Yours Faithlessly

Before I start; hi, I'm Mike. I'm 18, graduating from high school in two weeks, and looking forward to that like nothing else. I've been listening to Tool for a few years now, and they swiftly became my favourite band after listening to Aenima on the bus to school every day for a month or so.

This here is an essay I wrote for school. In my English class last semester, we had to write a 'jugular essay' - an essay about our passions, essentially. Originally, I was gonna write it about music, but then I thought, 'Hey, I should write it on Tool.' Then I realised that there was way too much shit to write about if I wanted to do Tool as a whole justice, so I decided to write it on just one song, for a challenge. And, obviously, since this is in the Salival Pushit section, I wrote it on - surprise - the Salival version of Pushit.

I hope you enjoy. Please tell me if I look like a huge flaming idiot in any of this :P.




Pushit On Me, Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Tool

We've been trying something a little different this tour. We've been looking at one of our songs from a different angle, under a different light, so we can hopefully kind of see it almost for the first time. We'd like try that for you tonight, is that okay?

We're gonna need your help though. We're gonna need your help and your permission, so we need you to find a comfortable space, that is not only comfortable, but vulnerable. I want you to shut your eyes and go there, and we'll meet you on the other side...


This brief speech by Maynard James Keenan, frontman for Tool, sets the stage for the thirteen minutes that is the dark, moody, epic soundscape of ‘Pushit’ performed live. Seas of emotion are traversed within it, taking it from the calm shores of a softly sung melody over a delicate guitar line to a massive, roaring storm at the end, with brief stops in the sometimes treacherous waters of elements such as a table (Latin hand drum) solo along the way. Majestic, monumental, moving; it could be described as those, but Pushit is for me something different altogether, something more and less than anything that could be expressed with those words.

But before I try to do just that, a brief background of the song.

Pushit originally appeared on Tool’s 1996 release, “Ænima”, as the prelude to the ferocious and scathing title track. “Ænima” is a concept album, using elements of Jungian philosophy, evolutionary science and pure, raw human emotion to detail the movement from humanity to divinity; self-improvement in its highest form, in other words. The place of Pushit within this album is to show the rejection of all the impure parts of yourself, the hidden and twisted parts of your personality and environment that stop you from the final step of ‘self-actualization’, as Maslow would put it. As the song Ænema deals with the destruction of the unnatural constructs the modern world has created, it is natural that Pushit would deal with the purging of oneself, before that step. When Maynard sings, ‘What are you but my reflection?/Who am I to judge or strike you down?’, the meaning can emerge as, ‘How can I judge you when I am no better?’ The song progresses to cover that final evolution, in a manner that fits with the whole mood of Ænima; terrifying angry and full-on, making up for its lack of subtlety with a raw power that could impress even the most disdainful rock critic. (It certainly impressed me well enough.)

Now, this works within the CD, and the album version of Pushit is an excellent song in itself; however, Tool evidently felt that more could be done with it, and so when they were on tour, they modified it to be more reflective, slightly more laid-back, but also more moody and intense. This final version was recorded live and released on the ‘Salival’ album a few years after Ænima’s release.

I could write an entire essay just on the changes in the music, without any reference to the singing, the mood, or the overall impact of the song… but that’s not what I’m here for. What really gets to me, what makes me stop everything so I can be fully in the moment with this song, is a feeling I get every time I listen to it, a feeling that I can express only imperfectly with this essay. There are too many elements interweaving and coming together to form the complex tapestry of Pushit to give justice to in only a few pages; the most important ones, the ones that really blow my mind and get me really passionate about this song, I will attempt to cover.

In this case, the most appropriate place to begin would be the beginning.

As already mentioned, Pushit is a song about destroying the ‘wrong’ or ‘impure’ parts of your personality; however, the song does not confront this directly. Instead, right from the start, you know that the singer is addressing a specific person.

Saw that gap again today.
While you were begging me to stay.
Take care not to make me enter.
If I do we both may disappear.

Saw that gap again today.
While you were begging me to stay
Managed to push myself away
And you as well, my dear
And you, as well
Pushed you away my dear

Although, as with all of Tool’s songs, narrowing the possible interpretations of the lyrics down to one is impossible, a general idea can be extracted from these two stanzas. The ‘gap’ that Maynard refers to is a gap within himself, most likely, a gap between who he is and who he wants to be. ‘While you were begging me to stay’ is an especially effective line, considering it is only the second in the song, and it communicates an awful lot. ‘Begging me to stay’ indicates a relationship, and more than that, one in which one partner is in fear of the other leaving. The singer feels in danger of losing himself within the ‘gap’, and that it is mentioned as his partner is begging him to stay indicates that she (Maynard revealed at a later point that this song was in a large part inspired by an ex-girlfriend) is seen by the singer as a part of the gap, the cause, the result, or maybe a symptom, and this will come back later in the song.

This is an idea I’ve found in a lot of music, and one that I’ve always enjoyed (and don’t think I’m sick because of that); the whole idea (and inherent irony) of violence mixed in with longing, as well as the use of the ‘gap’ to indicate an idea far beyond that little word, just kills me. There’s something about being able to dig deeper into music, being able to go through layers upon layers of meaning to come out with something truly profound, that I really love. It’s like how some people refer to debating, reading the newspaper, or in other ways being intellectual as brain food; Pushit, and songs like it, for me are soul food. (And I apologise for stealing that from the Blues. It had to be done.)

The second stanza is more interesting; with the use of ‘push you away my dear’, not only is the idea of abuse/an abusive relationship begun, but the use of the word ‘push’ obviously refers to the song’s title. This grants the stanza much more impact, as the title is usually used in the most important and relevant sections of the song. The way that ‘push you away’ is repeated, trailing off at the end of the verse as the music slowly builds, can almost put me in a trance, while having the impact and ‘kick’ that Tool always does well. It’s the first of the many ‘stop-and-take-notice’ moments that I find in the song.

And this is only two verses in. Hold on; there’s a lot more.

Consider the next verse:

I will choke until I swallow
Choke this infant here before me
What are you but my reflection?
Who am I to judge or strike you down?

As already mentioned, the line, ‘Who am I to judge or strike you down?’ gets to the heart of the song (as well as being just a killer line). This is Maynard’s self-doubt kicking in; he’s talking about pushing away his loved one, saying that she is the reason for this gap in himself, when in reality he is the cause of his problems, and criticizing her like that is only a way of externalizing his own inner conflict. This is more of the ‘love and pain’ theme expressed earlier; and hey, the more the better as far as I’m concerned.

Then Maynard comes in with a harshly whispered refrain that sends chills down my spine:

But you’re pushing me
And I’m shoving you
And you’re pushing me
And I’m shoving you

With this, he returns a measure of balance to the equation; the partnership is equally abusive, equally unhealthy. Both partners are contributing to the gap. Juxtaposed with the previous stanza, this could almost be seen as a shouting match with a mirror, or perhaps rubbing salt in a wound; by keeping the relationship, it is impossible for him to close this gap and become whole.

That’s something I greatly enjoy about all of Tool’s music, and this song in particular; the previous verse is merely two lines sung twice, but the combination of the delivery, the music and the context of the lyrics can conjure up all of these images and emotions in me. They do it with a lot of their songs, but Pushit is one of the standouts in that category.

The next two verses

Rest your trigger on my finger,
Bang my head upon the fault line
You better take care not to make me enter
If I do we both may disappear

But you're pushing me
And I’m shoving you
And you’re pushing me
And I’m shoving you

continue this trend, reinforcing the idea that they are both authors of their own destruction. Of most interesting is the first line: Rest your trigger on my finger. This is the strongest implication yet of the mutual consent they have in destroying each other.