Parabola

The second single from Tool's 2001 album 'Lateralus', 'Parabola' builds a meditation on embodied existence and the choice to inhabit the present moment. Maynard James Keenan frames physical experience as both gift and reminder, the body a vessel that anchors consciousness whilst pain dissolves into illusion. The lyric moves from acceptance to celebration, urging recognition of mortality not as limit but as the condition that makes breath and presence sacred. Released as a promo CD in 2002 and later paired with 'Schism' on a 2005 DVD single, the track extends the progressive metal architecture that defined the album. The arrangement spirals through its six-minute runtime, the repetition less cyclical than accumulative, each pass through the central refrain adding weight to the assertion that choosing to be here, now, in this body, constitutes a holy act. The song refuses transcendence in favour of immanence, locating the eternal not beyond the flesh but within it.