Using music and meditation to run 14km

A colleague asked once what music I listen to while running. “Sigur Ros, recently,” was the answer and she looked at me like I said I put beer in my coffee (which I would probably do because coffee is disgusting). But I get it – you hear they’re heaps in movies and TV but it wouldn’t really work in Rocky. Works for me though, sometimes.

Maybe I use music and/or run differently to others. I love running because it forces me to clear my often overactive mind. Music is not the fuel, it’s what blows out all the clutter so I don’t waste energy. I’ll listen to whatever sounds tap into whatever thoughts and feelings I’m carrying at the time; it helps to embrace and process that energy but let go of actual thoughts. Basically, when it works, it’s meditation.

Organisers of big fun runs seem to think pumping out trance music (I don’t even know/care if that’s the right label) through large speakers at the starting line gets runners ‘in the mood’. These aren’t rave parties; I want to clear my head, not get off it. I find running quite an insular, personal experience.

So it is as I stand in the Arts Centre forecourt at 7.30am on Sunday 17 November, 2013, as the sun slowly warms Melbourne, waiting for the 8am start of the 14km City2Sea. The night before I curated a playlist, 1:23:06 in length, hoping not to need the last couple of tracks.

Indeed, the final song, ‘Blue Order/New Monday’, was selected for the post-run high, though it feels appropriate to cue it up now as I mentally prepare, and use its mesmerising drifts to try and drown out the noise pollution. I feel good about this run on this rare perfect spring-2013 morning; I just wish they’d shut up their stupid beats.

Breaking into a stride as I crossed the start line, I flick to The National’s ‘Terrible Love’ – the song I’ve started every run with since I recently got back into it recently. It opens with a pending sense of dramatic purpose you can use to feel as though you’re taking on a meaningful challenge, and will kick its arse. And there’s something in the way it warms up and hits stride that perfectly complements and drives my mental process as I get going on a run.

I started in a good position, at the back of the first group – special treatment for running on behalf of a charity (work roped me into all this four weeks earlier). Having someone who runs marginally quicker than you want to, that you can mentally lasso, is great for maintaining a soft focus, kind of like a mobile drishti, if yogis would let me use the word in such a way. I also love working through the pack in these runs, while ignoring anyone passing me.

‘Feel It’ is the perfect song in that zone. Repetitive and rhythmic in a way that seeps into you, with a ‘fuck it’ edge that helps me unshackle weighty thoughts. As I pass 2km towards its end I realise that, just quietly, at just under ten minutes for what usually takes about eleven I’m off to a damn strong start.

Yeah, I timed the playlist the night before to keep an idea of how I was tracking without being too distracted by the clock. For a while I stopped timing my runs, telling myself I didn’t care, that it was all about health and headspace. But it actually helps. I’m a little competitive and want to run well, so what? Feelings are great, but it’s nice to have a measurable thing too. And although (because?) I’m not obsessed by it, it’s sort of like a mental drishti during the tedium of longer runs that keeps attention away from particularly tiresome thoughts, like ‘why run when I could walk?’

After the psychedelic dirge of ‘Doused’, ‘It Happened Today’ brings an uplifting mood change. I smile as I look ahead at the sea of sun-soaked heads bobbing up and down along St Kilda Road. Great choice. Minimal, rhyming and rhythmic lyrics followed by an ‘outro’ of exalted wailing that lasts more than half the song. From about 2:05 minutes onward it sounds like what flying must feel like. Three-and-a-half kilometres in, running with focus, energy and a smile, I feel at least like I was cruising.

‘Cherokee’ has a bit of a bloody-minded attitude that I like, which works well enough as I start to sweat and get some messages from the body that it wouldn’t mind a seat.

Then ‘Rival’, one of several songs on this list inspired by a best mate who ‘gets’ running, and tapped me on the shoulder two nights earlier as we watched Black Rebel Motorcycle Club perform it live and said “Great running song”. I thought of him – the guy who recently did the one thing I am *pretty sure* I never will: run a marathon – as it burst into my head. He’s the kind of rival that inspires me to push myself rather than beat him. We almost never run together, but talk running regularly.

Then ‘Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)’ and ‘It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)’. ‘It’s Never Over’ is basically my current favourite song so I knew would be a good distraction and provide some much needed endorphins around the 6-8km mark. They seem to work as a pair and I like them together, so ‘Awful Sound’ got a spot too.

Approaching the 8km flags, as ‘It’s Never Over’ eases into its soft final minute or so, a truly awful sound invades my earspace. A few ‘young people’ in red shirts are grooving and ‘woo-hoo’ing by a DJ set up with four big, red, ugly letters spelling out ‘N O V A’. Disgusted, I put fingers to my ears as I pass.

‘I Remember A Time When Once You Used To Love Me’ (instrumental, soaring and one I haven’t listened to for a while) doesn’t work as well as hoped. Perhaps it is just badly placed, but it isn’t what I need as things get tough.

‘Life Is Hard’ (another new favourite) on the other hand, comes in perfectly for that point just past halfway where you feel the struggle but can’t yet look to the finish line. “The mind wants to give up before the body does,” I remember a yoga teacher saying. If the cries of “Come, celebrate! Life is hard!” can’t get me in the frame of mind to relish smashing through those mental barriers then nothing will.

Despite the fatigue, I’m pretty happy with myself by the time ‘Dog Days Are Over’ starts, crossing the 10km line about a minute in, having aimed to be get there by the time it finished. It has great energy and is troublesome when driving because I always want to clap.

I don’t feel like clapping. The legs are a pounding the ground a little heavier, the arms need relief from being held up in ‘runners position’ for 50 minutes, my body is running out of fuel and I know I have four kilometres to go. Still, I also know I will finish, it’s just a matter of dealing with the tired discomfort. I’m breathing well, that’s something.

A kid is on the side of the road holding out his hand for high fives. I want to, I really do, but I don’t have it in me to change my line. Look straight ahead, run straight ahead, breathe, move the legs, feel it, use it.

‘Oceanographer’s Choice’ has a wonderfully defiant sound, but neither it nor the beautiful, long, instrumental psychedelic rock trip ‘You Look Great When I’m Fucked Up’ are working for me.

Perhaps nothing would have for the 11-13km section. Maybe I need no music at all when all energy is going into just moving the legs and breathing. Looking sideways to check the position of other runners is somewhat nauseating and thinking is like lifting weights with ‘jelly arms’ (which is actually great for rewiring an anxiety/OCD-prone brain).

The finish line is firmly in mind during the last three kilometres. Those fucking teases make us run past it, up Beaconsfield Parade for about a kilometre-and-a-half, before turning back. Streams of people are across the road heading for home and I just want to see where we turn around.

By the time I’m on the other side, coming past the 13km flags, the rousing intro of ‘Rise’ from The Dark Knight Rises soundrack gives me a burst of enthusiasm, before it quickly lulls into long, sombre strains and I fall back into nausea, remembering there are still several hundred metres to run.

I ease off a little until we finally hit the beautiful final turn for home. It’s not the perfect song for the last dash, but I barely hear it; my drishti now is a big red inflated arch and everything goes into running at it. I may not be able to beat my mind for 14km but I know I can beat it for 100m, bursting into a hard run and obliterating everything in my head that’s been urging me to stop and bloody well sit down. It hurts but it will be over in 50, 40, 30, 10 metres, and then gives way to a rush of endorphins, a fantastic feeling, with a mind as free and energised as my body is exhausted.

No one pays me any interest. It’s just me and the Dark Knight Rises soundtrack as I walk and breathe deeply. Shit I love that music. I feel like I’ve accomplished something pretty cool, or defeated bad guys or something. At least in my own body and mind.

‘Sometimes’ comes on as I walk into St Kilda’s Crimmins Reserve and knock back a cup of Gatorade followed by some water. It made the list because it’s an awesome ‘struggle-town’ song, but I’m not really into it today for whatever reason, and pay it little attention.

People are filling the lawns of the reserve, bathed in sunshine, looking out to the sea. They give us medals and a copy of The Age, both of which I find a bit silly. I put the medal in my pocket and indulge in the feeling of accomplishment, having run better than ever before. I think about when, a few years ago, I had neither the physical, nor mental capacity to run more than 2km.

Finding shade under a palm tree, I lie down in reclining bound-ankle pose, looking up at the clear blue sky and let ‘Blue Order/New Monday’ wash over me again. They’re playing that goddamn stupid music here as well, but I close my eyes and tune it out, letting this great feeling just soak in. Happy, calm, content.

Aware that I may seem like an entitled man taking up space and ‘airing’ his groin, I place The Age strategically and care nothing further about it.

Then, after the song finishes, I stand up and tweet my result (which shocked me), with the hashtag ‘#IDGAFbrag’, something like an achievement selfie. And suddenly I’m reconnected to the ‘real’ world, but I feel much better in it than I did about an hour and a half ago.

City2Sea 2013 playlist

Song – ‘Blackburn’

Housesitting and dog-sitting in Blackburn. My brother left me a guitar, a keyboard, beer and a Mac with GarageBand. So I mucked around with them.

Inspired by late nights in warm houses with cold beers and good friends, and thoughts of the moon over Blackburn Lake.

Song – ‘Dog Eared’

Roughly played, recorded on iPhone. Collaborated with @therealisation using an iPad. All in all, reasonably happy.

smiles and dancing in the darkness

music videos dont do much for me, but i fucking love this one

is it dark? you bet your hellbound arse it is.

is it depressing? not to me. i guarantee many people would think so though.

a grim-looking ‘country-horror’ band singing of death and hell to a miserable, all-but-lifeless congregation of ‘zombies’ in a beautifully sunlit, adorable little chapel. its already a fucking bundle of visual contradictions, and then enter an innocent young girl, blonde and sweet, in a white dress dancing and smiling the way through, despite some fruitless attempts to ‘wake the dead’.

(i’ll say here, i’ve recently fallen in love with this local – Melbourne-based – band, who’s song ‘all will be gone’ – with its delightfully persistent reminder of everyones mortality is a personal favourite just cos its so damn fun!)

darkness isnt hard to find in life – some of us are more familiar than others – and avoidance of seemingly unsettling facts is futile. you are going to die. shit things will happen to you. its all basic nessecity of life – indeed a good life. it imposes perspective and value.

this clip – truth and beauty and love and life. all light and dark. smiles of an innocent girl in a white dress, dancing joyously to a country horror band in a warmly sunlit white church amongst a zombie-like congregation. it sums up for me the argument about whether dark music is depressing.

fight fear off and itll hold you tighter. accept it and understand it, and you’ll feel like dancing. allow yourself to explore darkness, confront fears, open your mind, accept truth and the shadows have nothing on you. happiness penetrates.

or dodge it, narrow your mind to the light and fluffy, listen to Justin Bieber and enjoy a superficial existance (over the top, sure). so much beauty comes from those shadows though.

dark music isn’t necessarily depressing. if i relate to it, it helps me accept, express and manage my emotions rather than suppressing them or dwelling on whats going on. it soothes and/or energises my soul. if i dont relate to it, thats cool, someone else no doubt does.

for those of us who enjoy music as art, not just entertainment, some of the best, most timeless, has a dark edge to it, and has something to say about true life.

life is often fucked up. just accept it. experience it. explore it and learn from it. get perspective on it. you know what – greater happiness and enlightenment will probably be the result. i dont know if music taught me this, but it helped me realise.

First published 11 May 2011 on my Blogger site

Songs that live in moments

Ever find a song encapsulates a moment or period so perfectly that it becomes permanently attached to, and defined by, that experience?

So much so that any time the tune reverberates around your head your internal sensory wiring transcends the present moment and connects to thoughts and feelings familiar and intense, yet distant.

In some ways it’s unfortunate for a song’s meaning and enjoyment to be narrowed to a particular connection, but it is a magical way to experience music.

There are a few songs that seem to perpetually reside in certain moments of my past, continually inviting me back when I hear them. They are not necessarily my favourite songs – some I never play – but they all have their place for better or worse, and most of them involve women in my life. That’s probably no great surprise.

Self-indulgent as this is, these are a few such songs that have that affect for yours truly:

Reckoner (Radiohead)
In Rainbows came out just before I jetted off overseas by myself for the first time. Sure, I was meeting a range of friends in different places, but I was getting around by myself and, for the first time in a long time, had no-one but myself to worry about.

New albums rarely grab me and establish their own place in my psyche so quickly. I listened to In Rainbows every day for five weeks, in small Canadian towns, large American cities, airport departure lounges and everywhere in between.

It may have just been the right time for something to tap in to my mood at the time – newly single for the first time in six years (and the first time in my adult life), and travelling alone outside of my home country. Compounded with variations of unfamiliarity, new-found freedoms and exploring a new world, this created a unique atmosphere. It wasn’t all good times, but I was experiencing life and beating out a new path. In Rainbows was my soundtrack.

‘Reckoner’ was the track that stood up and floored me every time.

Four years on, listening to this song still gives me an abstract sense of the mental and geographical space I was in at the time, a wandering lamb, uncertain but unafraid, exploring with new eyes.

Heavy Heart (You Am I)
So let’s step back six months – the night the girlfriend and I called it quits on what had been a pretty solid relationship of more than six years.

It was as mutual and amicable a break-up as you’re likely to find. I walked out of her apartment relieved that we’d finally done what had been coming for a while, but still it was the end of something comfortable, familiar and, overall, fairly positive.

Suddenly I was alone.

I got in my car, put on The Cream and the Crock – The Best of You Am I – an album I’d been thrilled to find a few months earlier as I searched hopelessly for something worth using a Sanity gift card on – and skipped straight to ‘Heavy Heart’. I cried. And I then I set off, skipped back to the start of the song and cried again.

A classic case of dangerous driving.

Jezebel (The Drones)
… And then a few months later I was a bitter, bitter man. This girl who’d been my emotional support for six years – and had asked me to stay friends – was gone when I most needed someone close.

I was – largely unfairly – angry. This newly acquired album, in particular ‘Jezebel’ which got lots of play-time, tapped into my dark mood and helped me explore what was going on in my head.

We never resumed a friendship in any form, I’ve left behind the bitterness and I still quite like the song. But I don’t listen to it very often.

Just Try (The Dandy Warhols)
September 2008: travelling alone with a broken heart and no music. Is there a worse predicament?!

I should have known better than to a) let myself fall for a friend from another country and b) entrust my music-reliant sanity to a cheap iRiver. Seriously, I spent four days at work filling the fucking thing with music and it freezes on the way to the airport! I couldn’t even turn it off. Eighteen months later I realised the battery must have eventually died and I could charge it and turn it back on (it’s worked fine ever since, not that I give it much attention), but I was so pissed off at the time I left it in Australia.

As for the girl – a Canadian friend who had joined me in visiting a mutual friend from England – a week or so of outrageous fun in London and Southampton was just enough to (again) reignite feelings for her I thought had passed, just as she headed back to Canada.

The prospect of another 20 days tripping around Britain, but now on my own, had lost its lustre. I told her of my feelings and for better or worse, they were unrequited.

I was lonely and miserable. And if I had no-one to talk to or drink with, I damn well needed music!

‘Just Try’ must have been floating around my head; in London, in York, in Edinburgh I sought out internet access just to jump on YouTube and listen to it, slumped forward with my elbows on the desks, an expressionless face fallen into my hands so that my limp cheeks pushed up into my eyes while I stared forlornly at the computer screen. And then I’d hit play again.

It was utterly self-pitying and self-indulgent. She was unbelievably cool about the whole thing. In fact it was nowhere near as awkward as it should have been, we’re still friends and met up in Canada a year later. I just wanted some answers from someone about all the shit going on in my life.

Still love the song, and it does remind me of her and how I used to feel, but it offers some reflection rather than a sense of sadness.

More Than You Wanted To Know (The Panics)
Moving on.

My job at Dan Murphy’s was the most fun I’ve ever been paid to have by a long way. I left to embark on a professional career at the end of 2005, with unexpected feelings of sadness about a moment I’d been anticipating for 18 months!

I have no idea what this song is really about, but the lyrics just seemed to resonate with my sentimental melancholy of the time: ‘We’re all in line to go sometime / Only lives to tell it like it is / Always more than you wanted to know’, ‘Let go of some you’ve saved / Leave but don’t be no stranger / If you look in the eye of the one you’re beside / Ain’t gonna stop us aging / Are you lonelier?’

I seem to struggle with change, but have learnt it’s never as big or bad as you fear. Five years on I’ve remained friends with a few people I worked with there, and have some sensational, hilarious memories to keep in my bag as I walk on.

The three-parter
So a girl I went out with for six years gets two songs, but one I was friends with for just a few months gets three. That’s life, love and music.

Part One – Read My Mind (The Killers)
I don’t even own Sam’s Town and never really liked any of the songs from it… until one had meaning for me.

Sitting in the Carlton Club with sorting out a messed up situation of mixed messages, mutual feelings and incompatibility ‘Em’ offered me an earphone, explaining ‘This song sums up how I feel’. I still don’t know entirely what she meant by that.

She has exceptional taste in music, so I was a little surprised / disappointed to hear this initially. Lyrically there are a couple of absurdly relevant references, yet the song overall assumed a new character and sound for me. I listened to it a lot in the following days and weeks while spending far too much time contemplating this star-crossed infatuation.

Hearing it now (very rare), depending on my mood it either reminds me of the beauty of those unique connections between two people, or the pain of losing someone for reasons beyond either person’s control.

Part Two – Love Letter (Lisa Mitchell)
‘Take it from me, I’m a disorderly and you’d be off better writing someone else your love letter.’

The sound of the final nail in the heart. So beautifully sad. The reality that, sometimes, life trumps love.

I’d had a burnt copy of Lisa Mitchell’s Wonder for a few months, in preparation for seeing her at Splendour in the Grass, and enjoyed it well enough; but again, it took a real-life situation that aligned closely with this song for me to fully appreciate it. After a few months of back-and-forth, being pushed away and pulled closer, it was determined for the second or third time that it wasn’t working.

‘Love Letter’ has been one of my most-listened-to songs of the last six months. On the morning after she told me she had to walk away because I was her ‘weakness’ (another message I never understood) I sat at the kitchen table before work listened to it twice, and cried. I cried for what could have been, what was lost, with someone who’d inspired me like no-one else, cemented in me the self-confidence to take steps like starting this blog, and reaffirmed my place in the world.

Deride my manhood, but this is a tragically beautiful piece of music and lyricism.

It also now represents for me a time in my life that hurt like hell, but I never wish to forget, so I think I’ll always be fond of it.

Although, someone later informed me that Lisa Mitchell had been a contestant on Australian Idol. This almost ruined her music for me.

3) Home (Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros)
This is a band she got me into. ‘Moats and boats and waterfalls’ was a favourite phrase of hers when
referring to her small circle of close friends (her ‘family’).

Love the song, but can’t shake the connection to the girl. Not such a bad thing. At a broader level it stirs up some of those wonderful, promising feelings of security and comfort you find in a person every once in a while, and I had for a fleeting moment with her.

In recent weeks my reaction to this song has been ‘Get it off that damned ad for that stupid TV show!’

Beautiful Day (U2)
All That You Can’t Leave Behind must have been released towards the end of my final year at school. I loved the album for a while and it got a lot of spin-time in my CD player while I studied for exams, as well as being all over commercial FM radio. ‘Beautiful Day’ was my anthem for the time, as I looked forward to a new, exciting, terrifying, beautiful life ahead.

I’ve hardly listened to the album in ten years. I recently rediscovered a couple of gems on it that I adore (‘When I Look At The World’ and ‘The Ground Beneath Her Feet’), but the rest of the album can stay in my past – we shared some good (and stressful!) times, but we no longer talk. And that’s okay.

Still, you can’t avoid hearing ‘Beautiful Day’ every now and then, and I guess that’s cool too.

Cotton Eye Joe (Rednex)
Let’s finish with something upbeat then, shall we?

Definitely not one of my favourite songs, and I’m quite happy not to hear this one too often but we sure did play it loud and proud and incessantly for five days in Rye while celebrating the end of school back in 2000.

It was a bit of a party anthem for a bunch of 18 year olds for a while, but the novelty wore off pretty quick. It still gets a spin at a house party once every couple of years, and if a cover band play it in some shitty pub we’ll get into it jumping around singing along loudly like we did in November 2000, but that’s plenty enough.

One song I’m quite happy to enjoy purely for the memories I associate with it.