The Ancient Fable Hidden in Twenty One Pilots' "Blurryface"
Fans of the two-man-band, Twenty One Pilots know their song, “Heavydirtysoul.” What they may not realize is that one of the song’s best known lines is a distillation of an ancient fable.
“Heavydirtysoul” appeared on the band’s 2014 breakthrough album, Blurryface. The song was one of six to achieve platinum status on an album also featuring hits like “Stressed Out” and “Ride.” Blurryface also achieved the unique success of having every single one of its songs certified gold or better by the Recording Industry Association of America.
“Heavydirtysoul” unites caustic rapid-fire rap verses with a pleading melodic chorus set against a steady rhythmic backdrop provided by the band’s dynamic drummer, Josh Dun. Lyrically, vocalist and songwriter, Tyler Joseph uses the song to confront the twin problems of human purpose and mortality. Drawing on a previous poem of his, “Street Poetry,” Joseph says,
“Mindless zombies walking around with a limp and a hunch
Saying stuff like, ‘You only live once’
You've got one time to figure it out
One time to twist, and one time to shout
One time to think and I say we start now.”
Some present the fact that we “only live once” as an insight. But, as is often the case, this is a fact that means almost nothing by itself. The question is what to do with this one life. Is it worth living at all? And if so, which of the many possible purposes should we commit ourselves to? Speaking on behalf of the wider humanities, Joseph suggests “we start now” in answering such questions.
The first half of the song builds to a brief midway crescendo of halting cymbals and elongated guitar notes. The sonic intensity sets the stage for what has become the song’s best-known lyric. As if offering an incantation, Joseph twice recites
“Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit.”
In 2017 a reviewer wrote,
“Heavy Dirty Soul includes the viscerally poetic metaphor: ‘death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit,’ and that's the kind of wordsmithery that buys a lot of good will.”
Fans have created art featuring the lyrics. Some have even gotten tattoos with the quote and relevant imagery.
During an electrifying September 11, 2024 performance of “Heavydirtysoul,” Joseph left the recitation of these words to the band’s more than 15,000 fans gathered in an Orlando, Florida, arena. As the audience called out “death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit” video of a running skeleton dog flickered on and off on the giant screen behind the stage.
The lyric has been understandably highlighted as a rich simile, poetically emphasizing the way we might experience the looming threat of death as an inspiration to live meaningful lives. Such an expression fits philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s contention that it is a mistake to contort the “certain prospect of death” into a justification to abandon life. Our awareness of mortality, wrote Nietzsche, “could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity….”1 More directly, Joseph’s simile most directly aligns with an ancient fable featured in the late first century CE author, Babrius’ work.2
I discovered the connection in May 2023 as I sat in a hospital waiting to be inspected for some sharp pain in my leg. It turned out to be some sciatic pain and tapered off in the days to follow. (Strange and newfound pains accompany aging, a fact poetically pertinent to the discovery at hand.) At the time I was reading through a collection of Aesop’s Fables translated by Laura Gibbs. I brought the book to read as I waited to be seen in the emergency room. Wincing from the waves of pain and flipping through the hundreds of stories, my eyes serendipitously fell upon a short fable about a dog and a hare. Pausing to read further I immediately recalled Joseph’s lyric in “Heavydirtysoul” and recognized the fable as its ancient predecessor.
Basics of Aesop’s Fables
One point of confusion worth first addressing is the fact that what we call “Aesop’s fables” weren’t necessarily written by Aesop. Herodotus, the ancient Greek innovator of systematic, historical writing, treated Aesop as a real person. According to Herodotus, Aesop came from Thrace, today’s Balkans, and lived in the 5th century BCE. The later Greek novel, The Life of Aesop, gives a legendary account of Aesop as a man who began life beset with problems from enslavement, ugliness, and a host of disabilities. Yet, as the story goes, Aesop goes on to win the support of the goddess, Isis, and improve his situation.
The fables we today call “Aesop’s fables” are the result of a many centuries-old oral tradition. Though there was no book by Aesop, people of classical Greece regularly shared and reflected on the fables attributed to him. As the classicist, Laura Gibbs explains, “To ‘go over’ or ‘run through’ Aesop meant to bring to mind all the many occasions on which you had heard the stories of Aesop told at public assemblies, at dinner parties, and in private conversations.” The stories and anecdotes were compiled in written form much later, sometime in the first century CE, by poets including the Roman Phaedrus and a man named Babrius about which very little is known.
A final point is that the ancients believed Aesop’s fables were meant to be told by and for adults and not children. And though they are usually funny and entertaining, fables, unlike a pure joke, offer moral/life lessons rather than strictly humorous punchlines.3 These moral messages were conveyed in a few different ways.
The fable might offer up an example of immoral behavior, such as treachery, or we might be given a tale that highlights exemplary conduct. The lesson might be didactically stated before the story, what is called the “promythium.” Alternatively, the lesson was featured after the story, the “epimythium.” Otherwise, the moral was simply expressed, implicitly, in the story itself, the “endomythium.”4
In Which Dogs Inspire Rabbits Hares
The inspiration for the “Heavydirtysoul” lyric may well be an endomythic fable by Babrius titled, “The Dog, the Hare, and the Goatherd.” At the very least, the lyric bears a striking thematic resemblance to the ancient fable.
Babrius’ fable tells of a dog experienced in hunting who pursued but failed to catch a rather unimpressive hare.
“A dog who was not unwise in the ways of the hunt had stirred up a furry-footed hare from behind a bush. He set off in pursuit of the hare, but the hare outran him.”
A nearby goat herder witnesses the failed chase with bemusement, and razzes the dog over his failure.
“One of the goatherds scoffed at the dog and said, 'That hare's only a little fellow, but he turned out to be faster than you.’”
The dog defends himself against the slight by pointing out—it's a fable, remember, so the animals get to speak—that no one is more motivated than those whose lives are at stake.
“The dog replied, ‘It’s one thing if you are running in a hurry because you want to catch someone, but it's another thing entirely if you are running for your life.’”
This is the last line in the fable. Since we get no stated moral at the beginning or end of the fable we are left to our own devices to decide the point. Is the dog just rationalizing his failure? Perhaps, but I think the more charitable conclusion is that he’s imparting valuable wisdom. Death or newfound awareness of our limited existence can sometimes inspire us to transcend our limits and accomplish feats previously thought impossible.
And it’s this insight that the “Heavydirtysoul” lyric, “death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit,” so succinctly conveys. Setting aside the rabbit/ hare distinction—hares have longer ears and hind feet and are generally larger than rabbits—the lyric and song bring Aesop’s fables into the present once more. We are given time to pause and contemplate the significance of our mortality.
On the one hand, the fear of death can foster fear-inspired stagnancy and hopelessness—defeatism and futility. Yet, as Nietzsche and many an existentialist have pointed out, death can also issue a clarion call to life, to taste the sweetness of life and realize our fullest potential.
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From Nietzsche’s The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880). In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), Nietzsche wrote, “I show you the death that consummates—a spur and a promise to the survivors. He that consummates his life dies his death victoriously, surrounded by those who hope and promise.”
Very little is known about Babrius. Laura Gibbs writes, “Currently scholarly opinion casts him as a Hellenised Roman who lived and worked in Cilicia (modern Turkey or Armenia) during the reign of a certain ‘King Alexander’ in the late first century CE… “
Gibbs, “Introduction,” in Aesop’s Fables. Oxford World’s Classics.
Gibbs, “Introduction,” xiv-xv.
Absolutely agree. We might wish for immortality but I think we really wouldn't know what to do with it. I do wish we had a few more years of prime time, though!