Brooding under the smoke from the Jemez Mountains today – the center of the cosmos, in my story anyway, I put on an amazing song by Iarla O’Lionnard, “Caoineadh Na dTrA- Mhuire”. This beautiful Irish lament gave me the gift of taking my mind away from its helpless fire-turning, and got me thinking about musical traditions – from the street, they can start to all seem like storefronts, just boxes, each trying to catch your eye, ultimately sad and unfulfilling. But once you sit down and listen to the singing or playing of a master, you go through and beyond that doorway into an authorless space where, far from boxed in, an entire view of the world is invoked. There the healing of that truth may be absorbed.

Okay, you (I) say, so how does Round Mountain fit into that model? Are we just a little multiplex serving variety? No. I guess we fit because that kind of reaching through different currents is really what we’re about and a worldview we strive for, beyond authorship. That’s the story we are. Thanks, Iarla, for the cairn you left us under the imperceptible snowpack of this time!
As for the holy mountains of Jemez, may they regenerate themselves in time without anyone generating any extra limbs!