Luke Beling - Inside The Stories - Stone In The Mouth Of The Ocean

In the world of music, the artist has almost become invisible. Lives are not seen, stories not told. This is Luke Beling’s story.

We all carry it. Tension. The what is, what if, and what will be of our days. We might develop peptic ulcers when we fail to deal with or use the tension. We might fill our fridges with the nursing power of a cheap drink or five. The tension builds, powered by our discursive minds. Until, like a dam wall in a flood, we break. For better or worse.

Five years ago, I suffered a traumatic wrist injury while playing rugby. Three years later, after experiencing knee pain, I discovered I was missing my PCL, the ligament responsible for connecting my upper and lower leg. I teach tennis for a living. I’ve given everything to the game over the last twenty years; formed my entire identity around that yellow-green ball crossing the net, landing inside the lines.

Tension.

Both injuries triggered similar reactions. When I hurt my wrist, I doom-searched the internet for six months, trying to find stories of people who’d suffered the same setback, assuring myself I’d be okay. But this worsened my inner turmoil, sending my mind into an OCD-type worrying about the future, shooting viles of adrenaline into the bulging purple veins of self-doubt. When I couldn’t take anymore, sick of staring into the mirror of self-pity and preservation, I turned to something outside me. I wrote a novel.

Three years later, after consulting numerous orthopedic surgeons for my knee, my mind began spiraling again. Amid the internal noise, I picked up my guitar, penning twenty-five songs, nine of which would feature on my debut album, A Stone in the Mouth of the Ocean.

The album is an exploration of tension, songs that venture through the what is, what if, and what will be. One can imagine what it might feel like to be a stone in the mouth of the ocean, perhaps a similar experience to the struggle of trying to silence the mind during life’s harrowing moments.

I was watching the sea crash against a shore lined with stones one day. A wave dislodged a stone and dragged it to the ocean floor. I couldn’t help but feel like that stone, thinking about and dealing with my injuries. But after some time observing, I realized that eventually, the stone would resurface, carried by deep currents, back to the bed, shining again underneath the fiery sun.

Life’s thrashings are a certainty for all of us- the constant pushing, pulling, failures, and disappointments. The struggle, big or small, is inevitable. And the letting go is much easier said than done. But when we’re able to remain unreactive to the pounding waves, like that stone, surrendering to the present moment, giving up to something greater than ourselves, I believe it’s possible to meet the pain with a stillness that carries with it peace and hope.

May these songs take you someplace good!

Luke doesn’t only sing. He is also a published writer. Read his short stories

By Luke Beling,

“We fell out of love in a hurry that night. Suzy flipped over my dirty ashtray and tossed my empty can at me while I lay sprawled on the sofa watching the game. “You can’t just keep feeling sorry for yourself, you know. Bad shit happens. To everybody. All the time.” It’d been five years since the car crash. I came out of it unscathed, but our youngest child, Anthony, got crushed, killed instantly. It wasn’t my fault, and Suzy never blamed me once. But it still didn’t feel that way, no matter what she or the counselor said”. Read “Maybe It’s Not Too Late“

A Stone In The Mouth Of The Ocean is out now everywhere except on CD

This song is not on the album but it shows you that boy musicians in Hawaii sing barefoot after a surf and sing about touching things – Shot live in Kailua-Kona Hawaii.