---
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
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

draft: false
---

Track nine on [*Little Hug*](/albums/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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_barnacle) ride along without harming the whale (textbook commensalism), and the narrator keeps snagging on the detail that they give *helpful lice* ([cyamids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyamidae)) 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*](/songs/cant-imagine-feeling-better/) and before [*Don't Know Much*](/songs/dont-know-much/): joy, weird science love, then epistemic spiral. Same domestic weirdness as [*I'm Addicted to Baths*](/songs/im-addicted-to-baths/), Little Hug letting the joke be the whole song.

---