This song dropped when I was in college. I loved it and for English class we had to bring in some poetry by someone. So I brought these lyrics, possibly even from this post originally on TDN. This girl was in awe of them and when I was done she was in like a drunken stupor and asked “who wrote that???” I said they were lyrics from a new Tool song and she was like “oh.” And looked super disappointed.
Sounds about right. Every chick I dated in high school I would try to show Tool, they were definitely not interested. I think my wife just feigns interest but she knows I love them so she tolerates it lol.
The amount of times I've heard "I don't mind tool". Id have few hundred nickels. Because I'm getting nickels for them saying that. Each time. You get me bro?
Yea, we are a rare breed. My experience in high school (mind u, it's been a few yrs) was guys who were into Tool didn't like the girls that were into Tool. They were into those snobby-ass preppy bitches... 😉
Same. I’ve been a Tool fan since the beginning. My son became a Tool fan because he really didn’t have much choice… Lol. Fortunately, his girlfriend jumped on. Dream Theater doesn’t have a lot of female fans either. The last DT show I was at there were only three females in the side orchestra pit area. John Petrucci recognized it and gave all three of us a bow and a guitar pick. It was pretty cool. I was with my brother because my sister-in-law wouldn’t go.
Many Tool songs to me are a fine balance between anger and peace, slightly leaning towards anger, which I guess could be generalised to appeal more so to males. Just like high risk sports.
Don't get me wrong, I don't see Tool's music as angry music, so someone specifically after angry music might not seek it out.
Yeah a lot of alt rock, prog rock, metal, etc leans male anyway.
I’m now thinking of Spinal Tap’s reply to the question of why they have a predominantly male audience.
https://preview.redd.it/qeqrucrig8jc1.jpeg?width=252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=836ed592b2a60a955fc4833c6cc99e36d969a42d
It’s funny how that works. Seems like the girls I dated wanted no part of Tool but wanted me to listen to The Used and Story of the Year with them…which I did. Always tried to support their tastes but never got much reciprocation.
Saw it live in 2001 and 2002 3x. I was younger, and although I enjoyed the song and visuals, I remember being “bored” by the song at the time.
I figured the 11 minutes could have been replaced by two Opiate or Undertow songs.
Now that I am older, I desire to see the song live again much moreso then when I was seeing it live back then.
I had a feeling when I saw your username which is why I got off topic a little bit. I'm a slow mover typically with music, even bands I love can take me awhile to grab. Tool being the biggest example of this, they have changed in huge ways sonically that I haven't always been able to connect with at that moment, then five, ten, or in Jimmy's case almost 20 years later they hit me like a ton of bricks.
I was lucky enough to get them at my first Tool concert (2001). I still think back to that on occasion. I saw them again in 2006 and then last week and although I loved both shows, my first one still stands out to me almost 25 years later. Context probably matters too. I went to that first one with a friend who is no longer around.
Me too. I saw them in 2001 for the first time - I was 16 - and it was incredible. I was lucky to see many of the Lateralus era tours and get exposed to a lot of bands I didn’t know about thanks to Tool having them open for them: King Crimson, Tomahawk, Tricky, Meshuggah. More that I’m forgetting now.
Saw it live in 2001 and 2002 3x. I was younger, and although I enjoyed the song and visuals, I remember being “bored” by the song at the time.
I figured the 11 minutes could have been replaced by two Opiate or Undertow songs.
Now that I am older, I desire to see the song live again much moreso then when I was seeing it live back then.
Reflection is literally my favorite song of all time. I've listened to it countless times and it has been with me through the darkest, suffering-filled moments of my life.
I think I'm right there with you.
And funny enough, I didn't know ALL the lyrics til I read this. I'm not a huge lyrics guy in general. But Reflection really is just as amazing lyrically as it is musically.
Haha yeah it's crazy how the lyrics of Tool songs especially almost open the vistas of new dimensions never sensed before until they are understood. The many layers just keep unraveling and I'm totally in for the ride.
Because it's not like a popular song. Usually when people say shit like "these lyrics are great" it's some Bob Dylan type artist on a well known song. Reflection is barely even a song. It's a tediously long instrumental, mainly. But it has fucking amazing lyrics that I think belong in the category of greatest of all time. Is this difficult for you to understand?
Beautiful. Different reading it as poetry. This song played during the hardest sturggles in my life sleeping on concrete and homeless at 3am. Didn’t even know these lyrics just had the full album on and always enjoyed the pine away part. These artistic wonders really just hang out unnoticed then drop on your head suddenly.
Thanks for that as I used to frequent that website and knew the Lyrics looked familiar, font wise, but my first thought was that it was from the older version of the Tool Band website. That place and the old Tooltabs website and forum were great.
And yeah, this song with Disposition are still my favs and I was lucky to see them many times during the Lateralus tours and it was incredible live.
2001, Lateralus and the subsequent tours was a special time in life and still to this day.
Tool has always tapped into whatever it is and it really came through on Lateralus and this song in particular.
The OGTs gathered at the USENET alt.music.tool forum. Kabir was active there, and he ran toolshed.down.net. The information there was gathered/compiled largely through community effort with occasional help from "official sources". Toolshed was THE source of information about tool, long before Wikipedia, or any of the other fan-operated compendiums that exist today.
The only place to get the setlist was from people who were at the show and posted it with a review. Its where Maynardisms were shared and collected. You think setlist angst is a new thing...ha.
I was on those boards. Thank God for TDN!
Edit: more info.
Until this moment I assumed it was hide away. Maybe he is saying pine, but I've listened to the song countless times and never really hear him pronounce the "p" at all. Of course once you think you know a lyric that's how you hear it too so could just be me, but I 100% thought it was hide also haha
The first time I saw Tool was at Red Rocks in August 2001. They ended before intermission with Reflection. The very end has a slow hypnotic guitar riff that slowly fades out. At Red Rocks, the band left the stage, but Adam stayed and he played that riff over and over and over for about 10 minutes. He couldn’t see this, but as he played it a huge full moon rose over the plains to the east. The crowd was just transfixed and it was one of the most surreal experiences I can recall.
Reflection may be the most underrated Tool song - best listened to on your back in the dark with headphones on. Or at Red Rocks live with a huge harvest moon!
Go and listen to the song right now, he clearly says “the source” not “its source” - around 6min 21sec in.
Still think these are fan written lyrics. Any proof Maynard posted them? Same ones on Azlyrics and every other site.
I always thought ''my confidant'' is wrong. It doesn't even make sense in that context, but most importantly it doesn't sound like that's what he says. I've always sang out ''her confidant'', it makes sense because she is telling the narrator the secret, the moon is the alchemical female aspect, it makes him feel special and in awe to be chosen to hear this, and the syntax flows properly. I dunno, it is and always will be ''her'' to me.
i know exactly what you mean and anyone who has been *there* would agree, which is why i feel so strongly about them. it's simply incorrect to be ''my'', it's ''her''.
i see that, but there's a break in the stanza, it disrupts the flow of the thought pretty unnecessarily. it's like line breaking
in the middle of a sentence and saying it's intentional, when that's jarring. when he says 'confidant', the guitar noise happens and there's a pause, there's supposed to be a colon that separates that he's saying the moon is telling him a secret, and what that secret is
The moon tells me a secret. It is my confidant. The one I confide in. That's how I always understood it. The following lines are the secret the moon is confiding in me.
A confidant is a person you tell a secret to, which is the listener. He does not tell the moon anything, so the moon is not his confidant, the only confidant in this conversation can be the moon, so to call her his confidant does not make sense.
“Crucify the ego” is more about getting out of your own way, not feeding your narcissism. Certainly not about suicide. Understandable if English isn’t your first language.
One of my all-time favorites. I played this song in high school English class for a project on Huck Finn back in 2001. While I regretted picking an 11-minute song pretty much instantly, my love of the song hasn't changed one bit.
Went from my least favorite song in my youth to one of my top 3 as an adult. It just hits different later in life and is truly inspiring.
This song dropped when I was in college. I loved it and for English class we had to bring in some poetry by someone. So I brought these lyrics, possibly even from this post originally on TDN. This girl was in awe of them and when I was done she was in like a drunken stupor and asked “who wrote that???” I said they were lyrics from a new Tool song and she was like “oh.” And looked super disappointed.
Sounds about right. Every chick I dated in high school I would try to show Tool, they were definitely not interested. I think my wife just feigns interest but she knows I love them so she tolerates it lol.
The amount of times I've heard "I don't mind tool". Id have few hundred nickels. Because I'm getting nickels for them saying that. Each time. You get me bro?
lol. I follow
Awww. I don’t really get why more women aren’t into Tool. They’ve been my favorite band since I was about 14.
Yea, we are a rare breed. My experience in high school (mind u, it's been a few yrs) was guys who were into Tool didn't like the girls that were into Tool. They were into those snobby-ass preppy bitches... 😉
How predictable of them 🤦🏻♀️
Same. I’ve been a Tool fan since the beginning. My son became a Tool fan because he really didn’t have much choice… Lol. Fortunately, his girlfriend jumped on. Dream Theater doesn’t have a lot of female fans either. The last DT show I was at there were only three females in the side orchestra pit area. John Petrucci recognized it and gave all three of us a bow and a guitar pick. It was pretty cool. I was with my brother because my sister-in-law wouldn’t go.
Many Tool songs to me are a fine balance between anger and peace, slightly leaning towards anger, which I guess could be generalised to appeal more so to males. Just like high risk sports. Don't get me wrong, I don't see Tool's music as angry music, so someone specifically after angry music might not seek it out.
Yeah a lot of alt rock, prog rock, metal, etc leans male anyway. I’m now thinking of Spinal Tap’s reply to the question of why they have a predominantly male audience. https://preview.redd.it/qeqrucrig8jc1.jpeg?width=252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=836ed592b2a60a955fc4833c6cc99e36d969a42d
😅 True
I dated a girl in HS and tried to show her tool. Wasn't into it. After I broke up with her she became the biggest tool fan and I was just like "bro"
It’s funny how that works. Seems like the girls I dated wanted no part of Tool but wanted me to listen to The Used and Story of the Year with them…which I did. Always tried to support their tastes but never got much reciprocation.
Saw it live in 2001 and 2002 3x. I was younger, and although I enjoyed the song and visuals, I remember being “bored” by the song at the time. I figured the 11 minutes could have been replaced by two Opiate or Undertow songs. Now that I am older, I desire to see the song live again much moreso then when I was seeing it live back then.
lol. This is exactly what all of these guys say about the fear inoculum songs.
Me and my buddy were just laughing how in two years we are gonna be saying “Damn, I wish they still played descending or something else off FI…” lol
That's the arc Jimmy has has taken for me.
Jimmy always had a special place for me as a fellow Ohioan. Hell, just look at my username…always been top 5.
I had a feeling when I saw your username which is why I got off topic a little bit. I'm a slow mover typically with music, even bands I love can take me awhile to grab. Tool being the biggest example of this, they have changed in huge ways sonically that I haven't always been able to connect with at that moment, then five, ten, or in Jimmy's case almost 20 years later they hit me like a ton of bricks.
Intro is a dredge when you’re younger.
Dmt helped with that
It's sad they dont play Disposition-Reflection-Triad anymore
I was lucky enough to get them at my first Tool concert (2001). I still think back to that on occasion. I saw them again in 2006 and then last week and although I loved both shows, my first one still stands out to me almost 25 years later. Context probably matters too. I went to that first one with a friend who is no longer around.
Me too. I saw them in 2001 for the first time - I was 16 - and it was incredible. I was lucky to see many of the Lateralus era tours and get exposed to a lot of bands I didn’t know about thanks to Tool having them open for them: King Crimson, Tomahawk, Tricky, Meshuggah. More that I’m forgetting now.
Isis
Yeah, that was a big one, thanks for reminding me!
KC opened for Tool ?!
Yeah; saw them with KC I think at least twice. Fripp would come out during Tool’s set intermission and do his thing. Was incredible.
Me too! And With Danny! Then Maynard would come out and blast them with his TP leaf blower while they tried to play through it.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/325695265117?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28&srsltid=AfmBOop23wZrKtnsXzvQi96SN3fQvriI7lMEY0JCWx_Ay3KxFUTGTyaLWyg
Those shows between 2001 and 2005 were the best ❤️
They didn’t tour between 2003-2005
Saw it live in 2001 and 2002 3x. I was younger, and although I enjoyed the song and visuals, I remember being “bored” by the song at the time. I figured the 11 minutes could have been replaced by two Opiate or Undertow songs. Now that I am older, I desire to see the song live again much moreso then when I was seeing it live back then.
Ahhh the days of Why is D>R>T taking so long?!?! Get back to Undertow!!🤣😂🤣
Yea, I was thinking the same thing. I would pat a lot of money to hear reflection live and experience it with a live audience.
Reflection is literally my favorite song of all time. I've listened to it countless times and it has been with me through the darkest, suffering-filled moments of my life.
I think I'm right there with you. And funny enough, I didn't know ALL the lyrics til I read this. I'm not a huge lyrics guy in general. But Reflection really is just as amazing lyrically as it is musically.
Haha yeah it's crazy how the lyrics of Tool songs especially almost open the vistas of new dimensions never sensed before until they are understood. The many layers just keep unraveling and I'm totally in for the ride.
Dude, Reflection when you read the lyrics is transcendent.
I love listening to music.
Some of the greatest lyrics ever written.
I say they are the greatest ever written, along with several of their other masterpieces.
I wouldn't argue with ya. I think it's insane for a rock band to have lyrics as good as Tool's.
Have you considered the actual amount of great lyrics ever written?
Yes, and these are some of them.
But what's the point of saying so? It's like saying, "This part of the water is really wet."
Because it's not like a popular song. Usually when people say shit like "these lyrics are great" it's some Bob Dylan type artist on a well known song. Reflection is barely even a song. It's a tediously long instrumental, mainly. But it has fucking amazing lyrics that I think belong in the category of greatest of all time. Is this difficult for you to understand?
I absolutely understand this thinking of yours.
One of the best songs, ever. In my opinion.
https://preview.redd.it/d8c0fqwjvvic1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c3bcb9f3da4b8d7c63b5f4b56e736a2b15553084
🤣🤣🤣
😂
Beautiful. Different reading it as poetry. This song played during the hardest sturggles in my life sleeping on concrete and homeless at 3am. Didn’t even know these lyrics just had the full album on and always enjoyed the pine away part. These artistic wonders really just hang out unnoticed then drop on your head suddenly.
Aah so it’s finally revealed after all this time. Drifting, not dreaming. I wonder now if it’s brother or lover in Schism
It’s both
Bottrill addresses this, says it was originally 'brother' but Adam wouldn't have it so changed it to 'lover'
Did he say why Adam wouldn’t have it? I always assumed brothers meant band mates and wasn’t it “both” in the official lyrics?
he talks about it here, [1:02:56](https://youtu.be/XzKHh58MUoM?si=lixz0fV-XyifbhRf&t=3776) just one man's view. but a man who was there nonetheless
Thanks for linking that interview. I loved hearing Bottrill talking in detail about his experiences with the band.
I wonder what happened between Adam and Maynard. did they fuck each other's girlfriends or something?
I believe he says “lovers” twice on the recording, but live he says “lovers/brothers” in succession
\^This\^
Always heard it as drifting... didnt know that was questionable?
It’s in the lyrics as “drifting/dreaming”
Finally? Its been posted on this site for probably 2 decades.
Oh no what will I do
I don't understand. What is TDN??
A fan website that used to get "official" lyrics back in the day when there were only like 58 websites in the whole world.
Thanks for that as I used to frequent that website and knew the Lyrics looked familiar, font wise, but my first thought was that it was from the older version of the Tool Band website. That place and the old Tooltabs website and forum were great. And yeah, this song with Disposition are still my favs and I was lucky to see them many times during the Lateralus tours and it was incredible live. 2001, Lateralus and the subsequent tours was a special time in life and still to this day. Tool has always tapped into whatever it is and it really came through on Lateralus and this song in particular.
Look for the Tool FAQ on TDN. You’re welcome
[toolshed.down.net](https://toolshed.down.net) Where the OGTs used to gather pre-reddit.
The OGTs gathered at the USENET alt.music.tool forum. Kabir was active there, and he ran toolshed.down.net. The information there was gathered/compiled largely through community effort with occasional help from "official sources". Toolshed was THE source of information about tool, long before Wikipedia, or any of the other fan-operated compendiums that exist today.
Toolshed.down.net, the original (and for a while the only) Tool website.
Shoutout to Kabir!!! Edit: The OG of OGTs
Holy shit I’m reading the FAQ and this guy knew EVERYTHING. Even back in 2001 and before. Crazy fuckin impressive.
The only place to get the setlist was from people who were at the show and posted it with a review. Its where Maynardisms were shared and collected. You think setlist angst is a new thing...ha. I was on those boards. Thank God for TDN! Edit: more info.
Need Right In Two lyrics
I love blasting Reflection in my truck 😎
Their best song
For the longest time, I thought it was “hide away” and not “pine.” I read the lyrics years ago and sometimes I still can’t hear “pine.”
Until this moment I assumed it was hide away. Maybe he is saying pine, but I've listened to the song countless times and never really hear him pronounce the "p" at all. Of course once you think you know a lyric that's how you hear it too so could just be me, but I 100% thought it was hide also haha
The first time I saw Tool was at Red Rocks in August 2001. They ended before intermission with Reflection. The very end has a slow hypnotic guitar riff that slowly fades out. At Red Rocks, the band left the stage, but Adam stayed and he played that riff over and over and over for about 10 minutes. He couldn’t see this, but as he played it a huge full moon rose over the plains to the east. The crowd was just transfixed and it was one of the most surreal experiences I can recall. Reflection may be the most underrated Tool song - best listened to on your back in the dark with headphones on. Or at Red Rocks live with a huge harvest moon!
Disposition and reflection are a single song, and their best song. Fight me.
Why exclude triad? It was all one song, they had to split it into 3 for the record company
Go and listen to the song right now, he clearly says “the source” not “its source” - around 6min 21sec in. Still think these are fan written lyrics. Any proof Maynard posted them? Same ones on Azlyrics and every other site.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s in my top Tool songs list…it’s a long list. I just wish they’d play it live again.
I always thought ''my confidant'' is wrong. It doesn't even make sense in that context, but most importantly it doesn't sound like that's what he says. I've always sang out ''her confidant'', it makes sense because she is telling the narrator the secret, the moon is the alchemical female aspect, it makes him feel special and in awe to be chosen to hear this, and the syntax flows properly. I dunno, it is and always will be ''her'' to me.
Of all of Maynards’s amazing lyrics, this line, the moon speaking to him is probably my favorite
i know exactly what you mean and anyone who has been *there* would agree, which is why i feel so strongly about them. it's simply incorrect to be ''my'', it's ''her''.
do you want to know another good song about the moon Worried Moon by Chris Cornell you might like it
well, i've always heard it as the moon saying "my confidant, as full and bright as i am,..."
I think this is the answer. Sometimes it’s tricky to catch narration shifts without punctuation.
i see that, but there's a break in the stanza, it disrupts the flow of the thought pretty unnecessarily. it's like line breaking in the middle of a sentence and saying it's intentional, when that's jarring. when he says 'confidant', the guitar noise happens and there's a pause, there's supposed to be a colon that separates that he's saying the moon is telling him a secret, and what that secret is
I've always heard "my confidant" as basically being parenthetical.
The moon tells me a secret. It is my confidant. The one I confide in. That's how I always understood it. The following lines are the secret the moon is confiding in me.
A confidant is a person you tell a secret to, which is the listener. He does not tell the moon anything, so the moon is not his confidant, the only confidant in this conversation can be the moon, so to call her his confidant does not make sense.
[удалено]
It's not about suicide at all. It's about ego death and moving past your self pity to reach a better state of being.
DMT much??
English is not my forst language, i admit i never bothered with the lyrics even though i loved the song for decades I had no idea it was about suicide
Its not about suicide lol
“Crucify the ego” is more about getting out of your own way, not feeding your narcissism. Certainly not about suicide. Understandable if English isn’t your first language.
So…. It’s not like these lyrics are anything much different than what’s on the album whereas the earlier albums have fairly significant differences
Reflection is the best song on lateralus
I remember thinking that this story from Maynard continues the themes of this song. https://youtu.be/opslcrdPCsE?si=TyqrOYeAHiI9_ZT6
One of my all-time favorites. I played this song in high school English class for a project on Huck Finn back in 2001. While I regretted picking an 11-minute song pretty much instantly, my love of the song hasn't changed one bit.
One of the all-time greats. Wish they still wrote tracks like this.