Useful Tool

Today I thought I would write something a little different. I have mentioned before, my second or third post I believe, how much music has affected me. How much music means to me in my life. I have a passion that I can not express that attaches me to music. I recall having my high school agenda, from each year, filled with lyrics from songs I was feeling at the time, the majority of them written in class from memory while sitting there bored.


This is a song that anyone who knows me knows it is my favorite song. This song means more to me then any of these people realize, this song has directly affected my transition. Not just my transition, but my decision to do so, my decision to follow this path I am on.


The song is "Lateralus" by my favorite band, Tool. Yes, I am going to force you to sit through reading the lyrics. I had a craving while listening to this song on the bus today to write something philosophical and my version of creative. Here are the lyrics and a link to the song from youtube. I feel I'd do the song a disservice to write in between the lyrics, so I will continue to write after the end. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tcW-j7KFgY


Lateralus
Black then white are all i see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see.
as below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn beyond the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities that I must
Feed my will to feel the moment drawing way outside the lines.

Black then white are all i see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see there is so much more and
beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities.
as below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn outside the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition leaving opportunities behind.
Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace the random.
Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.

Come embrace my desire to
Come embrace my desire to
feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow
to feel inspired to fathom the power, to witness the beauty,
to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on the spiral
to swing on the spiral
to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.

With my feet upon the ground I move myself between the sounds and open wide to suck it in.
I feel it move across my skin.
I'm reaching up and reaching out. I'm reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me.
what ever will bewilder me.
And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been.
We'll ride the spiral to the end it may just go where no one's been.
Spiral out. Keep going.
Spiral out. Keep going.
Spiral out. Keep going.
Spiral out. Keep going.
Spiral out. Keep going.


First off I want to make sure no one thinks I am trying to say what this song is about, as written by Tool. This is what I think of the song, what it has made my mind come up with and how I came up with those things.


The song is, in general, about keeping your center, your "feet on the ground" but getting over your fear to "spiral out" to explore things that are far reaching for you as a person. 


I have to take the song as a whole to get my train of thought actually on the right rails, which makes it a difficult thing to explain while writing it out for someone else to read and make sense of. So, if I can ask, try to not make this make sense at first, just keep reading.


"Over thinking over analyzing" Is exactly what I have done all of my life. Not just in my transition but everything I do or come in contact with. It has detached me from the world, I feel, in a way that I have trouble reattaching. Every situation is analyzed to the point that it looses its humanity, and I 'hate' myself for it. Maybe hate is a strong word, but it is something I do that I wish I could shake off like a bad case of fleas. 


It is the part about me that kept my transition from being a reality for a long time. It is the part of me that has made believing I am transgender to begin with something that I dissected for years, the majority of my life. This song, feeling this song, is what made me see what I was doing to myself.


"Withering my intuition..." and "Feed my will..." Both instances of both of those lines gave me some clarity of what I was doing and what I needed to do. The opportunities I have missed in my life, to me, feel gargantuan in both number and impact to my life. How many things have I missed because I over analyzed my response to them? How many of those things would mean I would have a different life now? Education, money, friends, family, lovers, careers, experiences. Many of these things are not what they could have been because of my inability to just grasp the moment. Not to mention what being transgender has done. Not to suggest trans people automatically have a disadvantage, but trying to cope with it, trying to figure it out, trying to hide myself, all of these and more have affected many parts of my past, my choices, my reactions. 




The necessity to "draw outside the line" to "cross the line" becoming obvious to me, finally. That necessity coming from the realization of what I have been doing to myself. In a moment I seen my path, even though I was terrified to take it. I knew I had to embrace myself. I had to step away from who I thought I was, who I built as this supposed "person" and reach into places I have been unaware of, or scared of in the past. 


"Come embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, feel connected..." This is something that I wish I could scream to people on a daily bases. I feel a connection with the world around me that I feel most do not and i wish I could take people by the hand and show them. It isn't that simple, I have come to realize. It is also a part of me that I have a hard time feeling all of the time. I truly believe that is because I have been trained, like the majority of us, to not feel that feeling. Being too caught up in our day to day, mostly worthless, lives. Our lives themselves not being worthless, our "life", but what we do with them. How many of us, like myself, do things, unimportant tasks for people that do not need it? Many of our jobs being a great example, look at mine. I cook overpriced, mostly unhealthy food for people that do not need to eat it, at all. People in the world, people in my city, starving and I'm re-heating something made in a factory so someone can pay 19.95 to send half of it to the garbage can. 


I'm not hear complaining about work or anything, just my example of the triviality and thoughtlessness rampant in our society. I wish I could lead people along to see the power we all have, to connect, or 'feel' like only a crying widow feels. To embrace the rhythm of the world that surrounds them rather then paying attention to one small sliver of life. 


For myself, embracing who I am is part of that power. A power that, as I have mentioned before, is almost solely for us trans folk. Most people will not even know what it is to search themselves like we have been forced to, and I wish I could show them. This 'embrace yourself' isn't just for the LGBTQ community, it is for humanity. The LGBTQ community, from my experience doesn't bother much with suggesting those outside of it should do what they have done. There is an unbelievable calm that comes with it, that few people will feel. I find it hard to think that everyone who isn't trans feels like this as default. It would seem to me that if they did, the world wouldn't be in the state it is in. 


"Swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human." This is one of the most powerful lines in this song. It says so much. We are gods, we are everything that is what we need and ever will need. We are creators and destroyers. We have unlimited power to control ourselves and most of the environment around us, if not all, eventually. We have, what seems to be, the most unbelievable ability, the ability to think. The ability to set our minds to a task and accomplish it no matter what the odds, as individuals and as a species. It is possible to grasp that power, but still remain humble. To still appreciate the beauty of everything we come from and are a part of. Perhaps we can control the universe, but it is possible to control the universe and still see how it is perfect. How if we were not here it would still be perfect, how it is inevitable we will not be here eventually, and it will still be beautifully perfect.


I have always felt we are all gods, always. Even as a child I 'changed' my religion from believing in god, as my parents, family and community would have me do, to believing in myself. I finally embraced and understood that belief when I decided being someone who needs to transition is who I am. I embraced everything I felt about myself, free of the doubt that is given to us by others, by society, I embraced my inner god.


The last verse has been my motto for as long as I have heard it. "move myself between the sound" as sensitive people know, in music it isn't the sounds that make it mean something, it is the spaces in between, humanity reflects this. It isn't when something is going on, when activity is happening that is important, it is the spaces in between. Too many people put a great deal of effort deciding how they feel about something that has happened. An action taken or word given by someone else. The reaction of others from the same we do ourselves. The spaces in between get ignored, your feelings about being you, about when nothing has affected you to make you have to think. 


Every time I hear the line "open wide to suck it in I feel it move across my skin." I get shivers through-out my body. I feel the feeling it is referring to in the absorbing of the music I'm listening to, and the reminder moves through me. Now that I have started to transition, and have started to come to terms with it, it gives me more to shiver about. These words reflecting my reality. "...reaching up and reaching out... Reaching for the random or whatever will bewilder me..." There has been nothing more bewildering to me then being transgender. There is nothing I have desired more to reach for then my femininity. I started to see this through this song. I started to see that I need to take the risk and reach for what ever it was that I longed to reach for. I have done nothing but doubt all of my life. I doubted what I wanted, what I felt. I have never given myself to my feelings to do or be what I wanted, what I have ached all of my life for. I had to realize I am still 'me' while I spiral out, while I reach for the impossible, I did not need to lose sight of being the human I was.


As you can probably see by now, this song moved me in a way none other has. I call it "the perfect song" to people when I'm talking about it. Both musically and lyrically it is ingenious. This song helped me reach into my soul and pull out who I am, who I wanted to be. It made me think about myself in a way I did not have the courage to think about before. I started to see the likeness of the lyrics to my life. The things I had done in the past, or had not done. My desires for the future and my inability to let myself grasp it. That in turn led  me to understand that I had to, finally, reach for the one thing I was the most hesitant to reach for, my true self. I think everyone can take a lesson from these lyrics. Everyone should not be afraid to reach for what they desire, or who they believe they are. And as implied in the song, do not be afraid if what you reach for first is ultimately not what you wanted, or who you are, you can always reach again.