Peter Melnick

I just posted a blog about my song, Sometimes a Monster, offering a birds-eye view of trauma passing from one generation to the next in the life of a family, a song about people who endured and sometimes caused great pain. But the song isn’t about pain. It has more to do with love, and healing. To read more of my blogs on songs inspired by journeys of healing, please click on this link below, where you can also sign up for my bi-weekly newsletter, "Freedom From Within." Thank you! https://www.petermelnick.com//sometimes-a-monster-newslett

Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path, President Biden told us in his Inauguration address, adding, Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. Joe Biden is so right for the times. His call for healing is heartfelt, but he’s no dreamer. He’s a genuine humanist, and an idealistic pragmatist. In his honor, here are the lyrics to Rumi’s Field, a song I wrote inspired by the 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi: Beyond ideas of wrong...doing and right doing there is a field. I will meet you there. "Rumi’s Field" We glare at theme Through chinks in the fence, Trying to mount an insane defense. Keep telling ourselves We’ll figure it out, But we’re always standing In the shadow of a doubt. Some rise with their anger, Making peace with their pain. At the border it’s quiet, At least for today. From a birds-eye view, It all looks the same. An enemy is someone Whose story we’ve never heard. Beyond wrongdoing, beyond right, There’s a field, Rumi’s field. It’s far past hate and black & white, And I will meet you there. Facts are facts. What’s true is true. But I know different facts from you. And when this bloody day is through, We’ll meet in Rumi’s field. Justice, justice shall you pursue. But you must love The stranger too, The story that you never knew - Don’t you want to know? The best lack conviction, While so many are filled With a yearning for vengeance, An anger distilled. And there’s a house I yearn to build Out in Rumi’s field. Beyond wrongdoing, beyond right, (etc.) Peter Melnick 2016 https://www.petermelnick.com//rumi-s-field-biden-inaugurat

I just finished reading a wonderful novel by Victoria Foyt, VALENTINE TO FAITH, about a journey of healing over the course of four generations of a west Florida family. Set on insular Sanibel Island, VALENTINE is a story of mother-daughter love, romances bad and good, and the powerful ideas that hold sway over people’s lives, coloring the choices they make like an invisible hand on the steering wheel. Foyt is a master story-teller. She writes in a natural voice, her prose van...ishing into the fabric of the exotic world she has created. Her pacing is terrific too, now languid and atmospheric, now edge-of-your-seat gripping. It’s a great read, but that’s not why I’m mentioning it here. Foyt’s subject trauma and the journey of healing through the generations of a family is what I write about as well, and anyone reading this blog might want to know about her book. Here the link to a short review that provides a bit more detail: https://readerviewsarchives.wordpress.com//reviewfoytvale/ I’d love to know what you think Originally posted on my website, https://www.petermelnick.com/blog/valentine-to-faith

New Year in America As a nation, we are deeply traumatized. America’s got PTSD. A lot of what I write has to do with family trauma that wends its way through the generations parents passing their damage on to their children, great-grandparents shaping the lives of children born a half-century or more after their own passing. Trauma, and the possibility of healing. I’ve written songs about it, a play, an upcoming book, blogs... We who have been damaged, we who create damage, and we on whom it falls to help in the healing we’re one and the same. That’s the truth about families. The same holds for America. We’ve spent nearly a year with our lives on ice, doing our best to survive and live with multiple modern plagues Covid-19, the incomprehensible toxicity of the body politic during the tenure of the soon-to-be-ex-president, the pervasiveness of institutional racism that was finally brought front-and-center in the wake of George Floyd’s brutal murder, sexual predation exposed by the Me Too movement, and the sexual abuse of children by priests, members Boy Scouts of America and the trainers of some of our nation’s elite gymnasts As a nation, we are deeply traumatized. America’s got PTSD. We whose lives have been damaged. We who create the damage, and we on whom it falls to help in the healing none of us can claim to be above the fray. And if we hope to heal, we need to hear one another, listening and speaking in the spirit of truth and reconciliation. Happy New Year, America! Here’s to sanity, health and hope! Originally posted on my website: https://www.petermelnick.com/blog/happy-new-year-america