Peggy Sue McRae, Reviewer
Full Circle: A Song of Ecology and Earthen Spirituality By: Lone Wolf Circles 1991 Llewellyn Publications $12.95 169 pp, 38 illustrations
Oikos: Songs for the Living Earth By: Lone Wolf Circles and Friends Available directly from the artist: P.O. Box 652, Reserve, NM 87830 $11.00/cassette $15.00/CD
We are, as a people and as a planet, experiencing an increase in pressure as we carry the ever increasing weight of a vast military industrial complex upon our backs. Dependent on an economic system controlled by multinational corporations and living in a culture that supports this power structure, we are trapped like seeds beneath pavement. The work of Lone Wolf Circles is a crack in the pavement. Poet, artist, writer and musician, Lone Wolf is a radical deep ecologist weaving a spell to awaken us to our true potential We are told, "People need jobs." This is a lie. People need good food, shelter, clean water to drink, clean air to breathe and warmth in winter. In our "primitive" past we received all of these things directly from the Earth. That we now must buy what we need from corporations is blackmail. In Sarawak in Malaysia there live some of the few remaining people who exist outside the global economy that clutches our entire planet in a death grip. Corporations are moving in for the tropical timber harvest destroying the world that has from time immemorial sustained these people. Their homes and food sources destroyed, they live in shacks. The men are given the lowest paying jobs in the mills. Experiencing a state of poverty and wretchedness unknown to a people who have always lived in harmony with nature, daughters of this sacred forest resort to prostitution in order to survive. We "civilized" wage slaves who anesthetize ourselves with alcohol and television are no different. If we listen closely enough we can still hear the sacred forest calling us to return. Lone Wolf Circles invites us to listen.
We are told that humankind is something separate from the natural world - another lie! Even amid grinding electronic noise, under the glare of florescent lights, with our senses deadened by monotonous repetitive work and food laced with chemicals - if we breath, have blood moving through our bodies and bones that hold us up, if we feel pain, if we feel desire, we are part of this Earth.
Deep ecology is not a concept, it is a physical sensation. It is not in the mind but in the pit of the stomach and the pounding of the blood. Deep ecology is the hunger and the satisfaction of being an integral part of a whole. It is the contentment of a full belly. It is the smell of danger.
While there are other works written on deep ecology that engage the mind, Lone Wolf's work engages the senses. His book Full Circle: A Song of Ecology and Earthen Spirituality is a collection of provocative essays, sensual poetry and primal imagery. Passionate and revealing words ooze up between toes and tempt. Wade a little farther out into the stream. Pictographs prod the subconscious. Come a little deeper and feel the currents pull.
Learning, relationship, the role of the artist and necessity of activism are issues brought to life amid the wonder of new fallen snow and the warmth of a mountain lion's paw print. Lone Wolf Circles makes his home on an ancient Anasazi Indian ruin seven river crossings from the nearest road. The spirit of this place touches sometimes softly - and then with calm strength - the words and rhythms of his work.
Nine million European people, mostly women, were tortured and killed between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries for practicing the sacred world view that Lone Wolf writes of. This is our heritage; the fears and silencing power of that holocaust live on in our culture like an invisible hand over our mouths, like flames licking our feet and the smell of burning flesh. We hide our passion and our magic behind a facade of rationalism and have become so adapted to a mechanistic world view that passion and magic seem foreign to us. We must reclaim these qualities if we are to overcome a political and economic system that destroys all that is magical, alive, and beautiful.
Oikos: Songs for the Living Earth Lone Wolf's newest recording pulses the heartbeat of the dance. Entrancing lyrics set to joyous/dancing/mystical music call forth the traditions of Native America, Africa and the Middle East. Lone Wolf is accompanied by the lively Stone Biscuit Band. Joanne Rand and Jenny Bird lend their powerful voices to several cuts respectively. The haunting oud played by Ricardo Mendoza swirls like a silken veil through the Syrian Arabic Love Song, while the percussions of Joseph White Dog combine with Lone Wolf's to generate a dramatic sequence of rhythm in Jamming with Kokopelli.
Like prayer smoke, other voices add their blessings. A 96 year old Taos Pueblo elder prays "Spirit we need help. Bless us. We are a beautiful people and we are humble." Barbara Mor, author of The Great Cosmic Mother, speaks in a voice from the Ice Age while archaic Norwegian echoes the Viking Prayer, "True hearts. Gone Viking. Gone Home."
Woven throughout are the songs of Joyful Noise, two women who have gathered life-honoring music from around the world. African, Russian and Latin American melodies and harmonies lend a gift of bountiful fullness to this collection of songs for the Earth. In a voice as soft as the owls wing and as penetrating as her talons Lone Wolf Circles gifts us with his prayersong, for..."Beneath the ash, the ash of pavement, lies the certainty of seed...."
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