Tool: The Pot Meaning
Song Released: 2006
The Pot Lyrics
You must have been out your head.
Eye hole deep in muddy waters,
You practically raise the dead.
Rob the grave to snow the cradle,
And burn the evidence down.
Soapbox house of cards and glass,
So don't go...
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To me, this song is a convoluted expression of a hierarchy. It's about power,greed and how a mind brought up in power will never see what someone outside power will see, the twisted and immoral reasoning behind a politician/man in power. It is also a constant reminder that in order to progress, you must reflect upon ones self and realize your wrong doings. If you commit an act like a sheep, without reason or cause you are only going to contribute to the system. You are not in control of the system. Anyway here is my interpretation of the lyrics, it is broken down for your benefit. Tell me what you think :)
"who are you to wave your finger?
Ya' must have been out your head.
I think this is said in a hypocritical sense, Waving the finger may symbolize pointing the blame and responsibility onto someone else, although you have also committed that act. You must be crazy if you can point the blame onto someone else, to clear your conscience of your guilt towards your own wrong doing.
Eye hole deep in muddy waters.
You practically raised the dead."
Your judgement is clouded by the surrounding uncertainty which scares you, no one wants to know how deep the rabbit hole really goes. You are only plunging as deep as you are in control of (eye hole deep in muddy waters) and you fear the system. The only thing that is certain is that you are contributing towards the depravity of human kind because you fear change, you fear power and you fear questioning your own morals.
Rob the grave to snow the cradle,
And burn the evidence down.
To benefit from anything less than your own class because you can get away with it. Creating laws, reaping money, Tax, upping your own wages, all because you can, Turn left to the man next to you, is he questioning your morals? No, he is doing the same exact thing! Turn to the man on your right, he is looking to you, Are you doing the right thing? No you are thinking of the man who just upped his wages and got his new car. You find any excuse to fall in line with the crowd! If you were to look down at the man below you, you just spat on him. You burn the evidence by disguising your doings as a motion decided by the 'people'. As long as the crowd is doing it, you will not find prosecution, You are nothing but a sheep following the flock to the greenest grass.
Soapbox house of cards and glass,
So don't go tossin' your stones around.
Soapbox =Simply a House of power, Ruled by the few.
Cards= Politicians (Kings, Queens, Jacks, Aces) =Power
Glass= The smokescreens that no one questions, The interwoven series of immoral justifications like Tax,'Laws',Fines.
With the powerhouse so complex with lies and deceit, Every lie relies upon another lie,another justification and another politician. If one was to point the finger to a card, he must see through the glass, then that card would point the finger. I think the stone symbolizes a 'fault' in the system, a backfire or a maverick which causes the glass to start smashing. :)
You must have been high.
You must have been high.
You must have been...
Head in the clouds Mr fat cat. When will you realize what you are doing? When will the system change? When will we one day embrace this utopic notion of 'equality'?
Foot in mouth and head up ass so/asshole,
What'cha talkin' bout?
The only way to run that soapbox house full of cards is to use the other cards and let them use you. When you ignore those accusations and don't meddle yourself in troublesome matters you won't be pointed at, until you have to face your own.
What'cha talkin' bout?= Ignorance and denial to preserve your power and keep your assets. The day you point the finger is the day you will be sacked by your fellow hypocrits.Foot in mouth and head up ass so/asshole= Brown nose? Standing on someones head but your head up someones arse? Sounds like a soapbox house to me.
Difficult to dance 'round this one,
'Til you pull it out, boy.
Until you come clean and live like the majority you will always have to tread lightly.You will always have to be sneaky, be perverted and lie. That day you finally question the system, your own morals and abandon the perverted, sadistic ways of power you will embrace equality.
You must have been so high.
You must have been so high.
Still think you are innocent? Still think your ways of thinking are pure and benefit the many? What more do you want to hear before you will change your ways?
Steal, borrow reefer save your shady inference.
Kangaroo done hung the juror, with the innocent.
No matter how well you cover up your tracks you are still the vile ,
UNFINISHED.. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I think this song completely is about pot...but not concerning itself with pot, just about the controversy surrounding it.
1. kangaroo courts. we've figured this one out. kangaroo courts were made to prove people guilty without evidence, usually on ganja-related cases.
2. weeping shades of indigo shed without a reason. well if you melt red white and blue together it makes indigo. So I'm thinking this refers to how the government has raised the war on drugs for no reason whatesoever.
3. The song might be about the pot calling the kettle black, but in that sense, I think it refers to how the government has outlawed most psychedelics, depressants, hallucinogenics, etc., but trades tons of the stuff illegally each year and still gives people a criminal record if they're caught with two night's worth of weed on them.
see? it's like the pot and the kettle, but it's also quite literally referring to weed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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My interpretation of this song is that so many people tell other people that they are doing something wrong when in truth they could be just as worse..
Who are you to wave your finger
you musta been out your head
eye balls deep in muddy waters
you practilly raise the dead
rob the grave to snow the cradle
and burn the evidence down
soap box house full of cards and glass
so don't go tossin your stones all out
this song to me is not so much about drug use, but rather than all of the hypocrites in the world telling people not do something wrong when they do the same thing to a worse extent, like don't smoke weed, when they smoke four times as much as anybody else (the weed thing was the first thing I took from the song) -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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First of all, I don't think Maynard would go so personal with the Pot, actually the title itself is about "The pot calling the kettle black", that's what Adam said ^^ Anyway, it's not like Hooker in a Penis, criticizing the critics of Maynard. It's more a general thing, attacking the law. Note, that a lot of drug smuggling cases in the US, are penalized really high (50 years without a parole option). Most of them are kangaroo, everyone knows what's the verdict before the trial begins. And that's why the jurors are hanged, because if they don't agree to vote "guilty" in a kangaroo case, they will also be caught. Of course, this might also apply for other cases.
And the punchline is, after the lawyers got so much attention, probably got rich and things like that, they also start doing drugs.
I hope this one might help :P Cheers ^^ -
Hey guys, it's really nice how you've been arguing here about the lyrics.
But I think it's best that we have so many different interpretations. Almost everyone can find the one that fits best for him.
When I first heard the song, I immediately thought about weed, because I had some experience just at that time and it may be the aim of the author, that you can take the meaning and shape it with your imagination.
And btw, great music too ;) -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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Kangaroo refers to kangaroo court. The specific one he's talkin about is when people where tried for petty drug crimes and senteced to unfair punishments
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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The song is actually about hypocrisy and the name actually is no reference to drug use whatsoever, but to an idiomatic term (pot calling the kettle black.)
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I hope you readers actually get to this post, even though its so far down the list.
I think if you put a few of these interpretations together it makes sense. First of all, I, like all of you, thought the song title was reference to weed, but in light of the kettle reference, it's quite clearly about hypocrisy "the pot calling the kettle black"
Added to this, the Kangaroo part does in fact refer to Kangaroo court where a judgment is almost handed down before the trial. This ties into the hypocrisy theme by pointing out that the jury themselves are being judged as fools by the courts and lawyers, hence their preconceived notion about the verdict is in fact hurting them (the lemon in the eye part)
But hey, all in all its a great song.
Justin. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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