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Featuring the songs of Nick Sullivan

Demos, discussion, lyrics, sheet music

Infinite Sky

 
The title image of the video for Nick Sullivan's song 'Infinite Sky'The play button for the video
 
 

Album:  Songs Sung Sideways

13. Infinite Sky

It doesn’t matter how long your list or how big your bucket, there are some places you can’t go, and the other side of the Universe is one of them. The people who live there, if any there be, are so remote that we cannot possibly interact with them or communicate with them in any way, no matter how long we devote to the task. Walt proposes that we declare war on them immediately.

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds."
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

The Song

Walt: You could go a long way and not see a bigger sky than the one portrayed in this song. I recommend it to other big-sky guys like myself.

The Music

It’s a finite little folk tune. Of pretensions, it has fewer than this sentence, yet it carries out its humble duties with commendable aplomb.

Lyrics and Chords

Verse 1

         D                       G

You’re a very big guy, you’re as big as they get,

          Em7                     A7

With your private island and your private jet,

           D                           G        D

You’ve got plenty already and you want more yet:

                   A7

All that money can buy;

    D                        G

But way out somewhere in the depths of space

         Em7                    A7

There’s another big guy from an alien race,

         D                             G           D

And he’s looking back at you with an upturned face,

                 A

And that dot you fly

       A6       D   G  Em7  A7  D

In the infinite sky.

Verse 2

Every prince of the people, every king of crime,

Every servant of science, every poet sublime,

Makes but a flicker in space and time,

The wink of an eye;

Just a mote on a mote in an ocean so vast,

In every direction, the future and past,

Insignificant? Yes, at last,

Still it’s good to fly

In the infinite sky.

Verse 3

Though we might not matter in the widest view,

And it might not matter what we say or do,

If you matter to me or I matter to you,

There’s no need to ask why;

And way out yonder past the furthest star,

Though nothing of ours can ever get that far,.

Somebody’s wondering if we are,

And whether we fly

In the infinite sky.

What others have said

jim's picture
jim on

I've always thought of this as Nick's most far out song, at least in terms of space time.

Walt's notion of declaring an interactionless war on the conceptual Big Sky Guy, while not being winnable, does have the compensation of not being losable either.

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