Lyrics for Intension as interpreted by Solarius

Intension Lyrics
(These lyrics are played backwards: Work hard, Stay in school, Listen to your mother, your father is right/rising/right, son... Jesus loves you... Work hard, Stay in school, Listen to your mother, your father is right/rising/right son...)

Pure as we begin.
Pure as we come in.
Pure as we begin.
Ruled by will alone.

Pure as we begin.
Here we have a stone.
Gather, place, erase so. (*)
Shelter turns to home.

Pure as we begin.
Here we have a stone.
Thrown this day the stranger. (*)
Swore to crush his bones. (*)

Ruled by will alone.

Spark becomes a flame.
Flame becomes a fire.
Light the way or warm this.
Home we occupy.

Spark becomes a flame.
Flame becomes a fire.
Forge a blade to slay the stranger.
Take whatever we desire.

Moved by will alone.
Pure as we begin.

Pure as we begin
Move by will alone.
Leave as we come in.
Pure as light.
Return to one.

Move by will alone.
Move by will alone.

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SoakedinMercury
04-24-2006

Rated 0 
The way I see it, this song is about our progression as mankind, and as a civilzation. We were pure when we began, natural and still animalistic to all extents.

"Here we place a stone" might mean either constructing a building, one of the building blocks of civilzation, or it might mean voting, which is an even further step: government. Ancient Athenians used different colored stones in vases to signify votes.

The song progresses on from a tribal, entrancing beat, to bass & guitar, and then to the synth, and back again. The spark progresses to a flame and to a fire.
We go from pure, to "taking whatever we desire", be it from the earth, or from brother civilizations. We go from nomads, hunters & gatherers, to where we are now.

The song details how we are pure when we begin, and we will leave as we come in: pure. The human race is going to die out as we came in, as a pack of animals. Once the Earth turns to a sapped wasteland, we'll return to the wild, with no civilized means, and we'll be pure again.

It's only my interpretation, add to it/correct as you will.

Kickass song, by the way.

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1 Reply
meddlehead40
04-24-2006

Rated 0 
Soaked in Mercury i whole heartedly agree with you on this interpretation. I particularly like this part:

Spark becomes a flame.
Flame becomes a fire.
Light the way or warm this.
Home we occupy.

Spark becomes a flame.
Flame becomes a fire.
Forge a blade to slay the stranger.
Take whatever we desire.

I believe the spark is human greed/selfishness, the desire to out do our fellow men. It starts off small, but as civilization increased, the spark turned into a flame, flame to fire, thus consuming our whole human race. What's the result of this consumption?
The result is what we have now, a society that continues to:
"Forge a blade to slay the stranger, take what we desire"

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0ni
04-24-2006

Rated 0 
Judging by everything else Tool has done, it appears to be a very literal explanation of new age-ish philosophies, something they cover quite a bit. Returning to the light is exactly that, death, returning to light, which is God, in New Age ideas.

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0ni
04-24-2006

Rated 0 
Wondering why they spelled it "Intension" with an s...

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MunkyBallz
04-24-2006

Rated 0 
Oni, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intension

Wait, so if you reverse this song it goes "Work hard, Stay in school, Listen to your mother, your father is right/rising/right, son... Jesus loves you... Work hard, Stay in school, Listen to your mother, your father is right/rising/right son..."? I'm trying this out now.

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TREXOR
04-26-2006

Rated -2 
this song blows

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1 Reply
Vicarious
04-26-2006

Rated 0 
i love this fucking song

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vehuiah
04-28-2006

Rated 0 
I've a doubt on 'Thrown this day the stranger." , I would be more logical if it was "Thrown this to the stranger." The tool became a weapon, first to protect us, then to attack and destroy the strangers...like the fire which lighted the way and warmed and which finished by forging blades.....

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0ni
04-29-2006

Rated 0 
Intention + Tension = Intension?

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0ni
04-29-2006

Rated 0 
Or maybe it's just what that link said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intension

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egb
04-29-2006

Rated 0 
who'd have thought a Tool song with electronic drums would sound so damn good...

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Retribution
05-01-2006

Rated 0 
How or where can I hear the subliminal message?

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Dark Knigh7
05-01-2006

Rated 0 
I think this song is about a theory by Terance McKenna called the "stoned monkey" theory. It talks about how before the 1st humns, animal consciousness was a prerational and unselfconscious. When Adam and Eve began to be self-aware, they started on their 1st stages of rationality. The rational mind can distinguish one thing from another. So the early humans had to deal with anxiety of their newly precieved seperation from each other and their enviornment, all while having a strong sense of their own mortality. The 1st humans understood their own mortality and were responsible for their own actions, thus the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. McKenna says, maybe the early hominids, being omnivorous, one day discoverd and ate some kind of psychedelic plant. These plants sharpend the hominids perception, so that they could "sense" predetors better that the ones not taking psychedelics. This could have given the edge on their competetors, making them the ones to survive. I think Intesion and Right in Two are about this very theory. It wouldnt surprise me either, seeing as how I know about this theory through an Alex Grey art book. Its either this theory or about war, who knows for sure?

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nonetospeakof
05-02-2006

Rated 0 
Intension refers to the set of all possible things a word could describe, even things that may not exist, but could exist and would fall under that set of things (check the wikipedia link from 0ni). We get surface level examples of this through spark-flame-fire, and stone-home making the connection through intension, not hard lines to follow. Then we get some very abstract examples of intension. “Pure as we begin…pure as light, return to one.” This type of imagery seems to suggest that our purity is based on the fact that we are all apart of a universal cycle of particles similar to pure white light. And similar to light put through a prism (moved by will alone) we split into factions (the many colors of light that make up pure white light), but really we are all still part of the same whole. It is our will that separates us, keeps us from realizing our potential as a whole, our purity. I think this fits in nicely SoakedinMercury’s interpretation of civilization moving forward with progress. By our will we keep putting our collective energy (light) through prisms and refining and refining until we get what once was a spark to a fire. But through this refining we have driven ourselves further and further away from purity, exemplified by what we do with our refinements (make weapons and such). Despite our obsession with progress (and its power to separate us) when we die we just “leave as we come in…return to one” and recycle our particles to the earth. This is a fantastic segue for “Right in Two” which is a continuation of what humans choose to do with our will.

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1 Reply
Blindrider
05-03-2006

Rated 0 
because the word intension means, as nonetospeakof said, all the things that something could mean, it think that this song is talking about how humans exist in all forms of conciseness (according to some people-i dont know if its true or not) and how when we enter another conciseness we enter it purely, but soon become corrupted.

it could also mean having an out of bosy expirience when he talkes about entering purely and how we're "ruled by will alone".

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Blindrider
05-03-2006

Rated 0 
he could also be talking about how his songs can be interpreted any way you want and how when we listen to them we listen purely at first, but then we debate about the meaning of the song when it could mean anything to us.

it could also be similar to Reflection-maynard was quoted saying that the "information we receive is pure", but we can bend it to our advantage.

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SoakedinMercury
05-04-2006

Rated 0 
nonetospeakof's interpretation-

Very in depth. It definately does fit in with everything, and I really like the prism comparison. We're all atoms, and as we live, we wreak havoc, and when we die, we return to the earth, the whole.

Blindrider's interpretation is ironic and clever. Yep, Tool has made tools of their fans.

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bengt12
05-04-2006

Rated 0 
i love danny carey but the electronic percussion in this song is fucking awesome.

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babyevilchild999
05-05-2006

Rated 0 
i think this song is simply about corroputions of man through society, at least in our time, there are two different theories on the idea of corruption of man one is what i believe the song explains we're born pure then we become corrupted by society, the other is we're born corrupt and society keeps us from being complete sick freaks...anyway in that context the whole idea of the backward lines at the beginning make more sense because when we become concious people our worlds are bombarded with so many people trying to lead to the right direction that we kind of follow something whole heartedly straight into the ground, well thats what i think...

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egb
05-05-2006

Rated 0 
bengt12- no need to feel guilty, you can bet that danny engineered the beat, so it's okay to like...

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nowherenik
05-08-2006

Rated +1 
Spark becomes a flame.
Flame becomes a fire.
Light the way or warm this.
Home we occupy

The spark could be an idea. The idea turns into something, then gets a little out of control.


Thrown this day a stranger
Swore to crush his bones....
Forge a blade to slay the stranger

Getting back to the idea of free will, we have never ending conflict. Before the stanger this was not so. The stranger in a sense challenges our free will.


this isn't so much about civilisation as it is an idividual. Stripping down the world to it's essntial animalistic nature. The idea of free will is about not being ruled purely by instincts, though they remain the guiding force.

Born an innocent, return to earth (the atom mix if you want) when we die, pure.

but then again I've got a long track record of being wrong

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Melvana
05-13-2006

Rated 0 
Yeah, it does seem to be the spawing of crazy ideas that are caused by will itself.

Great song, I have a feeling this is the most underrated song on this album. I don't know why.

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Melvana
05-13-2006

Rated 0 
I mean SPAWNING. Blecch.

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egb
05-16-2006

Rated 0 
does anyone see a relationship between this song and Right in Two with the beginning sequence of 2001??

seems to me that the imagery is steeped in the whole 'Dawn of Man' idea... the whole 'crushing of bones' and monkey's 'beating their brothers down' with clubs... etc...

anyway, i think that's what the whole idea is... trying to see ourselves as if awakening from a primitive form of existance and moving on to the next step...

or maybe i'm rambling...

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1 Reply
Shaobiz
05-19-2006

Rated 0 
In tension......
during tension ...we seem to act by will alone

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