Into The Twilight: Meditations on Music, Memories, and Montauk

By Christopher Walsh

Encounters with Beatles. The Hamptons’ fabulous, beautiful, and absurd. Meditations on the unique natural beauty of the South Fork. The good old days before Montauk was overrun with hipsters. And here and there, adventures in Not-So-Incredible-India. Christopher Walsh, a reporter for The East Hampton Star, escaped New York to return to the place of his youth. In this collection of essays, he looks inward at the boy he once was and outward, sometimes in disbelief, at his once and present home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483550381

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Caylus

Chill Out, Give Thanks

Brooklyn

July 15, 2010

Dear David,

Here on the wrong end of the Island, the cheap air-conditioner blasting and an oscillating fan inches away, I consider these 18 long years since I last lived on the East End. Though born in Manhattan, I grew up in Montauk and spent an idyllic childhood there and, as a young adult, many equally pleasant summers in Montauk and Amagansett.

The longer and broader view that comes with age has shown me just how wonderful your town is. On the rare occasions that I do visit, I am reminded that, for all the (over) development of Montauk over the years — Lord Sri Krishna, so many houses were built and roads paved through the 1970s and beyond! — it remains a Garden of Eden, certainly compared to my wretched-yet-over-hyped neighborhood (Williamsburg).

In 1976, my good friend Chris Gosman and I, barely 9 years old, waited for three consecutive Saturdays until John Lennon and Yoko Ono rolled up to the real estate office on the Circle in Montauk (we’d been tipped off to their imminent arrival by his dear mother, Rita, who worked there part time, if memory serves), met our hero, and got his autograph.

Sixteen years later, I saw Paul McCartney drive past me by the railroad tracks in Amagansett, and just three summers ago caught his eye in Nichol’s and clasped my hands in prayer. (My wife, a Tibetan, later said, You only do that to a living deity! Precisely, I replied.)

I write because, though I am a hopeless news and political junkie myself, it is entertaining yet ultimately depressing to read the endless arguments, often marked by childish name-calling, about our president and foreign policy, as well as the turbulent local politics of recent years. I don’t wish to enter the fray, except to remind people just how deep was the hole dug by the last, befuddled president and his bloodthirsty sociopath of a vice president. Barack Obama, John McCain, or anyone else was condemned to extremely challenging circumstances.

Instead, I hope to remind all on the East End just how fortunate you are. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, as the song goes, but the next time you deeply inhale the salt sea air, or sample fresh produce at a roadside stand, or, especially, float and frolic in the surf, please take a moment to recognize that: You were born human, and you were likely born in a prosperous country, to a relatively prosperous (at least) family, and are in one of the most beautiful and tranquil places in this world. You are very, very fortunate.

A few weeks before Sept. 11, 2001, I was lying flat on my back on the dock outside my dear friend Sean Rafferty’s house on Three Mile Harbor, strumming his guitar on a perfect August afternoon while Sean and his wife, Kathy, were at work.

Three Mile Harbor, I’m under the sun, I sang, aimlessly making up words and phrases and chords.

After that horrific event, which I watched from the roof of my decrepit apartment building, the song, Three Mile Harbor was completed and is on iTunes and a bunch of other e-tailers. You don’t have to buy it; you don’t have to listen to it; but know that, in my experience, if you spend any time out there, you are very fortunate. Now that it’s gone — long gone — I realize how lucky I was too, once.

Chill out, give thanks. Maybe Richard Higer and Earle S. Rynston, Larry Darcey and Arthur J. French, Neil Hausig and Otis A. Glazebrook IV could go down to the ocean together, acknowledge their common humanity and extremely good fortune, and run full tilt into the surf