oh my god, rip
end of an era
While in Glasgow the past few days, I’d hoped to meet a young woman whose content I discovered last year. She was a tarot reader. I say was because, just before we got to Scotland, where she hails from, she posted a video saying she was leaving tarot behind due to her Christian faith. Her retired handle— @ Alex Reads Tarot.
(Quick context: There’s a song on my latest solo record called, “Love Me Different”, wherein I wax poetic about worthiness, as an attempt to call in some type of love I feel I’ve never received. The bridge gets a little less serious and I recount learning a valuable lesson from a late night doom-scroll. Part of the lyric goes, “endless scrolling, up til 3. Alex Reads Tarot reads the shit out of me…”).
So a couple friends sent me Alex’s video post, detailing her reasoning for no longer wanting to make tarot content, and I laughed to myself. But not because her personal choice is funny.
When I was going through a break up, I began to see content from multiple tarot readers and creators who made content that was geared toward grief and/or growth. Alex (Reads Tarot), apparently, was going through a break up too. It is no wonder her content was served up to me on an algorithmic silver platter. That’s what the algorithm does— it’s scary.
In the meantime, I also got (and still do get) served a lot of ex-vangelical content. Probably because my phone knows I’ve watched Welcome To Plathville for years, and it hears conversations between friends and I regarding deconstruction, Christo-facism, etc.
The irony of the internet tarot reader I most loved listening to while washing my face or whatever quitting because of a religion/faith that I am still deconstructing to this day… that’s funny. It’s funny because I don’t take it personally.
The things I saw grown people respond with when “Alex Reads Tarot” announced her departure shocked me. That it’s a story at all, with internet legs, is crazy.
It’s the faith part that seems to have disturbed her online community. I guess, from one vantage point, that makes sense to me. Religiosity activates my trauma centers too.
Faith is a personal thing. For me, it’s been a cringey journey sorting out what I do and don’t believe in front of an audience. For a long time now my belief has not been connected to any religion nor particular figure. I am in a completely different mind and heart space about it all than when I began having a relationship to the public. Because of this dynamic, there are strangers on the internet who, even today, would tell you I’m a devout Christian. I don’t think my tattoo helps. The truth is, I got this thick black cross on my thigh when I found out my then bandmates were telling everyone in our hometown that I was living in sin and needed praying for. I need it to be said that I laugh about this now. I got the tattoo, posted it somewhere on the internet as if to prove something, and then moved out to California.
All this to say, anyone’s early 20’s are going to be confusing as hell, but especially when you’re navigating judgement from your own public.
There are people who didn’t want me to grow back then and there are people who don’t accept who I’ve grown to be now. Those people aren’t my business any more than the now private life of a young woman who happened to gain a following for her unique gifts, her personality, her tone of voice. It’s like people forget they can just unfollow.
At the second of two shows in Glasgow, I got to the bridge of Love Me Different and in the last second changed the lyric to, “Alex Reads Tarot, oh my god, RIP”… Kind of dumb, I know.
But Alex is surely not the only one of us who’s felt the need to “kill” off a version of ourselves that mainly benefitted others. She wouldn’t be the first to need to declare it out loud either. Don’t you know it? Call it an ego death, call it a great loss. Necessary pruning.
Alex, thanks for the content you made, and for sharing your intuitive gifts with strangers on the internet. Wishing you well on the journey.