eyes couldn’t move past the “Parental Advisory” sticker on the front cover and she scrunched up her nose and said the soul-destroying word: “No.” Her Lilith in Virgo had beaten her North Node in Leo, perhaps for the better.
It’s okay though. We both fell in love with Alanis’ music when I became of age to hear it. Perhaps if NZ had been like the US and there were edited versions of the album readily available then it would’ve been fine. Unfortunately NZ’s music market is so small that they couldn’t justify the cost of buying the edited versions of albums. CDs in the 90’s could cost upwards of $35! This is such an interesting analysis of supply/demand economics and how music stores back then really had to toe-the-line in order to stay profitable. Buying one too many albums that didn’t sell could lose the store money.
Anyway, it is no secret that the past 9 months I have staged an internal revolution of sorts. I’ve had to kill so many parts of myself in order to allow other parts of myself to prosper. This is big Lilith energy. Death and destruction but also the rising out of ashes like a phoenix.
I’ve been reprogramming and rewiring my brain. I’ve thrown myself into sharpening my skill-set of self-discipline. I’m no longer delaying things, I’m trying to stay on top of them as soon as they come. I’m learning to lean into responsibility and finding ways to enjoy it rather than run away from it.
If I sleep in one day and don’t get into the gym, I’m okay with that. I don’t self-obsess over things and I keep it all cool. It’s okay if I couldn’t get all my workouts done this week. I don’t have to be so perfect all the time.
My therapist is constantly encouraging me to practice self-tenderness. I can be so tough on myself sometimes but it’s because I have high expectations. I try to live as sensibly as possible. I make choices to balance my endocrine system and keep my hormones in homeostasis. But if I want a slice of pizza because I have a food craving, I honor that in the moment because I know if I don’t, I’ll end up bingeing and eating an entire pie in an act of self-destruction and deep self-loathing (bad Lilith energy).
I don’t know how I stumbled across “Thank U” once again but I’m glad that I did. It was probably somehow connected to David Odyssey’s standom of her.
Context is important with this song. It is not from Jagged Little Pill, it is from the follow-up album Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. The previous year Mz. Morissette had been traveling and touring the entire world and was suffering from extreme burnout, both physically and emotionally.
The subsequent eighteen months after her incredibly successful tour, Mz. Morissette took a lot of time to decompress and re-evaluate. After a whirlwind of success, achieving all the accolades one could musically at the age of 21, Alanis took a 6 week trip to India in December 1996 after her tour. She took her Mum, two aunts, and two friends along with her.
India is an incredibly special place. I was blessed enough to go when I was 20 for the Commonwealth Games. We went together as a family, visited the Taj Mahal in Agra (the City of Love), picked out a beautiful rug that we got shipped to New Zealand, and I made the final for the 50M Breaststroke!
It was a time of spiritual awakening within myself also. I was confronted with poverty. Real poverty. The type that made me start asking questions about myself and my place within the world. The mechanisms and wheel was starting to turn in my brain about how beautiful, fleeting, and special life is. And that sure, I was flunking a math class or whatever, my struggles paled in comparison to others and it really taught me to appreciate my life.
This is why “Thank U” is such a special song to me. This metamorphosis I’ve been going through shedding several skins is very real and it is not pretend. It is authentic and people are picking up on it. The seismic shift into the Age of Aquarius is conjunct with my North Node and Venus. It’s my time to shine baby! I haven’t even peaked yet. Just you watch!
I’ve absorbed all this pain and it’s transforming me into something better but the change has been exhausting. It has taken so much out of me. So much so that during the New Moon, I stayed in that weekend and slept the entire time. Part of me knew I have so much work to do but I knew it would be beneficial for me to slow down and recuperate. The past 6 months I would’ve just muscled through this feeling and got shit accomplished, but MercuryRX is a moment that teaches us to slow down for a minute.
I know this blog post is long, but I think this quote about the song sums up where I am in my life. During her VH1 Storytellers appearance, Mz. Morissette explained:
"I felt that I lived in a culture that told me that I had to consistently and constantly look outside myself to feel this elusive bliss. And I achieved a lot of what society had told me to achieve and I still didn't feel peaceful. I started questioning everything, and I realized that actually everything was an illusion and it was scary for me because everything I had believed in was dissolving in front of me and there was a death of sorts, a really beautiful one ultimately, but at first a very scary one, and so I stopped. I stopped for the first time and I was overcome with a huge sense of compassion for myself first, and then naturally that translated into my feeling and compassion for everyone around me and a huge amount of gratitude that I had never felt before to this extent. And that's why I had to write this song, 'Thank U,' because I had to express how exciting this was and how scary it was and all of these opportunities for us to define who we are."
The bridge is very special to me:
”The moment I let go of it, was the moment I got more that I could handle,
The moment I jumped off of it, was the moment I touched down”