Ben's Songs

I saw Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith in the theater the weekend it came out. It so happened that I also attended a live production of Sweeney Todd that same weekend. The similarities stood out to me, as they so often do, like a bright, hot blade in a dark place: both Sweeney and Vader start out in promising careers in which they owe their success to their skill with a gleaming blade; both are disgraced, transformed by a consuming rage and hatred, and return under a new name seeking vengeance; both murder their wives but blame others for it; and both leave behind children who have to sort it all out.

In J.R.R. Tolkien, Author of the Century, Tom Shippey highlights the opposition of stars, representing the eternal, and trees, representing the temporal, as a central theme of Elvish poetry. This resonates as well with the themes of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, when we live in booths thatched with branches or leaves through which we can see the stars.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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My first multivalent song — that means it's about two subjects at the same time. Which two subjects? That's revealed at the end of the song (or you could read the tags). See if you can figure it out before then.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman