Ben's Songs

The "Here Be Cartographers" cycle began as a single song, playfully reversing the roles of map-makers and the dragons they so carelessly scattered at the edges of their maps.  It grew into the story of generations of a family of map-makers, as the craft of cartography hardened what had once been a fairy-tale world into a more definite and less wondrous shape.  I eventually realized that this story is about colonialism, and that I'm not sure that a happy-ending redemption arc for the map-makers is mine to write.  The end of the story remains unwritten... for now.

• Here Be Dragons
• Dragon Tales
• Maps Without Gaps
• All In One Basket
• Here Be Cartographers

I'm a singer-songwriter and filker who writes songs on a wide variety of topics — science fiction and fantasy; religion (several); science and computers; etc. I write original melodies, and I borrow tunes from other songwriters and from the soundtracks of media such as movies and video games.

You don't need to be a member of this DW community to access the songs. You can find songs by title or by tag — you can even search for combinations of tags. If you just want to see what's new, look at the recent entries view or the archive.

Audio files linked from song posts in this community are hosted on Google Drive. Leave a comment if you have technical difficulties accessing any audio file (or if it's the wrong file for the song it's linked from). These songs are, and will always be, free to download. I also have a bandcamp site where a few songs are available for purchase. In the future, featured or more intricately produced recordings will appear there.

Enjoy the songs, and please comment if you have any questions.