In a bar in New York that was designed to look like a bathroom a friend once asked me when my birthday was. After I shamed her for not knowing that I had the same birthday as Oprah (to which she refuted: No, Oprah has the same birthday as you), her eyes lit up like a Zoltan machine and she screamed, at the pitch of a starving seagull, OF COURSE. You’re a classic Aquarius!
She proceeded to don the voice of a 70 year old professor and summarize the Aquarius phenotype.
Aquarius’, she said with an intelligible rasp, were known for making other signs feel at home. They utilized their creativity to cultivate interdisciplinary communities and invent new forms of expression. Though often called “the water bearer,” the Aquarius was an air sign, and akin to the ethereal element they bore mysterious, socially malleable, and creatively abstract personalities. They were society’s powerhouses of creativity, powerhouses of creativity, she repeated. That’s good, she said to herself.
She should’ve known that I was an Aquarius all along, she continued, considering she had met most of her friends through me. The fact that many of those friends were from different parts of my life — parts of my life she held no relation to — was a testament to my accurately-Aquarius ass. I brought people together who would’ve never had a reason to know each other otherwise.
Although I felt the urge to snap my friend out of the astrologer role I so often saw people don in the part of Brooklyn that sent people into debt for a single cocktail, a realization struck me loud enough to transcend the noise from a group nearby who had been dissecting, for the past hour, the latest episode of The Daily: I agreed with her.
I’ve spent my whole life connecting people with other people! I thought. It’s my favorite thing to do.
I suppose that’s why I make art. And I suppose that’s what I do for brands.
