Tool: Lateralus. Form and Content in Progressive Metal

November 14, 2008 · Posted in Reviews · Comment 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS7CZIJVxFY

 

I was first excited to find the video above, then dismayed to find that it said much of what I wanted to say. But by no means all of it, and there is some to correct. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So there I was, listening to Lateralus for about the thirtieth time, remarking to myself once more how funky Maynard James Keenan’s (the name’s a sobriquet, I imagine it’s a play from his actual name James Herbert Keenan to John Maynard Keynes, the greatest economist of the last century) rhythms were in this song. And so I tapped my fingers across my laptop case, in the familiar sequence.

Black

Then

White are

All I see

In my infancy

Red and yellow then came to be….

 

WHAAAAAT?????? IS THAT FIBONACCI???? Obviously my first instinct was to panic. How the hell did I miss the Fibonacci sequence? I’m a confirmed pseudomath nerd. I read books about math written for the mathematically mediocre all the time! This’d be like being hit with Fermat’s Last Theorem and not recognizing it. I had to check Wikipedia to confirm my findings (not that I was in any doubt. I just wanted to say what else Tool fans, among the more lyrically and musically sophisticated losers on the interwebs, had contributed to the collective understanding of this song). Here’s what I found:

“ounting between pauses, the syllables in Maynard James Keenan’s vocals during the verses form the first few Fibonacci numbers, ascending and descending:”

“The Fibonacci sequence shares a relationship with spirals, which are mentioned several times later in the lyrics.” (that was actually added this week… it was NOT there when I checked, and I wanted to add it!)

“Additionally, Keenan begins singing at 1:37 into the song. 1 minute 37 seconds, or 97 seconds, is approximately 1.618 of a full minute. This happens to be the golden ratio, which is closely related to the Fibonacci sequence.” (specifically, and I may add this to the wiki-page or at least put in a link to the Golden Ratio/Phi page, the ratio of a step in the sequence to its preceding term approaches Phi [1.618...] as you approach infinity)

“The time signatures of the chorus change from 9/8 to 8/8 to 7/8; as drummer Danny Carey says, “It was originally titled 9-8-7. For the time signatures. Then it turned out that 987 was the 17th step of the Fibonacci sequence. So that was cool.” (I had long since noticed the changes in time signature, but had not been aware of its history or Fibonacci significance.)

“In a 2001 interview, Keenan commented on the lyric mentioning black, white, red and yellow: “I use the archetype stories of North American aboriginals and the themes or colours which appear over and over again in the oral stories handed down through generations. Black, white, red, and yellow play very heavily in aboriginal stories of creation.” (This is a common theme for Tool)

If you guys aren’t impressed yet, then obviously you didn’t watch the video. The fan was obviously a bit on the gushy side, but his interpretation isn’t far off. Tool’s message, “Spiral out. Keep going, going…”, is  repeated at the end (I wish I could make something of their decision to make the song exactly 9:24. they rarely do anything without a reason. I just did some quick calculations and could find no relationship to Phi, Pi, e, or any other sexy math). But that’s a very primitive formulation of their message. They say it several ways. The full lyrics are here: 

Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
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, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines.

Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see there is so much more
and beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn outside the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition leaving all these opportunities behind.

Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace the random.
Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.

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.

With my feet upon the ground I lose myself
between the sounds and open wide to suck it in,
I feel it move across my skin.
I’m reaching up and reaching out,
I’m reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me.
And following our will and wind we may just go where no one’s been.
We’ll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one’s been.

Spiral out. Keep going, going…

 

Observe the many references to the form of the song, within its content. “Swing on a spiral”. The song swings on a spiral, because the form of its verse is 1-1-2-3-5-8-13 (fulcrum)-8-5-3-2-1-1 . “urging me to cross this line”, one of several geometric metaphors pertinent to spirals (and Phi, and Fibonacci…). “Reaching out”, which he mentions multiple times, is exactly the act of a spiral, constantly expanding, reaching for new horizons. “Drawn outside the lines of reason”, a statement about their goal: to push their fans (and themselves) to cease thinking linearly and begin thinking laterally (Lateralus… is it coming together yet?). “Push the envelope… watch it bend”, a nice rhetorical flourish, indicating a desire not only to expand the borders of what’s allowed, but to break those rules as well. 

An oblique reference to Phi outside the context of spirals comes at the end: “Witness the beauty” may as well have been written with a capital B, because he refers to the Capitalized Essence known as Beauty. Greek mathematicians, whose mystical approach towards numbers has been legendary since Pythagoras, considered Phi the Golden Ratio because of its application in rectangles. An “aesthetically pleasing” rectangle has a ratio of Phi between its long and short side. The amazing thing is that when a square whose side equals the short side is removed from such a rectangle, the result is a similar rectangle, that is, one whose dimensions maintain that golden ratio! “Beauty” and Phi have a historical connection. Similarly, a statement about what “connects us all” may well be a subtle hint to all the literature (much of it, but by no means all, apocryphal) about the Golden Ratio in nature. A classmate pointed out to me this week that the spiral of a nautilus’ shell follows this proportion (I have yet to decide whether or not this information is admissible, as it may have come from “The Da Vinci Code”). The proportion can be found all over our bodies as well (for debunking of extraordinary claims to this effect, though, see http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2513/is-phi-a-mystical-number-as-claimed-in-em-the-da-vinci-code-em ).  

Does the song (and interpretation of the video artist, who did a decent but not great job) not speak for itself in a form-content discussion? The first instance I know of music built upon the Golden Ratio (though it would not at all surprise me to learn that it was used far earlier… heck, this is right up Bach’s alley), the song actually takes the very idea of spirals to make its point. Break the rules. Grow outward. Do not be bound by linear thinking, think Laterally. Feel the Beauty, the Divine pattern that connects us all (a particularly religious math teacher of mine considers Phi God’s magic number. He also, when asked who discovered Euler’s equation [e^iπ+1=0], replied with a straight face “God”, and proceeded to clarify that it was Leonhard Euler who “wrote it down”).

The content is similar. Black then white, the most primitive of colors, give way to red and yellow, the first primary colors (garnered from Native American creation myths, which in itself is a concept relevant to growth), finally giving way to the power of imagination. Imagination, as Einstein and Maynard James Keenan inform us, is far superior to any overthinking, overanalyzing.  

I’d be remiss in my responsibility as a Tool fan not to point out, again, the funky rhythm. The drums are lively and pretty cool, though not as technically impressive as in many of their other songs. Rhythm has always been the musical arena in which Tool has pushed, and bent, the envelope. 
Conclusions: Math is cool. Tool are freakin’ smart. A self-respecting metalhead has the attention span to listen to 9 minute songs (though we cannot tolerate top 40 for a duration exceeding 1.618 seconds. It is hardwired into us… God’s magic number, you know). Odd-time signatures are pretty fun to nod your head to. And 2:45 A.M. is the only time to write a progmetal review. 

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