I’m Psychic, So You’ll Get Your Answers… with Carrie Brownstein

I’m not one of those girls who goes around saying I have a crush on another girl. However, when Carrie Brownstein does that bad-boyfriend character on Portlandia where she wears a moustache and beard and tries to push Fred Armisen in drag a little further than he is ready to go, I get a funny feeling. 

So, I’m doing this column with tarot card interviews, and I just barely know all the meanings of the cards in this deck. I hadn’t really thought about what I’d do if I got an intense reading, which Carrie’s was. At the centre was the Seven of Swords, and crossing it was the Two of Pentacles. Then in the third position was the Tower. The Tower is kind of the most intense card in the deck. I would say it is the breakdown, break-up or breakthrough card. The third position is the “root cause” in the reading I do. I mean, I’m not going to sit here and draw it all out. The reading was intense, and I was confused, and found myself in the position of telling a person whom I admire that “the cards say your life’s in disarray, you’re bummed and you want everybody to fuck the fuck off.” Also her PR person was hearing all this. Carrie is clearly an intelligent and apparently a thoughtful person; and I’m not slick. By the end I just needed it to be over. I honestly don’t remember what the last cards were – it was not one, but four. I remember that they were intense, and that I pretty much had decided in that moment that this column was over. 

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Also, I’m sorry for all that bull with the Judgment card. I still don’t have a clue what it means. I know I could look it up, and maybe I will.

VICE: Hi. Do you know this interview’s gonna be a tarot card reading?
Carrie Brownstein: Hi, how are you? Yes, I do.

I can do a general reading, love reading like a reading on your love life or work reading. Or, if you have a question, I can do a reading on that.
Wow, OK. I mean I guess I don’t have a specific question. So you actually read tarot cards?

Um, yeah. I mean, yeah. I know how, sort of. I’m not very good at it and I’m not very intuitive, but I know the meaning of the stuff.
OK. You can decide. You can do work or love life or whatever.

I’ll do general.
Yeah, general.

OK, I have to shuffle and lay the cards out and it’ll take me a minute to read them all because I’m kind of slow, so it’ll take me like three minutes to do this.
OK.

[Longish pause, throat-clearing]

Huh, this is saying that there’s been some big change in your life recently. Is that accurate?
I mean, I feel like I’ve gone through a lot of changes. I mean just logistically I feel like I’m constantly changing locations and vacillating between being on tour with my band and then the show… I don’t know. Everything sort of constitutes a change. Some of those feel bigger or more impactful emotionally. Like, a big change?

Yeah. It could be wrong, but there’s one card in the deck that’s like the big thing card and that came up as the force of what’s going on right now. I’m not saying this is true, but this is what came up. It said you’re torn between having fun and thoughts of what you’d rather be doing.
Huh. OK.

I don’t know.
Interesting.

It said you’re not feeling very free about what you’re doing and it says you kinda feel like being alone.
Sorry, it says I’m feeling what?

It said you kind of feel like being alone. It’s this card called the Hermit. It’s a card that’s just what it sounds like just wanting to get away from everything and be by yourself and figure out what you want to do. Does that make any sense?
I feel like I’m definitely enjoying what I’m doing – of course, I feel very lucky for a lot of things in my life right now, very grateful. I definitely have a tendency towards isolation or wanting to be alone, being a hermit, that’s all very relatable to me. And a lot of the work that I do… like being on tour is a very insular, intense situation where you’re rarely alone. So definitely, that yearning for quiet or serenity…

What is it like going on tour? I’m sorry, but I’ve always wondered that.
Tour I think embodies some of the greatest highs and some of the lowest lows. It really can vacillate between extremes and it’s a study in contrasts, because there are moments that are so unlike anything in normal life in terms of getting to be onstage and sharing a moment with an audience and having that be spontaneous, and then at the same time there’s this kind of monotony of being on the road where it’s kind of like Groundhog Day. You wake up and it’s just a repetition of the landscape going by and being inside a vehicle and being sedentary. You live for that moment onstage and the privilege of getting to play in front of a bunch of people, and then everything else – a lot of the other aspects of touring can be kind of dark. But it’s really fun. I wouldn’t trade it. But it’s a peripatetic lifestyle, it’s nomadic and sedentary.

Wait, what does peripatetic mean?
It’s like wandering from place to place.

OK. So the next card coming up is the near future and that’s the Judgment card.
The what card?

Judgment. That’s one I have to read up on because I forgot what it means. Oh, I remember. It’s like asserting what you it’s like a card for people who know who they are and what they want and it’s time to be assertive. I guess that’s advice to you or what you’re going to end up doing anyway. Clearly you’re in a powerful enough position that you can do what you want.
I’m sorry, that was a little bit harder to hear. Something about being in a position where I’m in a position to do what I want to do?

Yeah. Because the earlier part of the reading was about there being a big change. I don’t know if there has been. You kind of want to according to this be alone or assert some part of yourself that’s more private. The Judgment card is saying you can do that. Or you’re going to do that. Does that make sense?
Yeah, a little bit, I think.

Publicist: Aime, sorry to bug you, but could we start wrapping up?

Yeah, one more card. So… yeah, I don’t know. Hm. Oh no, I guess that’s it. I have one more card but I don’t know what to say. So yeah, bye.
All right. That means I’m left hanging not knowing what my future will hold, but I’ll try to power through.

OK, sounds good. 

Previously: I’m Psychic, So You’ll Get Your Answers… Jon Benjamin