THE CLOSING OF THE FOURTH CYCLE – Revelation Rock For Eco Armageddon

Some of my favorite albums have been thematic concept albums, so while considering doing Closing of the Fourth Cycle I listened to Marvin Gaye’s What’s going on, An American Prayer by The Doors, Contact From The Underworld of Redboy by Robbie Robertson and The Past didn’t go anywhere by Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco for inspiration.

As an artist I have enjoyed the process of exploring a given theme by reading up on the history of the particular subject and then translating all that information into a series of works. As a painter, photographer and filmmaker this has been my process and therefore on this music/spoken word project I decided to apply the same process. Trying to break with convention I did not want to approach it like other albums so I wrote a series of spoken word pieces and songs and then collaged them together. I then illustrated each song to project for the performances.

The inspiration for the Closing of the 4th cycle initially came from several books, Frank Water’s The Hopi, Thomas Email’s The Hopi Survival Kit, There is a River (the story of Eagar Cayce) by Thomas Surgue, the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, and many of Joseph Campbell’s works on mythology.

I must also credit another experiential source and late friend James Nicholas who has since passed on. I began this album after James invited me to a Plain’s Cree sweat lodge, which is a traditional healing and or cleansing ceremony practiced by these Indigenous people. I felt that the experience was a great privilege and necessary point of departure to write such an album, which is a commentary on the state of the planet and our human condition. After that experience I felt compelled by a calm joy and musical outrage to write about what I saw in the sweat lodge and around me on a day to day basis, perhaps like Marvin Gaye I was asking “What’s going on?” quite literally. I feel this point in history begs the question, “are we really doing the best we can with the planet and as a human race?” I fully understand that democracy is young pupil and a work in progress yet I believe that a shift is needed, and often it is the artists, shamans, great humanists and activists that set things in motion. I am honoured and humbled to be a small part of this shift in thinking and awareness. I credit all of the great teachers and positive influences I had around me that enabled me to get this far.

So this has been a fantastic enquiry and enlightening journey that I wish to share with you the reader and listener. It is with joy and hope that I as vessel give you this work, encouraging all to explore the great mysteries of the Spiritual Ark and celebrate life as it is joy, love and light that will help put all back into balance before the earth changes bring us into darkness.

G.S. MacLeod
Montreal, Canada - April 2006

This album is dedicated to the Hopi, keepers of prophecy and the late mountaineer, conservationist, and wilderness educator John Clarke The Irish-Canadian mountain man who taught me how to exercise restraint and the late James Nicholas who introduced me to ‘the way’.

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