psychology, ontology, astrology, musicology; in that order
I knew virtually nothing about Backrooms (2026) before seeing it and I’m so glad. I only knew a brief synopsis and the cast; any movie with Chiwetel Ejiofor is an automatic bonus for me. What can I say, I love seeing Nigerian names and faces on the big screen.
Also, please note: I’m not a film buff. I’m a writer, astrologer, tarot reader, musician, and social critic. This essay is a culmination of all these roles.
Modern therapy: the “get better” machine
For those who don’t know, I have a degree in music therapy. I practiced music therapy for about three years. So right away, I was interested in the psychological part of the plot. I have a lot of thoughts on modern psychology, but I’ll share just one today.
I think, especially in America, therapy is an easy way to avoid doing the Actually Really Hard mental work required to “get better”. I have observed a trend of people making unhealthy (read: self-destructive) decisions and then, they tell me they are in therapy. Or have been for years. And while I recognize Things Take Time, I cannot help but put my therapist hat on.
So, I ask, speaking as a former therapist/kind of current therapist, What are you learning in therapy? Why aren’t you applying it to your actual life? Or rather, what is stopping you from applying the lessons learned to your real life? But, I tend to be a hard ass, so what do I know?
My sister and I were talking about narcissism and other mental disorders (aka casual sister conversation topics) and I expressed, “It can be so frustrating to interact with people who cannot live in a reality that doesn’t revolve around them.”
Then she, in her glorious, Sagittarian wisdom, said, “From an ontological (related to the philosophical study of being) perspective, the person does exist in a reality in which they are the focus. This is different from a normative (related to the philosophical study of sociocultural norms) perspective which says, the person thinks they exist in a reality in which they are the focus, but technically, both realities are real and valid.” Hm.
This reminds me of the backrooms, which are both created and distorted by Clark’s perspective. The scene when Clark first takes his map of the backrooms to his therapist, Mary, also shows these philosophical approaches. In Clark’s reality, the backrooms were real (ontological perspective). In Mary’s reality, especially in a clinical setting, she acknowledges that he thinks the backrooms are real, even if she doesn’t believe in their validity (normative perspective). Double Hm.
In my tarot practice, I talk a lot about the Power Of the Mind. In the Major Arcana, the first two cards of the story (The Fool and The Magician) are related to Air, which is our mind, communication, mental fortitude. Our own Fool’s Journey begins with how we think and speak about ourselves and the world.
This film talked a lot about the Power of the Mind:
- Clark revealing his subconscious thoughts about his life, his job, and feelings toward his (ex) wife through roleplaying.
- Mary’s self-help tapes which state that our personal (mental) loops are the path of least resistance.
- Clark’s memories being disjointed and inaccurately remembered in the backrooms.
- Mary finally accepting her fate and sinking deeper into her own memories, at the end of the film.
I found it especially fascinating that once Clark accepted how he was wired, accepted the reality of Captain Clark and the backrooms, he was destroyed by them. Figments of his imagination. But perhaps he was meant to self-destruct, since, again, that’s how he was wired.
And then I think of how Mary’s character was hardwired. Being raised by a mother who wasn’t Well and ended up institutionalized. Seeing the home that she was confined to destroyed. Using that destruction (the piece of cement her & her mother’s hands were molded in) to save herself from Captain Clark.
It makes sense she became a therapist, trying to undo and understand the mess she came from. Trying to help others do the same. She spent her adult life trying to figure out her own endless loops, just to end up in one. In the imagined comfort of her childhood home, in the very real comfort of her memories, following the path of least resistance towards her fate.
the third and fourth houses
Backrooms (2026) kept revealing 3H and 4H themes as I watched it. Here’s a quick breakdown of both Houses:
Third House (3H):
- Our mind
- Mental patterns
- Communication
- Our neighborhood
- Near the home, but not in the home
Fourth House (4H):
- One’s home life
- Familial patterns and relationships
- Ancestral knowledge
- Foundations and endings
- Where and how we retreat when we feel unsafe
In astrology, the 4th House is also concerned with land. Land can be as grandiose as having acres of land or it can be minutiae as planting seeds on that land. When you plant seeds, you change the environment. There is always new change happening in the 4th House, so therefore, change is nothing new for the 4th House.
The 4th House is also where we keep our childhood memories. However, studies have shown that our memories change with each recall. Our memories are those aforementioned seeds, always changing and always being rediscovered.
Kane Parsons, Director of Backrooms, said this regarding the film: “… that feeling of having a dream in your childhood home, but you wake up and register that the place you just were was entirely different from the real world version. It’s like the semantic information of that place all got shuffled and applied to something else incorrectly, but you believed it and felt it all the same. It’s your house, but extrapolated—these places don’t exist and sometimes they do weird things.”
That’s the 4th House. The ancestral, environmental, semantic knowledge of home being reworked over and over again each time you dig into that knowledge. But it gets more and more inaccurate because you are feeding the present reality into past feelings. And you still must use that “inaccuracy” to make decisions for your future.
This is where the 4th House gets tricky, because notice, a good amount of these 4th House matters are still kind of related to the mind. Here’s the thing, though. The 3rd House is the shadow of the 4th House.
Let me explain. If we were to shift the House wheel and make the 4th House serve as the 1st House, the 3rd House becomes the 12th House. Makes sense? Good. So what does this mean?
It means that often, 3rd House matters (see graphic above) are often engulfed by 4th House affairs (also see graphic above). Sometimes, we must sacrifice our minds, our self-expression, sometimes, even relationships with siblings, in order to maintain good, fuzzy feelings with our parents, our home, and our sense of safety. Sometimes.
In the film, Clark’s memories are alchemized into the backrooms, which, in turn, creates a sense of comfort. This sense of comfort then allows for him to easily, without resistance, fall into the endless loop of his own demise.
I know I criticized modern therapy earlier, but going to therapy, should, in theory, support you in accepting the friction necessary to break that loop. But you, dear Therapy Goer, have to be the one in the driver’s seat.
You have to be willing to rethink (3H) how you view safety (4H). You have to accept that your memories can only serve as emotional information (4H) so you can make rational decisions based on your environment (3H). See what I’m getting at?
This is what Clark doesn’t do until it’s too late. He uses the backrooms to justify his anger, his sadness, his alcoholism, his dreams failing, his wife leaving. He can play out all the dark, endless loops that have been plaguing his mind in the backrooms, and it doesn’t affect anyone but him.
It feels safe to be a victim, to accept one’s hardwiring and do nothing about it. But feelings are not facts.
There is a reoccurring analogy in the film, “It’s like describing a dog to someone who’s never seen a dog before and then asking them to draw it.”
This quote, the repetition of the quote throughout Backrooms, reminds me of the 3rd House. Why?
- It initially sounds like nonsense. But then you have to think a little longer, hear it a few more times, and it begins to make sense.
- It would take a lot of courage to draw a dog without ever seeing one in real life.
The 3rd House is also known as the House of Courage. Using your hands (drawing, writing, woodworking, etc.) takes courage. Public speaking takes courage, walking for the first time takes courage, your first day of school takes courage. These are all 3rd House Affairs.
Facing your fears takes courage. Participating in more positive self-talk takes courage. Breaking old patterns of behavior takes courage. Dealing with traumatic, and often randomly timed, memories everyday takes courage.
But how do you explain this courage to someone else? How do ask someone to draw a dog, even if they’ve never seen one in real life?
You really can’t, because it takes more of that aforementioned ancestral, environmental, and semantic knowledge (4H) in order to properly convey the word, the concept (3H) of a dog. Hm.
a quick astrological study of David byrne
Random, I know, but bear with me. David Byrne, the frontman of Talking Heads, is a 3H Mars in Scorpio, 4H Chiron in Capricorn.
Let me start with his 4H Chiron. Chiron, in astrology, is the Wounded Healer. Wherever Chiron sits in your chart, expect to have some open wounds, psychologically or emotionally. But through this pain and healing, you gain a greater capacity for growth and connection to the House themes of your Chiron placement.
Remember all the 4H affairs above? Well, they show up for Byrne’s Chiron placement, too. He was born in Scotland to a Protestant mother and Catholic father. When he was young, they had to leave Scotland due to job instability and tension caused by his parents’ interfaith marriage. When he was young, his family moved to Canada, then United States, and dropped his Scottish accent in order to fit in at school.
“I felt like a bit of an outsider. But then I realized the world was made up of people who were all different. But we’re all here.” That is the 4H Chiron finding meaning and healing from their own instability.
And Byrne’s 3H Mars. The 3rd House, along with all the mental things mentioned, rules over our hands. You’ll find 3H-dominant people are people whose hands always need to be kept busy. Or they make a living off using their hands. He learned how to play the harmonica by age 5. His father modified a tape recorder so he could make multi-track recordings when he was a teenager. By high school, he could play the guitar, ukulele, accordion, and violin. That’s a 3rd Houser.
Mars is also a contrarian. It likes to go against the grain, even when existing in popular spaces. Mars is percussive, big and angular (yes, like Byrne’s iconic oversized suit), dedicated and focused.
Keeping all of this astrology in mind, the Talking Heads’ became one of the first popular (white) American bands to use African music in their sound. Very contrarian for the time. However, Remain in Light would not have existed without the extensive work of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti. (Yeah, Nigeria is back, lol.)
Byrne has admitted he was “a little bit angst-y and very, very focused” as a member of the Talking Heads. He also said, “I’ve learned that you can work with people and sometimes get something in a way that’s not so dictatorial.” A 3H Mars lesson for the ages.
So, with all of this information, it’s no surprise that Once in a Lifetime, off the album Remain in Light, sounds the way it does; with Byrne’s powerfully erratic vocals, existential questions, musical and lyrical loops and repetition, heavy and deliberate drums and bass, I could go on. This song is also a beautiful piece of ontological art and so reflective of Backrooms, and the 3H/4H, in astrology.
The song opens with an ontological mystery:
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
Byrne sings in the chorus:
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down / Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
This is the 4H, ruled by Cancer/Water. Clark let the days go by in the backrooms, let himself be held down by the rushing water of his memories.
Into the blue again, after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Clark diving into the blue, deep waters of his mind. Dipping into the well of his emotional understandings. His job, gone, his money, gone. But exploring the backrooms is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?”
You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?”
And you may ask yourself, “Am I right, am I wrong?”
And you may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?”
When you’ve gone too far in your personal backroom and there’s no turning back. I can imagine Clark and Mary’s last thoughts before their respective demises were, “My God, what have I done?”
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, look where my hand was
Time isn’t holding up, time isn’t after us
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
There is the endless loop. When you are running on the hamster wheel in your mind, replaying the same memories, storylines, ways of thinking, this is how repetitive life becomes. It’s the same as it ever was. Byrne even says, “look where my hand was”, like Clark initially finding the backrooms. “Time isn’t holding up, time isn’t after us / Same as it ever was”. And that’s the thing about staying stuck in the past, in your comfort zone; time doesn’t hold up and it isn’t after you. Time is happy to let you rot in your memories.
Last thing about this song. I love that the phrase, “Same as it ever was” is technically never sung the same way. In the final chorus of the song, Byrne comes in on off-beats, elongates the words, ad-libs with unrelated lyrics (here comes the twister), vocally grooving on the outro.
Remember the 4th House is all about the inevitability of change. So these changes are nothing new. It’s the same as it ever was.
final thoughts on backrooms and mental health
So what does any of this mean, if anything? Maybe nothing. Probably nothing.
But as I continue to practice my style of “tarot therapy”, as I continue to unlearn certain parts of my ancestral knowledge in order to make better decisions in the present, as I continue to create new neural pathways for myself, as I learn new words, phrases, ways of being, I must continue to be cognizant of what my personal Backrooms are. I think we all must be, if we are to be truly invested in our own mental health.
If you don’t get a handle on your mind (3H), you will become a shell of your former self (4H). Please note: The 4th House is associated with Cancer, the crab, the one with the hard shell. You see what I’m getting at. We see the shell in Backrooms through Captain Clark; the worst version of Clark that swallows him whole and continues to live.
I’m putting my therapist hat back on for a second. I want you to remember: Your memories are stored in your mind. Your mind is not stored in your memories. You do not have to get lost in your mind, you do not have to succumb to your personal loops, but it is alright to explore the backrooms, in case you need to dip into your well of ancestral knowledge a bit. Make sure you’re dipping to be replenished, not to drown.
I think Backrooms (2026) is a wonderfully freaky ontological thriller. It’s a reminder that nostalgia can be dangerous. Being attached to the past can slow your progress in the present. Relying on (literally inaccurate) memories as your foundation will slow you down.
Accepting the absurdity of your emotions, your past, and your reality will actually set you free.
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