---
title: "Derrida Makes a Différance"

meaning: "MMM closer: intelligence is a mistake, no friends in space: if nothing matters, living in the meaningless frees you; Big Bang separated matters into places, we are the sun, to be a son, meaning in family."

year: 2020
release: "Masks and Monsters"
releaseType: "album"

artist: "Scoobert Doobert"
artistId: "#scoobert"

credits: "Written, performed, mixed, and mastered by Luke Francis Walton. Album art by Gentle Giant Illustrations."

spotify: "https://open.spotify.com/track/4Dk9O64xn5DdoXGhblis3y"
officialVideo: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xupSNIigymg"
apple: "https://music.apple.com/us/song/derrida-makes-a-diff%C3%A9rance/1526428042"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xupSNIigymg"

themes: ["meaning", "nihilism", "cosmology", "Masks and Monsters", "Derrida", "family"]

isrc: QZK6P2060463
isrcSource: soundexchange
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 living 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've separated
  All that matters 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 a son
  I find my meaning
  In my family

  Yeah yeah
  Yeah yeah
  Yeah yeah

draft: false

---

Track eighteen, the closer on [*Masks and Monsters*](/albums/masks-and-monsters/) (**August 2020**). Luke solo; the North Park lockdown record ends here, after [*Mystery Machine*](/songs/mystery-machine/)'s nostalgic sickness, by trading the cartoon shell for cosmic philosophy.

The title puns on [différance](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/), Derrida's term for meaning that's always deferred, never fully present. The song runs that pun through physics: *matter* the stuff, *matters* the importance. It opens in Fermi loneliness (*don't look too long for the aliens / we might as well accept we do not have a single friend out there*), works through the human comedy (*we kill and we create / we sit and masturbate*), and lets the chorus hammer the joke before spelling it out: *we do not matter much / if at all*.

Then the turn, which is the whole point: *but living in the meaningless / a freedom can come out of it*. Not leaving the meaninglessness, living in it long enough for freedom to leak out. The Big Bang verse splits the pun clean (*Big Bang might've separated / all that matters into places*) and the close lands small on the sun/son homophone: *to be the sun / to be a son / I find my meaning in my family*. Meaning after the cosmic shrug comes from family, not from any answer to the purpose of life.

Philosophical thread continues on [*Don't Know Much*](/songs/dont-know-much/), [*What Makes You You*](/songs/what-makes-you-you/), [*1101*](/songs/1101/). [The Bent Stick](/writing/the-bent-stick/) (*essai #1*), meaning bends at the waterline when languages meet, same stick-in-river image.

---