Maynard James Keenan discussed annoying Tool fans on The Strombo Show (via Ultimate-Guitar): “I think those ‘When’s the fucking album…’ [complaints] – those things are so much a larger symptom in our culture that goes way beyond that question and that specific band.
“Just the entitlement and that you are owed something.
“It’s unfortunate that the voice that social media has given people, they’re so disconnected with the bigger picture and the movements of things. We really need a meteor. We need something that’s going to get people organized with each other.”
“We need a meteor to just kind of – and that’s just metaphorical – but I don’t think it’s the meteor of hate, because I think that is just going to end up making things pretty awful. What we need is something that’s an outside meteor that brings people together, that they start realizing that they need to help each other and that they let go of some of that crap.
“One of the opening monologues for the ‘Conditions of My Parole Tour’ was about how we had to use our creative juices. We had to be intelligent, we had to be resourceful in order to stay ahead of the things that were trying to eat us.
“We weren’t faster, we weren’t stronger. We had to be more clever. And that’s why art is so drastically important. Throughout the ages you’ve had crazy things happen, you know? A meteor or a series of asteroids or whatever. Or the blackening of the planet with volcanic activity, ice ages, all these things have kind of hit – tsunamis, in areas, in isolated areas of the world where ground water is contaminated.
“All these things that get sewn into a culture through a religious practice or just a ritual, to help you survive in case that thing happens again. The argument people have made is – ‘There’s clothing, food, shelter everywhere you turn now, so why do we need to continue to develop that creative muscle?’ And the answer is that it’s never going to come in the way that you thought it was going to come.
“It’s not going to come for those areas that have tundra as part of their religious or ritualistic practice to survive. Ice age: it won’t be an ice age for them, it’ll be another thing. Something you had no idea that was coming: a virus, an alien culture… you know some other thing.
“And that’s how we as a creature have survived is our creative think outside the box processes. And I think that’s gone, just our basic puzzling. Social media is the biggest glaring sore in terms of that.”
“You can put a post up that has all the information is in the photo and in the post and someone will ask you the question about it. Didn’t you just read what was in front of you? They didn’t read it, they didn’t look, they just want you to hand them the answer. And you are going to be food, sir, you are going to be food for something. For some thing you are going to be food because you can’t puzzle, you can’t figure these things out that are right in front of you.”
