Rob Brezsny - Modern Wizard
by Constantine
I found Rob Brezsny, author of America's favorite Freewill Astrology column, at the Oregon Country Fair today. (For those of you who are not familiar with this famous event, the name, which conjurs up mental images of butter sculptures and rodeo queens perhaps-- is drastically misleading.)
Rob is scheduled to perform at the main stage at 3 pm, it's 2:59 and I'm lost. Dodging and weaving my way through a tight, moving crowd of stilt-walking hippies, fairy winged freaks, and young girls with their ta-tas all aglitter with sparkly body paint, I finally come to a clearing of some sort. The smell of falafel and pizza mingle in the atmosphere over a well mannered crowd sitting indian style in front of the main stage. The animated man presiding over them is the one I've been looking for-- Rob Brezsny.
I'm just in time to snag a seat in the shade, sit back and enjoy an earful of Rob's voice, which is a curious mix of fire and brimstone Baptist preacher and poetry night at the local coffee shop. The shock of wavy white hair along with the black pants and shirt that Rob is wearing makes him look a little bit like a wizard. Rob casts his spell over the crowd in a very wizardly way. He hypnotizes his listeners with long streams of freestyle chanting and ranting, warming up with a prayer to the goddess herself. God's girlfriend, as he puts it.
He has the women cheering rowdily in the front row and gets us all to sing with him. Then he switches it up and channels Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Rob encourages us to create our own, but in the meantime...he's going to tell us his. Rob dreams of a new world, where childbirth is broadcast nightly over our television sets and everyone has at least one imaginary friend. The word asshole will be used as a term of endearment. But most importantly, we learn that in the new world there will be an 11th commandment-- "you shall not bore God."
At that, Rob exits the stage to the sound of appreciative hoots and hollers from the crowd.
After the performance, a small, but determined line forms at the table where Rob is conducting a book signing. I watch as one of the fans plunks down an empty sketch book in front of Rob and requests him to draw a set of scales in it. He's a Libra apparently. Rob gamely begins sketching a set of lopsided scales and explains that they aren't always balanced. "But that's the fun of it," he jokes. After the crowd has dwindled, I sneak over for a quick interview with him, just as they are dismantling the table and chairs right out from under us.
Rob, unconcerned, parks himself on the damp, trodden grass near a food booth, and I join him on his left side. He looks comfortable even when someone accidentally trips over his foot. In response to the throng of people surrounding us he says, "There are two types of chaos. Destructive, horrible chaos or creative chaos. This is," he gestures at the parade of hula hoops, brass instruments and baby strollers, "fertile chaos."
I learn from him that he has written three books total, and also had a short career as a musician. He tells me that his band's manager died the day the first album was released. I must be making a grim face because Rob reassures me that, "It all worked out for the best."
He still manages to incorporate music into his livelihood, though. His current project, he tells me, is a soundtrack to the book Pronoia that will include poetry and music that he has written. Pronoia (the antidote to paranoia) is a bafflingly creative book that hit the shelves in 2005. It took him three years of writing before it was finished, but by the time he sat down to write, he was drawing from notes he'd been taking for five years. Rob jokes that he used the 'collage approach' to writing.
It's hard for me to imagine having an entire nation turning to you to advice, hanging on your every word. On that subject, I ask him if he'd been formally trained in astrology before he started doing it professionally. He cites one main teacher as well as having read a lot of books on the subject.
"It was a gradual process. As I got stronger and wiser, I also got more responsibility," he tells me. "It didn't happen all at once, thankfully."
Rob says that he spent many years of his life below the poverty level in Santa Cruz before he made it big. Sometimes making no more than $5,000 dollars a year. "I was determined to stay poor for as long as it took, to get paid to do what I really love. The money will come eventually, but what they don't tell you is that it make take fifteen years," he laughs.
From Santa Cruz, Rob moved to Marin County, which he believes is one of the most beautiful places on earth to live in. He tells me that in Santa Cruz, he felt like he was preaching to the choir, so to speak. His message needed to get out to the rest of the world.
"Marin has a lot of earth-power," he says. "I don't intellectually understand geomancy the way my friend Antero Alli does, but I believe that I have been shaped by the places I've lived in."
Steering the conversation towards deeper subjects I ask Rob if he has noticed that people seem to be from two camps these days. One camp believes that the human race is hitting bottom. The other camp believes that things are improving. People are becoming more aware. So,which is it, I ask him?
"Both," he says with an air of awe. "It is happening simultaneously." Rob explains to me that the original definition of the word apocolypse was absolute collapse, but also awakening.
I wonder then, what the cause is of all the paranoia and fear and misery we seem to be experienceing as a race? His opinion is that the media is playing the largest part in spreading misery and fear, by displaying it as entertainment.
"The reflection we are getting from media is that life is 80% terrible. But it's not true" Rob says. "We are stuck in a loop that moving with its own momentum. But it can't last forever."
"It's important to be upset about the world. About suffering. It shows we have empathy. So it's not entirely a bad thing to have complaints," he explains. Just not to the degree we've taken it.
I ask him what can average people can do to give back to the world? Rob says that he believes that each person has a specific way of giving back and that it is something that every person has to find in their lifetime.
"What is the mode of generosity? Whatever we find the most fulfilling and interesting is the key," he says.
So, on the subject of hobbies, Rob smiles and says that the word hobby implies something that you like doing, not necessarily what you make money doing. "I pretty much get paid for my 'hobbies'. Poetry, philosophy, music, writing."
Rob tells me quite frankly that he has had a very fortunate life. He lives in a beautiful place with a loving family. "It's easy to stay positive when we're living in a country where even our poor are rich compared to people in other countries."
Rob tells me that he spent the last night at the Country Fair and had the most amazingly beautiful and positive dreams. "I usually write down all my dreams meticulously. These were incredible. I must have absorbed all the happy, sleeping subconsciouses around me," he says.
I tell Rob that from reading his book and watching his performance, I get the impression that he doesn't have one organized belief system. It seems that he pulls in from all sources at once. Buddhism, Hinduism, Shamanism. At this, he perks up and says that truly his goal is to be receptive. To all sources. He tells me that he would like to become a good listener. Rob reaches down and produces a small booklet that a fan of his had given to him earlier. "Are YOU listening?" it says on the cover.
Apparently, it's a manual on how to become a better listener.
I hate to burst his bubble, but Rob already is a good listener. At times during the interview I feel as though he is interviewing me. He asks me my sign, and what dreams I am having lately, what I am studying in school and even laughs at my jokes.
But he's also a fantastic public speaker and writer with an ability to let words flow out of him in ways that empower his audience and command the attention of the entire nation. It's not often that you meet someone who is not only listening to you with their full attention, but giving back as much energy as they are receiving. Not often, as in....never.
On this note, we end the interview, I thank Mr. Brezsny, give him a hug and disappear self consciously among the dread locks, sparkling ta-tas, and fertile chaos of the Oregon Country Fair.
| 07/15/06
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Astrology
