1949 The Ox
SOME OXEN TURN 65 THIS YEAR, and you show no signs of slowing down. You are perseverance itself; singular, strong, idealistic and hardworking – is there nothing you can’t do when you put your mind to it?
This sign showcases many artists, devoted to their craft, like Charlie Chaplin, Andy Kaufman and Meryl Streep, all of whom share the ability to inhabit characters absolutely, to find the limits of a role and surpass them.
Bovines in music include Kiss’s Gene Simmons, who is both a financial wizard and rock ’n’ roll demon.
As is fellow ox Bruce Springsteen, in his own haunting and fervid way, and Lionel Richie, crooning “Hello?” into a pantomimed telephone onstage.
And then there’s Journey. Or singer and ox, Steve Perry, to be precise.
In 1981, they released Escape, an album of power ballads that yielded “Don’t Stop Believin’,” a massive hit that disappeared, then returned in a fraught, romantic and hard-hitting scene in 2003’s Monster.
In the 2007 finale of The Sopranos, the song – which ended the show – was played quietly by Tony Soprano at a greasy spoon jukebox, as a way of emphasizing his rugged existentialism and astonishing endurance.
And in 2009, the Glee TV pilot deployed this exultant, persistent song differently: sung loud and accompanied by a boisterous dance number, the song became the signature of this particular brand of freaks and geeks.
The message of this somewhat odd song – the lyric “Streetlight people, oh-oh-woah” is perplexing – lies in its shouted-and-wailing-guitar-backed chorus, wherein we are asked to keep our faith in the past, to “hold on to that feeling,” shared by us all, of freedom and joy, somewhere in the night, in the “movie [that] goes on and on and on.”
At 65, we may be feeling that the movie has become too familiar, the night too long. Not so, for oxen. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke believed that “to endure is everything,” as do those born under the sign of the ox – these forward-moving and dauntless souls are on a perpetual inner journey. One which asks them to embrace the yoke of hard work and discipline, toward making astonishing progress.
Two-time world heavyweight champion and Olympic gold medalist George Foreman still proclaims, “I get up in the morning looking for an adventure,” like the true believer, steadfast traveller and ox that he is.