A Cure for my Runner's Blues

I’ve discovered a cure for my runner’s blues, when I really don’t want to lace up and hit the pavement.

It’s found on Keith and Kristin Getty’s album, Facing a Task Unfinished, and the title of the number is “Beyond These Shores.” 

Now, I’m not a music critic, being quite challenged to play the footnotes on a shoe horn. Notes are things I leave on my bathroom mirror, half-measures are how I approach running, and rests are what I do when done running. Movements are what I do to get from my chair to the cookie jar. I cannot make heads or tails out of a musical score.

But I love music—it moves me, frequently transforming my mood. And it often cures my runner’s blues (the wimpy pity-party I indulge in when I really don’t want to run—which is most of the time). Music takes my imagination on flights of fancy, transporting me to far-away places.

Now, for those poor benighted souls reading this, for whom imagination is a superfluous luxury you left behind in grade school, you might as well stop reading now, because you really won’t get what follows.

Here we go: in the first movement of Beyond these Shores, I imagine someone giving me a pointed, sarcastic rebuke. He’s playing a violin, and saying something like, “Aw, poor little Chris. Feeling sorry for ourself this morning, are we? Don’t want to lace up the running shoes?” At this point I’m usually slogging along, wondering why I ever started running to begin with.

But the music makes a sharp (but smooth) transition into the second movement. The self-pity violins morph into a fast-paced Italian sort of celebration, something you might hear in Momma Mia’s Pizzeria. Before long, in my imagination, I can see Snoopy dancing for joy on top of his doghouse—self-pity transformed into jubilation. My running pace picks up, I can’t help it.

The third movement is like a free-wheeling jam session with strings, banjo, bass, keyboard, and percussion—almost a jazz feel to it. Not only am I running faster, but I’m smiling while I run.

And by the time you get to the fourth movement the violins are more accurately described as fiddles, and it’s a high-energy Nashville hoedown. I am running with a big grin on my face, sometimes clapping in time with the music, woes forgotten, enjoying the blue sky, the clouds, the sunshine, the farmers’ fields, and just celebrating life as I run, thanking my Creator and Redeemer for such a beautiful day.

Try it. If you enjoy music and have an active imagination, you’ll probably love it. You can listen to it on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3jaurZNvZw

Review of Getty's Facing a Task Unfinished

Theologically meaty and precise. Devotionally moving. Aerobically challenging. A hint of bluegrass with a touch o’ the Irish—or perhaps visa-versa. An all-nations flavor, with perhaps emphasis on the bluegrass and Irish. 

This is Keith andKristyn Getty’s album, “Facing a Task Unfinished.” 

The selections range from a night-club style of relaxed music highlighting Kristyn’s vocal talent (“Consider the Stars”), to a blue-grass jamfest—music for the sheer joy of it—that reminds me of a strings version of Dueling Banjos ( “Beyond These Shores”). Some selections you want to dance to (or rather run to, if you’re me—such as “Living Waters”), some selections you want to hand to a brother or sister burdened by problems with identity (“My Worth is not in What I Own”), or with the grief of loss (“He Will Hold Me Fast”). The weakest track on the album is an African piece (“O Children Come”) but that judgment is merely a matter of personal preferences, not performance or excellence, and the track contributes mightily to the glorious all-nations flavor of the whole.

The instrumentation ranges from standard folk/bluegrass, guitars, bass, banjos, viola/violin, hammered dulcimer, drums, to rather exotic (various eastern instruments, including a Chinese Guzheng). The album is performed live, which is usually my least-favorite recording situation—but it works and works really well on this outstanding Getty offering. It’s fun to hear the crowd whooping it up, clapping, and adding a spontaneous response to the music.

I have become addicted to this album—listening to it invariably becomes a worship experience. Highly Recommended!

The visual power of music

Matthew Continetti writes The Star Wars Symphony, a December 19th article on NRO, and he nails it!!

 

Star Wars was created, in many respects, by the sounds and the score, much more than the script. As I said on a Facebook post, the score is so evocative that you could practically write the screenplay from the music alone.

This is a delightful characteristic possessed not only by Star Wars episodes 4-6, but also by the entire Lord of the Rings franchise. The music makes the movie.

There are no spoilers in Continetti's article. Read, enjoy, understand.

No foot-tapping cats

For today's profound, blog-worthy thought, let me share this cogent observation: never seen a cat tapping its foot in time to music. Have you?

Meet Ivy the Cat, compliments of Dani Snell Photography:



 Ivy is best buddies with Laurielle who ostensibly owns the animal, if one can truly say that a cat can be owned. People own dogs; cats own you.

Now, while studying and listening to a Mairead Nesbitt CD [okay, I admit it, I was 'sposed to be studying, but was really watching Ivy] it occured to me. Never have seen a cat, or any other animal, tapping it's foot in time to music [or tail, or any other body part]. That's an amazing thing, when you think about it. Humans are totally wired in to music. We dance, we celebrate, we sorrow, we rejoice, through music. Part of what makes the movie Inception is the brilliant Hans Zimmer score. What communicates in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, if it is not Howard Shore's genius?

Music speaks at a more basic level than perhaps even words themselves, transmitting emotions such that the feeling the artist is engineering is reproduced in the experience of the listener.

And yet animals are more or less impervious to music. Perhaps, at best, you can agitate a creature with obnoxious sounds. But it does not bring forth celebration, like music does in people.

Now, some contrarian is sure to say that in a controlled laboratory condition, an animal's pulse rate or some such mechanical response to music can be detected. But that's the point, isn't it? We are not talking lab conditions nor exceptions. We are talking about an essential difference between the masses of people and masses of animals.

We dance to music. Its got something to do with the image of God.