Salt

This is about sex.

‘Salt’ focuses upon the sense of disconnect that can accompany the quiet moments after the body’s collapse.

It’s about being a man, raised in a place where the only way you feel allowed to be open with another person is if you are sleeping with them.

It’s about the confusion created when we ourselves don’t know what we want.

It’s about being physically intimate as an attempt at closeness, or a cure for loneliness, or trying to remember, through another body, that you are in fact here.

‘Salt’ was recorded live in the summer of 2023, but was written in 2018. It was the first piece of mine that felt like something of my own, something non-referential.

I’ve changed so much since then. Still, hearing it again today, I understand the feeling.

Last month I reread The Road Less Travelled which contains a chapter on grace and redefining moments we categorize as coincidental. As I began to get cold feet about releasing this song, The Will To Change by Bell Hooks came into my hands. It encouraged me to share myself.

“Sex, then, becomes for most men a way of self-solacing. It is not about connecting with someone else but rather about releasing their own pain. Patriarchal men have no outlet to express their pain, so they simply seek release. The more intense the pain of fear, unworthiness, and feeling unlovable becomes, the more obsessive becomes the need to have sexual interaction.”

– The Will To Change

I am working on finishing an essay that elaborates on the subject using my own experiences. It will be released in the coming month, and is entitled ‘When A Body Was A Shore: Sex, Masculinity, and Our Attempts At Love.

Thank you.