Michael Stipe

Not one of these ten planets sits in an air sign, which is the first thing to say about the chart of a lyricist. Fire takes five, earth four and a single one water. The Sun, Mercury and Saturn fill thirteen degrees of Capricorn and Venus, Mars and Jupiter twenty degrees of Sagittarius, so six of the ten sit in two adjacent groups. The record calls Stipe the singer and lyricist of R.E.M., and a visual artist and producer since the band ended, and gives Decatur, Georgia as the birthplace.

Capricorn is built on competence and on having actually done the thing, and Sagittarius measures a thing by how far it got from where it started. A record split between one band and everything after it has those two signs holding three planets each, which is a division the chart draws rather than borrows. Mercury sits on the first half degree of Capricorn with Saturn at ten, so speech shares a sign with the planet of limit.

Jupiter sits in easy contact with Uranus at just under nine tenths of a degree, which is fortunate change: being in the right place when something shifts, and an ease around new ideas. Mars sits in mild friction with Neptune at three quarters, will without a clear direction. Saturn sits sixty degrees from that same Neptune at just over a degree, imagination made durable. The Moon sits on the first degree of Aries at noon, with the sign before it still possible, Pisces, which costs this chart its closest contact, so it is left out. Uranus and Pluto were the two retrograde planets. A lyricist who moved to visual art and production after the band ended had scale on easy terms with the planet of sudden change, which is the contact a second trade runs on.

Jupiter came back to its Sagittarius birth degree on 10 October 2019, at fifty nine, and four laps precede it. Sagittarius measures distance from the starting point, which for a record that names a band and then three trades taken up afterwards is a question with four answers. No air at all, in a writer of words, is the fact to take from this chart.