Spiral Out, Keep Going

Artist: Tool
Song: Lateralus
Album: Lateralus
Mood: Inspired

Tomorrow marks my first, and hopefully not last, time seeing the band Tool. I have long been a fan since my high school days, mainly thanks to my boyfriend at the time who made me realize the band was more than just creepy claymation music videos. Tool climbed my favorite artist list quickly when I realized the band is a culmination of powerful lyrics, incredible musical talent, and stunning visuals and art. I have grown to appreciate journalist Patrick Donovan’s description of the band, “[T]he thinking person’s metal band. Cerebral and visceral, soft and heavy, melodic and abrasive, tender and brutal, familiar and strange, western and eastern, beautiful and ugly, taut yet sprawling and epic, they are a tangle of contradictions.”

The song in question today, “Lateralus,” is not only my favorite song by Tool, it’s quite possibly my favorite song of all time. Musically, it follows what Mr. Donovan described. It’s beautiful and melodic, heavy when it needs to be –mainly thanks to Danny Carey’s insane drumming towards the end of the song– and lyrically mesmerizing. The song is literally a consummation of my spiritual beliefs and how I view the world, how I view life itself. “Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind / Withering my intuition leaving all these opportunities behind.” Unlike other Tool songs that ebb and flow between slow and fast, quiet and harsh, “Lateralus” is a complete buildup. And the further into the song I delve, the more inspired I become to embrace life, to embrace this moment, and to continue to “spiral” into this infinite existence.

I’ll end with my favorite lyrics and what I feel is the most motivating and invigorating words from the song.

I embrace my desire to
Feel the rhythm, to feel connected
Enough to step aside and weep like a widow
To feel inspired, to fathom the power,
To witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain,
To swing on the spiral
Of our divinity and still be a human.

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