Hold Tight!

The end of luck

“Hold tight
Wait till the party’s over
Hold tight
We’re in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burnin’ down the house
Here’s your ticket, pack your bags
Time for jumpin’ overboard
The transportation is here
Close enough, but not too far
Maybe you know where you are
Fightin’ fire with fire, ahh”

— Talking Heads, “Burning Down the House”

What you read in this essay (if you are still with me) will represent 90% of my knowledge of zodiac signs and astrology.

The other 10%? Well, I know my daughter, a friend of mine and Bruce Springsteen all share the same zodiac sign.

2026 is the year of the Fire Horse. This year is supposed to be lucky, fast-moving, and transformative. “Fire” represents energy, passion, and sometimes drama. Personally, anything involving fire will ALWAYS bring drama. “The Horse” symbolizes confidence and momentum. When accompanied by fire, transformation is supposed to result. I am only passing along what I learned, so I am barely following along myself. I hope you are digesting this as well as I am.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I know precious little about zodiac signs. Despite that paucity of knowledge, I have heard people talk about this subject for almost as long as I have been alive. Every interpretation of just about every “The Year of…” is some variation of “The Year of the Fire Horse.” I know I am grievously wrong about that, and I probably insulted some of you who place a lot of credence in zodiac signs. Blame my ignorance because of none of that was meant to offend.

Because 2025 was a remarkably dramatic and transformative year for me already, I am not quite sure if I should look forward to the rest of 2026 or prepare for an inferno. As for this being a lucky year, I stopped believing in luck a long time ago. I have come around on the idea that certain things indeed happen for a reason, and I came around to that in 2025. Luck had nothing to do with it. If that was the case, I had an incredible run of bad luck…and I do not believe in luck.

“Has your luck run out?” she laughed at him
“Well, I guess you must have known it would someday
Be careful not to touch the wall, there’s a brand-new coat of paint
I’m glad to see you’re still alive, you’re looking like a saint”
Down the hallway, footsteps were coming for the Jack of Hearts

The backstage manager was pacing all around by his chair
“There’s something funny going on,” he said, “I can just feel it in the air”
He went to get the hanging judge, but the hanging judge was drunk
As the leading actor hurried by in the costume of a monk
There was no actor anywhere better than the Jack of Hearts”

— Bob Dylan, “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts”

See? Even Dylan does not believe in luck.

To my naked eye, fire representing transformation and drama and the horse, representing momentum and confidence, complement each other very well. I can get behind that.

David Byrne and The Talking Heads are one of the more creative New Wave bands from that early 1980’s era. I saw “Stop Making Sense” at least a half dozen times and they never reached Springsteen/U2/The Band/Dylan pantheon, they were always interesting. David Byrne can be a little…much. He takes himself FAR too seriously. Unlike Bono, though, I never got the sense Byrne has the same sense of humor…or any humor. Must be Bono’s Irish upbringing.

According to Byrne’s many interviews since 1982, “Burning Down the House” was specifically written to represent transformation and change. You can definitely tell by just listening to it that there is some hunger for some change, even if it takes burning down (figuratively) everything around you. They chose the title because Byrne and Chris Franz heard the crowd chant it repeatedly at a Parliament-Funkadelic concert, which is one of the cooler origin stories for song titles I can recall.

“All wet
Here— you might need a raincoat
Shakedown
Dreams walkin’ in broad daylight
Three hundred sixty-five degrees
Burnin’ down the house”

— “Burning Down the House”

However…

…while we should approach every year with ambitions of POSITIVE change and transformation, that is not guaranteed. And drama? I am a little on the fence about drama. There is never “too little” drama in real life. That is called “calm” or “peace.” Too much drama becomes chaos. The initial adrenaline rush from chaos can be intoxicating, but it is just temporary. Too much drama is exhausting, which is where momentum and confidence can kick into gear. Chaos does not necessarily mean kinetic energy is bouncing you off all walls in the room. It can mean you are just stuck with a million things slipping around you like you are on an ice rink, and you are stuck without reasonable traction, just desperate to stay upright and not fall flat on your face.

Or maybe that is just me. I have never been good at ice skating.

A horse needs traction to jumpstart anything resembling momentum, just like most humans. And confidence to keep pushing forward. It is a tricky balance, especially when your reserves of confidence are running on a low ebb.

I also cannot ride a horse to save my life.

And I may be running out of appropriate metaphors. Thank God I have quite literally hundreds of songs about fire to choose from, and horses are easy. U2 AND the Stones have songs with “horses” in their title.

“You’re an accident waiting to happen
You’re a piece of glass left there on the beach
Well, you tell me things I know you’re not supposed to
Then you leave me just out of reach

Who’s gonna ride your wild horses?
Who’s gonna drown in your blue sea?
Who’s gonna ride your wild horses?
Who’s gonna fall at the foot of thee?”

— U2, “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”

Wait. Hold on a second.

Maybe I am buying a little too much into horses representing momentum and confidence because Bono sure as hell is not so sure. Horses ARE wild creatures; hard to tame; harder to ride. I knew people Bono was singing about, and none of them was awash in confidence and momentum when I knew them.

“Ah, the deeper I spin
Ah, the hunter will sin for your ivory skin
Took a drive in the dirty rain
To a place where the wind calls your name
Under the trees, the river laughing at you and me
Hallelujah, heaven’s white rose
The doors you open I just can’t close”

— “Who’s Going to Ride Your Wild Horses”

While I have never seen Bono interviewed about his beliefs in zodiac signs, he just gives off the vibe of someone who knows something about it. I am going to assume the whole “wild horses” thing was not written as analogy for 2026. It is of some comfort that U2 initially hated this song when it went to print.

Instead, I will pull in another song from “Achtung Baby,” arguably their second-best album behind “The Joshua Tree.” This song seems a little more on the nose when it comes to transformation and excitement/drama.

“Johnny, take a dive with your sister in the rain
Let her talk about the things you can’t explain
To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal
If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel
On your knees, boy

She’s the wave, she turns the tide
She sees the man inside the child

One day you’ll look back, and you’ll see
Where you were held now by this love
While you could stand there
You could move on this moment
Follow this feeling”

— U2, “Mysterious Ways”

I have the rest of the year to figure out a better song to represent horses in the Year of the Fire Horse.