when ever i listen to sweat it reminds me of an lsd trip. the sweating and the thinking that accompanies the trip is a wonderful thing, it gives you beautiful insights on a lot of things. i think that lsd gives you the chance to see into that universal fountain, maybe you can see past lives or even experience a moment from a past life.... but anyway i can go on about this for hours but i'll spare you guys that, thats what i think sweat is all about.
deffinately have to agree with you on this, the feeling of deja vu when tripping is often intense this in addition to the fact that i had a bit of "ritual" i go through when tripping, i mean i get extremely ready for it empty my pockets (god forbid i lose something, i will end up looking for it for 12 hours) get comfy clothes, etc. etc., then as far a sweat itself a bit after the peak i hit a stage where regardless of external temp i begin to sweat profusely, then you got the whole slipping into a dream within a dream thing, i mean here you are on a trip and it takes you many wonderful places and inevitably i feel as if i am taking little side trips (hence dream within a dream) references to hunter and the fisherman when tripping i always feel that much closer to nature if not one with it in some cases. as stated in the post above i could go on and on so ill stop boring you here...
I agree, a lsd trip seems to fit the description, along with deep passionate love... and anal sex. But medically speaking, deja vu (SP?) is a borderline seizure, and too much lsd is obviously bad. So I think he is also warning about the effects of this, or simplely encouraging the end this way (....drag!....me!....under!). Too much of something is always bad, but when you deal with the brain, there is so much we don't know... maybe being a vegetable is heaven ( I am serious now ), maybe parts of our brain that hold us back are worth desrtoying. But maybe not. Either way, I would be interesting to be able to go into the fronteer, as long as you could come back. All I am doing is making more questions out of an answere. Think for yourself.
The whole album has a drug feel to it... Maybe the line "I'm the hunter and the fishermen" could be a key to "you can be whole and everything at once on drugs".
Originally posted by Satanist The whole album has a drug feel to it... Maybe the line "I'm the hunter and the fishermen" could be a key to "you can be whole and everything at once on drugs".
i think that the "hunter and fisherman", then later the "thinker & fisherman" may be refering to the primal/primitive train of thought one gets during a trip.
I agree with the idea that it is like a trip experience. Cause it very closely mirrored my first. Lyrically and musically, the initial build-up of the song is the waiting portion before anything really happens. When it kicks in, a lot of people get a "feed back loop" sensation. The deja vu. But, it feels a little more complicated than that for me. Not dreaming so much, but awakening. I looked into my girlfriend's (at that time) eyes while she was sitting on this bench at this outdoor chapel in the woods. It was like the eternal chase of two likewise eternal spirits stopped ... And at that moment, everything I was and everything I was seeking coalesced. For a second there, I remembered this being played out before .. over and over again. From that perspective, the song pairs well with Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place".
Originally posted by Satanist The whole album has a drug feel to it... Maybe the line "I'm the hunter and the fishermen" could be a key to "you can be whole and everything at once on drugs".
or maybe the hunter has something to do with seeking the truth, whereas a fisherman patiently waits for it to come to him. i don't know if you meant to say it in that way but i don't agree with "you can be whole and everything at once on drugs" -- i think that they make you realise that you always have and are this way to begin with.
but yeah, the line "into a dream within a dream" i feel gives it away as some sort of tripping episode. there's definitely a sense of deja vu that comes with tripping, not only that somewhere you've tripped before, perhaps in some forest with your tribe thousands of years ago, but that you've existed before as well.
i could go on forever about amazing tripping is, but as above i'll spare you. but don't you just hate it when you 'lose' your fuckin wallet?
Originally posted by ginbot462 For a second there, I remembered this being played out before .. over and over again. From that perspective, the song pairs well with Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place".
Read Stephen Hawkin's "A Brief History In Time", focusing on the section of the Universe's expansion and contraction. He lists a very neat theory (althought he ultimately dismisses it) about the relation of phycological time with entropy... and with the contration of the universe, perhaps explaining de va vou.
i don't know if the song is about triping, but since i never have i reay can't tell you. However, i do believe that it may be about the search for knowledge and how it can be overwhelming. so overwhelming that it can make you dizzy, like in the song but then again i don't know what i'm talking about because i'm crazy in the head.
everyone i know tells me so, so it must be true because not all the world would lie to me. b if they did it wol be really hard because they would have to tell all of the other people in the world what to tell me
and what i believe is that maynard is trying to convey that he is a nomad at heart. but not a nomad in the sense of the indian type but a nomad of the truth, forever searching for it in any way he can. whether he is consious or slipping into a dream within a dream he is searching for. he thilnks and hunts for it some of the time and other times he sits back and waits for it to come to him. like a fisherman me waits to get the big fish which represents knowledge and he hunts for clues of it ,like the hunter or a detective, he looks for tacks on the ground to lead him in the right direction.
but thats just what i think
I think you are all wrong about the song and albums content(no offense). I believe the album(CD) is about mankinds greatest opiate, religion. Hence the preacher on the cover.
__________________ Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be.
-Kurt Vonnegut
Well, I remember listening to the Sober '94 bootleg from lachrymology.com and before they got into Sweat, Maynard said "This song is about the time I took a big fuckin' hit of acid and played every Joni Mitchell album consecutively."
__________________ "Fire! Fire! heh heh!"
"The world is full of kings and queens, who blind your eyes and steal your dreams..."
Originally posted by marcus I think you are all wrong about the song and albums content(no offense). I believe the album(CD) is about mankinds greatest opiate, religion. Hence the preacher on the cover.
I completely forgot about the preacher guy. without him there couldn' be a CD, and he holds the key to the answer. He is the hunter and the fisherman and he is also maynard. maynard is the preacher who is telling us the truth but we are all to stupid to hear it. he knows what hes taking about but isn't telling us directly so that only the real tool fans would figure it out. the ones that deserve to know the truth
The song to me is simply describing an exercise perhaps Merkaba or even just a drug induced trip. It is being used to search for answers in the inner and outer surroundings. Some knowledge I found while focusing on this song personally is as follows…
The first set of lyrics is ‘Sweating and breathing, Staring and thinking. Sinking deeper, it’s almost like I’m swimming’ are a description. ‘Sweating’ represents the elimination of impure energies. ‘Breathing’ is the foundation of Tantric forms of yoga, in which the goal is to awaken Kundalini (a coiled serpent at the base of the spine, this signifies cosmic energy) then carry it upwards through six Chakras to the seventh (being located in the head), overwhelming bliss is then experienced, this represents reintegration with Atman (eternal essence of the self). ‘Staring’ could be the focus on a Yantra (visual aid sometimes used with this type of meditation). ‘Thinking’ is the concentration used to achieve whatever it is he is searching for. ‘Sinking deeper, it’s almost like I’m swimming’ may be the interpretation of the sensation experienced on the path of thought he traveled and the amount of possibilities unveiled.
The second set of four, ‘The sun is burning hot again. On the hunter and the fisherman, I’m trying to remember when. But it makes me dizzy’ is in my understanding (although a little hazy) a statement referring to belief systems and their suffocating nature. ‘The sun is burning hot again’ can be associated with fire, which is purifying and protective but also destructive. Fire has a need to burn up O2. Oxygen is vital if the brain is to survive. Fire has also been commonly used to keep predatory animals at bay. Being that ‘the hunter and the fisherman’ are but in very different ways predators, shows the use of intimidation and fear as the motivating force used to directly control the intended target. Orion the Greek mythological hunter may suggest that he is ‘the hunter’. One myth has the king of Chios ordering Orion blinded, only to have Orion’s sight restored by the rising sun, but its involvement is very questionable to my self however. Continuing with ‘the fisherman’, the pope wears a “fisherman’s ring” with a representation of St. Peter as a fisherman. This would put the entire organization lead by the pope under the sun in a smothering illustration. As for ‘I’m trying to remember when, but it makes me dizzy’ it describes how overwhelmed the mind can be when looking for answers individually. Perhaps it’s the exhilaration of discovery.
Moving quickly now ‘It seems like I’ve been here before, It seems so familiar. It seems like I’m slipping into a dream within a dream’ is a statement of bewilderment. The user now questions how this could not have been known prior to the experience. Basically the ‘Must be the way you whisper’ phrase is how the message has been successfully transferred, Whether the medium used has been changed or if just a clearer rewording of it.
Finally ‘The sun is setting cool again’ portrays the passing of the intense array of potential outcomes. ‘I’m the thinker’ it is now time for reflection to take place on the individual’s personal thoughts, expressions, and their self.
On the other hand LSD and other psychoactive drugs can give you these same results with little or no effort but recalling that sought after clarity is often more dizzying.
Just a quick message; there seems to be some confusion about 'the hunter and the fisherman' line from 'Sweat'. It is from a passage from Marx and Engels' 'The German Ideologies'. There is a passage in this known as the 'hunter, fisherman, sheperd,and critic' passage.
"as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particiular exclusive sphere of activity which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a sheperd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today, and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, sheperd or critic."
This is in keeping with the Marxist 'religion is the opiate of the masses' theme of the L.P. The passage itself is about the abolition of professions or even part time occupations. We will be able to do what we want turning the human mind to the many tasks it can handle rather than getting bogged down in the drudgery of profession. Anyway, hope this has inspired further thought on the song and the album.
The religious overtones described as central to this album are all well and fine. I do believe that they have merit, however, sweat holds a bit more meaning for me personally. I believe that in order for their to be conflict with religion, there has to be the belief that the time before religion came to great prominence was a better time. While I am not arrogant enough to ever try and decipher the artists original intent, for me, Sweat is about that time before widespread religous propagation. A time when man was more in accord with nature. As I have heard Maynard reference Jung before, as in AEnima, the connections with "I'm trying to remember when" become clear. For me, Maynard speaks of accessing that time before through the idea of a collective unconscious that Jung advanced. Hence he has been there before, as we all have. Psychoactive metabolites (like L.S.D.) can arguably, though inexplicably, re-establish that connection.
__________________ the unwilling
led by the unqualified
to do the unecessary
for the ungrateful
i think that even tho he used drugs to symbolize this cd he indeffineltley did not intend to make it as tho if on drugs. the song sweat has nothing to do with lsd but yet it does have that effect on u when u listen deep into the words.
Originally posted by DieForMe i think that even tho he used drugs to symbolize this cd he indeffineltley did not intend to make it as tho if on drugs. the song sweat has nothing to do with lsd but yet it does have that effect on u when u listen deep into the words.
Ah one of Tool's more reoccuring double entendres. Religeon and Drugs. Im all for one of them. The other hey you do what you want to yourself, i dont give a shit its your life not mine.
As I am only 14, so I have not experienced drugs, but I have fucked around with religion, thinking that would be the only way that people would accept me, and it just fucked me up, I became a whole different person.
Opiate is not just a drug, it can be drugs or religion etc. But the idea is that they may just dull you and transform you.
This is how I interpret opiate, showing us that drugs and religion will just make us "followers".
"All Indians, No chiefs"
Although this has nothing to do with "sweat", I just wanted to say that I believe this album is not just about drugs.The album Opiate is I think mainly the relationship between drugs and religion, and the effect they have on people. They are uniquely alike, so many people turn to drugs or religion for direction in their life, yet sometimes it just fucks their lives up worse.
__________________ It's not enough watching me bleed...
there again thats hear say. maynard is all about thinking for yourself. because to me the song has more to do with reliving a part of your life. like recesing in depression
as some others have said, i cannot, for i have never done lsd..so i have one word: MUSHROOMS. this song reminds me of grilling, "trying to remember when," like what time it is, from my experience time stops for a while and minutes can seem like hours. i suppose the hunter could be a part of him that is seeking something, knowledge perhaps, and the fisherman is patiently waiting; maybe for the trip to end, for it to come around full circle...when i stopped grilling its like i had this sudden realization about everything and nothing and it "[took] me home..." i also remember sitting in the couch and it felt like i was "sinking deeper" into it....that whole trip made me reconsider everything mjk wrote with tool...
