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Several goddesses have seen me through my struggle with bipolar disorder and the integration of my bipolar aspects — first of all Persephone, with Her own seasonal cycle of ups and downs; but equally Brigid, Irish goddess of hearth and forge, fire and water, poetry and healing. As the goddess of the hearth, She teaches me to manage the fire in my head, building it up to cook or heat or light the home, banking it to rest.

As goddess of the forge, however, She had something else to teach me, more difficult and more dangerous: to make it stronger, a smith passes a workpiece repeatedly through the heat of fire and the cold of water. My passage through the Year of Madness — and much hard and deliberate work, both practical and spiritual, both during and after — has made me stronger, indeed made me whole in a way that I wasn't before.

It's not for anyone to lay the story of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" on someone else without their consent. This is me claiming it, freely (although She also had some say in the matter), for myself.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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The dandelion is sacred to Brigid, the Irish goddess of, well, a lot of things — home and hearth, fire and forge, meal and milk, bread and butter, spring and sprout, pool and poetry, well and wisdom and wit and words.

Some time ago I developed a dandelion blessing ritual in Her honor — an anointing ritual even, for it involves physically smushing a dandelion blossom onto one's forehead and hands, which leaves (on my skin, at least) a quite conspicuous yellow mark. Much later I would weave the text of that ritual into the form of a song.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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Rain World is a very strange video game, combining exploration, survival, the ruins of a lost technological civilization, and a richly simulated ecosystem — full both of things to eat and things to be eaten by, and inundated every so often by torrential rains that wash away everything that doesn't take shelter. It's inscrutable and mysterious, poorly (or just un-) explained, punishingly difficult if the player isn't prepared to take each death as a learning opportunity, and yet somehow endearingly charming — I guess the slugcat is just that cute.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The River, Where She Sleeps" by Dave Carter

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The idea for this song began with just the sound-alike of the refrain, but I knew that, if I was going to write the whole thing, it would need to be a sincere devotional song. Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of material abundance. I also knew that I needed to write this song from where I am, which is a life of abundance — solidly upper-middle-class, with a good deal of privilege. I couldn't in good conscience write a song asking the Goddess for more when I have enough.

I should also mention that I don't literally believe in reincarnation, or any other afterlife — but I have never believed either that one must literally believe a myth in order to draw teaching or spiritual sustenance from it, especially in song and poetry. The intended teaching in this song (which is, as I understand it, consistent with but not exhaustive of the traditional Hindu understanding) is that everything is One, so the idea of a separate self is an illusion — another being living a life very different from yours is no less "you" than you are, and deserves your compassion in the same way.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Wagon Wheel" by Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor

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I unironically love Ada Palmer's "Somebody Will", the way it gets the whole filk community singing along about the hope for a future in the stars. And I can respect Jordin Kare's "Bloody Bastards", about how it will take an entrepreneurial spirit to get us there. But somehow I don't think the current crop of celebrity billionaires, who never got excited about anything they didn't think they could own — not gonna name names, you know who I'm talking about — are the ones to build it, at least not a future in the stars the rest of us will enjoy.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Somebody Will" by Ada Palmer

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Here's a more poetical take on generative AI's problematic tendency to just make stuff up. This is all a dream we dreamed.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: and adapted from "Box of Rain" by Robert Hunter and Phil Lesh

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This song completes a trilogy (so far) of Sondheim parodies, curiously not merely all about Star Wars, but all about Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Something about the bitter bite of certain of Sondheim's songs (they're not all like that) lends itself to that dark chapter of the saga — or maybe it's just me.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Last Midnight" from Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim

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One of the sensations I relish the most, that keeps me coming back to the video games that deliver it, is the feeling of zooming forward into a three-dimensional world. I'm especially a fan of science-fiction racing games, especially ones with vivid environments and tight, responsive controls. And, although the SNES wasn't the first system to do that, it was one of the first that you could bring home. The original F-Zero is still a favorite of mine, and has aged surprisingly well.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Fun, Fun, Fun" by the Beach Boys

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Haskell is an imaginary friend, a small silicon dragon who represents my wit and mental agility — you can read more about him in the notes on his other song. This song actually came first, and is rather lighter in tone.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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Haskell is one of my imaginary friends, a representation of a part of my own self that accompanies me on my inward journeys. He has the form of a small, silver dragon — actually, a silicon dragon, or if you're familiar with D&D dragon types, something of the character of a mercury dragon. The part of me that he represents is wit and mental agility, and his name is a pun on both the programming language and the Hebrew word השכל, which means "intellect".

Haskell's full backstory must await another song, but suffice it to say that he was not always so tame — not always so accustomed to the jesses and the glove as a kept falcon — and that he played a significant role in my struggle with my bipolar nature.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Hunter" by Heather Dale

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This song borrows the tune of Graham Pratt's pro-fox, anti-hunting ballad "The Black Fox" (popularized in the filk community by Heather Dale) to tell a different pro-fox, anti-hunting story — in this case, an original fairy tale. What I love about the way this song came together is that the story is original, but you can see its lineage — Pixar's Brave, Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers, Earthsea, and even the much-bememed legend about turning a werewolf human by calling it by name.

It's fair to ask if the ending here is earned, I'll merely point out that I have followed the fairy-tale rules by making sure that everyone's boasts, warnings, and foolish oaths are exactly fulfilled.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Black Fox" by Graham Pratt

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I'll admit, this song happened because I heard Taylor Swift's original on the radio and couldn't get the catchy chorus out of my head.

In my version, it's inspired loosely by the account, in James Gleick's book Chaos, of Edward Lorenz's discovery of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in nonlinear systems, and the realization that this effectively rules out technological weather control. Lorenz was famously soft-spoken, but for this song I've retained Taylor Swift's signature snark.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift

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The paperclip maximizer is a thought experiment involving a hypothetical AI that is programmed to make as many paperclips as possible, with the idea that, unless otherwise constrained, it would attempt to turn all the matter in the universe (including Earth and us) into either paperclips or machines for making more paperclips. This is used to illustrate the dangers of runaway superintelligences constructed without sufficient ethical safeguards.

Some people are concerned that the AIs being developed today could evolve into that, possibly very quickly and without our realizing until it was too late to stop them. Knowing what I know about today's AI, I think that's silly. But it's still an engaging thought experiment with a fine science-fiction hook, so I thought it was worth a filk. Loessor's "Inchworm", with it's "businesslike mind" and its obsession with exponential growth (it's right there in the descant), seemed particularly appropriate.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Inchworm" by Frank Loesser

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Generative AI has made a big splash in the past year. I think it's practically impossible that this kind of AI will lead directly to "the Singularity" or other AI doomsday scenarios — it's just not that good at multi-step practical reasoning, for one thing — but that doesn't mean it won't be disruptive or dangerous. In particular, we can expect to see a lot more of one thing the new AIs are very good at generating — bullshit.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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In Jewish tradition, opinions differ as to what real plant (if any) the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad represents, or what real historical development (if any) the eating of its fruit represents — some say it's basic sentience or moral self-awareness, others suggest a technological change such as the development of agriculture.

I'm firmly of the opinion that Eve made the right choice — that G!d's experiment and our story as modern humans doesn't properly begin until we eat the Fruit of Knowledge, and that this story is ours to try to turn towards the good (we're not doing so great right now), not to reject.

In this song, I imagine that each Fruit on the Tree of Knowledge is different — a different flavor moral awareness. Some are sweet, some are bitter, and some are outright poisonous. If Eve wasn't wrong to eat of the Tree in the first place, certainly Cain was wrong to keep on eating the particular fruit he picked after that bitter first bite — and that, I think, is the crack in the world and the beginning of the main thread of Genesis: brother quarreling with brother to win father's favor, until finally we meet two brothers, Ephraim and Menashe, about whom almost nothing is written because they do not quarrel so there is no drama to write about.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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"Rubies" is part of Girls in Trouble, a cycle of feminist songs about Biblical women — in particular, about the "woman of valor" from Proverbs, who is, as the song says, better than rubies and pearls. But Ruby and Perl are also programming languages — and it so happens that there is another programming language that I love more than either.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Rubies" by Girls in Trouble

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Tunic is an adventure video game that begins as a nostalgic callback to the classic NES Legend of Zelda and then grows into something much stranger and deeper (and more unsettling). Woven throughout the mystery is the game's instruction manual, which you find in the game itself, individual pages of it scattered across the world to be picked up, holding who knows what secrets — and most of it in code. If you have yet to play it, I'd recommend unraveling as much of the mystery for yourself as you can. This song hints at some of the answers, but doesn't spell them out.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", trad.

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A silly song that was done just for the pun and (I hope) doesn't outstay its welcome.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Lucille" by Roger Bowling and Hal Bynum

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Smith of Wootton Major, one of J.R.R. Tolkien's lesser-known works, is a strange and haunting novella about a man who journeys in Faery and seemingly suffers no ill effects just from being there (although he does get into trouble at points). Having journeyed in Faery myself — and not without serious consequences! — that story stands as an inspiration and aspiration. Tom Smith's original song suggested itself some time ago as a tune to fit this tale.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "I Want to Be Peter Lorre" by Tom Smith

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Bags of Holding, and other containers that are bigger on the inside, are a staple of fantasy role-playing games... but where do they come from? This song imagines one possible origin, in the form of a secret guild with the talent of folding space with just a certain turn of the wrist — inspired in part by William Sleator's The Boy Who Reversed Himself. I'd love to expand this concept into an actual RPG supplement so you can put a Packer character (or Packer guild hall setting) into your game.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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