Tool: Poetry in Motion

Tool: Stinkfist & Lateralus

The first time I heard Tool, I stopped breathing. I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean my body locked up, my pulse stuttered, my brain scrambled to process the sound pouring from the television speakers. The screen flickered—shadowy figures, distorted faces, wires twisting, skin peeling. It wasn’t just a song. It was something else. Something primal. Something I wasn’t ready for but couldn’t look away from.

I was just a kid. Time blurred around me in that way it does when you’re young and restless and unsure of anything except the fact that something is missing. I had never heard music like this before—had never felt sound crawl under my skin like an electric current, making my stomach drop, making me uneasy in a way I couldn’t name but didn’t want to end. I stood there, frozen, caught between fear and fascination.

“I can’t tell if I love this or if it terrifies me.”

Maybe both.

I didn’t know then what this moment would mean. That years later, Tool would resurface, not just as a sound but as a signpost. That a single question—Do you know who Tool is?—would shift the trajectory of my life. That the same overwhelming force that held me still in front of that television screen would be the same force that would pull me toward Jamie.

The video ended, but the feeling didn’t. That unsettled, electric hum still clung to my skin, vibrating just beneath the surface. I had never experienced a song that made me feel like that before—like my mind was short-circuiting, like something inside me was waking up and unraveling at the same time. I didn’t understand why it hit me so hard. I just knew that it did.

And maybe that’s the thing about anxiety and overstimulation. You don’t even realize it’s happening until suddenly, everything is too much—the noise, the light, the pressure, the ache of growing up too fast and not fast enough at the same time. I was already restless, already searching for something, already feeling the weight of emotions I didn’t know how to name yet. And then Tool arrived, crashing through my senses like a warning, like a prophecy, like a question I didn’t even know I was asking

.

“Where do we go from here?”

I don’t know how long I stood there after the video ended. Seconds, minutes—time didn’t feel real in that moment. The apartment around me was silent, but my head was ringing. My body still buzzing from whatever had just happened.

 Nothing had ever stopped me in my tracks like that. But there it was—sound, movement, distortion, emotion, something pulsing beneath it all that felt bigger than just music. Bigger than me. And I didn’t even understand why. Not yet.

I think I was waiting. For something. For someone. For the moment when my life would split open and become something else. But waiting for what? I didn’t know.

I didn’t know it then, but I would chase that feeling for years. The hunger, the need for something bigger, the restless search for meaning in a world that felt just out of reach. Music became my language for it. My map. My proof that I wasn’t alone in it.

I think about that girl sometimes, the one standing frozen in front of the television screen, her mind unraveling to a song she barely understood. I think about how she didn’t know what was coming next. How she didn’t know that one day, a single question—Do you know who Tool is?—would reroute her entire life. How she didn’t know that someone was waiting on the other side of that question. Someone who spoke in depth and rhythm, in philosophies and sound waves, someone whose words would captivate and intimidate her in the same breath. She didn’t know that the search for more—the ache that had buried itself inside her—was already pulling her toward him.

But that moment hadn’t happened yet. Not yet. First, there was just the song. The video. The realization that something had cracked open inside her. The quiet hum of something beginning. The first pulse of movement in the spiral.

It’s funny how things play out. I met this guy named Will at Subway, thought he was cute, gave him my number. When he called, one of the first things he asked me was if I liked Tool. I said yes. That answer led to a date. That date and that night led me to… Jamie.

It would be easy to say it was fate. That I knew, the moment he walked in, that something had shifted in the universe, that I had just met someone who would change the course of my life. But that’s not how it happened. Not exactly.

The first time I saw Jamie, I wasn’t even sure what I thought of him. He was late—coming home from work, the low buzz of conversation already filling the room. I was sitting on the floor in a circle of people, some faces familiar, some not, and then there he was—introducing himself, shaking off the weight of the day. There was nothing particularly dramatic about the moment, nothing cinematic except maybe the way time felt like it stalled for half a second before moving forward again. And maybe that was enough.

I remember the way he spoke. Not just what he said, but the way he said it. The way his words carried weight, the way his thoughts unraveled like poetry, calculated but effortless. He talked about music, about Tool, about things I didn’t fully understand but wanted to. He was smart. Too smart. Or maybe just so sure in what he knew that it threw me off balance. I didn’t know if I liked him or if he intimidated the hell out of me. Maybe both.

But I know this—I listened.

Maybe it started that night. Maybe it started long before that. I don’t know. I just know that, somewhere between the weight of Stinkfist pressing into my chest and the sound of Jamie’s voice cutting through the room, something shifted.

I wouldn’t have called it fate. Not then. I didn’t believe in things like that. I believed in music, in movement, in the strange electricity that hummed beneath my skin when something mattered—even if I didn’t know why. I didn’t know that Jamie would be important yet. I didn’t know that Tool would become something more than a band I admired. But I knew that, for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t just standing still anymore. Something in me had started moving.

Not running. Not escaping. Just… moving.

“Overthinking, overanalyzing separates the body from the mind.”

I didn’t know why that lyric latched onto me like a lifeline. But it did. And maybe it was because I had spent so much of my life doing just that—trapped inside my own head, spiraling inward instead of outward. But this was different. This was something else. This wasn’t the restless, gnawing hunger of Stinkfist. This wasn’t suffocation disguised as longing. This was something wider, deeper. Something that didn’t demand to be figured out right away. Just felt.

I had spent so much of my life searching. Restless. Overstimulated. Caught somewhere between wanting to feel everything and feeling nothing at all. Always bracing myself for the next letdown, the next moment that wouldn’t live up to the expectation, the next thing that would leave me hollow and hungry for more.

But then Jamie kissed me.

And everything stopped.

No, not stopped. Collapsed. Crashed in on itself. Rearranged. All of a sudden I felt like I recognized him from a dream. It was powerful and terrifying and nothing like I had ever felt before. It knocked the breath out of me, not because it was soft or sweet, but because it was too much—too real, too raw, too big for me to wrap my mind around. For a second, I wanted to run. But I didn’t. Because I knew. I knew in a way I had never known anything before. I knew that nothing was the same anymore. That I had stepped into something larger than myself, something already moving, something I could either fight against or surrender to.

I didn’t sleep that night. Or maybe I did, but it didn’t feel like it. Everything in my head was too loud, too sharp, too alive to shut off. I kept replaying it—the weight of the moment, the way it didn’t feel like just a kiss but a door slamming open inside me. I didn’t know what came next, but I knew I wasn’t the same anymore.

“We’ll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one’s been.”

I heard it differently now. Felt it differently. It wasn’t just a lyric anymore—it was something I could almost see. A motion, a pull, a path unfurling in front of me. And for the first time, I wasn’t scared of it. I wasn’t trying to slow it down or make sense of it. I was just moving with it. Letting it take me where it wanted me to go.

Something in me had unlocked. And once it was open, there was no going back.

I was stepping forward into the unknown and trusting that there was something waiting on the other side.

There’s something almost supernatural about Lateralus. The way the time signatures shift in Fibonacci sequences, the way the rhythm itself spirals outward like an equation unfolding in sound. It’s math and music in perfect symmetry—numbers turning into something infinite, something alive. It’s a formula, a pattern, a pulse. And somehow, it still feels human. Still feels like something reaching for more.

It’s not just a song. It’s a reminder. To move. To grow. To stop trying to control the outcome and just step into whatever comes next. To let go of overthinking and ride the spiral wherever it leads.

I didn’t know where I was going yet. But for the first time in my life, I was okay with that. Because I was moving. And that was enough.

The thing about spirals is that they don’t end. They keep moving outward, expanding into something bigger than what came before. And I think about that now—how the girl frozen in front of the TV, overwhelmed by Stinkfist, could never have imagined where the spiral would take her. That one day, the same band that left her breathless with fear would become the soundtrack to her expansion. That one day, a single song would stop being just music and start being a way forward.

I used to think life moved in straight lines. That once you figured things out, once you found the right pieces, everything would fall into place. But I don’t believe that anymore. Life doesn’t work like that. It moves in spirals—expanding, unfolding, pulling you forward even when you don’t realize it.

Somewhere along the way, Lateralus stopped being just a song and became something else. A shift. A movement. A reminder that I don’t have to have everything figured out— just trust the movement.

And maybe Jamie was part of that, too. Maybe he always was. The moment I didn’t see coming. The shift I wasn’t prepared for. The person who walked in and unknowingly reintroduced me to the very thing that had once stopped me in my tracks. Maybe Tool wasn’t just leading me back to the music. Maybe it was leading me toward him all along.