From The Archives 1: Twenty One Pilots in Social and Unsocial Settings

New Blog Series! Hooray! The first and third Tuesdays of each month I'll be posting an essay I wrote during my undergrad. Spoiler: most of them will be about music. I'm not going to edit past a cursory read to make sure I didn't do any stupid grammatical mistakes or anything like that, so it'll kinda be like a time capsule of my work at New College/Hague University! Enjoy!

This first essay was written for a class called Music and the Environment, which was the first class I took with my favorite professor, who became my academic advisor and my thesis sponsor. All hail Maribeth Clark! The funny thing is, me writing about an artist in popular music, in this case, Twenty One Pilots was almost foreshadowing to my writing of a popular music thesis, and there was a couple times that Clark referenced this paper that I wrote, even during the thesis process. Yay for music and popular culture!

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September 2015

          While some of my music I only listen to when it comes up on shuffle, some music types or bands I can listen to anywhere. One such band is Twenty One Pilots. Even though I only discovered them two years ago, I’ve already become attached to the band and their music. Spending time with music in different situations or locations can create different kinds of connections with music. I enjoy listening to music most when I’m listening actively in some way. Socially closed and open situations in which I listen to Twenty One Pilots initiate opposing but essential listening types and social interactions.

            One of my favorite places to listen to music is while riding in a car on a road trip with headphones on. Whenever I get new music, I want to listen to it at least once in this way so that I can really appreciate it. And for me, music through headphones in a car is a particularly meaningful experience from having done it on so many road trips. This aligns with Bull’s argument, which is that being around multiple people and putting on headphones can be disconnecting and create separation from the rest of the world.[1] I don’t mind being closed off if I’m around strangers, but if I’m around people I know, I want our shared experience to be along the same musical wavelength. It’s only when in the car on long trips where I feel it is most acceptable to detach myself from the shared experience and have, like Bull described as, a “private world” within the outgoing world that belongs to everyone.[2]

While I’m on a road trip, I’ve put myself in the mindset of having to stay in that one spot for hours on end and the only thing to focus on besides the ever-changing nothingness outside the window is the music I’ve chosen to listen to. I often listen to the band Twenty One Pilots in the car because I become introspective and focus solely on the music’s characteristics and meanings. As Chion would say, I go between semantic and reduced listening, thinking deeply about the music itself, rather than listening passively. I listen semantically, figuring out the messages in the lyrics and puzzling through their possible meanings and connecting it to my own life.[3] Twenty One Pilot’s song “Car Radio” has very intricate and thought provoking lyrics discussing what it is like to sit in a car without music and only his own thoughts.[4] Even though I do have music, I am deeply in my own thoughts while listening in the car. However, since I do have it, I can blend my thoughts with the thoughts being revealed in the lyrics. I am also a musician, so I can’t help but use reduced listening to consider the different qualities of the sound itself.[5] Twenty One Pilots has a unique sound that doesn’t readily fit in one genre, so I find it exciting to listen to and examine those elements as well. 

Sitting in a car is physically limiting and immobile, leading easily into times of deep thinking. Action doesn’t mean passive listening, though. It can be just as easy to connect with the music in a completely different type of situation.

I go to a lot of concerts, and while I may not listen to all the traits of the music itself, I definitely am listening attentively. Instead of listening to decode the music, I focus intently on the music as a whole, trying to imprint the experience in my brain in an attempt to never forget it. Concert going can be an expensive endeavor; so generally, the people there all came with the intention of wanting to experience the music fully. I love it for just that reason, because I can be surrounded by those who are there because of their love of the music, just as I am, and together we can create a memorable experience.

It’s not one-sided at all though, because the musicians themselves are deeply ingrained in their music and sending out meaningfulness in their music as they perform it. Twenty One Pilots is known for putting on an engaging and exhilarating show. Whereas listening on the iPod can be separating, concerts bring people together in a place where it is acceptable to get up on the shoulders of a near-stranger and scream as loud as you can when the band jumps into the crowd. In particular, during their song “The Run and Go” the lead singer does always ask people to get up on someone else’s shoulders.[6] Because it is such an open environment, at one of their concerts I went up on the shoulders of someone I’d met only a few days before. Whether someone is an actual stranger or not, there is a culture of family and mutual support within the Twenty One Pilot fandom. Rather than a group of fans seeing a famous singer, their shows are more like a get-together of a community that all love some of the same songs. 

But without having had those times listening to their music alone, I may never have connected enough to the music to make it to the experience of going to a Twenty One Pilots concert. So while Bull maintains that iPods can create isolation in that immediate moment, spending that time can create the complete opposite of isolation, although at a later point in time.[7] Hosokawa noted that there was a distinct relationship between street-performers and their city- while some people didn’t take the time to pay attention, there is often an audience that connects deeply with the musicians and their music. Just like the street-performers’ audience and the passer-byers that pay no attention, we also have the shared-togetherness of musical performances coexisting right alongside closed listening of music devices.[8] Except rather than being just one or the other, everyone can be both, and I mix back and forth between the two types depending on where I am. 

            The interactions people have with each other and with music closely tie together. Whether music is a passive experience in the background, or the reason for being in a place together has an affect on people’s interactions. It is only because we recognize those connections between listening types and interactions that we can understand each other and accept each other when in shared or separate experiences with music. No matter if in a quiet car or at a raucous concert, acknowledging that the location can influence people’s relationship with music creates a deeper understanding of how I and everyone else function together as a society.

Bibliography

Bull, Michael. Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision.New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Hosokawa, Shuhei. “The Walkman Effect.” Popular Music. 4 (1984): 165-80.

Twenty One Pilots, Vessel, Fueled by Ramen, 2013, MP3.

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[1]Michael Bull, Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience(New York: Routledge, 2008), as found in Sterne 198-202.

[2]Bull, Sound Moves, 199.

[3]Michel Chion, Audio-Vision(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), as found in Sterne 50-52.

[4]Twenty One Pilots, 2013.

[5]Chion, Audio-Vision, 50-52.

[6]Twenty One Pilots, 2013.

[7]Bull, Sound Moves, 198-202.

[8]Shuhei Hosokawa, Popular Music (1984) as found in Sterne 105-106.