CHAPTER II

Every time I’ve gone to write about my own past I can’t help but start to laugh at how small and inconsequential my life seems and how uncomfortable I am with the telling of any of it. “The Big Bang” kicks off that idea. 
From the very inception, from the very first time I thought about telling my own personal story, it always made me kind of queasy. I don’t like talking about myself, in any medium. 
“The Big Bang” and “The Amoeba” songs are really about that, about falling into the trap of being too self-absorbed and really thinking that you’re so fascinating. It can happen at any time.
That way of thinking has been something that’s stopped me through the years and is one of the biggest reasons I haven’t done more with my own personal story. Why I stopped again and again from going forward. 
Because I feel that in the perspective of the entire galaxy it’s a pretty f****** small story. So I was trying to think about how to convey that. What’s a funny way to do it? And since Mel Brooks is 30 seconds away from any thought that I’m having, due to a lifetime of exposure to his work, in this case, well, it’s History of the World Part 3. 

The way it went down, we were just going back further and further with the research and how much further could we go? We got to some Welsh king, and I don’t even know if this Welsh king is an ancestor, but at that point it seemed even more hilarious to see how far we could go on the white Anglo-Saxon line and I said well f*** it, let’s go back to the beginning of time.
Then for me, with my very limited knowledge of the beginning of time, well, I love Carl Sagan, but that doesn’t mean anything in regards to deep scientific knowledge on my part. But that’s probably the last time I really learned anything about the cosmos.
So I said, let’s do the Big Bang. What’s funny about the Big Bang? The whole idea that it was a giant thing, but in show business it’s about thirty seconds long. I think show business is so friggin’ hilarious. 
“The Big Bang” and “The Amoeba” are making fun of myself. They’re making fun of show business, they’re making fun of the idea that any individual life is that important. Of course I believe that everybody’s life is important, but you know, from the comedic sense, not so much.
So that’s how we did it. Then Ethan came up with the chords, two chords, and we just did it and we were both laughing. That’s good, because we’re not laughing at our own stuff most of the time.
Then we brought other voices into it, Koa and Zach, and Ethan recorded a three part harmony. Bill played with it. Zach’s doing some cool note at the end of the tune which is just fabulous. The tune is literally 15 seconds long. Then we brought Jackie and Soara-Joye on it. 
The song captures the point of view that I hope people get right from the start of this project, that we’re just showbiz people telling a story. That’s about it. What’s even more fun is that we’re talking about this tune a hundred million times longer than the tune actually is. Like the ratio of human beings to the history of the cosmos.