On Twenty One Pilots and the Point of it All

"What's the point?"
"What are you looking for?"
"What did you come here to find?"

Last Wednesday, I saw Twenty One Pilots play a sold-out show at Cleveland's House of Blues, and frontman Tyler Joseph peppered their high-energy, electrifying performance with questions like these, questions which are echoed throughout his lyrics. For a long time I've been meaning to write a post about the band's lyrics, and I've used a number of their songs for discussion in my Morality classes, but being a terrible procrastinator, I've let that thought sit for about a year. Instead, I'd like to say a few brief words about their performance.
The concert itself was built around the song "Trees," the second-to-last track on their sophomore album Vessels. As they took the stage in hoodies and ski masks, a remix of "Trees" was playing in the background. A few songs later, after a number of wardrobe changes and a succession of masks had finally been shed, Tyler played just the first verse of the song on ukulele before launching into "House of Gold." Again, a number of songs later, he sat down a the piano and played just the first verse, before going immediately into another song. Finally, they finished the concert using "Trees" as their encore. Towards the end of the song, the stage hands brought out sheets of plywood with bass drums fixed to them, and Joseph and Josh Dun (the drummer) came out onto the crowd and played them over our heads.

Given the prominence they gave this song, I think it bears looking at:

                                                                          "Trees"

I know where you stand
Silent in the trees
And that's where I am
Silent in the trees.
Why won't you speak
Where I happen to be?
Silent in the trees
Standing cowardly.

I can feel your breath.
I can feel my death.
I want to know you.
I want to see.
I want to say, hello.

The song itself is fairly simple, repeating these two verses several times as the music builds. At the climax of the song, Tyler repeats the "hello," moving from wanting to say hello to actually saying hello. But to whom?

The first time I heard this song, I was struck by how much it reflected my own spiritual state as one who stands silently among the trees. This song is probably the best example of Twenty One Pilots' overall project, which seems to be a constant sitting with mystery in order to encourage their listeners to think (but don't take my word for it, take theirs, under "band name meaning").

This song is clear evidence of a deep personal struggle, the struggle with one of the most fundamental questions surrounding God's existence: if God exists, why is he silent? The interesting thing that Tyler does here is to recognize that he is also silent in the trees. While he sits with and suffers God's silence, he also sees that his own silence is that of a coward. At the same time, he recognizes that the place where he is, the silence, isn't permanent; it's only where he "happens" to be.

In fact, there may be an implied connection between the fact that God is silent and that the speaker is "standing cowardly." Standing is static, a refusal to move. In some cases, this can be a sign of strength, a refusal to be swayed or led astray. Here, though, the speaker is standing out of cowardice, hiding in the trees, refusing to be led at all. Even in his cowardice, even in God's silence, though, he still feels God's presence, and his own death looming. In light of the fact that he will die, he realizes his own mortality, the fact that he is not God, and because of this, he longs to encounter God.

The song reaches its climax and conclusion at the end, as Tyler chants the last hello's, moving from wanting to say to saying: he is no longer silent in the trees, but is reaching out, seeking relationship with the God whose presence he already knows, because when we know there is a God, we long to know that God.

While they never mentioned God once in the concert or very often in their lyrics, what Twenty One Pilots do is a very subtle form of evangelization. By constantly confronting the culture with the aspect of mystery ("What's the point? I promise you there is one, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. When you find it, though, it is beautiful"), Twenty One Pilots are ultimately confronting the culture with God, who is the Mystery, the entirely Other, the One from whom our meaning and purpose come.

Why is it that they are able to get rooms packed full of people to sing along about things that they may or may not believe or even understand? I think that it's because their sense of mystery touches a deep longing in our hearts, a longing for meaning, for intimacy, and for belonging, all of which are answered and fulfilled in God.

By reaching the culture and holding on to mystery, Twenty One Pilots is already participating in building up a culture of life and hope, and one in which they can softly plant the seeds of an awareness of God's presence. This isn't secret knowledge (they're not gnostics, after all), but their listeners have to think in order to pick up their message, which is, after all, their whole point, calling people out of complacency and into new relationship, especially with God.

Verse From "Car Radio"

There are things we can do
But from the things that work there are only two
And from the two that we choose to do
Peace will win
And fear will lose
There's faith and there's sleep
We need to pick one please because
Faith is to be awake
And to be awake is for us to think
And for us to think is to be alive
And I will try with every rhyme
To come across like I am dying
To let you know you need to try to think