Ben's Songs

Durian is a large tropical fruit known for its tough, spiky exterior (you don't want to be hit with one), delicate yet unctuous floral taste, and a peculiar and penetrating smell which to some resembles rotting garbage. Some countries where it is popular don't allow it to be carried in enclosed spaces such as subways for this reason. If black tea flavored with bergamot is Earl Grey, would black tea flavored with durian then be Durian Grey? And will drinking it then confer eternal youth? Perhaps... but consider the cost.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
portions of the melody are borrowed from Leslie Fish's setting of Rudyard Kipling's "Our Fathers of Old" and Cynthia McQuillin's "The Wild Hunt"

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This song uses the metaphorical frame of that so-called legend about the two wolves (it isn't) to reflect on my experience of coming to terms with myself as a bipolar person.

Kipling's "Recessional" is a prayer for an empire on the edge of decline due to its overweening pride.  In the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the Old Republic and the Jedi Order stand at the edge of a similar precipice.

by Benjamin Newman, after "Recessional" by Rudyard Kipling
set to music by Leslie Fish

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Explorators are self-replicating, self-improving robotic space probes, sent out into the universe by a race of makers who developed artificial intelligence but not the technology to sustain organic life across interstellar distances.  Their prime directive is to continue exploring and learning.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Hope Eyrie" by Leslie Fish (just the verse)

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