A Perfect Union of Contrary Things

by Maynard James Keenan

Imagine a table with only one leg.” Boots Newkirk’s class never knew what life lesson he had in mind when he began his lectures. He stood a copy of the 11th-grade history text on end and laid his grade book off-center across its top. The class burst into nervous laughter as his shaky construction collapsed across his desk. His message that long-ago day had been on the importance of friends—or, more precisely, on the absurdity of depending upon one best friend, one girlfriend, one significant other whose inevitable abandonment would result in locker slamming and tears. Better to build a community of support, Boots advised, a more complex framework with enough components to withstand change and uncertainty. He illustrated his metaphor by standing two books, then three, then four on his desktop, at last setting the grade book atop the secure base. It was a matter of simple geometry, he explained, the axiom that stability increased as forms progressed from point to line to triangle to square, the notion that the strength of a whole depended on a sufficient number of parts, each in place, and a counterbalanced tension among them.