Collected Agenda with Emmalea Russo

Guest Edit #9

Drawing on the diary as a medium of both confessional interiority, and visceral engagement with the physical world - guest edits ask creative people to share What They Did and What You Should Do.

Introducing Emmalea Russo (Instagram) (Cosmic Edges) (Vivienne)

Emmalea Russo is a writer, astrologer, and teacher. I saw Emmalea describe her routines and rituals for Health Gossip, and I knew I would like a glimpse into her diary.

I weaved my way through the surreal world of Emmalea’s first novel Vivienne late in the fall - described to me as an Art World Novel, and it is, but it’s so much more, too - hazy, poetic, an exploration of the cost of art, what does one lose, what does one gain, what becomes your legacy? Vivienne takes place over the last week of December - “as the light is reaching its dimmest, during the short days and long nights leading up to winter solstice.”

I love novels set over the course of one week, adore one done well, and not all of them are, but Vivienne is, and it whirls the reader all up in Internet and Cancellation and Art and Life - it’s brilliant, and while the story is fiction, the reader gets a sense of an author who views the world through a lens of some wisdom, reflection, extended clarity.

On further investigation, one learns the author - Emmalea Russo, is on intimate terms with the cosmos. Her newsletter, Cosmic Edges, offers “cosmic rigor and poetic derangement.” I learned about Pluto in Aquarius here, about Simone Weil’s Guide to Christmas, on Divine Limits and Accepting the Void.

As a teacher, Emmalea Russo presently leads PSYCHO - COSMOS - “an ongoing, generative monthly workshop series exploring connections between astrology, psychology and psychoanalysis, and the creative process.” A library of recordings from her past classes spanning topics on literature, art, and the occult can be found here. She has taught courses on poetry, philosophy, and art at various institutions, including Saint Peters University, Northeastern University, The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, and GCAS.

Emmalea Russo’s books of poetry are G (2018), Wave Archive (2019), Confetti (2022), and Magenta (2023). Recent poems and essays have appeared in Artforum, BOMB, Spike Art Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Compact, Granta, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.

WHAT EMMALEA RUSSO DID

January 20

Bucks County, Pennsylvania: Bizarre dreams, Freud, and five inches of snow.

Prepping, much of the day, for the first Psycho-Cosmos this Sunday: a monthly workshop series I’m teaching on the creative process, astrology, and psychoanalysis. I’m thinking of it like a car. Not totally sure who's at the wheel or what kind of car, not yet, but the car will stop and pick people up along the way, all year. My classes are collage-like and tend to circle and scatter around a theme, getting at it in different ways. Books and notes everywhere today. Writing a lecture is a little like sex in that changing positions and locations can be fruitful. Sex and cars! And Mars–desire, war, drive—is in retrograde until the end of February! So many drives, libidinal, Google, and otherwise. Later in the day, in the car, I catch up with a great friend and we speak of the joys of living near, and driving (and walking) along, the Delaware River. The rest is a secret.

January 21

Reading Lacan before sunrise is like being on old school drugs or having a fever return after you’ve taken the meds, sure it was totally gone.The Sun is conjunct Pluto in Aquarius. Our light weighed down, soaked with post-verbal underworld intel. Wrote this newsletter on dreams, David Lynch, and the underworld. Continued note-taking and research for Psycho-Cosmos: lots of things that may not end up in the actual class but will fuel the car, nonetheless. Thinking of the hysterics at the root of psychoanalysis, and the stars as timepieces at the root of astrology—all that’s hard to read.

Did this questionnaire for Cosmic Valley Girl, a pod I do with my dear friend Michelle. Reread parts of this brilliant and moving open letter to Freud by the “mother of psychoanalysis” Lou Andreas-Salomé, which we’ll be looking at in class. Nietzsche proposed to her and her correspondence with Rilke is extensive and incredible, though her contributions to psychoanalysis are often pushed to the side. This letter, like certain songs and scenes from David Lynch, looping back to me all week.

January 22

?!

January 23

Back at the beach today. Moon in Scorpio, where it’s said to be in its fall. Hidden, obscured, repetition and return. We go back and forth between Bucks County, PA and the Jersey shore. Different worlds only 1.5 hours apart. At first, this felt a bit batshit. Now, I find the oscillation between woods and beach soothing. The beach in the winter is empty, mostly locals, the best.

Client sessions today. CONFIDENTIAL! What is the role of the astrologer? Though single sessions can be great, seeing clients regularly tends to be the most fruitful. The planets keep moving—returning, each time new. It is trippiest and deepest when consistent. More than a map or a snapshot, the natal chart is an erotic topography of time—layered and visual. Interesting to see it as a poem or a painting. To keep wanting, wondering how to see it, to relate to its paused movements, its planetary returns, the way the moment hits and interacts with one’s own moment. Dane Rudhyar said we expect astrologers to give us meaning and answers in like, an hour, whereas we know the work of psychotherapy takes time and energy. He sees this as a problem. Astrology’s not a magic trick. He uses a phrase I think of often: the planetariation of consciousness.

Jan 25

Back in Pennsylvania. Long, weird week. Dreamed I was kidnapped. Went to dinner with three of my favorite people at one of our regular spots, the olden and cozy Springtown Inn.

January 26th

First Psycho-Cosmos. The discussion went in unforeseen and surprising directions, which is always a good sign. Slides, behind the scenes: