Derrida Makes a Différance
Cosmic nihilism meets a matter pun: if nothing matters out there, maybe meaning is just being the sun for someone close.
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The title is a pun on différance — Derrida’s word for how meaning is always deferred, never fully present. The song takes that idea literally and cosmically: we’re alone in infinite space, intelligence might be a mistake, and the chorus hammers it didn’t matter much until even freedom rings hollow.
Then it pivots. The Big Bang separated “all that MATTERS” into places: matter as physics, matters as importance, the joke spelled out in the lyrics because the song knows it’s doing a bit. But the energy in you is the same as in the sun, and the close lands on sun/son: we are the sun, and that’s enough for me / to be the sun / to be your son. Meaning doesn’t arrive from the aliens or the purpose-of-life answer; it shows up in family, small and specific, after you’ve sat with the meaningless long enough for freedom to leak out of it.
It’s one of the early Scoobert songs that already asks the question the rest of the catalog keeps circling: if nothing matters at the cosmic scale, what actually grounds you? Here the answer isn’t philosophy. It’s yeah yeah yeah yeah at the end, which is the whole point.
The Bent Stick (essai #1) picks up the same thread: learning Japanese showed that meaning is not atomic. It bends at the waterline when one language meets another, the way light bends a stick in a river.
Written, performed, mixed, and mastered by Luke Francis Walton. Album art by Gentle Giant Illustrations.
Lyrics
Intelligence is a mistake Genetic combinations infinite in all this space Don't look too long for the aliens We might as well accept We do not have a single friend out there We kill and we create We sit and masturbate, oh Sweet Gaia cry a tear, I'll turn it into beer, oh Dominion we pursue Dominion never knew we were born It didn't matter much We do not matter much If at all Don't matter much You do not matter much Let freedom ring! The purpose of life oh The purpose of life oh The purpose What a bummer What a fate It's lonely here in outer space If nothing really matters then why do I gotta live? But leaving in the meaningless A freedom can come out of it And I can see my tiny little place inside the One Yeah Big Bang might have separated All that MATTERS (get it-- it's a matter joke) into Places But our energy is unmistakably the same as in the sun We are the sun And that's enough for me To be the sun To be your son I find my meaning in my family Yeah yeah Yeah yeah Yeah yeah