Eulogy
The Teaching
A eulogy has one job: to say good things about the dead. This one does the job and empties it as it goes. It praises how much the dead man had to say, then takes the praise back: what he said amounted to nothing. The mourners say they will miss him, again and again, until the words go hollow. He was loud, he had an opinion about everything, and the speaker no longer remembers any of it.
Not all martyrs see divinity, But at least you tried
Then the song stops mourning and gets to its point. The dead man is told to come down off his cross. The space is needed.
Come down, get off your fucking cross. We need the fucking space to nail the next fool martyr.
Commentary
The last line turns a sacrament into a vacancy. A cross, in the song, is not an event that happens to one man. It is a position, and a position has to be staffed. The man on it is incidental. The song ends by predicting his successor, so it is not really an obituary at all. It describes a role that will be filled again, and again after that.
The song’s preacher is sincere. He wanted divinity and did not reach it, and the song grants him the trying, which is the whole accusation. Martyrs don’t try to be martyrs. A martyr is made by circumstance and by other people, and to seek the cross for what it confers is the one motive that disqualifies the seeker.
This site goes a step past the song, and the step is ours, not Tool’s. The song describes a man who wanted the real thing. The queue it sets up has since filled with people who want only the appearance of it: the posture of persecution, and what that posture is paid. The Body Politic’s layer The Counterfeit follows that queue.
The song never names its preacher. Keenan has reportedly said it concerns the tendency of people to stand on a soapbox and sacrifice themselves in some way, and that you should make your own decisions. The anonymity is why a 1996 song still lands: every listener supplies their own occupant, and each one supplies a different name. The layer it opens follows the same rule.
The song is read at length in Same Angle, Greater Distance, the fifth reading in Collection 02.
Themes
Connections 10
Travelled
The song borrows the Christian image of the cross.
Travelled
The song borrows the Christian image of the cross.
Unsure
No documented reading of Greek thought by Tool.
Unsure
No documented reading of Hinduism by Tool.
Unsure
No documented reading of Judaism by Tool.
Unsure
No documented reading of Greek thought by Tool.
Unsure
No documented reading of Taoism by Tool.
Sources
Tool, “Eulogy,” Ænima (Zoo/Volcano, 1996); lyrics quoted for commentary and criticism.