What does Weak and Powerless mean?

A Perfect Circle: Weak and Powerless Meaning

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Album cover for Weak and Powerless album cover

Song Released: 2003


Weak and Powerless Lyrics

Tilling my own grave to keep me level
Jam another dragon down the hole
Digging to the rhythm and the echo of a solitary siren
One that pushes me along and leaves me so

Desperate and Ravenous
I'm so weak and powerless over you

Someone...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
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    Aug 30th 2009 !⃝

    Wow. You guys need to understand what a lot of Opiates will do to someones mind and body. Its a secret dark love affair for the rest of your life. Being weak and powerless over your love for what makes you whole again. And by "Jam another dragon down the hole" talking about shooting heroin down the needle. and lets not forget when he comes right out and says it: "Someone feed the monkey while I dig in search of China
    White as Dracula as I approach the bottom." Its a dark love affair, cause we all know how much it kills us. But without it after so long, its all you have come to know and love. Always going back for the "piece of mind
    Whatever just as long as I don't feel so..."

    All I can say is this: Unless you have given your life to opiates, there isnt a chance in hell to truely understand or feel what opiates do to a person. These songs of MJK's have multiple meanings, reason is, there is a whole crap load of feelings and information that he has on any 1 subject or point of view, that he has to be a little mysterious. But when he sings of Opiates, you know darn well why.

  2. 2TOP RATED

    #2 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
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    Sep 4th 2006 !⃝

    Tilling my own grave to keep me level = maintaining what will eventually bury him in death. He does this because he believes it's what stabalizes him.

    Jam another dragon down the hole = ever heard the saying "chasing the dragon". Well, he's jamming the dragon down the hole. Injecting.

    Giving into the solitary siren = he does this alone and it always leaves him weak and powerless

    someone feed the monkey = heard the saying "monkey on his or her shoulder"? I think it represents a habit.

    While I dig in searh of china = going "down hill". Think where china is in perspective.

    White as dracula as I approach the bottom = white as in pale as he goes down hill.

    The devil has my ear today... = he doesn't want to hear the bright side. He's not open to it because he believes the devil (or habit) will bring him peace of mind.

  3. 3TOP RATED

    #3 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
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    Apr 28th 2006 !⃝

    I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the last guy's own interpretation was good but not one hundred percent correct. This song is about trying to fill the empty void or "hole" as represented by the hole in the ground. She keeps throwing in what Maynard called "creepy crawlies" to fill the void but she always needed more. This song is about the weakness and emptiness people feel when they are addicted to anything, more specifically drugs. They keep shoving the drugs in and they can never completely fill the void. The hole in the girls stomach was representing the chakras that were empty, all the inner parts that she was now missing because of her addiction. ggkthnks <3.

  4. Br0nson
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    Feb 20th 2023 !⃝

    The narrator of this song is a narcissist. The obvious drug references in the verses are the narcissist's need for "supply" which is often described like a drug addiction, as the need to control and push down someone else to push themselves up. The bridge is the narcissist trying to explain himself, as good and bad are optional to a narcissist. This song has an untypical happy ending as the narrator is lamenting the loss of control over the victim (us).

  5. anonymous
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    Nov 2nd 2020 !⃝

    The lyrics had an odd meaning to me

    I think weak and powerless is about the internal conflict Maynard had trying to confront his drug addict girlfriend that was mentioned in the song blue

    >> "Tilling my own grave to keep me level"
    To till is to prepare soil so he was preparing the grave for the death of the relationship

    >>"Jam another dragon down a hole"
    chasing the dragon is a way of doing heroin which is was his girlfriends was on

    >>"Digging to the rhythm and the echo of the solitary siren"
    A siren in greek mythology was a creature who would sing a song to convince lost sailors to come to them ultimately killing the sailors, the meaning of this line is, the siren in his head (conscience) is telling him it'd be better not to confront her about the problem as he's digging the grave of the relationship

    >>"One that pushes me along and leaves me so desperate and ravenous"
    The siren is telling him not to confront her about what's happening and he desperate to give in but he knows he's has to face reality

    >>"so weak and powerless over you"
    He can't control his inner conflict

    >> "someone feed the monkey while I dig in search of china"
    Distract the siren while I look for way to address the problem

    >> "White as dracula as I approach the bottom"
    Scared as I approach the girl

    >>"Little angel go away, Come again some other day, The devil has my ear today, I'll never hear a word you say"
    It's about conscience but instead of the angel (good) he took the devil (bad) so instead of confronting her and trying to get her to stop, he chickens out of it

    >>"He promised I would find a little solace And some peace of mind Whatever, just as long as I don't feel so desperate and ravenous"
    Maynard followed the bad side of his conscience to make him feel better for the time being but his girlfriend later ended up overdosing and he realises this was a mistake

    MMM yes just a thought though

  6. anonymous
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    Sep 30th 2020 !⃝

    I personally feel that this could be about having to deal with every thing you don’t have control over. But to ones opinion his own.

  7. anonymous
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    Sep 12th 2019 !⃝

    In MJK's eyes you are all right to interpret the music and lyrics anyway that connects to you on the level or place you are at in life. I heard him say in an interview once about Tool's "Stinkfist", and I'm not verbadem, "If you want to think it's about fist f***ing someone then great....that's where you're at in life". I have listened to MJK steady for about 20+ years and the amazing thing about his music, whether it be with Tool, APC, or Puscifer, is that songs and lyrics that I listened to when I was 15 have different meanings than now being 33 and the experiences that I've had from then until now. Ask me in another 20yrs what this song means to me and it will probably have a different meaning to me in that moment and time in my life.

  8. anonymous
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    Jan 30th 2015 !⃝

    My interpretation is just my opinion keep that in mind. But anyway to me it's almost like he's talking about the control a women has over a mans life, typically if there in a relationship and the fact that the man will do anything for her as long as they can stay together I've seen it happen. Tilting my own grave to keep me level, jam another dragon down the hole, someone feed the monkey while I dig in search of China sound like chores to me. Chores he will do simply because she asked. He won't argue he'll do it if it means we can still be together. Some will know they're in that position and know there isn't much they can do about it: "so weak and powerless over you" but anyway that's just the interpretation I got out of it. Thanks for reading.

  9. anonymous
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    Jul 1st 2014 !⃝

    Don't u all know what China white is?

    But I guess that's why music is so awesome. Each person interprets it his or her own way.

    But really? China white is heroin, the strongest form.

    Don't go rapping about shit you don't know or understand.

  10. anonymous
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    Sep 8th 2011 !⃝

    she kinda reminds me of Sadako from the horrormovie the Ring, but the blond version of it. the way she is crawling around and uses her long creepy fingers and so on.

  11. anonymous
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    Dec 23rd 2010 !⃝

    This interperatation to me means he is feeding himself with drugs as they envelop him and take him over. Watch the music video it correlates it.

  12. anonymous
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    Jul 20th 2010 !⃝

    it is most obviously about god who is at this point reffered to as an addict and to cave its addiction , humanity is used as a solitary substitute for torture,corrupt & misery ....

  13. anonymous
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    Jun 6th 2010 !⃝

    Weak and powerless by a perfect circle--

    i think this song means that he/she is either in love with someone who doesn't feel the same, and they're lonely and powerless and "desperate" to have the one they love. So they dig themselves deeper into a hole where they try to escape the thoughts of what they can't have.

    or it is about a drug addiction, as someone else explained before me.

  14. anonymous
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    Mar 26th 2010 !⃝

    This song is definitely about drug addiction...when a person is addicted to a drug (opiates or otherwise) they convince themselves to use, even when they don't want to. This makes them weak and powerless. I think Maynard wrote the song to describe his own personal issues, but also to generalize it. In N/A, the idea is no one says which drug they were addicted to, so everyone can relate. I think that's coming across here.

  15. anonymous
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    Dec 13th 2009 !⃝

    Ok could it be that maybe this song is nothing but nonsense jumbled together to get a rise out of the interpreter?

  16. anonymous
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    Oct 14th 2008 !⃝

    I do agree with some of the interpretations I've seen so far, but before you make one please note that music can mean anything you want it to... So Maynard could be singing about almost anything. But the interpretation of the lyrics being about drug addiction is very persuasive & likely lol.

  17. anonymous
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    Sep 2nd 2008 !⃝

    Feed the monkey is to get the monkey off ones back, you know, the saying. To dig to China is not to "score China white" whoever said that, really, that would be too simplified for him to say it like. If you know tool and PC than you would know that, ok...The reptiles and snakes are represented by the serpent. Yes she is supposed to be Eve. She is upset for what she did by forsaken God so she rezents the serpent for how it tricked her so she throws them in the hole to be divoured by the little creatures. The hole in her stomach is there I believe because of what she did and the only way to heal it is to do away with evil, in other terms all the serpents around her in the forest represent the sin she brought upon herself by doing what she was told not to and doing away with them shows that she is doing away with sin , that being the way to heal the hole.... just my interpretation

  18. anonymous
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    May 11th 2008 !⃝

    I think the chorus it saying your desperate because you spent all your money and you need to keep going but the only thing left is to steal for whats ever your addiction is. Little angel go away is a friend telling you that you need to stop but you know you won't.

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