ecosystems, not empire: diana rose harper in conversation with jeanna kadlec

two saturnian astrologers get real about (spiritual) relationships

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I first met Diana Rose Harper (she/they) in the most likely/least likeliest of places: working on an app. I had been brought onboard the then-tiny CHANI team as the Director of Content, and one of my jobs was managing the writers who had been hired on the planets. Diana, of course, was writing Venus, and the way she wrote about her fundamentally changed my own relationship to the planet of all things love, beauty, and culture. Reading Diana on the planets was — and remains — a great joy.

the one and only diana rose harper

Throughout the years, as our long-distance friendship grew (slowly, as Saturnians do), Diana implicitly showed up as and called me into further relationship with Venus. They’re the one who first introduced me to Sphere & Sundry (“I think the Empress series would be really beneficial for you”). They have helped me spiritually troubleshoot various issues over the years, but always, first and foremost, from the position of relationality. In this, Diana has played the role of both friend and priestess, a trusted advisor who, in spite of their own wisdom, remains profoundly humble and asks questions first, before anything else.

Diana is the author of the guidebook for the Rosebud Tarot (and projects ~to come~). And her relational point of view around astrology is the foundation of some of her most accessible, beginner-friendly teachings: Fierce Compassion: Natal Astrology as Radical Self-Care and Fundamental Needs, Required Resources: the Collaboration of the 1st and 2nd Houses Workshop. For more intermediate astro-savvy folks, Diana’s Work Your Angles workshop, which considers aesthetics and branding based off of your Ascendant and Midheaven, is based on a reading she used to offer (it’s one of the fucking coolest readings I’ve ever had).

If you’d like to book a reading with Diana, you should subscribe to their Patreon, as their calendar is exclusively open to Patrons.

I hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation that, full disclosure, is between two queers with Mercury in Sagittarius. I know we did!

this interview has been lightly edited for length

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Jeanna Kadlec: I'm so excited to have you for the newsletter. Before we kick off into talking about spirituality and creativity and how you do those things, if you wouldn't mind describing yourself for any of my newsletter readers who somehow don't know who you are like?

Diana Rose Harper: I am someone who is deeply interested in the process of becoming more genuinely human. That has taken various shapes over the years, but this has been a constant theme throughout my life. What does it mean to actually be human? and then, how do we relate within that? How do we be in the places where we are and with the people who surround us? and when I say people, I also mean human, but very much also other-than-human people. 

The tools and languages that I use for that at this point are astrology and poetry and tarot and metaphor. But the primary tool, especially that I'm known for, is astrology. I am part of a micro-movement of astrologers who are calling ourselves “relational astrologers,” which aims to really foreground the always already present and potential relationships that we have with ourselves, with other-than-humans, with the planets and stars. It is a way of communicating an animist worldview without using the language of animism, and also making more explicit the intentionality of relationship versus — you know, animism as a worldview doesn't necessarily require relationship. It is instead allowing for and acknowledging the presence of intelligence and agency in all of existence, and not hierarchical-izing human intelligence as the only intelligence. Whereas saying “relational” is [how] all of these agential beings are available for various kinds of relationships, whether that's a devotional relationship, a neighborly relationship, simply acknowledging that I am in a relationship with this building because I live inside of it, even if I don't necessarily hang out and play D&D with the building. You know? It’s foregrounding the relational component. 

JK: That's so beautifully said. In one of your bios you describe yourself — I loved finding this — as a “planetary intimacy guide,” as a “cosmic officiant connecting Earth bound souls with the starry heavens.” Everything you said just so beautifully encapsulates the relational aspect of your work. 

And you did basically just answer [my first] question, around what spirituality is to you in this moment. But to deepen that, how does that worldview and how do those relationships then impact your creative process, your relationship to creativity?

DRH: I really take to heart quite deeply something that I first learned in a Greek thought and literature class when I was 18. I don't really know if 18-year-olds are ready for Greek thought and literature, like, deeply.

JK: We sure thought we were.

DRH: I mean, some people never grow out of [being] that kid that gets developed inside of a Greek thought and literature class, let's be real. 

So I first came across this idea in that class, and then I think it's Elizabeth Gilbert who has kind of recycled this idea in her book Big Magic: the idea that ideas or genius are things that visit you, things that pick you to some degree. Then, if you have the correct circumstances and skill, you get to make something because the genius or the idea entered in one of your ears or eyes or crown chakra or whatever. 

So when it comes to my creative work, so much of what I make is in response to or in conversation with the beings that I am in relationship with. I think this shows up the most strongly on my Instagram, where I'll be thinking with or talking with a given planet or looking at a particular configuration that has happened or is happening will happen

a spile in a maple tree // sap streaming

.From there, words emerge. The image that is coming to mind right now is actually tapping maple trees. The thinking is the same as assessing trees for putting in a spile. If I'm lucky, I hit a vein and out pours some sugary something, and then in the cooking, eventually I come out with something that I can share with others. 

Devotion is a huge, huge, huge, huge thing for me. My house basically is a temple. The readers of this can't see this, but behind me, I have two altars here, there's three altars here, and then you can't see them, but there's four altars right here. And then I have more upstairs. 

I work to be in constant cognizance of the perpetually true presence of other-than-human intelligences, would be one way of putting that. In particular, those I understand to be already invested in me and in whom I am invested. A not insignificant part of my creative work is the consequence of deliberately doing what I can to cultivate the virtues and wisdom that I understand these beings to embody and teach.

It always feels a little risky to bring in vessel imagery because fucking Christianity, mono-normativity and hetero ideas of what a person with a uterus is supposed to do. So it's not quite like, I'm a vessel through which these things speak. That kind of thinking can really facilitate egoic non-acknowledgement of one's own biases and desires in what you end up creating or sharing. But I [do] understand myself in a very — not that I'm better than anyone kind of way — but the image that I think really resonates with this is the Hierophant image of like, I'm an incarnate person in communication with and relationship with either non-incarnate beings or incarnate beings who are very much not on planet Earth. Like Jupiter literally can't be on Earth, like, right? But like standing at a sort of crossroads and receiving such that I can give from that place. I'm reminded of the image of The Hierophant from the She-Wolfe Tarot. 

the hierophant in the she-wolfe tarot

JK: I was going to ask if you had a favorite Hierophant card, but if one's coming through, then that's what we're gonna go with.

DRH: I have a few favorite Hierophant cards. I really like The Hierophant. When I judge a deck, it's The Hierophant and Temperance that I look at. 

JK: The fives! You can tell that [my partner, tarot-numerologist] Meg [Jones Wall] has infiltrated my thinking fully.

DRH: It just is allowing you to be an even more brilliant person. This is why it's important to partner with brilliant people. 

JK: Oh my god. I love her. Yes.

DRH: *laughing* Very yes. Let me grab the Moonchild Tarot’s Hierophant.

This Hierophant in the Moonchild feels a lot more like a High Priestess from other decks, personally. Like, at the throat we have Saturn. So that’s kind of how I understand my creative process. Which doesn't make it particularly easeful to understand, or — how do I put this. I am so acclimated to responding to inspiration, that the components of creative work that aren't about being inspired, but are about cultivating the quote unquote vessel… It is harder for me to do. I'm just like, well, I'll just wait around until I get struck with inspiration.

hierophant in the moonchild

But this is something I feel like I'm learning quite interestingly lately, that [there is something to] the tending of the vessel. I had an extremely stressful relationship for a couple of years, and in the aftermath of exiting that relationship, really coming into an understanding of how much I could have or would have been doing, creating, etcetera if so much of my energy was not being siphoned into such a challenging relationship. 

Another thing that I've really been thinking about is the necessary boundaries around creative inspiration, but then also just like literal creation, that intersect with other people's desire to take on or take up that creative potency. I love collaborating. I love talking with people. There's something so wonderful that emerges in those sorts of processes. And also, I've had the experience of there being an expectation that I was going to be fitting into somebody else's vision versus a collaborative process, if that makes sense. I'm trying to figure out the most diplomatic way of putting this — Libra Midheaven. *coughs* *both laugh* But like, recognizing how my responsiveness to inspiration and responsiveness to visions that may not be mine — meaning that I am less available for those visions that are mine.

JK: It’s a process.

DRH: It's a process, and it's not instantaneous. It takes the time it takes. 

JK: Yeah, it really does. I wanted to ask — this is picking up on something you said a little bit ago — but because your process is, [and] I think a word that might get put on it that isn't necessarily true, but what comes to mind is channeling — 

DRH: Mmm hmm, yeah.

JK: And it’s a significant part of your process. How was it to come to terms with that? Did you try on or try to force yourself into creative processes that were like the MFA process? Or is this just how your brain has always been?

DRH: I think this is just how my brain has always been! 

JK: You’re looking at me like, that’s not a question. 

DRH: It’s interesting, though! Because I like being reminded of the different ways that people come to similar-ish places. “Normal” is one of the cutest lies that's ever been created. Cute and terrible. 

This is kind of just how my brain has always been. But the thing that I would say I would have struggled with more is — there's a couple of different things that arise from that. One I remember very distinctly is Mrs. Smith, my fifth grade English teacher, because for whatever reason, starting in fifth grade in my school system, we started changing classrooms for certain subjects as preparation for eventually doing that in high school, I guess. Weird. But my English teacher in fifth grade, Mrs. Smith was convinced that I was such a good writer and [that] someday I was going to be a published author. I'm pretty sure she would not approve of the way in which I am a published author, which is as the author of the Rosebud Tarot deck guidebook, currently my most official form of publishing. 

The [other] thing that I struggled with. I had a very, extremely absent father, and I haven't spoken with my dad since I was 13. He's still alive, but I haven't spoken with him since then. And he was an artist. So even though he was very creative and artistic, I had an early life exposure to the life of a quote unquote artist that I strongly disapproved of. I saw [it] as something that elicited harm and that was really irresponsible and wasn't reliable. I feel like that kind of image was really drilled into me, that artists and writers are people who suffer for their work and they're really poor and they have drug and/or drinking problems. 

JK: The tortured artist. It's also a very masculine archetype.

DRH: It's this weird choosing to suffer as a heroic art act. Like, I think about the egoic jizz paintings of Jackson Pollock. 

As much as I loved art and poetry and literature, and reading is how I survived being a child and an adolescent and a young adult. As much life as these things gave me, it was so impossible for me to take on the identifier of “a writer,” even though I knew that's what I was. I've always known, even before Mrs. Smith said anything about someday you're going to be published, and she was right. An oracular witch in a Christian context.

I couldn't hold that as an identifier. My high school boyfriend and first husband — only husband I've had, the ex-husband. He’s an artist. We met at art camp, and then we went to Chicago, where he went to the School of the Art Institute and then Northwestern for his MFA. I was surrounded by artists during this developmental stage of college and just after college, just perpetually surrounded by people doing art, talking about art, writing about art. And even then I was like, nah, I'm not a writer. I'm not an artist. 

I think there's something about it for me where holding the identity, having an egoic attachment to being an artist or being a writer: that's the thing that I've run away from. Recognizing that that is just what is happening versus what I'm pursuing has been important, over the past couple of years in particular, and the past year and a half especially. It feels more like an opening into who I am versus the pursuing of an identity, and seeing what I've already been doing versus trying to do something in particular. Does that make sense? 

JK: Oh, it makes total sense. I know some folks who write, where the practice is there. The proof is in the pudding. Like with you, there's so many resources you've created, you've literally published this deck and guidebook, and other things to come. You are a writer and artist. 

But then there's the coming to terms with the “I am.” The use of the “I am [this thing]” is really problematic for a lot of people. There’s that difference between I do versus I am, and that centralization of it as identity. I've seen it be very difficult for friends, for clients. Like, with one friend, I’m always like, you've written a book that was published by the Big Five. You're a writer. And they’re like, no, I'm not. I’m not that kind of writer.

DRH: There’s a connotational cloud around these behemoths of archetype, and depending on what you've put in your cloud, or what your cloud has had put into you, that deeply affects whether or not there's comfort with identification. 

This is even something that comes up in my gender identity, for example, where it’s like I'm not exactly a woman, but I'm definitely absolutely not a man. What and how I feel around these things feel too nuanced to want to foreground in a vast majority of situations, where it's like I'm more comfortable with being misunderstood as a woman she/her than I am with being misunderstood in what I might mean if I say any other set of pronouns. I don't want to explain it. I don't want to deal with it. 

So then, if I say that I'm a writer, what does that mean to the person who is receiving that identity? If I say I'm an artist, what does that mean to this other person? If I say I'm a channeler, which is not wrong, and also I don't mean it the way that people doing channeled messages on TikTok mean it.

JK: I mean, we're talking about Derrida's différance here. We're talking about Trace, with the question of I [mean this when I] say this word, but what does it mean to you? Like, I am this, I have a this, I did this. But what is that word to [the listener/reader] because of what's in your cloud and what has been put into your cloud?

DRH: Yeah. I want people to be curious rather than concretizing of what or who they are perceiving. That is also at me, where it's like I would rather be in a process of curiosity, at least for right now — 

JK: Tell me you have Mercury in Sagittarius without telling me.

DRH: There’s so many things included in this. Why would I define it in such a narrow way? Yeah, extremely Mercury in Sagittarius. It's an exploration rather than an irrefutable delineation.

JK: How do I say this? I have so many issues — that I don't want to project and assume that you may also, [so] I will speak for myself. I have so many issues with cookbook-style astrology that prioritizes the rote memorization of keywords and bullshit like that. I find it exhausting and disappointing and many other things. But I think this is why you’re one of the people — this is roundabout [way of getting to the point]. I have Mercury in Sagittarius, too, I can do that, you can rock with that. 

DRH: Taking the scenic route all the time.

JK: But this is a roundabout way of saying that you're actually you're one of the very few people who I feel totally comfortable recommending to pretty much anyone, regardless of whether they are a beginner or more advanced. A lot of folks who I recommend come with a caveat: cause their work is, actually, very technical, or it’s their area of specialty. And specialties are good. I have a specialty. 

But your work, I think, is so deeply accessible, and people can go so deep with it, whether they are new to astrology or whether they are literally a professional, because of how you foreground image and metaphor. You are so known for the powerful images and metaphors that you can articulate for placements, for transits, for very technical things. Even in the [astrology for writers] Discord the other week, someone was asking about Jupiter in Capricorn and what that would look like, and you just jumped in with this beautiful, very sweet, simple articulation, but not simple at all! You said something about a cathedral being built. And that clicked for so many people. 

Connecting that to trace and this idea of, what do words mean? How you provide images is so often really foregrounding that curiosity and spaciousness, because you're not saying like, Jupiter in Capricorn is [this]. [You’re not saying] it absolutely is a cathedral that you're building. Rather, you are providing that image for someone to then live inside, with their body, their experience, and to really make it their own. It invites that relationship between someone and something [to go] further. It’s just something that you do so fucking well and that I can't wait to see you continue to put into various forms of art because it's this highly relational and highly accessible way of articulating and witnessing the world.

DRH: Thank you for that reflection, Jeanna. I'm like. *emotions*

JK: But for real. I would not say it if I didn't mean it, you know that.

DRH: Malefic for malefic culture is, we generally don't say shit we don't mean. And if we're saying something that we don't mean and you can tell, it's because we love you. And if you can't tell… *both cackling*

JK: Fill in the blank there. 

DRH: Fill in the blank. I really appreciate that reflection. I am so invested in helping other people find their agency, or at least facilitating other people [to find] their agency, and I'm extremely invested in not being given other people's agency. I don't want your agency.

JK: You are not a guru.

DRH: I mean, I might be a guru in the sense of facilitating learning, but definitely not — I have some stuff in my star parans that if I was so inclined, I could totally go the culty round.

JK: You could do that very easily.

DRH: I really don't want to though, because it's too much! Carrying my own responsibility, especially given my own trauma history, is more than enough. It's more than enough. I would like to give somebody else some of my responsibilities. Don't give me yours. This backpack is full. Except for the donut that I would like to eat later. There’s space for the donut. 

This is also one of the exploratory qualities. What does it mean to create that which facilitates exploration versus providing people with thought terminating clichés or imagination killing stereotypes? I want to nourish people's capacities to become themselves more and more clearly, in their processes of becoming clearer versions of themselves. 

I have a first house stellium. It is a very heavy first house. I am really obsessed with the Ascendant. I feel like one of the most important things I can do in the world is encourage other people to be who they are — understanding that who you are is a moving target. There isn't a singular you that you are going to just find or establish and then never deviate from that. 

At the same time, I think there are a lot of stories, conditionings, baggages, things like that, that people carry with them that were functional at some point but aren't functional for who they are or who they're becoming.

Underneath that baggage, there is something that is continuous for people. It's like this infinitely faceted jewel where you might have identified the entire south face of it, and identifying the entire south face of it has totally altered your lived experience in really positive ways. And then you start getting over to the west side, and you're like, wow, there's so much more! Holy shit!

The perpetual fractal of the natal chart is such an excellent tool for this, because you have this chart from the exact moment when you were born, where you were born. And we have all of these timing techniques that help to unveil the process of unveiling. It’s really beautiful, and it gets so much more beautiful — and I don't necessarily want to say easy, but maybe rich? — whenever you have a clear sense of what that foundation is. Clear. Not finished, period. But clearer than before.

JK: That’s also such a 12th house way of putting a lot of that. Like, life as a perpetual unveiling. 

DRH: Also revealing. As a very 12th house person, with my sun, moon and Mercury all in my Sagittarian 12th house, there's something of the just around the bend quality. Nobody gets an actual straight and narrow path. Roman roads are a violence on landscape. Instead, what we get are deer trails, and sometimes the deer trail becomes a river, and sometimes the river becomes a cart path between a few farms. And then the next thing you know, you're not on any trail at all, but the sunlight is bright enough that you know you're continuing to walk in the right direction, like. And the thing that remains is you and all of these different places. 

yosemite falls, california

JK: Again, that’s just such a beautiful way of putting it. The perpetual journey of the chart. In contrast to so much of what’s in the ether around astrology, with using it as this personality typing, this is the static why you are the way you are that will never be dynamic and that hasn't changed before and will not change again.

DRH: There is nothing that doesn't change. Absolutely nothing. Sometimes you have to change your scale in order to perceive the change. Like, so in my lifetime, the sun is the sun and these mountains that are behind where I live are probably going to be those mountains. They were those mountains long before I was born, and they will very likely remain those mountains long after I have died. From my perspective, they're unchanging. But also, if I were to pay attention to the plants that grow on the mountain, they're changing week by week.

The desire for things to be unchanging is, I think, and like somebody might get spicy with me about this, but I think it's a sign of spiritual immaturity.

JK: I agree. Obviously I see Christian influence in everything, but to my mind, folks don't have to have been Christian themselves, they don't have to have grown up that way, like explicitly going to church, to be impacted by the idea and value of [unchanging] timelessness. It’s like that verse [Hebrews 13:8] that says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever — that [idea of permanence] is so tied to a Christian conception of god. This just comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning. It's not as in tune with the earth, with the cycles of the earth, with what is what is actually matter and manifesting and changing around us. 

It’s a very particular kind of Protestant Christian conception of God. It's obviously very informed by solar orientation rather than lunar orientation, for example. 

DRH: Yeah. Part of what becomes an issue is when these differences of scale and perceptibility of change become qualitatively hierarchical, right? So it's like, yeah, the sun is unchanging, and actually is worth a lot of praise for all of the ways that it facilitates life on this planet and lets us see each other on this planet and is the central organizing principle of our solar system, without which none of us would be here and astrology would be totally irrelevant. That is all incredible and amazing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the sun is better than the volunteer oxalis that ended up in one of my one of my planters this year, oxalis being this very tender and temporary plant. It’s not less beautiful or less worthy of relation simply because it is so significantly less durable than the sun. 

Solar consciousness and solar awareness requires the balance of lunar consciousness and lunar awareness. But this doesn't mean that one is better or more important. They're actually equally important from the perspective of their necessities for life. The moon is why we have weather, and without weather we don't have plants, and without plants we don't get to be here. Right? Like there's so much interweaving and interdependence amongst these things, versus like top of the heap, bottom of the heap stuff. And even the bottom of the heap is necessary for the top of the heap to exist! It’s acknowledgement and gratitude that changes — oh, change, here we go again — how we relate with all of these things.

Ecosystems. Not tyrannies.

JK: Ecosystems. Not empire.

Sidebar, I’m writing about the moon right now. So I’m very much in moon space. 

DRH: Ecosystems not empire, yes.

The moon is also literally of Earth, in the sense of being a literal hunk of our planet.

JK: I tried to not write down a question about this, but I can't not ask you about your relationship to art in terms of Venus, because I associate you with Venus. In part because of how we first met, in part because of your name and all of the rose imagery that you use. But also because you were the person who first recommended Sphere & Sundry to me, based on a Venus series. So I'm just like Diana, Venus. Venus, Diana. 

But in terms of talking about art and how we make it, how we perhaps put it out into the world, you know, you have a Venus ruled Midheaven and a very prominent Venus in your own chart. I wanted to ask you about your relationship to Venus and Art specifically.

DRH: There's so many things I could say. Over time, people have tried so hard to be like, what makes humans human versus any other kind of animal? That’s kind of an annoying question. And there's also something about the breadth and diversity of art that comes out of humans specifically that, thus far, we don't necessarily see in the art that is made by other-than-human animals. Other-than-human animals have culture, have art, have song, have language, all of these things that the scientific establishment has tried to use to differentiate humans from other animals or just like lies. 

But humans do have such a diversity. It's like dancing, painting, singing, performance, installation, sculpture, jewelry, fashion, makeup, tattooing, ikebana. There are so many different things. With all art, what is happening is a deliberate facilitation of unification of materials and ideas and particular ways to create a meaningful experience of some kind. 

A friend of mine has been reading Byung-chul Han's Saving Beauty, which is on my list to read. When I was visiting them recently, we did some bibliomancy from it that was really beautiful. But they were sending me some photos of sections that they've been reading, and one of the things that Byung-chul Han talks about is the idea that beauty is in part like a ritual or religious experience.

JK: Yes.

DRH: And one way to think about this — and this is now my idea, not Byung-chul Han's — one way to think about ritual experience or religious experience is temporary alleviation of the sensation of separation from the totality of experience, the totality of life. That is to say, an ultimate reconnection with something that transcends independent selfhood. And Venus is the planet of union, and reunion whenever union has been separated. 

I think that the act of making art, and then the experience of art that hits you particularly in the specific way that your own system needs hitting — these are acts of touching God again, in a way that is not necessarily able to be a constant experience within incarnate reality, because incarnate reality necessitates that we have differentiation and that we have ego structures in order to have the experiences that we're having here. At least in my cosmology; everyone who is reading this is allowed to disagree with me on that. But that sweetness of union is such a part of art, and even if we're not going into the like, are we touching God? Like, are we tasting divinity as we look at a fucking Jeff Koons? I hate Jeff Koons. 

But there is something about touching the psyche of another person, right? There’s so many different ways to get to know someone and to understand someone's perspective. You’re never going to fully, completely know another person. It's literally impossible, and as an aim, it’s a path to sadness and sorrow. But whenever we've seen someone's artistic production, we are literally seeing an externalization of an internal reality that person has had, otherwise it wouldn't exist external to them in that way. I think that's another really interesting thing about art. To see someone else’s art, there is a very specific kind of intimacy involved, which is also part of why poetry is so embarrassing and poetry is so intensely cringe, because there is this sort of like, I'm going to unzip my sternum and I'm going to let you touch this one part of my heart. That’s fucking terrifying and disgusting and so beautiful.

JK: I'm just getting over the delicious grotesqueness of that image. Of unzipping the skin suit, as it were, and letting someone in. I find it very moving that you articulate it in those terms, because I've been doing a lot of thinking similarly to this topic around like, how does one define creative flow? How does one define — you know, not that it has to be defined again, like not here for rigid boundaries — but when I'm talking about, you know, creative flow in relationship to the moon, for example, what is the riverbed that I'm putting that in? Like, what does it feel like? How is flow different for different people? 

It’s so interesting because in spite of the multitudinous and varied creative and writing processes that everyone has in their everyday lives, there is such — to your point about unification — there is such similarity when artists of all modalities and mediums talk about being in flow. I talked to Reese Kwon [R.O. Kwon], the novelist, a while back about this, and she talked about how one of her favorite places is when she goes away so hard that her “I” disappears.

The way that she [Kwon] put it was, “I lose my ‘I.’” Again, to your point, there's that merging of consciousness with something. Is it the other-than-human? Is it with a greater collective consciousness? Who knows what exactly is in the river. But it's like you are no longer just the you at your desk or in your bed or wherever you work. You are tapping, and as you said earlier, you are tapping the maple trees, and you have hit the vein, and suddenly it's all there. That was a ramble. 

DRH: I think it's a beautiful way of continuing to think about Venus and Venus's participation and creativity and art and beauty. It's like that totalizing epic micro-eternity.

JK: What a cool phrase.

DRH: Yeah. I mean it's like there's the Jupiterian version where you see everything from above, and then I feel like the Venusian version is, you are so intertwined. The intertwining reality is so predominant that the separative reality fades into the background.

Like, why is it that finishing a good book or a favorite TV series can feel so sad? It's like a breakup. It's like, oh, that relationship — that version of this relationship — is done now. Like, oh, I binge watched. This is really funny because we're coming up on eclipse season. Last eclipse season, I binge watched the Wheel of Time TV series, and it was incredible. I rarely have this experience because I don't watch that much TV. I don't watch that many movies. So it's very rare for me to watch something and immediately be like, I wish I could un-watch this specifically so I could watch it for the first time again.

JK: That's so real — the consciousness when you're immersed in art, the awareness that you're never going to get this first read or this first watch again.

DRH: Even a first taste, a first smell. I think this even encapsulates one of the things that we were touching on earlier, eternal versus changeable. There is a very specific sweetness to that which is ephemeral. 

JK: Yes. Yes.

DRH: You can't replicate it with something that you have constant access to. We take the sun for granted. We don't necessarily take that perfect late spring day for granted.

JK: The sweetness of union, the bitterness of separation. Also, Venus is sweet. Mars is bitter.

DRH: Also, we wouldn't be able to understand sweetness if we did not also have the other flavors. Sweetness is irrelevant if you only ever taste sweetness, but if you also taste spicy and salty and sour and umami and bitter, then sweetness has an entirely different significance. We need differentiation to appreciate unification.

JK: On a related note, I did want to ask by way of gesturing toward wrapping up the interview, if there are any creative projects or projects of the heart, creative operations right now that you are currently working on, that you are really reveling in that sweetness with?

DRH: Oh, I love this. I feel like the most honest answer that feels shareable is the creative project of — and this is a years long project — but the creative project of becoming the adult that my child self needed to know existed. And making choices now that she needed to know were able to be made. There's so many different ways that that shows up. A little bit ago, I had this really intense desire to have one of the unicorn tapestries in my house and like literally within 24 hours I found one. I found the exact one that I wanted on Etsy on sale. So now I have a giant unicorn, quote unquote tapestry in my house.

“the unicorn rests in a garden,” from the unicorn tapestries at the met cloisters

JK: Oh my God, that's beautiful. Love the unicorn tapestries. 

DRH: Yeah. Like all of them are gorgeous. I was joking with my friend McCalla Anne, who runs the Saturn Vox podcast, and they were like, oh my God, I have this one. And I was like, there has to be a personality typology around which unicorn tapestry do you choose to have in your house?

JK: I didn’t know that was an option. That you could just GET a unicorn tapestry. 

DRH: You can just get one. I'm excited to know which one you get because I feel like you're going to get one now.

JK: Now that you've said it, I'm like, WAIT. You can just have one!

DRH: I see the light happening. I see it. You can also get like fabric with different components of unicorn tapestries from Spoonflower and stuff like that. I'm like, am I gonna make a unicorn dress? Maybe! We'll see. I don't do prints. I don't wear prints. That's the problem. I don't know how it doesn't make sense to me. 

JK: But given that the rest of the wardrobe, Diana, is black, like — it’s very doable.

DRH: I have an immediate stress response. I’ll wait until it dissipates.

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