The Silence of Music

I use to wonder why so many people would walk down the street in the city with ear phones plugged into their ears.  Then I noticed the number of people I saw in Heathrow airport doing the same thing.  As I waited in line to go from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3 (ugh...those of you who travel through London know EXACTLY what I am talking about) each person stood in line - in a group, but fully separated from the group through their music.  And I would be left watching and wondering what the hell they were doing.  Until I tried it.

About a year ago, I started plugging myself in the moment the plan landed.  Instantly, all of the shifting of luggage, stretches, yawns and mysterious sounds of passing gas disappeared.  All that was left was David Gray or Alexi Murdoch or Sufjan Stevens.  Nothing else.  I was alone and in my own mind.  Everything else existed in a new way.  It was physically present, yet it was farther away.  It was like my son trying to touch the clouds - they look so close, but always just beyond his grasp.

Music separates us.  At the same time, it brings us closer.  We put miles between ourselves and those around us and we bring within a hairs breadth - ourselves.  Most of our lives are exactly the opposite.  We sprint faster than we ever could in a race just not to look at ourselves and we use others as our mirror instead.  We compare ourselves - measure all aspects of who we are to others - and then recreate ourselves as what we want to be.  Not really who we are.  Music breaks this twisted mirror and allows us to face ourselves.  To be ourselves.

There are different views about listening to music as we train.  "You can't listen to music when you compete.  So why listen to music when you train?" some say.  They aren't necessarily wrong.  However, what they miss is that on many occasions, music is the key way that we understand ourselves when we train.  The speed of the beat tells our minds that our legs can go faster.  We are stronger.  The line in the song echoes a truth about ourselves that we need at that exact point in our training.  It tells us that we are not the fictitious person that we have created...we are simply human.  And simply human is much greater than we give credit.  Simply human can do things that seem to others as superhuman. 

Part of being an athlete is to understand ourselves as we are.  We fail.  We succeed.  We excel.  We are magical...and music is part of this saga.