In this particular picture, three people in their late teens or early twenties are squatting barefoot in the sand looking all sly, but you know, on the inside, they're really fucking clueless and terrified, and that's going to be a major thread winding throughout the next album: recognizing the mask you wear as an individual not to conform to a group, but to assure yourself that such an option—that is, interaction with other people and the possibility of forming meaningful relationships—is available and feasible despite one's introversion and/or disillusionment. The goal is to realize that "the mask" is just as much a part of you as what you're trying to hide, which by definition is contradictory but nonetheless makes sense—like being confident but scared as hell, damaged but hopeful—and that's a beautiful and amazing thing when you're able to communicate... explain yourself to yourself and to those around you, people who won't judge or condemn you, people who might even understand and agree with you. In the midst of trying to figure out all the personal shit in one's life, there has to be external points of anchorage—in those close to you and in doing the things you love, and taking off cross-country with a carload of friends to see one of your favorite bands exemplifies this perfectly. It's about... the courage to set aside any sort of reluctance or anxiety or straight-up fear of the unknown, which in reality is all around you and inside you at all times, already. It's about the ability to stand on your own but acknowledge and accept when you need the comfort of familiarity—friends and family—allowing yourself to be dependent upon and depended on.

Though it's hard to see, it says TOOL in the sand, and that's the way we like it—difficult to detect—in the foreground but at the same time nearly invisible. It's an underpinning force, a... connection. That binds these kids together, as well as their stability if not sanity to themselves, and it's more than us, I don't want to sound conceited or anything. The link doesn't begin or end with our music or even with what these kids get out of the music. It's just there, in between, woven in the memories of moving experiences. It's like... the aura that surrounds awakening. The soundtrack to self-realization. Just look at these three, and imagine the focal point, the eye of the lens—the one holding the camera. They're titans conquering their own divides—vagrant poet-warriors in a screwed-up world where the only thing they can meaningfully change is themselves. They're what's coming next. The purveyors of transformation. Precarious yet inevitable. They are possibility.

Taken from the January '02 issue of the pulp zine Naiveté.