Pet

@si4ws89 It's actually 12 steps of addiction, not 13. But yes the album is about addiction, but I think each person can get still interpret how they will. Personally I have no experience with addiction, but to me I can identify with the government aspect of the song. So for me that is what it means to me, irrelevant of why Maynard wrote it. As an artist you have to accept that people will identify differently with your work.

@si4ws89 I know how you feel. This song/album resonates with me as well. I'm sorry for everything you had to go through but I'm glad you're doing alright. <br /> <br /> Anyway, I completely understand where you're coming from. I too have seen aMotion clip you were referring to. The thing is, Maynard is notorious for intentionally misleading fans when explaining the meanings behind his lyrics. His explanations for the meaning behind Judith and 3 Libras respectively are almost comical. It's like he likes loves playing with people's minds. That's what's so captivating about him. He thrives on being very enigmatic. He hates being a celebrity hence the make up, wig, costumes and performing in the back/side of the stage at live shows. I've seen almost all if not all of his interviews and he very rarely gives out serious/sincere answers so I wouldn't necessarily count on his explanations. 13th Step is indeed very well centered on addiction and the failure of 12 step programs (13th step being Relapse. A common joke within AA circles) but not all the songs on it are about addiction. This one being one of them. The line "Swaying to the rhythm of the New World Order" and the reference to sheep and war drums alone are a dead give away, I think. It's the only subject that makes sense to me. Like most art forms, songs/lyrics are open to interpretation. This to me is very straight forward once you get the topic. This song helped wake me up. That's my take on it.

@si4ws89 still listening in 2017! But couldn't agree with you more. It's obviously about the comfort of drugs or even alcohol to me. That escape that you look forward to everyday, the one thing that helps you sleep at night. It's a really sick, yet true meaning of the song

@si4ws89 i dont blame any of em Maynard may as well be god at this point

@si4ws89 MJK - "I think that there's many meanings that we really strive for within<br /> the music. There's layers of interpretation." Yeah he might of said this about a Tool song, but he is the same person. There is no single meaning to Maynards lyrics. He makes them to be interpreted in many different way. Get your head outta ya butt and actually learn what MJK is about. He may have said that cuz that is his inspiration, but he has and always will want the individual to think outside the box and make their own views. Dont blaspheme Maynard. He is basically a god at this point.

@si4ws89 Well but the world really isn't a safe place, anything can happen to you, the good and the bad and it may be due to your actions, or incidentally. Sometimes even with the best intentions and the best expectations and all possible knowledge of your situation you just can't predict what will happen and it may take a wrong direction, we are no gods. Suffering is a part of life as well as joy, you just can't avoid it even though the amount of it may differ from one person to another. The thing is that it's not a reason to give up and run away by using drugs and killing yourself. Another thing is that there are many other ways of escape, all forms of art may be kind of escape, or just any activity where you get caught up, you basically become the activity itself and lose the world from your sight forgetting who you are, where you are, forgetting how complex you are as a person, forgetting your pain, forgetting everything. It's important to have the gratitute for being alive and having this possibility to enjoy every moment of it from any position, to keep faith, because nothing lasts forever. That being said I think everyone has some kind of relieve and it's not bad thing at all, it's necessity to a certain extend, but too much of anything is harmful. I also think that this world (talking about western lifestyle) could use more kindness and sincerity to lower the ubiquitous pressure.<br /> <br /> Sorry for the elaborate, your comment just made me think a lot :)

@si4ws89 People who have spent time in meetings for addiction know about the 13th step. For those who don’t know, a 13th stepper is someone who uses meetings to hook up with others or find romantic partners. For this reason, it’s entirely appropriate for this album to be titled Thirteenth Step to make reference to experiences with romantic partners within recovery, A Perfect Circle wouldn’t be A Perfect Circle without painful, specific and relatable love songs. \r\n\r\nI love that the band added in this lesser known tidbit of information that only addicts and loved ones of addicts who have gone to meetings would understand. I myself haven’t any personal experience with addiction but spent many years trying so hard to help my sister and mother and went to a lot of NA meetings, unfortunately to no avail. It took me far too long to realize that an addict will only change if they themselves really want to. You can’t save someone else no matter how hard you try. \r\n\r\nThank you so much for this interpretation and sharing your experience. Happy to hear you’ve found recovery.

@si4ws89 People who have spent time in meetings for addiction know about the 13th step. For those who don’t know, a 13th stepper is someone who uses meetings to hook up with others or find romantic partners. For this reason, it’s entirely appropriate for this album to be titled Thirteenth Step to make reference to experiences with romantic partners within recovery, A Perfect Circle wouldn’t be A Perfect Circle without painful, specific and relatable love songs. \r\n\r\nI love that the band added in this lesser known tidbit of information that only addicts and loved ones of addicts who have gone to meetings would understand. I myself haven’t any personal experience with addiction but spent many years trying so hard to help my sister and mother and went to a lot of NA meetings, unfortunately to no avail. It took me far too long to realize that an addict will only change if they themselves really want to. You can’t save someone else no matter how hard you try. \r\n\r\nThank you so much for this interpretation and sharing your experience. Happy to hear you’ve found recovery.

@si4ws89 Justin1039 absolutely nailed it!!!

Incorrect. Maynard stated on the aMOTION DVD what this song is about. This song is about addiction. When the addict is so far into their addiction that the world seems out to get them and the only safe thing in their life is their addiction. The entire album The Thirteenth Step is about the thirteen steps of addiction. It's an entire drug album. When this song was remade into Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums, it was redone to take on the anti-government meaning you describe here. <br /> <br /> Think what you want about the meaning behind the song, I'm only telling you what the man who wrote the song says it's about. Sad to see so many misinformed APC fans out there. Considering Maynard rarely says what his lyrics truly mean, I figured you guys would take it as the word of god when he does. This album has very deep meaning to me and describes a long, painful few years in my life dealing with an ex, and I can see exactly where Maynard was coming from when he wrote this album.

@ajsteph this is one of the stupidest things I have ever encountered.

@ajsteph spot on. I agree. It’s a song about corporate enslavement and isolationism of the people to me. Sort of what’s going on in america since corporations have been used to violate peoples rights.

@inrandomtandem ok I thought I was the only o e that interpreted that way. At first I was like do I like this song cuz that's kinda weird. But I did like it n now I feel like it's protecting of a child from this fucked up world but ya "pet"

@knowforever I got the exact opposite idea from these lyrics. This is not good advice from a benevolent higher power. It is literally the wolf telling the sheep to trust only the information that comes from him, don’t think for yourself, believe what the overlords and their media gatekeepers tell you, stay a helpless child reliant on the government to protect you from the ‘boogey man’ which for liars with nefarious motives always turns out to be the truth. <br /> <br /> Maynard is so skill full with his lyrics and so prescient about how the corrupt system works that it fulfills this meaning on every level. From all forms of addiction used to numb, control and distract the masses to the demand for being the sole agent of control (‘protect’ you from using your discernment to ascertain reality based on a variety of information sources and making decisions and accepting responsibility for the consequences including learning from your mistakes…they want you asleep to the true nature of their intentions and kept under their mesmerising spell, compliant and obedient, not an adult with god-given sovereignty and the maturity to understand our obligation and responsibility to protect the precious freedoms that were wrested from tyrants with blood. They want you trust government and WEF and the corporate captured public institutions to look after your best interests, to keep you in a childlike state of dependence, the last thing they want is mature adults who are confident in their ability to survive and thrive outside their control. Pay no mind to the rabble, they don’t want you listening to other independent minded truth seekers, and they will demonise and censor all inconvenient observations and questions because lies do not stand up to the light of truth for long.<br /> <br /> The message is their modus operandi, and they’ve become so confident and brazen about it that they simply censor any views contradicting or questioning the inconsistencies in the official narrative openly, calling it misinformation and demonising the ‘rabble’ with slurs like ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘anti/vaxxer’ or anti science when the opposite is true. In their Pinocchio world everything is the opposite to reality. Science welcomes being challenged and tested, so what they call ‘following the science’ is actually a faith based cult of conforming results to a preset agenda, the word for that is scientism. They use people’s faith in real science and their lack of awareness at the level of corruption that has infiltrated every level of our system, inculcating trust for authority and the urge to conform to the ‘experts’ they accredit through the ‘education’ system which is really an indoctrination program. That people are hypnotised and in cognitive dissonance is apparent as they continue to trust that the government somehow works for them and has their best interest at heart in the face of constant, long-standing and ongoing demonstrations that dishonesty, self-seeking, power-hunger, immorality, greed and outright criminality are the true motivations of those who since Covid are openly ruling us with out consultation or referendum to even give window dressing of supposed democratic decision making. <br /> <br /> Now they have developed the all the technology they need to implement a worldwide totalitarian state that will reduce the majority to the level of serfdom while the 0.001% rule with the help of AI to implement ubiquitous surveillance and eliminate all notion of privacy or human rights, even to the right to think your own thoughts in what used to be the privacy of our own minds. <br /> <br /> This is the Global New World Order that Maynard has been trying to warn us about, and addiction is but one arm of this powermad group of billionaires arsenal in its war on humanity. This is a multi-generational plan and is getting close to fruition. Of course Maynard didn’t spell it out because he would be endangering his life and career and those of his loved ones if he openly attacked them, much like people like David Icke and others who have been ridiculed and ‘discredited’ as kooks and others who have lost their lives for threatening the plan in any way- look at Julian Assange, they are doing everything in their power to get him to the US so they can execute him or send him yo Guantamo for exposing how inhumane their military tactics and decision making in the field is - and that’s for just exposing a peripheral detail. <br /> <br /> It is no accident that so many people who are enslaved by addictions are those who are the most intelligent, sensitive, spiritual and creative. Addiction is one of their main arsenals to imprison our spiritual growth and atrophy our potential for personal power and growth. Added bonus is that it destroys our health and impairs our mental acuity. The sugar and chemicals in processed and junk foods are a case in point. <br /> <br /> They want you isolated, feeling overwhelmed and powerless with nowhere to turn but the government for your needs and manufactured wants. What they DONT WANT is an awake population spreading truth to trigger those still hypnotised by lies to break out controlled propaganda matrix and discover the true nature of their situation. They don’t want people to realise they have been misdirected to fight each other in order to obscure who the true enemy behind the controls are. And most of all they don’t want the population to unite for freedom, truth, justice and God. <br /> <br /> Because it would make their plan so much harder to implement against an organised resistance. They’d much rather manipulate people into compliance. Which has proven to be be phenomenally successful in this latest Covid Trojan horse scam to get us all to willingly give up our privacy and freedom of movement and association in the name of ‘safety’ and ‘health’. It’s so sad that people cannot see their so-called concern for our health as the blatant mechanism for implementing new powers that people would otherwise reject. That’s why they don’t teach true history in any official institution of education, because they have used the same playbook over and over and if people knew their history they’d recognise what’s being perpetrated. They’d know that vaccines never eradicated or saved any population from any disease, that celebrated propaganda ‘victories’ like the purported eradication of childhood polio and the dreaded smallpox along with many other diseases were already in decline because of improvements to hygiene practices and the engineering of environmental sanitary improvements like sewerage systems and pest control. I was ignorant as we all have been at some stage because the propaganda is so all pervasive and the evidence to prove malfeasance is actively suppressed. I had been convinced that anti-vaxxers were anti-science kooks too, even after I realised that this latest experimental juice of secret ingredients utilising the utterly novel mRNA technology had to be unsafe to use just with the info they supplied at the start of it being ‘warp speed’ development skipping steps and no medium or long term vetting. They were claiming they knew some thing they couldn’t possibly know. Then the bribes, then the threats - if it works why do they need to bully people, all that is needed is an honest forum of discussion to allay fears or just as importantly confirm them. But lies avoid the light and hence even questioning has become ‘disinformation’. Then I thought they’ve lied about this, what else have they lied about? And yeah, now I know that they had to demonise anti-vaxxers at all costs because again their genuine concern about the safety of these travel and childhood mandated vaccines does not stand up to the scrutiny of questioning and the demand for evidence.<br /> <br /> What a rant but here we are. Most people think that all this album is about is one man’s personal experience of drug addiction. They don’t even notice the subtle critique of the only approved faith-based cult ‘treatment’ of this condition, it’s corruption and in efficacy. <br /> <br /> Great lyrics and music encapsulate multi-levels of interpretation and changes as the level of our spiritual understanding and life experience grows. That’s why albums and songs like this are true masterpieces, you can go back to them again and again and realise something new.<br /> <br />

I hope you know the another version of this song "Counting Bodies Like Sheep" (from eMotive) which actually is about the war, opposite to "Pet" telling the story about the drugs or about the love (maybe that was Maynard's intention - combine love with addiction?).

Tumil's right.. The song 'Pet' is about drugs, love and violence. The video symbolizes that, the words show whats about. ObessiveTendencies you weren't too far of. i like your meaning but its not totally right, he's telling his story through a song (his addiction to drugs).... i dunno if im totally right, but that's what i get from this song..

I also believe that the song is about our current state in world affairs. I do believe maynard has an opinion on these issues because you all know that he is a moral person. He does not have to write about "politics" in order to talk about things that are moral and things that he thinks should be changed or thought into more. That being said I also believe that he writes his songs so that anyone listening to can apply them in a personal way to themselves. That is why we all have grown to love his music with every project he explores. Apply what it means to you but never shut out other people's opinions. Keep an open mind and consider every possibility.

tht does make sense but there are lyrics tht contradict it extremely so if u could decode every line tht would make it more believable.

@ZenAndTranquility Ironically another poster says that Maynard wrote this song about drug addiction, so he must really be frustrated with you. As you not only tell people that their interpretation is wrong and yours is right, whilst suggesting Maynard gets frustrated with people getting different meanings from a song. Yet you are apparently "wrong" too.<br /> <br /> This shows that as an artist you either make sure your lyrics are explicit in their intention or accept that each person will get something different from the song and lyrics.

Spot on!