The Pantaloon
Before we take a look at the lyrics of the third song from Twenty One Pilots, let’s look into the song’s title and the term we hear throughout the song: “The Pantaloon”. According to Wikipedia, a Pantaloon (or Pantalone) is a character from commedia dell'arte, a form of theatre formerly called "Italian comedy" in English. He is an old wealthy man “with little else to occupy his thoughts after a life as a tradesman or merchant”. I quote this specifically because this line describes my late grandfather a lot. He ran a small business that raised my mother’s family. When he got really, really old, he’d occasionally ask about it out of nowhere, and we would assure him with a smile on our face, knowing in our minds he had forgotten that the business was already gone a long time ago. My grandfather wasn’t wealthy or greedy. There was just little else for his memory to remind him of, after half a life of working hard to support his family. In the same fashion, elders often talk about the war, and dementia patients often recall bits of their lives as working persons. All of these ties to that description of the character Pantaloon, as well as one of the main themes in this song: dementia, or at least, getting old and “losing one's mind” (and memory).
In 3 minutes and 33 seconds, a man’s life is told in a second-person pov. He had seen how his grandpa lost his mind and died. Eventually his father became the Pantaloon. Then, he is a Pantaloon. Throughout the song, we hear a recurring bass melody. I’d like to think that this bass line represents the end of an old man, both his cognitive decline and his death. After the intro verse, we first hear the melody line being played with other instruments. It’s with the other ones, a more distant issue. It’s also distant to the 9-year-old, all he knew was a slight peek into what the Pantaloon is: “you should never trust the Pantaloon” (*I’ll talk about this at the end). In verse 2, we can also hear it slightly when Tyler mentions “your dad”, reminding us that It has gotten “closer”, to you and to people “closer” to you. Verse 3, Tyler raps in third person pov with pretty much just the bass line. The character is now very conscious about what “death” is (because he has grown enough and seen enough to understand the concept), and what “getting old” is: physically getting weaker, and mentally losing the energy we once had, as we all “used to hustle all the people walking through the fairgrounds”, but we don’t have the energy to rush anymore, let alone going to the fairgrounds - a place often for the children and the youth to play in. Verse 3 also ends with “a Pantaloon” instead of “the Pantaloon”. Getting old isn’t that much of a big deal to use “the” anymore. What was once formidably “The Elder” in our young eyes, has become “just another old guy”, as the character is also just an old man at this point.
During the bridge, towards the last chorus and death of the character, Tyler sings along to the bass line. The melody has become the bass line. The person is facing death himself. For the phrase “you like to sleep alone”, I’d like to think that “sleep” can also mean dying. The person is used to colder bones (could be about feeling cold/sad at night/tough times, or in a literal sense, being more sensitive to cold temperature as he ages, as well as seeing more cold bodies of the dead as he grew). Death might still be scary, but the person has witnessed enough, so he is ready to “sleep” alone now.
The vocals of the choruses also add to the closing in of our end, and the meaning of the word “friends” changes as the song progresses. Tyler’s main vocal is calm and rather emotionless in chorus 1, as death is still distant to us. The friends who “fertilize the ground”, are more like the adult friends that may be our distanced relatives. In chorus 2, the main vocal is accompanied by a harmony. The friends here are the ones who died sooner than us, maybe even a close friend who died of some accident or tragedy. Chorus 3 starts with accepting “your” own end, and since every friend of your age has died, “you” decide to let go, so lose your mind. While losing one’s mind means that one has gone “crazy”, or in this context might relate to having dementia, a “mind” can also mean our consciousness, and losing it would simply mean death. And so, the person joins his friends, as the backing vocals and harmonies join in the last chorus.
But, at the very end everything goes quiet, and Tyler sings the phrase “lose your mind” all by himself. He did it in quite a weird way, almost like he’s laughing a bit. Remember how I mentioned that the character Pantaloon is from “Italian comedy”? This reminds me of a quote from Charlie Chaplin: “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” It feels like Tyler is directly singing to the listener here, telling us how funny it is that we all become a Pantaloon in the end, so much so it makes you lose your mind. (He probably has too, anyway, as the way he sings it also sounds like he’s lost his mind.) It is sad, it is cold, but it is inevitable, because this is life. So tragic, yet so ironic, that it is comedic. All of this is told, through the happy music and depressing lyrics, by The Pantaloon.
*To me, the line “you should never trust the Pantaloon” has two meanings. One is obvious, the Pantaloon deceives, he is sinister (which is a nature of the character Pantaloon) or you can’t trust his words because he has lost his mind. The other, though, is more about how you can’t always trust an elder’s ability to take care of themselves. My grandma would say she’s not tired even though I can clearly see her worn out face. Or in a more simple sense, I wouldn’t let her walk home by herself. They might overestimate their aging body’s ability, or they simply don’t want to be a burden so they urge you not to worry. But they are getting older. Especially for elders with serious dementia, you can’t really trust them on their own because they might not be capable of simply staying safe.
(I do not know much about dementia so I tried to speak more generally, but it is hard to avoid this topic and I apologize if I was wrong about it in any way.
