If you're wondering why Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27, you've come to the right place. You see, Amy was at the transitioning end of her nineyear Personal Year cycle, plus she was about to change Period cycles. And if that weren't enough, she was struggling against a 5 Pinnacle cycle which, as everyone knows, is associated with addiction.
No wait: The real reason the erstwhile rock goddess passed on at 27 is because she had just had her progressed lunar return cycle six months ago, but had yet to go through her first Saturn return. Oh, and she also had an Out of Bounds Moon, as if we didn't know.
Now you might be tempted to accuse me of parodying numerologists' and astrologers' "explanations" for Winehouse's untimely death. But seriously, head on over to numerology.com and astrodispatch.com, from which I took the above "explanations," and you'll soon be wondering who the real parodist is.
Besides, I have my own theory, though it's not specifically about the infamous "27 Club," the decreasingly exclusive haunt of rock stars who die at that troublesome age. After all, that celestial group, which is usually headlined by the Fab Five of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain, is old news.
Indeed, in 2008 Eric Segalstad published The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll, which included 34 members of the club. People have been searching for new members ever since, and Wikipedia's entry on the club now lists 45 members, though many were not widely known as rock stars.
In any case, my theory probes a little deeper. If you think musicians dying at 27 is unusual, check this out: If we consider just the five Club 27 headliners, we find that two (Brian Jones and Jim Morrison) died, not just at the same age, but on the same date (July 3).
That's not all: If we look through Wikipedia's list of 45, we find three other duos who died on the same day: Ragtime musician Louis Chauvin and British singer Dickie Pride both succumbed on March 26, Stone the Crows guitarist Les Harvey and Triumvirat bassist Helmut Kollen died on May 3, and Chase keyboardist Wallace Yohn and graffiti artist-musician Jean-Michel Basquiat passed away on Aug. 12.
So out of 45 musicians, we have four pairings of "death days." That seems even less likely than them all dying at the age of 27, but whatever you do, don't tell the numerologists for fear of sending their astral calculators on the fritz.
This is indeed an unlikely result, in that the probability of having four sets of matching birthdays is low. But - and you just knew I was going to spoil the fun, didn't you? - it's not as unlikely as you think.
To see this, and to keep things from getting any more morbid, let's forget about death days and consider what in mathematics is known as the "birthday problem." And let me ask: Without considering Periods, Pinnacles or Out of Bounds Moons, how big a party would you need plan to ensure at least a 50-per-cent probability that two partygoers share the same birthday?
Is it 365? Or perhaps 186? Those numbers would certainly make for some rock star calibre partying, but they're way out of the ballpark. The answer, as that gawdawful Jim Carrey vehicle had it, is: The Number 23. That's right, counterintuitive as it might seem, 23 people is all you need to guarantee a 50-per-cent chance of matching birthdays.
To understand this, consider why it's counterintuitive: When we consider probability (and much else), we tend to think only of ourselves. We think the probability of finding matching birthdays is low because we think of comparing our birthday - and only our birthday - with every other guest's birthday.
But, alas, it's not all about us. We have to consider not only the possibility that one of the other 22 people shares our birthday, but that any one of the 23 partygoers might share a birthday with any one of the other partygoers. Each person must be compared with each other person in the group, which results in 253 possible pairings. So it's not so surprising to find two with the same birthday.
Now I know I'm beginning to sound like a numerologist, but there's a method in my madness and it is this: What seemed like a wildly unlikely result - several members of the 27 Club dying on the same day - isn't so wild, or unlikely, after all. Coincidences, you might say, aren't always as coincidental as they seem.
It's important to remember that because in our need for meaning, we tend to search for commonalities in disparate events, to weave things together even when they don't belong together. This tendency is especially strong when we're confronted with events that seem too coincidental, when things seem too unlikely to have occurred by chance.
This tendency also explains the very existence of the 27 Club: While the behaviour of some rock stars increases the risk that they will die at a young age, the fact that many died at exactly 27 doesn't mean anything at all, except the meaning we give to it.
Or to put it another way: Rock stars may be dying to get into the 27 Club, but it is we who keep it alive.
pmcknight@vancouversun.com
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