What Do I Gain from This?
On content consumption
So had a sudden burst of inspiration and this is it, so have fun reading it or don’t, whatever you want :)
One thing that I like to think is important to me is consumption of edifying content. I try not to be a mindless consumer, just chasing the next dopamine high. (But if we’re being real, who hasn’t found themselves doing that? I’m certainly guilty of doing this occasionally, but I still try to keep myself in check, but it’s always going to be a struggle.)
If I’m going to strive for that, the question I’ll have to keep asking myself is “What am I gaining from this?”
I found myself wondering that as I was listening to the song “Trapdoor.” It’s a song in the last half of twenty one pilots’ self-titled album from 2009, and it’s pretty dark. There’s no real resolution in the song itself. All we’re left with is
Everyone gather around for a show
Watch as this man disappears as we know
Do me a favor and try to ignore
When you watch him fall through a blatant trapdoor
‘Cause nobody knows his life
The chord progression resolves, ending on a nice major chord, and let’s face it, this song has an epic bass line. But besides all that, what do I gain from ingesting this? Well, nothing—at least, not from this song by itself.
This is another reason I love this band: they’re all about interconnectedness and long-running storylines. One of the next songs on the album is called “Taxi Cab,” and the comparison between it and “Trapdoor” is like night and day. Where “Trapdoor” and broods, “Taxi Cab” comforts and rejoices, especially with the lyric “Don’t be afraid/We’re goin’ home.”
“Trapdoor” is about succumbing to the darkness; “Taxi Cab” is about delivery from it.
There are many twenty one pilots songs in the same vein as “Trapdoor,” especially older songs. Some examples are “Air Catcher,” “Migraine,” “Car Radio,” and “Semi-Automatic.” Tyler Joseph (the lead singer) had some very enlightening things to say about that last one in particular when he was asked to do a commentary on Vessel:
There’s the lyric…[“I kinda like it when I make you cry”]. If you really think about that, it’s really not good…it’s one of the most hateful, evil things you can do, to gain pleasure out of seeing someone suffer. You know, we think about the reasons why we do things. If I know I’m gonna hurt someone, or do something wrong, why would I ever do it again?…Why is it that we continue to do wrong things?…Why is addiction even a thing? These are all things I ask myself, and I know there’s something wrong with this world…there’s something wrong, and we need to figure out how to fix it.
The point that I’m trying to make is that this older music is just a starting point. Every good story has to have a main conflict, and in this case, we’re talking about the conflict between good and evil, of the form “How do I fix what’s wrong with me?” Pretty much all of twenty one pilots’ music has been an exploration of this question, and many others, from every possible angle. Once the question is understood, it just might be ready to be answered.
And now we’re at the end looking back. We have answers now, and, believe it or not, a definite conclusion. It’s called “Drag Path,” and I’ll have to dedicate another post to it, but for now suffice it to say that it gives us the final question: “Can you find me?”
It wouldn’t be an ending if the answer wasn’t “You found me.”