New music from b. dexter
Hey,
It's me, Ben (Cooley). A few years ago I started playing music under my middle name (dexter), and I've decided to revisit that practice.
TL;DR the rest: I'm releasing some new music and thought you might be interested. First one is at the end of this email!
But first...
You didn't ask for this email, but I'm hoping you enjoy receiving it all the same. You see, I'm starting a new thing and trying to be intentional about who I share it with. If you're reading this, it means I know you in some capacity and thought you probably wouldn't sue me.
I'm also not on social much these days and I'd like to keep it that way. So I'll be sharing things here first.
Still, unsolicited emails are quite frankly, the worst, so if you don't want to hear from me in the future about new songs, music, writing, art that I produce, click here or in the email footer to never receive this from me again.
Ok, disclaimer over: now to the real point of this email.
Art as survival
I have been a musician in some form for the past 15 years. In high school, it was the way I connected with people. I made my best friends playing music together, going to shows, listening to records.
I formed a band with some buds. We were called Fever Blanket, and we played absurdly pop-laden, reverb-soaked tunes about the throws of high school love. It was good fun.
Eventually we all moved away to go to college. I got married. Moved to London for a few years. Got another degree.
The whole time, I wrote songs here and there, buried in notebooks and unfinished voice memos on my phone. Music was still important to me, but more and more it felt like an activity of isolation.
A year after I moved back to the US, the pandemic hit. Where I live, in a town just outside of Cambridge, MA, isolation became commonplace. People stayed apart, wore masks, stayed inside. They still are. I still am.
In this time I have turned more to art than anything else to quiet my mind. A few weeks ago, I visited this wonderful museum in North Adams, MA called Mass MOCA. The pieces were beautiful, but what stuck with me even more was a single phrase used in the introduction of a sculpture exhibition by the artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois.
She described her work as a process of finding harmony between elements, but also within herself. Her art was not a preoccupation; it was a spiritual practice.
She called it "art as survival".
North End
We're all doing our best to survive these days. Music is part of my survival. Sharing music, however, is a very different thing than writing it.
Over the past year many things have shaken loose in my mind. One of them is the attachment to perfection. This song isn't perfect, but it exists. I've decided to care more about the latter. I'd rather make music imperfectly than let songs rot in a notebook.
This song began when I was living in London and ended with many nights here in Boston hunched over my laptop trying to pull out its final form. It's a bedroom-produced, labor of restlessness. I hope you enjoy it.
I'm still working on some other songs, but hope to share more as they surface. Until then, don't be a stranger. You can reply to this email and I'll get you back.