As he gets ready to put on an unforgettable performance of his album Lillian at NYC’s Le Poisson Rouge on October 25th, Ben Lear is sharing a free mp3 of one of its tracks, “Scuba Lessons.”
Lillian is a compelling tale of love, loss, and an underwater adventure with sea creatures and an island made of floating trash. An activist who has performed at events for the United Nations and TEDx, Lear was inspired to make Lillian a parable about pollution in our oceans after learning about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a giant gyre of plastic bottles, tires, and other debris floating in the ocean between California and Japan. Activism runs in the Lear family, as Ben is the son of activist and TV legend, writer/producer Norman Lear (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son).
The October 25th performance of Lillian will bring Lear’s vivid story to life with an ambitious staging that includes plastic bottle light sculptures (designed and built by Ben himself), costumes, a 15-piece band and orchestra, gospel choir, and projected animation.
Click here to watch Ben construct Lillian light sculptures for NYC show
Lillian is the story of a young man kept awake by the fear that he’s watching his lover, who sleeps soundly in bed, drift away from him, becoming one of the many things he’s lost in his life. He determines that all the things we lose in our lives end up in an island of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean. And, in a desperate attempt to reclaim these things, he sets off on a scuba-diving journey to that island.
Lear elaborates, “During ‘Scuba Lessons,’ the diver remembers when he and Lillian learned to dive on a family trip to Hawaii. It’s a bit of an aha moment when he realizes that’s how he’ll rescue her from sea, by diving to the Garbage Patch.”
Download: Ben Lear – “Scuba Diving”
Musically Amusing 