Description
* * *
Back in 1972, after emerging from a self-constructed sweat lodge in the California desert, Aumahum called out to Marjorie and Bear. They approached and he spoke: “Prepare The Zone.” Marjorie locked arms with him and they walked together in a slow sweep across the compound, bare feet puffing dust trails, as Bear hustled on ahead. “Water, Mother” he spoke softly to Marjorie, who handed him the intricately embroidered canteen sashed across her torso. He drank slowly but shakily, drips darkening the white muslin of his gown as they walked. He handed the canteen back and Marjorie dried the droplets stuck to his beard with the ends of her blond hair.
Entering The Zone through its salvaged door, a yolk-yellow light greeted their faces and they smiled. Bear was just placing a fresh 7” reel of tape on the two-track recorder as Aumahum took a seat upon sheepskin, Marjorie kneeling beside, eyes closed, smile wide. Bear wordlessly handed him an acoustic guitar and positioned one microphone aimed at its soundhole, another at Aumahum’s mouth.
Aumahum pronounced words and invented music, and Richie was both here and there.
“Because the stars are the Mother’s suns
And all the Earth, the Father’s drum
Everything that beats inside me:
The echoing pulse of where we’re all from
Seedlings and foundlings in our care
Spores, motes and wings dance on the air
Everything that sings outside me
Reflecting the voice of the Mother’s lair”
* * *
Richie listened to the song he knew by heart as though for the first time. The genesis point of his current path—his Independence Landing—lay in this transtemporal moment. 1972; 2006; 2009: all folded up and collapsed into the present.
A cluster of tears formed in both eyes and overflowed their containers, cascading down Richie’s smiling face. He felt weightless, his body limp in the wooden chair as sobs shook his torso. He’d seen footage of Christian revivalists falling into similar states by the touch of a declared Holy Man acting as an “Instrument of God” — religious ecstasy, or rapture. He’d always scoffed at these devotees, assuming them victims of psychic suggestion, brainwashing, or worse. Finding himself likewise overcome, he sensed no hint of the sinister, just a generosity of love impossible to quantify, too large for human emotion.
Is this how it felt for them, too?
credits
Matt LaJoie: electric guitar, reverb, live looping
Inspired by Galactic Signature, Wadadasow, naturbørnehaven, and Wollensak Quartet’s impressionistic covers of Aumahum’s “Because the Stars” (1972), released by Wollensak Records on limited edition cassette and CD-r in May 2008.
Recorded at home in Maine, 3.12.2026, live to Zoom H4n. Edited, mixed, and mastered by ML. Cover art and words by ML.
