I know this may seem a little strange but it makes sense. I was wondering what the meaning of 10000 days was so I did a little research. I can tell from the lyrics that it is about his mom dying, but what is the significance of 10000 days. Well I found out that his mom had a stroke and was paralyized when Maynard was 11 he talks about this in the song jimmy "What was it like to see, The face of your own stability, Suddenly look away, Leaving you with the dead and hopeless?, Eleven and she was gone. Eleven is when we waved good-bye. Eleven is standing still,". With this in mind the song Judith is about how mad he was at god for doing this to his mom [1]. Now if you think of when his mom died, on June 18th 2003, and when maynard was 11 years old April 17, 1975 - April 16, 1976 do the math and it is right around 10000 days. So this song is about him accepting his mom's death and "10000 days in the fire is long enough, your going home" is saying that it is finally time for his mom to leave this hell on earth and to go where she belongs.


[1]
You're such an inspiration
For the ways
That I'll never ever choose to be
Oh so many ways for me to show you
How your savior has abandoned you

(FUCK Your God)
Your Lord, your Christ
(He did this)
Took all you had and
(Left you this way)
Still you pray, never stray, never
(Taste of the fruit)
Never thought to question why

It's not like you killed someone
It's not like you drove a hateful spear
Into his side
Praise the one who left you
Broken down and paralyzed
He did it all for you...

He did it all for you...

Oh so many ways
For me to show you
How your dogma has abandoned you

(Pray)
To your Christ, to your God
(Never taste of the fruit)
Never stray, never break, never
(Choke on a lie)
Even though he's the one who
(Did this to you)
You never thought to question why

It's not like you killed someone
It's not like you drove a spiteful spear
Into his side
Talk to Jesus Christ
As if he knows the reasons why
He did it all for you...

He did it all for you...

He did it all for you...

Kudos, bro. Looks like you're one of the few that figured it out on your own. Although a few did the math even before the album came out (show-offs!).

I always listened to "Judith" and thought he was angry at the person he was singing about but now that I read the lyrics in that context, he's definitely mad at the divinity they worship, not the person. Interesting...

I just realized that the relevance of the name Jimmy comes from James in Maynard James Keenan. I remember reading somewhere that his mom used to call him Jimmy. I never thought until today that Jimmy was about himself.

yes, if you want more discussion about jimmy there are lots of topics in this forum discussing it

Yup, jimmy and judith make alot more sense now that 10,000 days is out. I never realized that he was mad at God because his mother became paralyzed. I always thought he didnt like his mother. It all falls into place now.

http://toolnavy.com/showthread.php?t=42560

I made the same discoveries =D

I think this song puts The Grudge into context too when you consider the lyrics (Saturn ascending equaling aproximatly 10,000 days). It's basically a song about forgiveness after a long period of animosity.

i agree 100% w/ this post. for some reason i always thought Jimmy was about maynard and his dad, but I have changed my mind.

good work.

Funny how it took me Jimmy, Judith, and 10,000 days before I finally understood what he was talking about.

That is very interesting.

his real name is james hebert keenan
TOOL LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

why funny?

maynards lyrics are generally vague for a reason. theres no shame in not knowing wtf hes on about all the time... ok fair enough, 10kd lyrics are less vague, and more of a slap to the face...

judith is such a profound experience, and with wings for marie..the pattern of grief maynard has experienced seems to be joined together. His extreme emotion and loss comes through astoundingly and its so beautiful, it gets me every single time.

10,000 days is also the rough amount of time that Jesus of Nazareth was persecuted for his views on life. -.-
-just my two cents worth-

true..but judith is an aggressive song,wings for marie is a beautiful song,
there both emotional songs .

Really? I always felt it was fairly obvious that judith especially was him talking to a believer about how little their God has done for them etc...
And yes, it makes a lot of sense he would be mad at God given the situation, and his mother's unrelenting belief despite all that she'd been through.

nice interpretation i was thinking the same thing with judith, but never really knew jimmy had any relation to his mother, well done.

I also see a correlation with 10,000 days and The Noose, APC. Just something about the way he says "How we'll rise to the height of our halo." vs. "With your halo slipping down" It seems to me like hes emphasizing halo as his mother's beliefs.

"So glad to see you well
Overcome and completely silent now
With heaven's help
You cast your demons out"

10,000days - 36.5years - "Bible clearly said that Jesus was resurrected 36.5 "Biblical" years after His birth"

You should take a math class or something.






Not necessarely. Maynard by himself isnŽt necessarely mad at all. I think the song "Judith" tells more about Judith than about the narrator, how strong was her faith and so on.

Or Maynard could just be looking at the situation from that certain point of view (god is an asshole). ItŽs not like singers have to truly experience everything they sing about or writers what they write about. He may just be giving us A point of view, not necessarely HIS point of view.

The angle 3.59758° has astronomical significance. In 10,000 days, there are 366.01 lunar orbits, and in 10,000 rotations there are 365.01 lunar orbits. This most significant intercalation of these three periods are products of the three fundamental astronomical motions, earth rotation and lunar and solar orbits. The difference between lunar orbit motion per 100 days and per 100 earth rotations is 3.59758° or CIR/100, equal to the distances from the Tara complex and from the Newgrange complex to the Avebury complex. Multiplying degrees of lunar orbit motion per rotation and per day each times 10,000 results in nearly 360° of difference. Mean lunar orbit per rotation (R27) equals 13.1404° and, at this latitude, CIR/100 equals about 1,314,040 ft.

ok

Great post. It also says something about his eventual respect for his mother's faith when Maynard says "Fetch me the spirit, the son, and the father", which is obviously the Christian holy trinity that Maynard aledgedly doesn't believe in at all himself.

Great. Still you donŽt know how many years 10,000 days is.

10 000 divided by 365 = 27.3972603

and if you average the normal 365 day year with the 366 day leap year, you get an average year length of 365.5 which yeilds:

10 000 divided by 365.5 = 27.3597811

so yeah.. no matter how you slice it, 10000 days is no where near 36.5 years.

The Noose is not about his mother.Its about a reformed addict being self righteous about being clean for so long and forgetting about the wrongs they commited while being addicted.Maynard explains this on the commentary on the aMOTION dvd.

hmm sorry not providing an insightful comment at all, but does anyone know if Jimmy is actually listed as jimmy, with a lower case j. i remember reading it on the tdn faq and im a sort of itunes freak that i like to have the details of a song correct:)

I'm pretty sure I read a concert review of some sort saying that Maynard said live before they played jimmy. It was like Prison Sex 2. Seeing who you became or who you have become since the abuse. I think people may be stretching looking for a connection between that and this and Judith.

edit:

http://toolshed.down.net/tour/summer97/970629.html

ah here we go..


Maynard was intense as usual but "danced" less and stared
more. The quote before Jimmy (paraphrase):

"A little earlier we played a song called Prison Sex...It
was about recoginzing the cycle of abuse. That's the first
step...the next step is to work through it...that's what
this song is about..."

haha you guys are such n00bs. who analyses tool songs. ***s

I agree, and disagee. The song Jimmy is almost undoubtedly about him working through his difficult childhood and reconnecting with the 11 year old HE was at the time the "face of [his] own stability suddenly look[ed] away."

I'm totally on board with the original poster for the 10,000 days reference. The 3 songs are certainly connected in subject matter. His mother, his childhood, where he was left then, where he is left now, where he hopes to go, and how he hopes to get there.


PS.

As a side-note, I've never been certain that "Judith's" meaning was the apparent and obvious one. This could well relate (at least dichotomously) to a person who may have "left" his mother "this way." I'd be somewhat curious to the details of how his father handled his mothers condition, for instance.

Leap year is every 4 years, so the average would be 365.25 days/year. That's still not entirely accurate for the length of a year but it's pretty close

Not that it matters because 10,000 days is obviously a rounded off number rather than having a song called "9,573 Days" or whatever it would come out to be

His mother died in 2003, after The Grudge was already released for 2 years. Obviously 10,000 days would have had no significance at the time The Grudge was written and there can be no relation

One thing I was thinking through my 2nd or 3rd listen... I believe everything happens for a reason, and although quite sad his mother suffered for sooooo long, Here we are all discussing how much one person meant to another, and examine our own spirituality and such... No doubt Maynard has suffered too, tremendously so. I mean come on, an 11 year old with no functioning mother (although I don't really know the extent of her paralysis) how tough would that be. I lost my dad at age 10, and that was a real life changer. So to sum it up... Maynards mom has touched us all, and thanks to MJK for sharing such a trajic part of his life.
I checked out his wine web site, and in one of the photos, it shows him with his son. I think age 5. Well as a parent myself, having children definately changes your perspective both on the here and now and the ever after...

I dont know if this has been mentioned or not, but on the APC live dvd, there is commentary w/ Maynard about APC's music video's. I was looking forward to hearing it for Judith. He explains that when he says "Fuck your God", he's saying fuck the middle man that has his own interpretation of a religion/belief and tries to push/force it on others. Those are his words. I don't think he is saying "Fuck God". But hey this is an opinon section so...yea peace.

that might be the context of the song, but the album name 10,000 day, i think, has a lot different meaning.

oh, my mistake.. i was doing it in a hurry.. averaging out the leap years should be more like 365x3 + 366 divided by 4.. so you're right it would be 365.25.. i just added 365+366 and divded by 2.

If you watch aMotion Maynard offers a different meaning behind the noose.

I've been a big fan for many years, but never joined the opinion forums until now.
I was so blown away by 'Wings pt 1 & 2' that I just had to see if anyone else was having the same experience. I am glad to see I'm not alone. Ever since 'jimmy' I've always wondered what the hell happened to Maynard at age 11 that was so traumatic that he felt like he needed to reconcile with his 11 year-old self. I sort of always figured it was about his mom based on the 'face of your own stability' and '11 she was gone' lines, but I never knew for sure. I must admit that with 'Wings pt. 1 & 2', that it didn't click with me on the first two passes through, mainly because I was busy trying to take in everythying, not just lyrics, but by the third time around the song hit me so hard both lyrically & musically that I couldn't handle it. I thought I was either gonna cry or throw up. I really wasn't prepared for the emotional left-hook. Once I knew what was going on in the song, my mind flashed straight back to 'Judith' and then to 'Jimmy' and it all made sense. In a strange way I kind of feel guilty, like Maynard has said too much. He's really laid a huge part of himself out there personally and emotionally with this one. Listening to the song, I feel like I've just accidentally walked in on someone who's totally naked. But at the same time, I realize that Tool's continual ability to pack this much substance into their music is also why most of us became Tool fans in the first place....