Love and Other Acts of Subversion

About the album

After three years of songwriting and six months of intensive recording, Love and Other Acts of Subversion will be released on July 25th, 2025. An art installation will accompany the album, with cover art by Hosanna White, and illustrations for each song by Asante Riverwind. Full album credits can be found at the bottom of this page.

Illustrated lyric booklets are available by donation.

Prints are available for all works. Originals available for some. Contact: forestmountainlion@gmail.com

Alchemy 

I am the ocean and you are the moon
Without you I’d never move
I can’t understand the way that you dance across my sky 

I don’t know the words
You say only inside
But I’ll tell you mine 

When
Do I
Get to
Kiss you 

You make me wonder and I haven’t a prayer
Like thunder dissolves in the air
But I wonder like when I was a kid
When it’s all I ever did 

And there’s an alchemy
There’s a way to take the pain
Deep inside of me
I can turn my fear to faith 

I don’t know the words
You say only inside
But I’ll tell you mine 

When
Do I
Get to
Kiss you

 Gone wholly blind
Till the truth peeks through

Julia Butterfly Hill 

All I ever asked for
Was a little love at the end of the world
Someone to lay on my shoulder
And watch the sunset of civilization 

But it’s everyone from everyone
Isn’t that just the problem?
We’re separated from the earth
Now we do the same to each other
Until we learn 

I’ve been climbing trees, still looking for my
Julia Butterfly Hill, I heard she learned to fly 

But we still believe in love, we think it might be the only
thing that we really bring that means anything at all 

To live a life before love is lost
Lately I wonder how long it has left
Sacred economy’s cutting costs
How can you give when your heart is in debt? 

Working to heal the hole in me
Often the days are lonely
To see beyond the city walls
And hear the call of the rest of me
Even when she’s crying 

But it’s everyone from everyone
Isn’t that just the problem?
We turned away from the earth
Now we do the same to each other
Until we learn to remember to return to the power of the heart 

I’ve been climbing trees, still looking for my
Julia Butterfly Hill, I heard then I’ll never die 

But we still believe in love, we think it might be the only
thing that we really bring that means anything at all

I’ll Meet You There 

Fir trees and frozen grass
A blanket on the ground
Our hearts the only sound
Your face and the moon

But I tried to make you summer
When you were still just spring
I found a song to sing
But I sang too soon 

We’ve known it from the start
The hole in my head, the hole in your heart
The wind that pulls your hand from mine 

What was it that you said?
Just keep me in your heart instead
When from the start I never had a choice

Like kids, we jumped in
But frightened by the night
We zipped the bag up tight
And we hid from the wind 

But the wind is all that sings
And though the saddest song it had to bring
The mystery is more beautiful
When you see what’s really real
Beyond ideas of right
Beyond ideas of wrong
There is a field to lay your soul 

And when the soul lays in that grass
The world’s too full to talk about
Even the words “each other” disappear
Beyond ideas of right
Beyond ideas of wrong
I’ll meet you there

 Somewhere we’ll always be
Hiding in that two person bag
And I have yours and you have my love
Sleeping inside
Though I know you’ve walked into the night
Left me far behind
To find the beauty in this life
So we step into the mystery
There are secrets on the breeze
Don’t go back to sleep

Songlines 

Nothing can hold back the land
So dig it with your toes and hold it in your hands
Like a river beats the back of every dam
Ten thousand generations still sing “remember when” 

I was so afraid you didn’t care
But I read between the lines and now I see it everywhere
We are seeds under the asphalt, waiting where
The cracks grow all around, so flower if you dare
A war inside, but peace in the air 

It is whispered, inside and outside
By the fearless and the wild
The songlines
Who will win out in the end 

Nothing can hold back the land
So dig it with your toes, she holds you in her hands
Someday our cities sink in sand
You can take man out of nature, but never nature out of man
A war inside, the heart and the hand 

I trace the songlines through a forgotten forest
In and out of my mind, rewinding tracks to the chorus
Pave over their trails, but the deer still know
Silence their songs, but the hills still echo
A war inside for the real conquerors 

It is written in rivers and in our bones (the songlines)
Can’t hold back the grizzly and the wolf (the songlines)
It is sung on the wind in silence (the songlines)
Can’t hold back the wild inside us (the songlines) 

Man brings love to the land
The land brings love to man

When the hair hides your face

Now I’ve cleaned the hair of five women from my broom
No more laughter echoes through my lonely room
A trade I must have made in another life it seems
To weave her between, to turn life to dream
And tie you underneath the seam 

Sleeping all alone in the house I bought for you
A single father to the songs that we once knew
For a moment she got tangled in your hair
But now I know she was never really there
Nothing but a prayer in the air 

I couldn’t take the easy way, I’m a garden of pain and she’s the rain, baby
You don’t know what a curse it is to love a girl who does not exist 

You’re a casualty in a war I wage with myself 

I only wanted to keep us kids
Now you’ll never know the heart I hid 

Last night I ran into a friend that we once knew
First thing he asked was if I ever married you
When I meet somebody new I’ll have to ask
Please keep it underneath your hat
You never know when she might be back 

Now I only fly along and watch us on a drive in the rain
But I can’t tell what you’re saying when the hair hides your face

I Want My Earth Back 

Something’s been knocking at my door
Something’s been calling from my core
So I sit and listen as something inside me spins
‘Till I breathe and take away the wind
And I step off of the wheel for a while 

And in this bliss, I break a spell
I don’t listen to what the world would call myself
I am just the latest face, unbroken back I trace
Three billion years to find my family name
And I know I’m still the same wild love
That came to let a larger life unfold
And won’t stand to watch the world grow cold 

I won’t be hypnotized, separated from the stars
I’m severed from the earth and I still bear the scars
Let this lonely illusion show us what we are
What waits within our hearts?
Forget we followed fear so far 

The call of the wild says you never need to be afraid
Your thoughts evaporate but you never go away
Just a life that wants to love, a love that wants to live
But the city takes so much more than it gives 

So I stand with the wild of the earth
And the land so defiled for an artificial world
I want no part in this machine that consumes the soul
Take my hand, we’ll dream a world of love
I am an unbroken life, three billion years old
I am the same wild will that started it all
I forgot and now fear has love under attack
And I want my earth back
I want my earth back

Wolves

My heart cries out to you from within the cage I call myself
My heart cries out to you and it echoes over the frozen hills 

My heart is a wolf that’s gone insane
No longer wild but never tame 

Won’t you answer, I know you speak his language
Won’t you answer, won’t you let him come running home to you
Can’t you see, how I’ve been wounded by the world
Just like you
Can’t you see how the world has hurt me too 

My love is a wild rage, it splits the night then sounds no more
My love is a tidal wave without the sand to crash ashore 

And this old wolf’s been caged so long
He forgot his cry was once a song
And all it takes is to hear you sing
And you can turn me wild again 

We are wolves, trying to get along alone
We are out here in the cold
Starving for love 

Won’t you answer, I know you know the notes
Won’t you answer, won’t you let me come running home to you
Can’t you see, how I’ve been wounded by the world
Just like you
Can’t you see how the world has hurt me too

My heart cries out to you
Won’t you answer?

Songbird 

A songbird landed in my life, for a time
I can’t decide to smile or cry when she takes flight
My fear’s a fist inside but still my hand remains
Outstretched my palm up to the sky 

And there I see my love, my love come alive
It is not what I take, but what I give that’s mine 

Land your heart and overwinter in my hands
And from this frosty field you and I will never stand
I thought I knew just what I wanted from the world
Until I chased the midnight sun into the cold 

A songbird landed in my life, for a while
And there’s no song I wouldn’t sing to see her smile
I am erased in flames and yet my hand is still
Outstretched my palm up to the wind 

And there I see my love, my love take flight
It is not what I take, but what I give that’s mine 

I thought I knew just how the story’s supposed to end
Until I chased a trail of gold off of the edge 

Fly, songbird, fly
I can’t believe I hold all this inside
Fly, songbird, fly
You may not be a bird in the next life 

And there I see my love, my love come alive
It is not what I take, but what I give that’s mine 

A songbird landed in my life, for a while

Peace and Possibility 

Did you really think I’d fade away?
I’m more like the sunlight in the spring 

All that ever drives my feet’s to convince myself of things I believe
The funny feeling of being you and me
A solitary sight I seek, to find out what it means to me
To believe in peace and possibility 

But for now, I’m standing at the gate
Just to see inside before I’m turned away
Please, I’ve been taking faith
That I’m not wrong to want to feel OK
And maybe when I don’t I’m not to blame
Like maybe someday maybe I’ll deserve to stay
But no one answers so I walk away 

Sometimes it seems to me, I’m abandoned here in mystery
When in the mirror I can’t tell what I see
But someday soon up to the task
I know I can remove this mask
To see peace and possibility 

I can see, the door is round and wide
People step to either side
If you can believe it with your eyes
In me, a joy as wide as spring
The headlight of a train
Ask for what you really need