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Machiavelli70
09-29-2003, 10:11 AM
I'm sure a great deal of you have read the toolbook (adobe format) interperetation of Lateralus' lyrics. I quite strongly disagree with that interperetation.

"Overthinking, overanalyzing separates the body from the mind. Withering my intuition, leaving opportunities behind." et cetera:
To me, this is a direct reference to music. So many songs (Tool songs especially) are difficult to perform in exactness to their recordings. Forget that -- you don't have to scrutinize every detail. By playing it exactly the same, you ruin your own musicality -- your musical sense of intuition. Rather than reading off the sheets, fall into the moment and play with the song.

"Black then white are all I see, in my infancy . . ." generally, when first taking to music, you focus on reading the notes. I hear plenty of bands who can read the notes, but lack emotion. When they play, there is no sapient quality to their music -- it might as well be a machine. You must learn to play tones with color (tone color being a musical term) to give them some feeling other than that of simple harmonic resonance, some emotion. Hence red and yellow -- adding color and emotion to your music (not sure about the significance of those two colors, though yellow may be a reference to the golden mean again).

Beckoning to look through to infinite possibilities -- improvisation, free-form writing. Let the music guide you. Don't be so caught up in perfection (perfection to be avoided -- plagarizing or musical ideals like normal key signatures. Keep spiraling out when perfecting your own style, instrumental technique, interperetation skills)

"As below, so above and beyond" is difficult for me to interperet specifically. It's pretty vague as to exact meaning. I would guess this whole section of the verse is tied together. "Drawn outside the lines of reason. Push the envelope, watch it bend" seems to be in reference to pushing the conventional ideas and forms of music, while the "as below" may reference the drawing of the line -- the ideas and creativity below (simpler music) extend above and beyond the lines of (current) musical reason. Shaky, yeah, but as is anything proven neither right nor wrong.

The "To Feel" lyrics of this song are pretty straightforward about music. "To swing on the spiral" may be a reference to the golden spiral being a basis for what we consider beauty. This agrees also with the paragraph above regarding "as below". Spiral out beyond the lines of reason. Most of this song happens to be spiraling along the fibonacci sequence.

And damn, I'm going to be late to class (again) for writing this.

eek
10-15-2003, 06:15 AM
Hey, sorry I haven't been around. I kind of got burned out (over thinking? ;) on it all after wrapping up the book and needed to get away for a bit.

It's cool that you relate the colors directly to the music and to progression. I thought that there were definately parts of the song that refer to that as well, or at least, the process of putting music together ('lose myself between the sounds' etc). I really just found the correlation to the tree of life too tight to dismiss.

But in light of both our interpretations, you could come up with a hybrid, which might be that the progression along the nodes of the tree of life (from void to divinity) could easily be a metaphor for any other kind of progressoin. Certainly you could apply it to honing musical tallents. The tree is supposed to be applied to life remember. ;)

Just an idea. ;)

Machiavelli70
10-25-2003, 06:58 PM
Agree. I was Tree of Lifing when I found this:
http://www.borndigital.com/tree/index.html
Click on the path between Kether and Binah (the upperrightmost connector)
Interesting, no?
Definately sheds light on that verse.