^ I should think Ben was suggesting we return to discussing those sections of the album that deserve to be disputed.

to me it sounds like:
"damn my eyes.....Jambi eyes.....dim my eyes if they should...."

but it is easy to hear all three....can't wait until saturday when i can hear it live.

Heard it live on Monday...it's "damn", all three, like I thought.

Agreed.
It doesn't sound like anything other than "Damn my eyes"

I agree with that too. I don't hear "Jambi eyes" at all...

"Dim my eyes..
Jambi eyes
Dim my eyes..."

This is the correct one. Listen through very good headphones. You can definitely hear a difference between the first 2 lines.

Dim My Eyes
Dim My Eyes
Dim My Eyes


and as my friend Jimmy the Pineapple would say "CASE...FUCKING...CLOSED"

yeah he seems to say dim my eyes live. so whether it is interpretted as something else i dont know but dim my eyes is the closest we are gonna get

using an audio editor i extracted the vocal track from this song and can distinctly hear
Damn/Dam my eyes
Jam my/Jambi eyes
Dim my eyes

the first one is a very clear short A sound not an I sound. the second one to be honest, I definately hear the hard J but can't distinguish a B sound. The third one is very clear on the audio track

I'm hearing:

Damn my eyes.
Damn my eyes.
Damn my eyes.

The overall tone (to me) is of someone in anguish, in conflict over their weakness before temptation. In that context, I suppose I'd be damning my eyes too.

It's probably both (where the name Jambi came from, that is). It wouldn't be the first time Maynard alluded to more than one sing with a single phrase; Aenima/Aenema anyone?

Regardless, it is not Jambi any of the three times. The J sound is just a weird pronunciation of D, somewhere near J. Try saying "dim" or "damn" forcefully; move it a little closer to "jim" or "jam" and you'll get to the sound Maynard is making. That B sound is definitely just a hard M. And for the last time, Jambi is pronounced Jahm-bee, not Jam-bye. Go through all of Tool's and A Perfect Circle's songs and find me a place where Maynard intentionally pronounced a word completely wrong.

As for the real word, I personally hear "dim my eyes" all three times, but it would sound almost identical if he were saying damn. The fact of the matter is, dim is more powerful of a lyric and makes more sense in the context of the song. Damn my eyes may be a saying, but it does not make any sense in the song. Dim my eyes makes just as much sense alone and fits better in the song; plus damn simply doesn't fit the singing at that point! He sings it far too powerfully to be saying a simple swear. The lyric has meaning behind it, and the only thing that makes sense would be dim: technically, reduce or eliminate the light going into his eyes. We say to dim things all the time, not literally meaning the light. It doesn't need to make literal sense, but it should make sense without reaching. Ever heard of Occam's Razor?

However, it is very possible that he means both at once. There are many places in this song where he seems to say more than one thing at once due to the pronunciation. Perhaps more duality?

Is this really still a debate?

I dont know what the hell orca is trying to prove...

That it's "dim my eyes" three times, or "dim my eyes" and "damn my eyes" at the same time. There were plenty of recent replies (and not gravedug either), and there appeared to be no resolution, so I put in my two cents.

NO!

I don't see a reason to go through the songs. I can type one off the top of my head:
"Saw the gap again today"
Sounds more like: "Saw them Gap-am-gam-tom-day".
Oh, and good luck to all those who make effort to decipher this anyways.

I vote "Dim my eyes"
Although, maybe I didn't get the Tool-club decoder ring out of my cereal box like everyone else seems to have......

Heres a thought.

Every one keep their thoughts about the lyrics to them selves, its been almost half a year and this same conversation continues. It doesnt matter

Think what you want and keep it to yourself.

every angle has been coverd.

But it still sounds mostly like "Saw the gap again today". "Jam-bye eyes" has its vowels pronounced totally differently from every other pronunciation. The only justification I see for absolute mispronunciation is the pronunciation of the "æ" in Ænima as "aw" (as in father) rather than the usual "ee" (as in free), but they're consistent about that.

"Jambi" (JAHM-bee) has to do with the way the lyrics are sung - iambic pentameter; it's Finnish for 'iamb'. As we know Maynard, how often does he use the song title, especially obscure ones like this, in the actual lyrics? (i.e. 'schism,' 'parabola,' 'lateralus,' 'opiate,' ænema,' 'prison sex,' etc, etc.)

That outa the way, I'll throw in my interpretation. I threw in my idea on the Jambi lyrics page, but I'll toss it here, as well. I'm not so sure it's "damn" my eyes. I'm thinking it could be "DAM my eyes," stop the tears from leaking if 'they' won't compromise. It makes the most sense to me, followed by "dim my eyes."

Not quite... no one's been man enough to suggest something like, "Jimmy eyes," or "damn/dim/jam my/jam-bye ice," or making some weird political inference about Condaleeza Rice... Nor my suggestion, as I posted before this.

I personally like hearing people's thoughts. No matter how random or seemingly unrelated to the song they may be. The Condaleeza Rice thing would be interesting to hear...

Listen to concerts. You can clearly hear Damn.

i'm gonna throw in a vote for "dim my eyes." damn, u guys read into the lyrics a little deeper that what i'd imagine maynard had even intended.

Well, to be fair...
- Sweat (sweating)
- Part of Me
- Cold & Ugly
- Jerk-Off
- Sober
- Bottom
- Crawl Away (crawled away)
- 4°
- Eulogy
- Forty Six & 2
- Pushit (push it)
- Third Eye
- Maynard's Dick
- No Quarter
- The Grudge
- Vicarious (vicariously)
- 10,000 Days
- Right In Two
That's around 40% of Tool's songs with Maynard...

Hah - can't believe this post is still around alive and kickin'.

Glad to see it attracted mostly thoughtful responses - maybe the world's not done for afterall. =)

So after listening to the song about 10000 times...

I've come to believe, and proclaim once again, that JAMB-EYE is indeed at least in there once.

I'm pretty sure he is pulling out a triple entendre with that word, as people have pointed out (Jambi the Indonesian province; Iambic pentameter; and Jambi, Pee Wee's Genie).

So what he is saying "Damn my eyes" -> they are "Jambi Eyes" (they want everything and they're going to compromise our fulcrum if I allow them to pursue everything) -> Jam My Eyes (if they should compromise, you know the rest).

Though at first I didn't hear the B in Jambi eyes - I'm quite sure it's there now. It makes such good sense. Such amazingly great sense. This is, afterall, a love/wish song for his son - Of course he would use such a bizarre, yet beautiful and poetic (maybe the right word is special) triple entendre he'd thought of at an earlier time for it. Only Maynard writes "Wish songs" hah...

'damn my eyes'

it's 'damn my eyes'

you'd say the same thing if life was fucking up right in front of you. maybe you would wish you were blind sometimes because you couldn't deal with what you were seeing.

seriously though, everyone in here...reading so much into these lyrics...listen to rosetta stoned more...pay attention to the lyrics.

stop reading into mayo's lyrics so much...
i thought we all liked TOOL for the MUSIC ?

Both "Damn my eyes" and "Shit the bed" are phrases that were much more common years ago.

Shit the bed, as it was explained to my by my father long, long ago, was used to describe either someone who died or soeone who made a terrible mess of something, and it was contrived supposedly, due to the fact that when some people die, in bed, their bowels empty, thus literally shitting the bed. I use this phrase frequently and have for many years.

Damn my eyes, was used to explain shock at something a person saw that they never thought they might see or wish they had never seen. It might be a long lsot loved one, it might be a flying saucer, it might have been their parents in the sack, but "Damn my eyes", was an expression of disbelief or shock at a visual stimulus, they don't always make perfect grammatical sense, and misuse can lead to confusion.

and on topic, Damn my eyes always sounded right and made the most sense to me, I listened hard for a J sound or inflection and just could not find it, I just hear D's.

I think the problem in all of this is everyone is hearing what they want to hear. when you listen to it you should do your best to have an unbiased opinion and not be set on what you are hearing.



I listened to jambi 4:20-3:50 just now on repeat a whole bunch and what seemed to fit to me was
damn my eyes
dim my eyes
dim my eyes


this makes me lean towards dim my eyes x3 or what I just said only. I dont really think the 2nd or 3rd sounds anything like damn but there is a slim chance *** it is damn my eyes x3. both damn and dim fit the lyrics perfectly so it comes down to what you hear really, I dont feel either way you interprite it affects the song lyrically too much but just for correcness I guess would be the only reason any of this is still even up for discussion.



I think jambi being interprited as what maynard is saying should be completley dismissed, I tried and tried to even hear a J at all and I didn't. I'm 100% positive would bet my life and the world on it that maynard does not say jambi. I think it is just as plausable as him saying giraffe.

i still think it's only "DIM my eyes"

I'm convinced that it's:
"Jim buy eyes"
Which begs the question: who the fuck is Jim and are his eyes really bad enough that he needs to buy new ones?

The climax of this song has distorted the whole damn thing. Let's not argue about what the words are, but why they are distorted to the point of question. Obviously, the words are about his eyes. Let's go with that. He wants to change his eyes, because what he is seeing is unbearable? What is he looking at that is so bad?

I will continue to post that Maynard's lyrics come second to the music or even the rhythm of his vocalizations. What Adam, Justin, and Danny are doing during that part of the song is miraculous! I almost feel optimistic or happy during that part of the song.

I read the repetitiveness of this post and wanted to "D-HAH-MMMMN my eyes for . . ." spending the time reading it.

i completely agree with felix45. theres NOW WAY IN HELL he says "jambi eyes", or "jim buy eyes" or whatever. its clearly only "damn my eyes" or "dim my eyes".(as felix said) i think he might switch it up a little and say them either or. (like damn my eyes dim my eyes dim my eyes) ya hear what ya wanna hear, but theres still now way in hell he says anything with a J in it.

THE OFFICIAL JAMBI LYRICS HAVE BEEN RELEASED ON TOOLSHED.DOWN.NET. thought i'd share the news.

It's really?

yes i agreed to its like jambi eyes

The answer lies within the song Lateralus. "over thinking over analyzing separates the body from the mind"


It's "Damn My Eyes". What else would it be? Nothing else would even make sense given the context of the passage in the verse. Nothing. And don't go all "Dim" high horse on me, that shit makes NO SENSE!

"Damn my eyes if they should compromise our fulcrum if wants and needs divide me then I might as well be gone..."


Get it now?


/thread