TOOL – 10,000 Days

I’d recommend reading this along with listening to the album, following it song by song. Bear in mind this is simply my interpretation.

I’d recommend you read my TOOL write-ups in order, from Ænima onwards. This is because I explain concepts in those pieces that are pretty important to go over, and also link the albums in a way that only makes sense if you read them chronologically.

We’re carrying on the TOOL write-ups with the band’s fourth album – 10,000 Days. It’s an album a lot of people rank below Lateralus, but for me it’s almost equal.

The title 10,000 Days refers to the length of Saturn’s orbital period, or the Saturn Return. You’ll remember this idea from my Lateralus write-up.

Without further ado, let’s get into the album…

Vicarious

It’s common for people to live vicariously through the media. We see horrific things in the news, and we derive a sick sense of pleasure from it. We seem to be desensitised to it all, as if we’re addicted. In so many words, we need to watch things die. As Maynard admits this, he tells the listener not to judge him because he knows they need the same.

It may be foolish to believe that there is purity at the hearts of people. We default to hostility in order to survive, instead of communicating and helping each other grow and move forward as one race. This is the way it’s been since our beginning.

Jambi

This song is written from the perspective of someone with wealth, and who lives in luxury. Although they own everything they could want, they would throw it all away if it meant that their loved one would stay.

He was living a destructive life filled with evil, but she saved him from this. She helped him realise that fame and fortune doesn’t equate to true happiness.

From this point onward he knows it’s important to focus on what really matters in life. If he wants to live fully, he must put his needs above his wants. He wants his loved one back, but realises that this may not be for the best. It’s not what’s important in the grand scheme of things.

What’s really important is that humanity elevates their consciousness and lives as one entity (remember this concept from Jungian Alchemy, explained in the previous TOOL write-ups). We must be connected to one another in a collective consciousness and fight against the poison of advertising, politics and prejudice.

Wings for Marie/10,000 Days

This song is dedicated to Maynard’s mother after she died. She was paralysed for thirty years, roughly equating to 10,000 days.

She kept her faith through it all, and believed in Maynard even though he thought the religion was bullshit. She was a passionate spirit. God put her in this state, but she continued to pray for Maynard so that he could find his way through all of this. He doesn’t think he deserved such a caring mother.

Maynard sat with her in hospital as she died. It was difficult to see her under the cold fluorescent light bulbs. He asks her what he’s meant to say to the people at her funeral in his eulogy for her. He describes them as ghouls, which shows he doesn’t like that they’ll be there showing, in his eyes, fake sympathy.

She never lived a lie. She didn’t have a life, but saved his. Maynard says he’s alright, and that it’s time for him to let her go.

We romanticise Christianity, and say we try to follow the path of Jesus. We say that when the day of reckoning comes that we’ll make it into heaven. We rationalise our actions by doing this. None of the struggles compare to the trials his mother has been through.

When she died the people at her church mourned her, but Maynard saw this as fake sympathy. None of them even compared to his mother. They are still corrupt, but his mother was pure. She lit the way for Maynard in his life, and he will return the favour in her last moments on her way home – to heaven.

In a joking way he thinks that without her, the rest of the faith will fall apart. When Jesus returns, all they will do is tremble incessantly. His mother was a perfect example of faith, and the rest will read about her in books. He prayed that God knows when to take her, and put her out of her misery. 10,000 Days in the fire is long enough. She deserved to go home.

In Maynard’s eyes, she’s the only one worthy enough to demand entrance to heaven, demand to see God and tell him that their pillar of faith has ascended. She deserves to be given her wings and become an angel.

Maynard is still set in his ways, and doesn’t believe any of this is real. He’s a burden of proof upon the believers. However, through all of this, he understands that Judith Marie is his evidence that unconditional, pure love is possible through faith.

Back to the hospital room, under the cold lighting. He can’t see her all that well, but he knows she’s passed. He tells her to look her maker in the eye and tell him that she “never lived a lie, or took a life, but did save one. It’s time for you to bring me home.”

The Pot

The world is full of arrogant people who do harm to others. These people carry out terrible acts for their own benefit, and then dare to point the finger at those who they’ve harmed and blame them for ruining society. The example this song uses is that many of these people blame drug use for much of what’s wrong in the world.

The sympathy that these people show is fake, as all they care about is themselves. Drug use isn’t the problem here – killing and prosecuting is. TOOL show this type of person as one that has no understanding of what humanity is truly about. Their third eye is firmly shut, and they don’t see the evil of their ways. Maynard mocks them by saying they must’ve been high to do what they did.

Lipan Conjuring/Lost Keys/Rosetta Stoned

We start with a ritual of the Lipan Apache people. This would involve conjuring visions by consuming ayahuasca, a drink made from the pssychoactive cactus Peyote, found in deserts. This is where DMT is naturally found. It leads to an otherworldly experience, many finding it life-changing.

We follow the story of a man who’s experienced this, and finds himself in a hospital. A nurse and a doctor are confused as to where he came from as there’s no ID or name for him. There’s no obvious physical trauma and his vitals are stable. The doctor decides he wants to speak with the patient.

He finds that the man is unresponsive at first, but insists that he must share everything that happened that caused him to end up in hospital. The man agrees.

All of a sudden he starts speaking rapidly, telling his story. He was high on Ecstacy and DMT at 10 to 2 in the morning, and found himself sat in a yoga pose outside area 51 contemplating what it means to be a chosen one. He then saw an alien UFO whipping through the sky in front of him at right angles, before stopping in front of him. He couldn’t help but yell – “holy fucking shit!”.

An alien with blue-green skin and almond-shaped eyes then came down from the craft in what seemed like slow-motion. It hovered over the man, who’s still sat on the desert floor. All he hopes is that the alien doesn’t noticed he’s wet himself. This can’t be real. It has to be the drugs, surely.

The alien proceeds to calm the man down by giving him some orange slices and spooning him. Once he was calmer the being told him why he visited – to let him know that he is the chosen one. He’s the one that will deliver the message of hope to those who wish to hear it, and a warning for those that don’t. This surely means that the aliens intend to invade Earth. All the guy can think is that he shouldn’t be the chosen one – he didn’t even graduate from high school.

The alien stared with its somniferous eyes, almost inducing sleep. All of this feels so real to the patient. His heart is pounding throughout this experience because this kind of thing never happens to him. He doesn’t want to be alone telling this story. Everyone around him sounds muffled and distorted. He feels lucky to have experienced his, but his heart is still racing. He can’t breathe properly.

He wishes more than anything that the doctor believes what he’s saying. It wasn’t all in his head. The aliens showed him things that he can’t even begin to explain. Although the patient believes everything that happened, he can’t remember exactly what the beings said. The doctors suspect that the patient is suffering from severe mental illness and have strapped him down to his bed. He can’t tell if he’s a live or dead any more; this is something that can occur with DMT use, since the chemical is naturally produced when a person is close to death.

The patient still feels overwhelmed by the responsibility of being the chosen one. It’s him that must tell the rest of humanity of how their ending will occur. He must write it for the world to see… but he forgot his pen.

The patient is now strapped to his hospital bed being given various medications, but this won’t help – he feels brain dead. He’ll never know what the aliens were truly saying.

Intension/Right in Two

In the beginning, human consciousness was primitive. We used the materials we found to create shelter, which turned into homes. We used the same materials to keep strangers away and stay safe. We discovered fire, which we used to warm our homes and provide light during the dark hours. We also used fire to forge weapons to kill strangers and take what we wanted. We began pure, but quickly found ourselves becoming corrupted.

Angels look down at the talking monkeys (humans) and question why God gave them free will. Even though there is enough for everyone on Earth, we fight over it. Where there’s something that should be shared fairly, we’re bound to divide it in two.

Why did humans choose to be destructive when given the gift of reason? We killed each other over pieces of the ground that we divided up in the first place. We forged weapons to make it easier to kill.

From the perspective of the angels, it’s baffling how humans have survived so misguided. It’s disgusting that we’ve wasted this chance we’ve been given. We’re only here for a short amount of time, so why have we chosen this path? Why must we fight over everything? The angels just look down and wonder when this all will end.

–

For me, this is a much more grounded album than previous TOOL works. It’s really just about people, and how we’ve made mistakes. It’s about the wild experiences we can find ourselves in. It’s about mourning the loss of a loved one. Although it still includes all of those typical TOOL ideas – Jungian Alchemy, DMT and so on – they still manage to make this album feel deeply personal.

The concept of maturing and letting go of pain has been written about by TOOL over the last couple albums, and 10,000 Days is really a sum-up of this process. It takes 10,000 days to reach this point, and the songs on this album are about the trials that you will go through in life. It’s TOOL’s conclusion to its teachings of evolving our consciousnesses. Although this sounds like a far-fetched hippy idea, and the band have definitely delved into this side, it all stems down to reality – evolving consciousness simply means to grow wiser. Focus on what’s important.

So, where Ænima is the beginning of the process of transmuting consciousness upwards, and Lateralus explains actually going through this process, 10,000 Days is about the end of the journey, and what we’ll need to overcome to get there.

A lot of people don’t like this album as much as Ænima or Lateralus, but I certainly do. Thanks for reading this, and come back next week for the final TOOL write-up – Fear Inoculum.

– Kane