TΦΦL

Tool. The band called themselves that, because a tool is something you use. I've used this Tool during the hardest times, to make some sense out of those times. And it works.

SOBER

Undertow. It's something that I got caught in, before I actually experienced it in my life. I heard it first, as an album by TOOL. Sink into this album, and you'll eventually get pulled into a song called SOBER. There's a surface to the song, and there's the darker depths of it. On the surface, it's a song about an alcoholic that needs drink to do his best work. But closer to its core, I find the problem that truly talented people are often confronted with - poverty. We flunk out of everything. We can't hold down a damn job. People don't give us money, because they think we're crazy. The only thing we're able to afford at all, is this hard drink at the end of the day, because that's how much time we spend absorbed in doing what we love, or experiencing the art made by other people like us. So before you call this bottom, call it rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouVedNg-6WQ

FORTY SIX & TWO

"...for a piece to cross me over, or a word to guide me in, I wanna feel the changes comin' down, I wanna know what I've been hiding..."

"...in my Shadow."

TOOL is not a band that shies away from confronting the darkness of our human existence. Carl Jung was not a psychologist that shied away from that either. The Shadow, lives in all of us. It lived in Jung, and he admitted it. Do you? If you don't admit it, you can always listen to the rippling, inky riffs of this song on the second major album by this band - Aenima. TOOL designed this musical piece like a inverted double-helix, to take you down the depths of the mind to where you're creating yourself. Where you're creating both the good, and the bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIuZUCpm9hc

LATERALUS

☹︎✌︎❄︎☜︎☼︎✌︎☹︎🕆︎💧︎

The above is how the word Lateralus, is spelled in Wingdings. Like the font Wingdings, this song is simply not meant for humans. We don't know what it's meant for. But it was created, it exists, it continues to exist, and people can use it for things like, feeling what it's like to encounter the unknown. TOOL did this with an album called LATERALUS. On the album Lateralus, where the song Lateralus exists, amidst a brain-puzzle of music theory carefully interwoven into complex, multi-layered album art depicting a human being becoming more of a being and less of a human as you turn the transparent page - is even more art. The awakening man is depicted in what's now called dissectional art, painted by Alex Grey, and this is about as TOOL as it gets. If you don't have a spiritual side, the entire song may start to give you one, as it spirals out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIuZUCpm9hc

Right

In

Two

...is one song, not two songs. However, we manage to make two countries out of one, all the damn time. And it costs us more than the album 10,000 Days will cost you, when you actually buy it, instead of pirating the leaked version before it's released, and making the members of TOOL want to destroy their instruments and abandon their studio, at the same time. So, let's break down this song. The song flows in a long, elegant harmony, which some call union. It's not, divided. Except that it is, because halfway through the song, it turns into TOOL instead of just, tool. So it's divided, I admit. Like we are, as a species. Seeing these things happen around the world pisses off TOOL. Well, at least enough to write a song about it. And TOOL songs are written in some kind of Kevlar forge that will just, stand the test of time. This song is no different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bndL7wwAj0U

All of these songs impacted me in a way that's deeper than just a simple narration of personal events. Music connects us across space and time. You don't have to treat it that way. It just does. Just treat Tool well, for making this kind of music. Because it's amazing, their concerts are amazing, and I can't wait to go again.