Week 7: The Sound of Silence

There was a recent column published on the Runner’s World website entitled, “How I Found Motivation by Ditching Earbuds and Embracing Discomfort.” The column’s author, Joe Squance, discusses his experiences as a runner both on, and off, music. Joe describes that his reasoning for ditching out on music during his runs was merely because “[He] couldn’t keep the damn things in. [He] got tired of adjusting them. And [he] didn’t like fiddling with [his] phone as [he] ran.” All valid points there. Later in his column, he describes some of the effects that he began to see on his running, once he aborted the cumbersome earbuds.

Squance describes how he was “free from distractions” and how he “communed with the world around [him].” Needless to say, these are all intriguing propositions for a runner. When you run, you often find yourself searching for something to connect you to the purely elementary nature of your activity. After all, human evolution would suggest that walking, then crawling, and then running is the most pure lineage of human movement. So, it is simple to reckon that a runner longs to feel a sense of connection with the natural world around him/her. For Squance, ridding himself of material distraction (music) actually helped him come closer to this dream.

Personally, I have never considered the possibility of running without headphones. Music is a towering force in my life, especially for the past eight years. Every moment of my day is usually accompanied by some lyric, melody, or harmony that I can’t get out of my head. My moments on the internet are usually spent on a music message board, website, or streaming service. I like to consider myself a provocateur of as much listening material as I can put my filthy hands on. So the opportunity to run without music just strikes me as being void of any life.

Yet, I was inspired by the words of Squance. He made running in the sound of your environment seem so enthralling and engaging that I couldn’t help to give it a try. On Monday, I woke early in the morning, and decided to tackle my two-mile run before work. I left the house with my phone strapped to my arm, not as an iPod, but merely a mileage tracker. My white Sony headphones were left stranded on my nightstand, and I set off down the street.

Immediately, I began to notice all of these minute details that had previously been shrouded by pulsating beats. I could hear my breath and feel my heaving chest. These sensations weren’t new to me, but I found them to be amplified. My breathing quickened and my chest seemed to expand at a more rapid pace than I had originally thought on my previous runs. It had rained the night before, and I heard the constant exchange of water being displaced over and over by the soles of my shoes. Cars buzzed in my peripherals, occasionally dashing water within dangerous range of my legs. Everything felt cooler to a degree when I ran, as well. It was almost as if my senses flew into hyper drive. It was a surreal experience, but then I quickly found that “pain” was amplified, too.

Around the one-mile mark (halfway through my run), I started feeling my legs tighten, sweat drench my eyebrows, and my lungs fill with biting cold. I checked my Fitbit app, only to see another mile staring back at me. Dammit.

The next mile seemed like an eternity, and now all of the hyper-sensations I was feeling earlier started to take a toll on me. I no longer enjoyed the sound of my breathing. In fact, it started to annoy me to hear myself gasping for air. The aches and pains in my legs started to ramp up, and I felt like I was dragging my limbs to the finish. The rain that had painted an interesting mural only 15 minutes earlier now seemed to strike doom and gloom to my psyche.

By the time I reached my two-mile destination point, I was drained.

To be fair, this maybe seems like I’ve been going on two-mile jaunts without any hiccups along the way. That’s a fallacy. Pretty much every two-mile run I’ve gone on has been met with the same type of feelings. If you remember last week, I ran two miles with the Eagles playing in the background, and I honestly can’t tell you if that run was any better than this. For some reason, though, this run just felt elongated; almost as if it would never end with me still standing.

It would be putting it mildly to say that I wanted out of my little experiment by the next day. However, I couldn’t let myself quit this research just yet. At the very least, I needed to give silence one more day.

On Tuesday, I set out for a bit of a shorter run, coming in at just one mile. This time, I made sure to just leave my entire phone at the house. I’ve mapped out enough one-mile runs to this point that I just follow a track that I put together in my head; no need for any technology to bog me down. I felt much more satisfaction at the conclusion of this run than I had with the two-miler the day before. Of course, that’s mostly due to the shorter distance, I’m sure, but silence was kind of growing on me. I started to notice my surroundings in new ways. Christmas lights illuminated the sidewalk for me, which is great since I’ve broken nearly every bone in my body tripping over dimly lit tree branches. And, if you don’t like Christmas lights, then your soul needs to be exercised. You can be Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist, but dammit you can’t deny the unrequited joy of Christmas lights.

Running through blocks with a fresh layer of Christmas cheer suddenly made running in silence an enjoyable experience.

Even with this turn in my attitude towards an anti-music running campaign, the allure of my headphones was too strong. And, on Thursday, I realized that there were times in life where silence could be the opposite of calm; the antithesis of collected. I received a call from my dad that a beloved family member was in dire shape. In the interest of keeping my personal life somewhat personal, I won’t be going into too many details, but it hit me with a dense impact. It’s one of those times where it feels as though someone’s poured concrete into your gut. You start to feel sick, your mind races through memories and moments, and you find it difficult to put any thoughts into words.

Many runners will tell you that it’s cathartic to run in times of distress. That the act of running itself keeps not only your body, but also your mind moving forward. To me, music is the same type of medium as running, in this regard. The two go hand in hand in a way that I can’t quite comprehend, but I know it’s real. I feel it every time my foot strikes the pavement in tempo with a break-beat. I hear it every time a car flies by my peripherals, emitting a whiz so close to my ear that it sounds like it’s been properly mixed into a track.

When I ran on Thursday, anxious to push the fear, worry, and anxiety from my mind, I put on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. I love Daft Punk, as you’ll see in the playlist section for this day. They approach music in such a unique way, and it’s almost impossible not to react to the infectious nature of their songs. As I worked my way up through my first half-mile, something interesting happened, though. My ears stopped listening intently to the analog synths rumbling in my ears. I couldn’t hear the music. I only heard silence.

I continued this way for the next mile, waking from my daze in time to hear the opening notes of “Fragments of Time.” It was almost as if my brain had conditioned itself to run through this indescribable pain I was feeling in the moment. It signaled to the rest of my body that it was time to shut down, and let my feet carry me wherever they wished. It was freeing, and fleeting, to feel like this. The moment I came to, it was as if the reality of life used the brisk winter air to smack me back into time. There was a beauty to that six-minute time lapse of silence. My mind was blank, free to roam where it wished, and my legs were the vessel to carry me forward.

As for the song, “Fragments of Time,” it’s not really about loss, despair, or any sort of melancholy affair. In fact, it’s almost comical how the lyrics and melodies are a retro-inspired homage to 70’s soft rock. If you’ll take a look at the lyrics after you read this post, you may even imagine that I found it fitting because of the allusions to “Making me feel like I’m seventeen,” and “Keep building these random memories.” Anybody that loses someone close to them can identify these idyllic tropes. For me, though, the real line of connection is when the singer, Todd Edwards, admits to his listener that he simply can’t stay. Time hasn’t afforded him the luxury of being able to continue making these memories. That time has come to end. Just as every run, and every life, surely does the same.

Would I have been able to have this moment if I just set out without my headphones? Maybe.

But I’d like to think that the music almost provided the silence to me. As if it’s wonderfully melodic nature gently rocked my mind to sleep, supplying the silence I desperately needed in such a deafening time.

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Week 7 Breakdown:

Mileage

Week: 8 Miles

Total: 31 Miles

Daily Mileage/Playlists:

Monday: 2 Miles

Playlist: Silence. My heartbeat. My shoes hitting the pavement. My breath as I tried not to die from early morning exhaustion. Cars. Fresh morning rain. This was an extremely meta playlist I just described. Man, I’m deep.

Tuesday: 1 Mile

Playlist: See above.

Thursday: 2 Miles (And some change)

Playlist: Daft Punk - Random Access Memories. Every now, and again, I just remember that Daft Punk exists and it’s...awesome. I mean it’s the best. Daft Punk make music in such a way that their ego never seems to get in the way of the pure, unadulterated joy that creating melody can yield. Undoubtedly, many eloquent words have been written about the French duo’s career, but it’s all justified. They simply make dance records in the way they ought to be made; the main focus never lingers too far away from being about the listener. What does the listener want to hear, but also what does the listener need to hear. And, how do we go about it? Do we cut corners? No, the duo instead fling themselves into the clutches of detail. Perfection isn’t always the result, but it damn sure comes close. Maybe I was just feeling sentimental, given the circumstances of this run, but I truly don’t mind. Daft Punk always turn the mood into unrequited joy, and I thank them for that.

Friday: 1 Mile

Playlist: Silence. Again.

Saturday: 2 Miles

Playlist: Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book. Coloring Book is one of those rare albums, at least for today’s musical landscape, that emits constant joy. Chance is in the midst of something beyond comprehension, and he knows it. How one kid from the South Side of Chicago could fill this many dreams as quickly as he has is truly too much for words to describe. So what’s a young man to do? Celebrate. I listened to this after a trying two days, and I realized that if Chance never puts out another project, he’ll have already succeeded in leaving a lasting impact in people’s lives through the sheer jubilation of this album.

-Ryan