The Ladybug and I have been listening to Here Come the 123s, a CD that combines two of my favorite things: They Might Be Giants and mathematics. Here is another song off the album called “One Everything,” which does a nice job distinguishing between the immensity of all objects and the singularity of the set that contains all of them. (This is akin to the set containing the empty set being nonempty, only at the other end of the cardinality spectrum.) The video is on YouTube, after C is for Conifers.
One Everything
There’s only one everything.
Remember these words,
There’s only one everything.
And if you go out and count up everything
It all adds up to one.
There’s only on everything.
The last time I checked
There’s only one everything.
It kind of makes sense that there would only be
Just one, not ten, not three.
If you get all the stuff together
And you have not left something out,
Then would there still be anything left over?
I’m pretty sure that means that there could not.
We share the same omniverse.
(Please clean your room.)
We share the same omniverse,
And even though you are over here and not there,
There’s just one everywhere.
You’ve got the cars, the trees, the house,
There are some clouds, some birds, a monster,
And when it’s all too much to count up
You can put it in one pile.
What if you drew a giant circle?
What if it went around all there is?
Then would there still be such a thing as the outside?
And does that question even make any sense?
There’s only on everything.
The last time I checked
There’s only one everything.
It kind of makes sense that there would only be
Just one, not ten, not three.
Not… twelve.
There’s only one everything.
Remember these words,
There’s only one everything.
And if you go out and count up everything
It all adds up to one.
It all adds up, it all adds up, it all adds up to one.
