The time signatures of the chorus of the song change from 9/8 to 8/8 to 7/8; as drummer Danny Carey says, "It was originally titled 9-8-7.

"[2] In a 2001 interview, singer Maynard James Keenan commented on the lyric mentioning black, white, red and yellow: "I use the archetype stories of North American aboriginals and the themes or colors which appear over and over again in the oral stories handed down through generations.

Black, white, red, and yellow play very heavily in aboriginal stories of creation.

In July 2017, in an interview with Joe Rogan, Maynard described his thoughts on the song; "...in a way a song like Lateralus with the Fibonacci thing, I feel like I kind of pulled a very pedestrian, sophomoric move by including those numbers in there because in general music is the Fi ratio.

It’s… um… I could do better.” The syllables Maynard sings in the first verse follow the first six numbers in the pattern, ascending and descending in the sequence 1-1-2-3-5-8-5-3.