There is a quote by the writer and activist James Baldwin that haunted me in the first three years of writing my novel. It served as a caution and a prediction both:

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.

My mind snagged on the dark conditional of ‘if they are to survive’. It suggested something existential and inevitable. And though the process of vomiting up your anguish is – and must be – intensely private, its results are usually not: a reader or viewer senses the difference between art that is polite and a little dead and art that is honest and fully alive, Baldwin says.

But what does he mean by ’the whole story’? Perhaps the one you feel is impossible to tell. In my case, I sensed that my novel was melancholy, sentimental and queer and I didn’t want it to be these things. I hoped, for a long time, to create an entirely different book, more guarded, less vulnerable. In hindsight, and only in hindsight, I’m grateful I confessed. I’m grateful Baldwin did, too, and gave us Giovanni’s Room.

I want to make a case for applying Baldwin’s wisdom not just to art and artists, but to life. Not all of life and not all the time, because imagine how relentless that would be. But to stay attuned to the choice between expressing our deepest sorrows and our most terrible secrets, and so remain fully alive, or to quash them, and remain a little dead inside.

The astrology of October 2026 has presented us with this particular choice more than once. The Venus Retrograde in Scorpio and Libra, which started on October 3, is a challenging transit both for interpersonal relationships and for societal ones. Traveling through the intense, emotional water sign of Scorpio, Venus retrograde pushes us to acknowledge the roiling anger we've glossed over, the hurts we've buried in our proverbial backyards. She dredges up the anguish like no other. In Libra, Venus retrograde highlights what is no longer balanced, fair and true.

And for what? So that we can love one another more honestly and love ourselves more honestly. So that we gain clarity on our own values. So that we develop self-respect in the places where we’ve been too much of a pushover. So that we stop making impossible compromises.

It is no coincidence that young people in fifteen different European countries have been taking to the streets last month, demanding that their respective governments finally start caring about the cost of living and education and that they stop lying about the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The impossible compromises have been stacked far too high.

To reiterate the theme of confronting what is dark and ‘telling the whole story’, Mercury has now joined the crowd. Since October 24, the planet of communication, friends, listening and learning is also retrograde in Scorpio and Libra, covering much the same territory as Venus. Painful misunderstandings, as well as cathartic conversations, may abound.

In a somewhat rare occurrence, both Venus and Mercury will station direct within a day of each other this coming month: Mercury on November 13 and Venus on November 14. So, whatever was dredged up from the depths for you in October, know that it’s part of a process that will keep unfolding until mid-November.

If things are unraveling, let them unravel. Pour your anguish onto the page so it doesn’t poison you. Ask your favorite dead people for advice tonight and listen quietly for their replies while the candles are slowly burning down.

Sources

The James Baldwin quote is from an article he wrote about the director Ingmar Bergman for Esquire, in April 1960.