Story Behind the Song
Recorded LIVE at Bull Moon Studios, Atlanta, GA. 8/19/99.
Lyrics
What do a letter ten million miles high
and a neighbor
have in common?
It is this: there could be a letter
ten million miles high
on a star you see at night
and no one, today, would know.
You see, today’s telescopes—
and this is nothing against the Hubble—
their many limitations vote early and often.
Big ten-million-mile-high letters—
big ten-million-mile-high messages
changing on the hour—
today’s telescopes could be looking right at them
and pick up a twinkle. If that.
Like a high school subject, Billy.
Let’s say it’s a . . . B.
Let’s say our big big B be in . . . Cygnus.
No, no, no—our big big B be on—
Betelgeuse!
No, no, no—the Big Dipper!
Made of some amazing thing
that couldn’t melt if it wanted to,
something that if known to science
would change your religion
if it got in your coffee,
and your sex if you finished the cup.
You’re quite right to remind me
of my original question:
What do a letter ten million miles high
and a neighbor
have in common?
Well, don’t you have a neighbor
you know absolutely nothing about?
A neighbor who perhaps
you’ve never seen?
Well, that’s the neighbor who’s
just like our Big Dipper B,
ten million miles high,
just being itself, just being B,
because.
That B in space, too small from here to see,
is your neighbor.
The neighbor who gets home and puts ice in his socks.
The neighbor with the three-kinds-of-toothpaste ritual.
The neighbor who wrote this.
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