Know something about this song or lyrics?
Add it to our wiki.
I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them fall away
Mildewed and smoldering. Fundamental differing.
Pure intention juxtaposed will set two lovers souls in motion
Disintegrating as it goes testing our communication
The light that fueled our fire then has burned a hole between us so
We cannot see to reach an end crippling our communication.
I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them tumble down
No fault, none to blame it doesn't mean I don't desire to
Point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.
To bring the pieces back together, rediscover communication
The poetry that comes from the squaring off between,
And the circling is worth it.
Finding beauty in the dissonance.
There was a time that the pieces fit, but I watched them fall away.
Mildewed and smoldering, strangled by our coveting
I've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second guessing
Doomed to crumble unless we grow, and strengthen our communication.
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any
Sense of compassion
Between supposed lovers
I know the pieces fit
Mildewed and smoldering. Fundamental differing.
Pure intention juxtaposed will set two lovers souls in motion
Disintegrating as it goes testing our communication
The light that fueled our fire then has burned a hole between us so
We cannot see to reach an end crippling our communication.
I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them tumble down
No fault, none to blame it doesn't mean I don't desire to
Point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.
To bring the pieces back together, rediscover communication
The poetry that comes from the squaring off between,
And the circling is worth it.
Finding beauty in the dissonance.
There was a time that the pieces fit, but I watched them fall away.
Mildewed and smoldering, strangled by our coveting
I've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second guessing
Doomed to crumble unless we grow, and strengthen our communication.
Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any
Sense of compassion
Between supposed lovers
I know the pieces fit
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
In my opinion, and many others who have researched the band and know it's history (not just "oh man, these guys rock!" because they sound good) - this song is about the band "falling apart" and then coming back together after everything negative that happened with Maynard and APC, and the band being on a very long break, they realized they were here to create music and to show people something new and different.
The album Lateralus is completely different from their earlier work - it's after Maynard met Alex Grey (amazing artist, fyi) and became more at peace.
Keep your third eye open, people.
'Cause I watched them fall away
''pieces'' is every one of us as a human being.. and we fit together cause we are social beings and we get together to form society.. but those words deeply refer to the whole world as a society.
Fundamental differing.. well i can t say he is talking about religion .. he just talks about every one's special thoughts personality opionions and self which sometimes are different enough to create a conflict between people. Just to be more specific he is upgrading their quarrel as a band to a level of the society now.. and he finds out that the pieces fit by rediscovering communication. Communication is a really big deal and this holds a society together as even a smaller group.
The poetry
That comes from the squaring off between
And the circling is worth it
Finding beauty in the dissonance
The lyrics though recognise that the disagreements and the misfits are part of the life and the living, which are helpers to keep the pieces fit. Poetry is a very strong word .. the deepest meaning of it is creation. Finding beauty in dissonance..dissonance i think must refer to the difference between each other and find the beauty is like keep an open mind and see that this dissonance is not your enemy but just someone different. Build communucation and collaboration and you shall have creation(poetry).
The light that feuled our fire then
Has burned a hole between us so
The factors that reinforced them to create are the same which seperate them now.. the light is the capability and the talent of the members of tool seperately which made them create with teamwork, but right now their strong personalities(which are talented and eccentric) block their path back to creation.
Maynard wrote really great lyrics. He takes their quarrel as a band to another level. To society, to every relationship (brother, lover). Communication is the sollution ,trying to understand one another ,keep ourselves social as we are all truly are.
Cold silence has
A tendency to
Atrophy any
Sense of compassion
Between supposed brothers
Between supposed lovers
Although I can see religious and humanity elements in this, I actually think this song is about the band itself. The Lateralus album was released 5 years after AEinma, where the band had been through not only a personnel change (Justin replacing Paul D'Amour) but also a lengthy court battle and MJK doing his thing with A Perfect Circle. What this says to me is that Tool knew they could create together because the pieces had fit previously, but had they now broken down,become divided, between supposed brothers? It took strength and communication to bring them back together, stronger, determined and the Lateralus album was the child of that pain, growth and subsequent love of being together.
"Point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.", refers to the way humans blame one another for their problems, difficulties and oppression. However, humans are not to blame other humans as it is not humans who cause these problems. Humans have been separated to think they are different in order to be more easily controlled. The temple (human existence and temporal bodies) will topple over (cease to exist) if humans continue to point the finger at one another.
Maynard and Keenen realize their origin because of "There was a time that the pieces fit, but [i]I watched them fall away[/i]."
These lyrics:"I've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second guessing. Doomed to crumble unless we grow, and strengthen our communication.", mean that if humans do not trust their intuition and continue to evolve in LOVE (the ultimate communication), and realize they are one and come together in unity there is a possibility of the annihilation of the human race.
The human race is now in a period of transition back to the light and the pieces that fit are coming back together...
Asperger's is a sub category of autism.
The song really resonates with me as I watch my totally cool, but extraordinarily neuro-diverse son struggles w/ the world, but revels in it. That is the point about autism, because we neuro-typical people all see how the pieces fit and put them together, but we see how others struggle to make the pieces fit. They know the pieces fit and they have to work their tail off to get them to fit. My son is the hardest working person I know and the pieces do fit, but, squaring the circle and making the pieces fit is difficult for the most brilliant amongst us.
I think the song is about how life, communication in particular but also other aspects of life disintegrates, breaks down and then we, as people have to work to put the pieces together, how the work is worth it, how it is possible. Sometimes, we all revel in the madness of life, enjoy the misery and see how the pieces fall away and see how it is just the fault of the universe, atrophy and chaos. We then have to put the pieces back together and it is so difficult. Sometimes screws come undone and atrophy controls, despite the best planning, despite all the fail safes we build into the system, despite the best and most experienced people engineering the system. Certainly the song speaks of lovers and how their zeal and the tie that binds ended up causing a rift between them. But, that is just one example of the world coming apart at the seems and how we have to work to put it together. How squaring the circle is worth it.
The song really should be adopted by one of the autism groups as a theme song. The pieces do fit and squaring the circle and having those who don't see that the pieces fit seeing that they do indeed fit is so worth it.
Admittedly it is not the strongest argument for a "proper" interpretation of the song, but, again, I can't move beyond the glaringly obvious metaphors between the autistic puzzle pieces theme and the song.
This song is a metaphor for the band's condition at that time. It had been 5 or 6 years since aenema and there was a little tension in the band, Maynard was off with apc and it was a shaky period for them.
They then proceeded to drop lateralus, showing the world just how fucking sure they were that the pieces fit.
The poetry that comes from the squaring off between
And the circling is worth it, finding beauty in the dissonance
Squaring the circle is a subject that can't easily be summed up in a small article, but I'll provide some quotes to start with:
"The 'squaring of the circle' is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness."
-Carl Jung from Mandalas (1955)
"The intent behind alchemy and the alchemical work is personal individuation, which is wholeness. In order to attain wholeness, it is said, one must square the circle... To square the circle is to see equally in the four directions, and so to be whole... To find a new equilibrium where inner, outer, above, and below are balanced and in harmony, is to be One... The viscous flame of oneness comes burning away all division of spirit and flesh, and the diamond body becomes the eternal fuel of this emancipative, destructive union."
-Jack Haas from OM, Baby! (2005)
Squaring the circle is also referred to as "quaternity" or "quadratura circuli", and is represented in countless artistic works going back to ~1000 AD (and probably before then). It is, as Jung and Haas point out, a symbol of wholeness and balance between the inner portion of the Self (i.e. the spirit), the outer portion of the Self (i.e. the body), the heavens above, and the Earth below.
The video for Schism, in particular, brings out this theme in a way that the song by itself cannot. It takes us through the process of purifying the mind and the body, in order to allow "the viscous flame of oneness" to dissolve the boundaries between spirit and matter, between male and female, between good and evil. This is precisely what occurs in the final moments of the video.
In the beginning, we see a circular shaped metronome that bounces up from the floor and becomes suspended in the air, where it starts to oscillate back and forth. This is symbolizing a spirit that is in a state of confusion and uncertainly, thus it sways to and fro because it cannot reach a state of calm equilibrium. In other words, the circle has not yet been squared.
We then fade into a room that's very square-like and gray. This represents the world of matter.. the physical realm where the spirit is held within a body. You'll also notice there are wires that stretch across the room, symbolizing the lines of communication that are gray and stale (meaning they are not working properly, as described in the lyrics).
Similar wires are seen stretching out from a female figure's head, who now comes into frame. Only her wires are red, meaning they are healthy and open for connection. As she wanders around the room, she starts to sink into the floor. At the same time, she notices an opposing male figure's feet rising up out of the floor, as if he's stuck in a state of total unconsciousness. She pulls herself out of the sinking floor and is also able to pull the male out by his feet thereafter. When she does this, we can see that she rotates him around on his head, forming a circle on the ground. This expresses her desire to form a higher, spiritual connection with the man, which is clearly seen as the camera fades out and displays the two figures forming the shape of a compass. The compass is often shown and referred to in the works of alchemists, because it metaphorically represents one of the tools that can be used in the process of squaring the circle and reaching a higher state of being.
The female then carries the still-unconscious male back to the first room we saw in the beginning, and lays him down. She moves close to him (again, indicating a desire to communicate), reaches out toward him with her arms, and pulls them back toward herself.. like she's trying to pull him closer, but there's no wires available to hold on to. She's just pulling at the air, and is only miming the act of connection.
The male continues to remain asleep, as he starts to drift away from the female. She pursues him into a new room, which has a large tree-shaped crack in the wall where the male is hiding (the cracks are clearly another symbol of a breakdown in communication). The female then begins to walk on all fours and soon, the male emerges from the crack in the wall and does the same thing. This is symbolic of male and female communicating at a sub-human level... at the animal level. That's why they walk on all fours. They're not yet at a point where they can connect spiritually, so they can only connect through the flesh (i.e. matter).
Now we reach a crucial point in the video, where the female moves in close to the male again (only this time they're both standing upright). You'll notice her movements are very twitchy, again indicating that's she's vibrating at a higher frequency and desires higher-level communication. She then grabs his ear, and pulls it out along with a rectangular chunk of his head. This is represents the process of purifying the mind, as we later see a small goblin-like creature emerge from the extracted head piece.
Later on, we see another cancerous goblin being extracted from the male's neck, symbolizing the purification of the body (in addition to the mind). Once this occurs, the male figure becomes much more vibrant and life-like. At the same time, the female becomes fearful and weak as she falls to the ground. While she's lying there, the parasitic goblins start to feed off of her as they had been previously doing to the male. Fortunately, she's strong enough to sit up and remove them from her face so that she doesn't become consumed by them.
This process of purification through bodily extraction/operation is common in strong psychedelic experiences or experiences with alien abduction. Often, you'll read about people claiming they were operated on by aliens who extracted things from their bodies. This also occurs during DMT and Salvia Divinorum trips, where you run into therianthropic figures who reach into your body as if to purify you and show you what is needed in order to reach a higher level of being.
Once purified, the male now grows the same red-colored wires as the female has. They grow so fast and thick that he has to pull them away from his face. Afterwards, the male and female turn to face each other and become merged into a single being with a large head. Male and female (i.e. spirit and matter) have now become one, as we see the viscous flames rain down upon them, symbolizing the union of opposites. The squaring of the circle is now complete, and the spiritual/astral Self has finally reached a state of equilibrium. This is confirmed by the reappearance of the metronome we saw in the beginning of the video, which you'll notice is no longer oscillating back and forth. This being has now completed the process of individuation, and is in a harmonious, balanced state of oneness.
First the title. Like people have said, one definition of the word is a split between people due to differing beliefs. This best applies.
First off, the song is about a relationship. Probably relating to his ex-wife at the time or writing, but wrote vaguely enough that it applies to all struggling lovers - perhaps not even intimate lovers, such as siblings etc.
He starts off by saying that he knows the pieces fit because he watched them fall away. The relationship couldn't fail if it didn't work in the first place. Mildewed and smoldering. Fundamental Differing. That is sheer poetry. In a few words he explains how parts of their connection to each other have either been burnt to cinders by their passion or left to neglect and rot. He recognizes that there is a primal difference between them now that causes this. Pure intention, or the desire to love one another, will set two lovers souls in motion and begin the relationship. The intention, that pure desire to be with the other regardless of pride or ego, disintegrates as time goes on, forcing lovers to cope and communicate their desires and arguments. The passion that brought the two lovers together now works against them, and burns a whole between them. They cannot see to reach an end [to their differences], which cripples their desire and will to communicate and heal.
Then he begins to talk about the pride and ego that sets in when you've been with someone long enough. It becomes less about what's right, and more about WHO is right. He recognizes now there is no one to blame, but it doesn't mean that he didn't want to blame the other, and that their wasn't some trace amount of a destructive desire to topple the temple. He admits that even through the arguments and the desire to blame, it doesn't mean there wasn't the driving desire to fix it, why else argue and blame?
Even the melody has begun to change. It becomes charged and you can feel the pump in it. The potential for motion. The next few lines are some of my favorite. The poetry that comes from the squaring off between, and the circling, is worth it. Finding beauty in the dissonance. Anyone who has had a serious fight would understand this. There is a weird desire to argue, its that misguided passion we feel. Passion is by its nature overwhelming, and there is beauty in that. Just as it set them in motion, it tosses them together violently, and they still feel the pull of it.
Again, he comes back to how the relationship used to work but has fallen apart. This is the chorus, but its also the core of the song. He comes back to the fact that it used to work and doesn't again and again, and it begins to change near the end. He knows how dangerous it is to second guess what people are doing together. Second guessing introduces doubt, and the schism grows wider, hence the doomed to crumble unless we grow (mature) and strengthen their ability to communicate with each other.
Obviously this is the not the case, because he go on to say that cold silence atrophies compassion. Imagine being angry with someone and not being able to reconcile it with them. Silent anger settles into bitterness, while you justify your actions and demonize theirs, thus killing your compassion for them.
Finally, two lovers because "supposed lovers". This demonstrates that the split is finally complete, acknowledgment of a defeat.
The song winds down in what sounds to be like bitter regret. "I know the pieces fit" but they don't anymore.