Greetings Season fans, Harvey here with a post-festive newsletter for your enjoyment. Sorry that this is a little late into the season. I initially wrote this note around New Years, off a couple of shots and a few beers, but then managed to injure myself rolling out of bed and spent a couple of days on my back (while sober).
Capricornus. Sidney Hall, 1825
The Gregorian calendar has done it again. That year felt like 100 but we’re back and ready to do it all over again. I’ll spare you the “we’re with you in these unprecedented times” patter but if you are looking to spice up your next scroll through the marketing emails in your inbox, feel free to play COVID marketing bingo with this handy card I made.
Who is that atop of the cliff, looking to guide us into this new year? Why it’s Capricorn. Like its animal mascot, the goat - and to a greater extent the sea goat - is an enigmatic creature. At first glance, you say to yourself, “I get it, it’s like a sheep.” But on closer inspection, we realise it’s not so simple. As Rosa Lyster put it
>Look at the goat: here are its horns, its little hooves, its little tail. Here it is, climbing unsmilingly up a difficult mountain and briskly eating a hard plant when it gets to the summit. Okay. Look even closer at the goat. Look at its eyes. What’s this? Why, rectangular pupils. Little hooves, little tail, little horns, little nose, little teeth, little eyes, little oh my god rectangular pupils.
>This is the heart of the Capricorn mystery, the secret that has been kept so quiet for all these years. They seem so normal, so predictable, but they are looking at the world through effing rectangular pupils, different from all the other kinds of pupils in this world, and they don’t even know. >
I think this gets to the heart of a lot of people's frustrations with Capricorns: they see the world through effing rectangular pupils and it can be difficult to line up their perspective with those of everyone else. Now, it would be unfair to say that they’re not team players, however Capricorns tend to have a strong sense of what they want to do and how they want to do it, often running in opposition to a more well trodden path.
Frustrating as that can be, it’s hard to deny that it contributes to that Capricorn charm. Sometimes we can be lured into a fruitless quest to solve the sea-goat’s cipher. Other times, their focus ( or, tendency for single-mindedness) can produce incredible results. Case in point: LeBron James has Sun, Neptune, & Jupiter in Capricorn.
I guess you could say that Capricorns contain multitudes! Not always Hannibal Lecter, sometimes Zorro. Sometimes a big man upfront, sometimes walking round SXSW in a nappy. They could be cool and scary or they could just be Jared Leto 😬.
Capricorn Season Mix: Kazabon
This season’s mix comes from another impressive Irish talent, this time via London. Kazabon is a DJ and designer who, when she’s not designing cover art for the likes of Equiknoxx and Swing Ting, forms part of NTS residents and World Carnival Sound tag team champions, Hipsters Don’t Dance. As with a HDD set, this mix threads together dancehall, afrobeats and club music from the UK and beyond. Kazabon herself said of the mix:
>I tried to select tunes that reflect how I’ve been feeling approaching the new year; a little dark but reflective with moments of hope and joy. Hoping people will find it fun and uplifting.
Listen to Kazabon's mix and check out the tracklist here.
The world continues to look bleak as we reach this arbitrary period in our planet's rotation around the Sun and the view from my window is one of bare trees and frozen ground; but while a lot seems uncertain, I know that Spring is around the corner.
That's it from me. See you under the Aquarian sun.
Love,
Harvey xx