Today ends a decade-plus cycle, as the great thunder-bearer Jupiter leaves Pisces, enters Aries and begins a new creative saga. In the spirit of culmination, I wanted to share my greatest hits from the year: the art I consumed, the moments which lasted, the work I’m proudest of. This list is not meant to be comprehensive — the #1 movie here came out in 1996 — but only came into my orbit in 2022. There are no stakes, no rules and no consequences, as it should always be.
INFLUENCES
While preparing to write my jumbo opus on Uranus in Taurus, I watched the 2002 documentary The Century of the Self, a harrowing breakdown of contemporary, commercial “identity;” a construct developed by the Freud family and a pack of advertisers on Madison Avenue. Free on Youtube. The Betty Crocker section is bone-chilling.
Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This is the sort of podcast I want to make, an in-depth exploration of Hollywood’s sexual evolution and endless ethical contradictions. Longworth inspired my first-ever viewing of Flashdance, in October. My mother hadn’t seen it since 1984, when it came out, and was game for a rewatch. Let’s be clear: the movie is perfect, the sort of high-budget dance spectacle that would never be made now. And for all the ways it is purported to be overblown and unrealistic, the conversations among its cast of dreamers — those who give up before trying, those who try and fail, and the few who actually make it — are still crawling around in the back of my head. Unforgettable.
I started reading Liz Greene’s The Astrology of Fate on my flight from NYC to Greece. The cosmic stuff is but a piece of the potato — a much grander, operatic examination of the human reckoning with fate. Swimming in the sea in Tel Aviv, wrestling like Jacob with the horrors of my past, I finally understood, through Greene, that whatever happened, happened. It’s not that everything happens for a reason, but that everything happens, period. As I fought through the middle portion of the twelve steps, something like forgiveness, or grace, emerged. I owe it to Pluto, the Fates, and this book.
In August, I interviewed one of my idols, the comics pop-messiah Grant Morrison, about their batsh*t (and thoroughly enjoyable!) drag thriller LUDA. In some rare cases, meeting your heroes can be better than you’d ever imagine. I loved the book and I am very proud of the interview. See my Grant Morrison reading list for recommendations on their works.
In terms of comics, Vita Ayala’s New Mutants run has been beautiful, sprawling, bizarre and imperfect — as any true New Mutants book should be. Issue #23 is one of the best single issues of a comic book I’ve ever read.
I’m tired of complaining about how TV is over, so let’s just skip to the movies that did it for me. Prey was fucking fierce and Amber Midthunder is gorgeous; let me write more of these sorts of reboots. TÁR is a highbrow camp masterpiece; in the spirit of Notes on a Scandal and Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett careens into Crazytown fast, and every faggot in the audience was lapping it up. Anyone who didn’t “get” it, or who found the movie problematic is — in Lydia’s words — a robot.
But the movie that took me somewhere else, the movie I watched two nights in a row — a feat unheard of since we used to watch Spice World on VHS, rewind it and immediately watch it again — was 1996’s Welcome to the Dollhouse. I think this is the movie I wanted Catherine, Called Birdy to be: a bleak, brutal vision of girlhood. That I didn’t find a movie about seventh grade to be actively retraumatizing is a testament to its restraint, taste, and intelligence. Heather Matarazzo deserves an Oscar and eternal glory: her Dawn is a martyr, a hero, a saint who never sees justice. She ends the movie unredeemed, unloved and unremarkable. But in her defiance, in her molten agony, she burns with a valiance which only we — her wizened future selves — can validate and venerate. Dawn Weiner will be avenged.
JOURNEYS
2022 was the year that I died. In the spring, I’d completed my training as an initiate in the Orphic Mysteries, a journey through the gates of Hecate and the halls of Persephone, a casting off of my skin, bones, name and identity into the hot green fires of Tartarus. And so I arrived, for the summer in Tel Aviv, dazed and broke, a barista speaking in another language, healing in his motherland, plunged deep in the primeval waters of the womb.
In an Akashic reading with the master Kat Hunt, I was told by my guides that this would be the summer of my life — my own Dirty Dancing. It took some time for me to feel like I had really landed in Tel Aviv. Though this is my birthplace, my home, the place where, upon landing, I can finally breathe freely, I arrived bearing a lot of death with me; a lot of grief. I cried and screamed in the sea, walked around alone, and wept watching Matilda in an empty apartment. I yelled and fought against uncertainty, boredom, and the fear that I’d never be a real artist, that I’d be stranded like so many cinematic diner waitresses before me. Oklou’s album Galore, like Grimes’ Visions before it, became an album of abstraction, processing and closure. It helped me cross through something.
As the months progressed, I caught myself feeling, at the periphery, an ambient clarity: the nightmare was over. I’d bite into the juiciest peaches I’d ever tasted, then slice them into yogurt made from sheep’s milk. My skin fed on the sun. I reread the Harry Potter books and started collaging again. And I danced, a lot, enjoying Tel Aviv’s pop rennaissance, and going hard on these anthems:
Treat Me Like a Toilet by Mel 4Ever
Duvshania by Shahar Shaul
Rokedet by Ofer Nissim
I Feel Better by Hot Chip
Cute Boy by Nunu
I felt new channels open. One July night, while watching Dirty Dancing, I experienced an emotional clarity and focus I’d never known — it was as if the artistic gate the film opened was so pure that I could travel anywhere, anytime, to any dimension (and so I did). I began to interface directly with my inner parts, along with the gods and planets, and so recruited Venus to go out on the town with me…
CLIMAXES
One Saturday in August, I took a chance, cancelled my readings, and went to a day party called Gazoz, at the beloved, relatively recent Tel Aviv venue Phi Garden. I know that it was one of the best days of my life. I had been partying for months with 23 year olds, feeling decrepit and done for. This was a space for men my age, and, turning over my body anxieties and dismorphic thoughts to a higher power, I asked to be a pure vessel for Venus, and for my grand femme parts: my Libra moon. Soon I found myself on a high podium, tits out, gin & tonic in hand, and when Bananarama’s “Venus” came on, I knew I had arrived. Jessie Ware’s “Free Yourself” soon took over, and I followed her commands. (The continuous cut of her album, What’s Your Pleasure? would soundtrack many of the hot summer nights to come).
There was a stacked Russian who I’d spotted the moment I entered, the sort I marked as untouchable, as someone who’d never look at me. But somehow, I ended up in his arms that evening, and then in his bed. I just gave myself permission to not make meaning out of it, to just treat it as a dare. On the scooter ride home, I was so delirious that I crashed in the middle of the street.
At the Rosh Hashanah new year’s rave in Park Hayarkon, a twelve-hour blowout involving every gay person in the country, I was lifted onto a man’s shoulders and spun around. I realized that this freedom — this fun — which I was finally experiencing after so many years of martyrdom and myopia could be accessed in any country, any time — and that New York would beckon with more adventures to come.
The adventures would continue, to a wider — and more varying — range of outcomes. In November, my friend Jack would introduce me to jockstrap night at The Eagle. Looking at myself in the mirror, I realized that I didn’t recognize myself. That I’d shapeshifted yet again. And I was so grateful for it.
BEST PIECES
I’m grateful to have collaborated with affirming, open-minded, game editors at NYLON, GAWKER, IFFY and beyond this year. Here are some greatest hits:
In terms of astrology, I consider these NYLON breakdowns on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Lilith and Pluto to be my best work yet. Naturally, I loved writing about my sun sign, Taurus, covering the eclipses, and doing a cosmic breakdown of every Catwoman — from Eartha Kitt to Zoe Kravitz.
For NYLON and GAWKER, I got to really go in on a few of my favorite things, namely: Neve Campbell’s final girl journey through the Scream saga; the strangled feminism of She-Hulk; and the untouchable legacies of Absolutely Fabulous and Girls.
NYLON let me write a two-part Manifestation guide, which is really more of a personal bible to prayer, active channeling and connecting with your “team” of higher powers. I hope you find it helpful.
And, in terms of demonic work, IFFY let me write a piece about cruising, sex apps and gay hedonism. If I wrote it now, I’d do it differently — I’ve learned a lot about the double-sting of moralism — but I consider it to be an imperfect part of my journey that’s worth sharing.
ANYWAYS
Thanks for being a friend, reader, client, co-traveler and beyond this year. As you know, 2023’s astrology is all about the new, different, exciting (and sometimes violent). I’m game if you are.
Ever,
David Odyssey
love this love you
A JOURNEY OF LIGHT