I Dream of Nicki
An encounter with the divine feminine, and masculine
You’ve heard me give this spiel before. It comes from the Spotify song notes on Nicki Minaj’s “Your Love.” In Nicki’s words:
“Before recording Pink Friday, Baby & Slim came to LA to meet with me.
They told me it was time to release my first album.
I told them I wasn’t ready and that nobody would buy my album.
I released it reluctantly as per their orders.
Its first week sales still haven’t been topped by any female rapper.
Believe in yourself.”
Typing it out now, I burst into tears, like I always do. So often, for me, it feels like there isn’t a self to believe in. But something recently roared back to life, and I do indeed believe, as I never have before. I’m ready to bet everything on myself. Nicki was right.
She came to me in a dream, a few nights ago. We were in my mother’s house, which had been converted into a walk-through wardrobe, with all of Nicki’s looks on racks. My mom was a very good sport, keeping to the living room while Nicki and her team (including me) went through it all. She had something big to prepare for, a show or an appearance. My subconscious cast another Jewish mother from my middle school days, let’s call her Ruth, in the role of Nicki’s mamma.
Ruth terrorized Nicki. It was shocking to see the ultimate Sagittarian, the indefatigable firestar, get crushed by the spectral terror of an Ashkenazi matriarch. Meanwhile, I was trying on bras, not focusing, not helping.
Nicki summoned me. “You’re all over the place,” she said. “How am I supposed to count on you?”
Suddenly, I came to center, and into full, adult presence. “I will be there, tomorrow and every day, like Batman in Gotham City. You can rely on me.”
My friend Joe says that I’m in my Dark Phoenix phase. The divine feminine, as embodied by the Phoenix and Nicki Minaj, is life incarnate. What Nicki revealed to me, in these song notes and in dreamtime, is that the closer one comes to the heavens, to the heights of the cosmos, the more vulnerable she becomes.
Which is why Nicki demanded that the divine masculine do its job. She deserves back-up.
In akashic therapy, I confessed to terror. There is the power now, the planet-consuming, creation-generating enormity. But what happens when it crashes, like it always does? The guides said they’d help me get past fear of losing it, so that I can calmly say: “I have this.”
Blurring through the akashic trance, I saw myself in clay pastels of orange and red, the earth in my hand. I didn’t need to clutch it or hang on. “I have this.” I could hold it, gently, unafraid of burning it all down.
In Croatia, we wandered through a hidden park, a lost world out of Zelda. The trees were massive. I touched one, closed my eyes, and felt was it was to be unmoving, grounded, eternal. “I am a tree,” I said to Lulu.
But within a few days of returning home, at the peak of my heart-opening high, I betrayed myself. A friend invited me on a camping trip. I didn’t know the group, or where we’d be going. I’d have to share a tent.
It was fine, but also kind of awful. I didn’t feel like I was in myself, or among trusted comrades. I felt homeless, not in control of my circumstances, as I have before. It was a failure to give my inner Phoenix what she required: home, stability, rerooting, calm and consistency. I only went on the trip because I was afraid of saying no. I overextended myself, and came back broke.
What would it take to commit, to stick around, to not lose my way, or lose myself? What is it to be of earth and stone, not intangible like smoke, or doomed to extinguishment, like fire?
I have always been seduced by the mania, enthralled by the power. But now the higher Voice has spoken to me, through Nicki Minaj. She doesn’t need me to go to the stratosphere. She needs me to stay on earth.
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