Tool: Lateralus Meaning
Song Released: 2002
Lateralus Lyrics
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn beyond the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
Over thinking,...
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Just thought i'd mention that there is such a thing as "the golden spiral" that is said to be the source of human beauty.
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The fibonacci thing you can find out immediately in wiki. That's just the first level: a pattern, chosen, used...adds unity and strength to the text. The interesting stuff lies deeper.
How about a homonym? When my son first put me onto this album (and tool), I thought he was saying "Ladder Alice." Funny, right. But think about it. Alice in Wonderland. DNA spiral...
Everything is a spiral. Things spiral out of control. Vicious circles. The "spin" on a situation. Revolutions per minute. What goes around comes around. I could keep going and going...
T. Kuhn described the cycle of institutionalization: the new, latest-and-greatest gets layered with more and more baggage, becomes THE authority, begins to dictate, until the next New becomes the latest and greatest...
The ACTION is where the norm ENDS, at the edge of "the envelope." Need for speed. Here, time and public opinion BEND, until they break.
Go ahead, think if you want, which is safer, the norm, the institutional. OR you can DO. Research can lead to knowledge and knowledge explains. Very efficient. But boring. It loses the freshness of first discovery, the life of first rebellion, the opportunity of the random.
Stay if you want, but this poet says, instead, keep going. Swing on the spiral. -
Does anyone else find this ironic?
Let's take the chorus for example.. "over thinking, over analyazing seperates the body from the mind"
doncha think we're all over thinking and over analyzing this song and its seperating the body from the mind? -
Everybody's interpretations of this song are awesome. I like to think of it as a sister song to "Third Eye" which pretty much has the same message... To me at least
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I think this is the ultimate song about Tool's music, or music in general. At first, the listener only takes the music and lyrics at face value, but as you listen more and dig deeper, the listener begins to realize how there is much more to the song than initially thought. For example, when people first listen to the song "Stinkfist" they initially believe the song is about nonexistant sexual gratification, but when listened to more and more the listener comes to realize that this is merely a metaphor for desensitization and addiction in general. Lateralus is about finding the latter meaning and completely understanding the created music, and eventually losing yourself between the sounds.
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Could it be possible that this is a poetic way of looking at how humans age? The first verse sounds as if an infant is born and not yet ready for everything, the baby still has much to learn. And as he says "I imagine...Push the envelope...Watch it bend.." ...It's Maynard saying "hey...I mean I don't remember childbirth but lets get outside the realms of self and imagine". Maybe the "over thinking" verse is Maynard saying to his fans that too much thinking is a bad thing. If you think all your life, you won't act, therefore you separate the body from the mind...So the second verse.."beckons..Infinite possibilities"...Maynard is now a child with an imagination and he sits and dreams of all these impossible feats and realities (like that Rugrats cartoon). And he finishes the verse with "watch it bend"...Reminding us to just think and challenge because we might find something not in front of us. Back to the lazy part of my argument "over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition leaving all these opportunities behind. " backs me up. Too much thinking destroys your ability to throw caution to the wind and let go. Remember Maynard is all about letting go. So when he talks about the crossing of the line, he reaches maturity, and the story is beginning to close. He ends by saying he is ready to be a part of society and push the human race towards more forward progression in whatever it is that he feels is still not understood.
I really don't feel like I captured my whole thought...But here is the brainstorm...I would love to discuss anyone's thoughts on this...I also enjoyed the other interpretations...Its fun to see how Tool always leaves you guessing (remember the april fools jokes)... -
First off I would like to say Tool is the best band ever.
Lateralus is truly a great song that has a lot of meaning behind it, I believe that the meaning to the song has to do with a "new being."
"Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
Red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me."
At first when I listend to this song I thought this guy was on some kind of mushroom trip, but second time through, if you were new to a whole new dimension, or a universe
you would be recognizing these details also.
"push the envolope watch it bend......"
ummmmmmm ok what else could this mean....
"over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind."
exactly, over thinking over analyzing, seperates the body from the mind. -
This song does have a lot of spiritual meaning and this is part of my interpretation but I think the obvious is that he is singing about the human condition of thinking Laterally, he is a very intelligent person and as I'm sure you would probably find this leads to making you always calculate things, to be very analytical. This spiritual search of his it would seem could not work with out logic in his mind, he needs to "embrace the random", for him to be able to accept this spiritual path he is looking for, he speaks of needing to let go of the 'self', "Over thinking, over analysing separates the body from the mind." It would seem that once he finds this place it’s a beautiful thing, so intertwine this with the spiritual interpretations above and below and you have found out why this song continues to connect with us all. ------- DiSsOnAnT1
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The section of the song where it goes, "Black/And/White are/All I see/In my infancy..." was inspired by the book The Giver. Under the influence of "sameness" the people could only see black and white. However, when the Giver opened Jonas's eyes to reality, he began to see red. Then (you guessed it) yellow.
In response to the person who said, "your brain controls your body, how could they be separate?" He's not talking about the brain, he's talking about the mind. Believe it or not, there's a difference. I have often been the victim of over-analyzation. When this happens, I exist only in my mind, which often travels "beyond the lines of reason." I'm not thinking about the present moment, where my body is. Therefore, the mind and body are separate. -
This IS my Favorite Tool song, I think it is near on impossible to fully understand this song. Basicly I think it's about life and making the most of every moment in life. You can never say you know exactly what a tool song means. I think Maynard intends on the listener to apply their own interpretation on the song.
Thank You For Reading
FROM GERRY BISKET -
When I listen to tool, I begin to question reality...
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This song is one of my personal favorites, so I listen to it all the time. Ive thought about the meaning of the song for some time and can only come up with a small number of things and one is most clear. I think that this song is about learning. It is said that a baby sees only black and white for a short time after birth and then see colors hence the whole begining of the song. Its the way that we learn and how much we learn and when we know enough to get by, we stop learning but some people continue to learn past that line and learning and knowing becomes their life and body. And this song is about someone stopped at that line but seeing all these "infinite possibilities" and wanting to learn more but the thought of devoting their life to learning would mean "seperating the body from the mind." Well I don't know what this song really means and everyone has a different opinion on this and that's how Maynard wants it to be, to keep us thinking differently, not the same because thinking the same way has already caused us to stop at this line.
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I believe it to be a alchemetical explaination into the divinity of the whole human condition. Especially, when he uses the four basiic colours of humanity and how we think we're all so different,but in reality we are all the same being looking at life at different angles. "As below so above and beyond I imagine"? That my friends is basic alchemy. Simply the equation that makes One out of three(Mental + Spiritual + Physical = The Perfected One). The spiral being our very same gentic code (which are the same for gold and the rest of this universe we happen to live in at this present time). Gnostic, in its terminology about embracing the Random. Its the over thinking over analyzing that really separates the body(the base)from the mind(the collective Godhood) until we are nothing more that lead trying to be turned into the Golden Age of Human Perfection that would be ushered in, once we accept our collective Godship instead of our individual devilishment.
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