It is Losar, the Tibetan New Year, the Year of the Fire Pig, an auspicious time to talk about the artwork of Tool's 2006 release 10,000 Days, for which they recently won a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. I was thrilled that Tool's 10,000 Days artwork and its Art Director, Adam Jones (who is also the band's guitarist), was publicly vindicated after being dismissed in the December 28th (2006) issue of Rolling Stone as headache inducing and "pointlessly elaborate".

I have to go with my fellow Seattle compadres, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana on this one ... "Corporate Magazine Still Sucks" ... Rolling Stone hasn't made a significant cultural contribution since Greil Marcus, one of my personal heroes, left their ranks in the 1970's.

In my opinion, Rolling Stone nearly always misses the point and seems content to continually slide around on the surface. I am almost certain that the collective members of Tool could care less about accolades from either Rolling Stone, or the Grammy's, since both institutions are hopelessly mired in manufactured product marketing, and are woefully devoid of artistic or transcendent spirit.

Since its release in 2006, I have been observing events surrounding 10,000 Days as a touchstone for what is grazing the consciousness of American youth in our turbulent times (and in the public domain). If Rolling Stone is used as a cultural benchmark or indicator of youth culture in America (and God I sincerely hope this isn't the case!) then they have missed the mark on spotting the first great Concept Art Album of the 21st Century – I feel like a 19th century Parisian Henry Murger shouting "Vive la Bohême!"

One of the first things that I noticed opening the 10,000 Days CD was the juxtaposition between the use of 19th century and 21st century technologies and imagery: the tactile sensation of the smoky dark grey-and-black cover is silicone-slickery-sliding you along into the interior liner note pages.

Embedded on the cover is an Alex Grey detail head, which is reminiscent of the huge Shiva heads of Elephanta, with its triptych faces and co-joined-at-the-brow All Seeing Eyes of Cosmic Conscious Awareness, which are further enlarged by visionary glasses. The full sized painting is featured in Grey's COSM Sacred Chapel of Mirrors series entitled, Net of Being. It took a moment to realize that the built in cover flap stereoscopic 3-D lenses covering the eyes were meant for viewing the interior art ... an antiquated technology revived in our virtual simulation age.

The stereopticon was in some ways the end-of-the-Nineteenth-century's equivalent to the end-of-the-Twentieth-century's VCR, and became a wildly popular form of entertainment in the mid 1800's in Victorian England, primarily to view travelog type slides. The basics of how the stereopticon (and all other 3-D stereo viewing devices) works were first laid out as far back as ancient Greece when Euclid explained the principles of binocular vision. Euclid demonstrated that the right and left eyes see a slightly different version of the same scene, and that by merging these two images, produces the perception of depth.

The travelog themes of shifting one's perceptual perspective while merging the past and future by finding a pathway between them in the present, a present with depth, is repeated over and over like a vibrating beacon transmitting signals to all those tuned to this unique frequency setting with ears to hear, eyes to see, a body to feel, and a heart and brain open and developed to act as a receiver.

Interspersed throughout the grey-black liner notes are, what appears at first glance to be embedded glyphs of Alex Grey's Vision Crystals paintings, which many of the glyphs may be. However on closer inspection, I realized that I was also looking at Hans Jenny's complex cymatic wave forms, and again the vibrating geometric theme emerges; in this case, complex forms based on the unicursal hexagram, which Jenny produced in his experiments with vibrating water droplets in the 1960's.

Jenny found that at higher frequencies, more complex shapes were produced, such as the 3-D Star, or dual-tetrahedron, with certain shapes having similarities to traditional mandalas, such as the dual-tetrahedron Vajrayogini Mandalas of Tibet, or the Enochian and Thelemic symbols on Tool's drum kit.

Tibetan Buddhists have a long tradition of utilizing vibrating sound for the ritualistic transmission of sacred and esoteric teachings of the Buddha, starting with Marpa in the 11th century and with the establishment of the monasteries of the Gyuto monks in 1474. Huston Smith first recorded the Gyuto Multiphonic Choir in 1967, where each lama produces the full display of musical sounds: a musical first, third, and fifth with additional overtones ... which is an awe inspiring experience to hear!

When I saw Tool perform 10,000 Days surrounded by Grey's set designs at the Gorge at George, Washington on an incredibly gorgeous starry hot summer night last August, I experienced a bodily-visceral transcendent shift not unlike when I first heard the Gyuto Monks perform in St Marks Cathedral. Perhaps it was Danny Carey's rhythmic time signatures acting as a cognitive entrainer? Besides metal, Carey has also trained as a jazz drummer, as well as with the famed tabla master Aloke Dutta. I do not know what triggered my euphoric perceptual shift. I would (Lost Keys) Blame it on Hoffmann but I have been "straightedge" for years. I rarely drink, the exception being an occasional glass of very good red wine, and I do not take drugs, so my experience was a "natural high". Something that night flipped a transcendental brain switch and that's when I woke and started paying attention to this particular work of art.

Upon viewing the second liner note page of 10,000 Days through the stereoscopic lenses I felt like I came face-to-face with death in 3-D. I was staring directly at a bare human skull, shielded only by its vacuum glass bell jar, with a sacred text lying next to it hidden from view. Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot deck sits stacked on a table, with a Masonic ritual dagger and a Tibetan ritual Phurba lying before me. What is my fate? Death. A certain reality, for nearly all in this space-time continuum.

Flipping the next page, I encounter the completion of the first scene: I see Carey as a 19th century conjurer, Lipan Conjuring, perhaps? An esoteric arts initiate, who is an XI° Ordo Templi Orientis Magus and Master of the Thelemic Universe, surrounded by his orchids ... how quaint. First edition Astrum Argentum Great Works lay in stacks on the table, including perhaps Crowley's AMRITA: Essays in Magical Rejuvenation. The Bell Jar and skull sits to his left where we can see death Vicarious-ly "from a good, safe distance" along with the ritual daggers. A Kabbalah Tree of Life hangs behind him, beside an esoteric anatomical chart – this man is a healer. He is opening a Tibetan Skull cup, a dakini Feast with the King, releasing 21 grams of mind-stream essence which has been trapped inside a no longer useful body – Wings for Marie? I wonder. A great arch of electrical ether streams out into the universe on it way to journey through The Bardo, the place between.

We now encounter Alex Grey's Bardo Beings, also from his COSM Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. One of the first initiations that I received upon taking my Bodhisattva Vows as a Buddhist was the Shitro Initiation – the 49 day ritual accompanying the dead through The Bardo from death-to-becoming. These All Seeing Bardo Beings of mind stream consciousness are covered in the pristine jewels of awareness and hold their perceptual rebirth in their visual orbits. The Tibetan Vajra, the Diamond Cutter of illusion is poised at the level of the Third Eye. Nothing escapes their vision; what you sow in life, you reap in death. Fight or Flight? These are the deep reptilian brain structures and its attending autonomic nervous system: the province of the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus. And then there are the emotions. Can you cut through it? How well have you trained in the language of the heart? What inspires your compassion? It's all here. Watching.

Next we encounter a Falcon, the Egyption God Horus perhaps, the God of Light, Resurrection, and Rebirth surrounded by candles, still more path choices. He's fuzzy, not yet clear and has yet to take flight. The amazing synesthetic dapper bassist, Justin Chancellor, helps Horus reorganize what was cut away in his travels through The Bardo, reordering the old forms of perception, into newly inspired creations. With Chancellor's unique vision and assistance Horus is now ready to fledge.

The rebirth begins: the new creative vision is quickened in its fetal infancy. And then we arrive to meet Maynard James Keenan, Tool's Lead Voice, in his Da Vinci inspired Renaissance Vitruvian Man incarnation; he is offering us wine from his vineyard: or perhaps an elusive 750 mL 1953 Penfolds Grange Hermitage which would be lovely, but I think the Sassicaia, which originated during the Medieval and Renaissance period in northern Italy would be more in keeping with Vitruvian Man. Wings for Marie, or is it Jambi?, can be seen as a ghostly apparition, a hovering protective presence reflected in the mirror behind him.

The same firey red head, a twin, a womanly and shapely nude – no starved frail anemic anorexic here thank God! – stands poised to lift the powerfully glowing phallic Art Deco symbol of the Empire State from the pedistal on which it rests ... wrenching it from its very foundations ... King Kong only manged to climb up the sucker! ... this woman is lifting it!, she is larger than life ... and strong!

So the Renaissance begins with the Scarlet Woman – a Red Headed Gaia, Crowley's own 19th century muse – ripping away the old power forms, and in the next picture we see her 21st century ascending manifestation: The Kundalini Serpent has traveled up the spine and is breaking through at the Anahata Chakra – the 4th Level of the Heart! The red fiery energy courses through the transforming androgynous fusion of human-and-bionic titanium-framed skeletal structure – the new bio-generation coming on-line.

The Energy Serpent continues its ascension up through the 7th Level of the 1,000 petal Crown Chakra of Sahasrara. In the Kabbalahistic systems this point corresponds to the Sepharoth of Kether, and is believed to be the province of the pituitary and pineal glands working in conjunction with the hypothalamus to entrain and connect the nervous system to the endocrine system and which may also excrete the endogenous psychedelic Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). DMT may be responsible for REM dream states. Some researchers have proposed that the pineal gland is responsible for the manufacture of endogenous DMT, and there are some who believe DMT has a role in dreaming and possibly near-death experiences and other mystical states, like Rosetta Stoned, although this has not yet been proven. Research does show that DMT is connected with "visual" dreaming.

In the next 10,000 Days picture, we revert back to outmoded Darwinian 19th century scientific constructs like, "Survival of the Fittest", and once again find our selves in the realm of past technology and primordial biology projects hanging on by the skin of their teeth: Darwin is dead, and this is the woman who helped kill him.

During the 80's, (around the time I discovered Excene, Minor Threat, and Black Flag) I had the unparallel privilege of working with Lynn Margulis on two of her writing projects. Margulis, an evolutionary microbiologist who co-authored the Gaia Hypothesis with James E. Lovelock, and who was once married to astrobiologist-physicist Carl Sagan, may ultimately be remembered for her Endosymbiotic Theory which she first formulated in 1966.

In her 1981 work, Symbiosis in Cell Evolution, Margulis argued that eukaryotic cells originated as communities of interacting entities. According to Margulis and her son Dorion Sagan, "Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking" (1996) and cooperation, and Darwinian ideas of evolution driven by natural selection are incomplete. Others have argued that endosymbiosis constitutes slavery rather than mutualism. While her organelle genesis ideas are widely accepted, symbiotic relationships as a current method of introducing genetic variation still remains a fringe idea.

Recent results from the Human Genome Project led by Eric Lander, however, lends credence to an endosymbiotic theory of evolution. At the very least Margulis' endosymbiotic theory is the catalyst for current trends in thinking about the composition of the human genome. Significant portions of the human genome are either bacterial or viral in origin with clearly ancient insertions, while others are more recent in origin.

This finding strongly supports Margulis' symbiotic hypothesis, and even parasitic relationships, as being a driving force for genetic change in humans, and most likely all organisms. Although endosymbiotic theory has historically been juxtaposed with Neo-Darwinism, the two theories are not incompatible nor mutually exclusive. The likely truth is that natural selection works on many levels (from the genetic level up through the ecosystem) while variation is introduced both at the genetic and cellular levels. In 1995, the prominent Neo-Darwinist evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins commented on Margulis' work: "I greatly admire Lynn Margulis' sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy ... This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it".

In the next 10,000 Days picture we peer past the thick red velvet curtains to see the incrediably multitalented Film Maker, Art Director, and Tool guitarist Adam Jones. He is surrounded by his preserved biological 19th century specimans – he could have recently returned from a collecting expedititon on the Beagle. Nouveau Art Deco lighting wall sconces hang behind him, while a spectre of Death in the form of a ghostly human skeleton can barely be seen hovering over his shoulder ... death from fallout of the industrial revolution. Death of a species. Death of a By-Gone Era.

In the next shot we again see the futuristic fusion of a human body with a titanium-wire framed form with stick pins running through it, like a butterfly specimen gathered from a futuristic collecting expedition, Lost Keys, Rosetta Stoned. The pin points are at key nadis sites, which are the channels through which the energies of the subtle body flow. The nadis connect at the chakras in Hindic and Tibetan yoga and in Asian medicine traditions, and there are believed to be 84,000 of these points within Homo Sapiens Sapiens current form.

In 10,000 Days concluding scene we arrive full circle back where we began, only now we see a Bigger Picture. We are back at Alex Grey. Grey first came to attention, here in Seattle, with his cover art for Nirvana's In Utero in 1993.

I became better aquainted with Grey's collective works, through Joel and Michelle Levy, who are members of the Buddhist monastery that I attend. Grey is my second favoriate Ayahuascadero; my first is Dorian Sagan's friend, the Swiss anthropoligist Jeremy Narby, who wrote The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, and then of course I have to mention the Western American literary pioneers of the field, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg's, Yage Letters. Alex Grey is my favoriate visionary artist however, and my personal favorites in his COSM Sacred Chapel of Mirror's collection are Surrender, Gaia, Theologue, Cosmic Christ, and Net of Being the concluding "Big Picture" of Tool's 10,000 Days. Grey presented the full installation at the 2006 Burning Man festival with Net of Being as the center focal point installation flanked by the emotional opposites of Hope and Fear. In the Net of Being we are in the center, on the Path of Buddha's Middle Way. This is also Indra's Net of Gems, and Lynn Margulis' cooperative communities ... and we are not alone.

And perhaps, just perhaps, we are all really vibrating strings playing a cosmic song, like String Theorist, Ed Witten and his colleagues describe. Perhaps all theories are different view points actually describing the same phenomena, much like the six different string theories Witten unified in Magic, Mystery and Matrix. Maybe we do live in a 10 Dimensional Universe, plus one for Time. A multidimensional Universe enfolding into itself  ...

Turning itself inward ...

Something like a Calabi-Yau manifold.

And if you Listen Very Closely.

You may hear the rythmic beating of your own Cosmic Heart.

Thank you Tool Band for the collective effort and amazing creativity of 10,000 Days. And thank you most for your inspiration. Happy Losar! May you all find Peace, Compassion and Freedom in the Year of the Fire Pig.

dakini_3