Toes Across The Floor

My take on this very awesome song:

The first stanza is his opinion on the world and is pretty self-explanatory. The killers should be killed, the religious leaders have social/moral sicknesses, and the poor shouldn't go hungry. But it's more of him asking can he really be the only one out there that feels this way? If he's not the only one who thinks that way then why do these problems exist? I think he comes to the conclusion that he must be mostly alone, mostly different and therefore can not live like everyone else does.

The next stanza is about God and his idea of God. He uses "God" and "dog" interchangeably on purpose because no one really knows who or what God is; people just view God in their own ways and generally assume that God is there to serve their own individual purposes, i.e. provide positive mental/spirital feelings or even provide opportunities or physical gifts. So, in a sense god=dog because they are both slaves to the owner/believer. I think all he's saying in the second stanza is that he has some guilty desire or problem that he needs help with, but it's worded so that it reads like if he asks God, or his own idea of God anyway, for assistance it would be like some kind of rape or severe violation of code of conduct between man and God.

Stanza 3 sounds like he's found God or at least for some short period of time conformed to a set of ideals of a certain religion. He's just getting by, just like every other day before, but he's happy that he's found something even though whatever question or desire or need he's referring to in the previous stanza is still being left alone. He's always open to the invasion of new ideas so he's running with whatever new religion or God he's currently following.

Stanza 4 is just like the previous stanza; he knows he's not getting what he wants/needs out of this religion even though he's making it appear that he's a loyal follower. This dog or God is fine for others but it isn't working for him, because their God/supernatural slave by law does not exhibit compassion/sympathy or advice for whatever his "perverted thought" is.

The last stanza is him saying he's through with pretending to be part of this other group and their God. He'll have his own God and hope that it's the right one, and he'll talk to him but he still doesn't expect to receive help for whatever it is he's most desperate for (whatever the "perverted thought" is). If he ends up wrong though and the others are right, and the God who they say serves them is the one and only real God, then maybe that God will be his friend, i.e. understand and pity.

Then again, maybe Shannon Hoon wanted to get it on with a dog. I don't think so though, and I really hope not because he was and still is my favorite vocalist, but you never know these days. This comment is going to be really long and probably confusing to anyone who reads it, but oh well. I read this song for like 10 minutes and this was the main meaning I could pull from it.

R.I.P. Shannon, and hopefully your bandmates burn in hell for relaunching Blind Melon without you. I heard the new guy and he sucks a big fat hard one.

i won't say that any of you are wrong. art is open to interpretation. as a fellow artist and writer, i will offer my humble interpretation. all art conveys the artist's unique point of view. notice his plays on words. he reverses the word god to make dog and vice versa. god is essentially the highest level of being, benevolent, loving, and good, while dogs are considered to be lesser beings, ruled by their temper, resorting to violence to maintain pecking order in the pack. also pay attention to the fact that he uses both definitions of the word lie--#1 to lie down, and #2 to tell a lie. this illustrates the confusion he feels inside himself over the subject at hand, this paradox he feels inside. shannon opens the song by stating very plainly what his point of view is on the subject he is thinking about. (killers should be killed...healers should be healed...so all these beggars can be filled)

next he talks about how that thought is perverted. it's perverted for the simple fact that if he kills all the killers, he too will become a killer, therefore, defeating the purpose of his wish to make the world a better place and rid it of all killers. he's owning up to the fact that even though he has good intentions and is not lying about being a good person (why am i to lie...holding firm and feel the right), the thought is a lowly thought (lie beside this dog of mine), but he really wants to get rid of the bad people in the world and make things right (...really run through my mind).

in the next stanza, he's overcome by the monotony of life in this imperfect world ( this day's the same as those before) what happens when you drag your feet? you scrape your toes across the floor. although he feels love for the world (feeling giddy), he has exposed parts of his inner self he wishes he would not have shown (never giving myself that uninvaded door). in other words, he's said too much.

so, instead of these dark thoughts, now he must create something more pleasing to share with the world (glittered room for view) not "for you" like they have written anyway, he wants to break free from this conondrum (start sitting so pretty) because it just doesn't add up in a moral sense (not thinking clear...things ain't fittin here). you can't do bad things to anyone and then call yourself a good person, no matter what the other person has done. so he won't do those things. he'll just stay with being a good person (lay... beside this god of mine) and continue to think about those things (perverted thought burn a hole in my mind). but if he can't call himself a good person because of these perverted thoughts he's having(if i can't lay my head beside this god of mine), he may have to depend on time to rid the world of the killers.

think about it. what does a hunter's dog do? i grew up in a family of hunters, so i have been around hunters' dogs all my life. the dogs are bred and trained for tracking down and /or retrieving the object of the hunt. in this song, the "hunter's dog" is death. it's "called God" because everyone must face death in time. so in the end, death will be his friend and kill the killers, so he won't have to become a killer himself. and he will also, upon his own death, be free from these perverted thoughts and the anguish of being torn between trying to remain a good person with bad thoughts or becoming a killer who wants to make the world a better place.

where is the love for this song!!!! I love this song im not really sure what its about but if u notice, in the second stanza he says DOG and in the las he says the same thing but reverses it to make GOD. I'm not really sure what its about but it makes me think of when i do something thats not good enough i feel like i should just lay down and not do anything letting "thoughts burn a hole in my mind"

Im not really too sure either, but i kinda feel that its about like expressing your views that arent popular to other people and getting shot down for them? who knows tho, i sure dont

i think this song is about faith...(dont ask me to explain...i wondered about this for a while and im still not sure)

It's about being alone so long that your thoughts become distorted

I think that with a mixture of Shannon's born character and influences he picked up along his way he gained a certain preternatural understanding and thought process of life, and at the same time he was more attuned with true nature than most people. I can't say what this song means. From what I've read about the way he would put together his lyrics it might mean a number of things. But like many other songs of his, this song, line from line, sounds like he payed attention to things that most people don't.

LMFAO enjoy at ur last few lines... Bitter much?!? :-) travis is ok but he is no hoon eh?? :) I love this song and I really enjoyed ur take on it. Thanks for ur insight. Shannons songs can be so complex sometimes :) anyone else think it interesting he also interchanges god and dog in wooh dog? Just found it curious :) rip Shannon and happy bday yesterday. Miss u bro.

one last thing to add about Mr. Hoon himself. he was a great writer, musician, and lyricist. in my opinion, one of the greatest of our time. "why does something beautiful have to die before we listen?"

I think the song is about feeling like you're going crazy and loosing your mind. You see in the first stanza what he feels and then you have people telling him that he shouldn't say those things. And when he talks about lying down with dogs, it's like the saying "if you lie with dogs you're gonna get fleas." Then in the third stanza he talks about how he just slugishly going through life and not giving himself space from other people who are telling him he's wrong. Which leads him to make a facade for other people which cause him not be able to see his own thoughts clearly. Then in the last stanza I feel as though he has just given up trying to fight and is letting the thoughts of other people enter his mind. I think this is shown when he talks about the Hunter's dog. The Hunter being Orion and his dog being Sirius. In anciet Greece when the star called Sirius could be seen during the summer they thought that was what made dogs pant instead of the warm weather. This made acient greeks think that dogs went crazy because they where ruled by the star siruis (dog star) giving rise to the phrase "dog days of summer."