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I Am a Lobster, I Am a Barnacle
Metadata
- title
- I Am a Lobster, I Am a Barnacle
- meaning
- Little Hug marine-biology love song: barnacles on whales, helpful lice, commensalism: I'm barnacle and you're the sea; does it itch?
- year
- 2021
- release
- Little Hug
- releaseType
- EP
- artist
- Scoobert Doobert
- artistId
- #scoobert
- credits
- Written, performed, and mixed by Luke Francis Walton. Mastered by Riley Knapp.
- spotify
- https://open.spotify.com/album/08qm91rIDQEj86DoQWiNyB
- apple
- https://music.apple.com/us/album/little-hug/1558296985
- themes
- Little Hug
- relationships
- science
- absurdism
- commensalism
- isrc
- QZDA82108366
- isrcSource
- soundexchange
- draft
- false
Lyrics
I am a lobster I am a barnacle Okay so Barnacles are just along for the ride They don't harm the whales Or feed on the whales Like true parasites do Barnacles don't serve any obvious advantage to the whales But they give helpful lice A place to hang on the whale Without being Helpful lice? Lice? They give helpful lice The lice in my head On a whale How does that work? So it's like Wait, lice? Like hair lice? Commensalism Commensalism It's symbiotic But it's also kinda parasitic Like you and me I'm barnacle And you're the sea Whale lice feed on algae and whale skin But there is no evidence that whale lice are harmful to whales Does it itch? There is no evidence that whale lice are harmful to whales
Content
Track nine on Little Hug (April 2021). Luke solo. After the title hook, it's mostly spoken marine biology read aloud and turned, accidentally, into a love poem. The text is real: whale barnacles ride along without harming the whale (textbook commensalism), and the narrator keeps snagging on the detail that they give helpful lice (cyamids) somewhere to hang. The phrase loops and breaks down (helpful lice? lice? like hair lice?) as the fact collides with the gross-out image, commensalism repeated like a mantra he can't quite hold.
Then it slips into meaning: it's symbiotic / but it's also kinda parasitic / like you and me / I'm barnacle / and you're the sea. The metaphor wobbles on purpose, a barnacle rides the whale, not the sea, and the relationship is the unstable ecology. It ends not on a verdict but on the one human question buried in the citations: does it itch? No answer, just the fact repeated.
After Can't Imagine Feeling Better and before Don't Know Much: joy, weird science love, then epistemic spiral. Same domestic weirdness as I'm Addicted to Baths, Little Hug letting the joke be the whole song.