Here is the first of four new songs I will be posting over the next few days.
We go to the beach -- specifically, Ocracoke Island, North Carolina -- every summer, and we have been doing so for over 30 years now. I grew up on Long Island, spending a LOT of time at Jones Beach State Park, which I could ride my bike to from our house in Wantagh. I love the beach, and as a kid I would go there 12 months out of the year, anytime of day or night. Something called me there, calls me there, and it has never gone away.
"Melt" is my attempt to capture that elusive but consistent feeling I get at the beach of dissolving, becoming one with nature, becoming one with the universe, losing myself in sun, surf, and sand. Early in my recovery, a wise person noted that the beach is a lovely metaphor for God, for a power in the universe that is reaching out toward us endlessly, as far it possibly can, wave after wave after wave as far up the shore as it can. The problem is that I am usually looking in the wrong direction.
So "Melt" is my beach song. I wrote the music on Ocracoke in the summer of 2020. I then waited a full year before writing the lyrics there in the summer of 2021.