MNYS stands for My New York Summer.

It started with the idea that somewhere out there, life might look a little different. A different city. A different version of yourself. A summer that never quite ends. The feeling that everything could change if you could just get somewhere else.

I think a lot of us grow up with some version of that idea.

For me, it came from growing up in New Jersey, in a family where there was plenty of love, but not always much stability. I learned early that life could be complicated, that people could be doing their best and still have a hard time, and that the world looked very different depending on where you started.

As I got older, I found my way into music, art, and the things that gave me somewhere to put all of that. I went to college, worked different jobs, wrote songs, built things, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what a different life might look like.

Eventually, some of it happened.

But getting somewhere isn't always the same as arriving.

The older I get, the more I realize that everyone is carrying something you can't necessarily see. That success doesn't always look the way you imagined it would. That growing up doesn't mean having everything figured out. And that sometimes the things we spend years chasing aren't quite what we thought they'd be when we finally get there.

That's become the foundation of MNYS.

It's a music project, but it's also a world built around the things that make us human. The strange, funny, difficult, beautiful parts of being alive. The people we meet, the places we leave, the things we remember, and the versions of ourselves we're still trying to become.

ECLIPSED is the first major chapter of that world. An album about perspective, identity, and the feeling of being just outside the light. The experience extends beyond the music through interactive games, stories, characters, and a growing universe.

At the center of that universe is MONO.

He's a character built from broken pieces, trying to make sense of a world that doesn't always make sense. He's not quite sure where he's going, but he's going somewhere. In a lot of ways, he's a reflection of the things I find difficult to explain through music alone.

I don't think MNYS is about having all the answers. It's not about pretending everything works out, or that changing your circumstances changes everything about you.

It's about finding something meaningful along the way.

The name might have started as a fantasy about somewhere else. But I've come to appreciate that there's a whole life happening in the meantime.