The Outer Banks of Love, part 1

For those of you who are reading this internationally, and aren’t too familiar with the geography of the United States, let me explain the reference in the title of this song. “The Outer Banks of Love”, track #4 on handmade, is not a happy love ballad. The Outer Banks are a feature off the shore of North Carolina . . . sometimes called “The Graveyard of the Atlantic” because of the large number of sunken ships there.

Well, like I said in my first set of notes for “Like the Ocean Needs the Moon”: I’ve only written one real love song, and that was for my wife. Tracks 3 through 5 on handmade make up a trilogy. There are two dominant themes: the ocean, of course, and a second theme you might call the dangers of imbalance.

Johnny Cash had it right. We all walk the line. Two forces compete for our mindspace — the emotional, the gut reaction, the “heart”; and the cerebral, the rational, the “head.”  When one of these forces pushes the other out of the way, disaster usually results.

In this case, the Outer Banks of Love are those things we run into when we are cruising ahead, carried by the tide, and not watching the map.  True, someone who rigorously follows the map never makes any new discoveries; but also true, someone who ignores the signs of approaching shore never returns to tell of those discoveries.