Running With Radiohead

by editor Michele Catalano

I used to run. I didn’t run to get in shape or to stay in shape or for any physical health benefit. I ran because I needed somewhere to go. I needed forward momentum, to feel that I was pushing toward something instead of staying stagnant. The fact that I ran down winding roads that took me back to my front door didn’t matter. All that mattered was that, in that moment, I was moving. For the half hour or so that my body could tolerate running, I was alone. It was me, my thoughts, my music, the pavement.

Things were bad. Things had been bad in my life before. But this was a different kind of bad because everything before it had been so good, so perfectly storybook. Life descended so quickly into bleakness that I didn’t have time to process what was happening. There had been a happiness in my world that I had never felt before. Then it was gone, replaced by a sense of despair, a feeling that everything had slipped from my hands just as I was learning to hold it tight. I cried a lot.

Before there was running, there was walking. Putting on my headphones and taking a walk around the block seemed like a good way to dissipate the negative adrenaline that my body was making. This wasn’t an adrenaline that made me feel as if I could take on the world. It was a buzz, a low key humming that coursed through my body and caused my hands to shake and my thoughts to teeter toward destruction.

I needed to kill this energy before it killed me. I’d scroll through my phone looking for appropriate music; something buzzy, something that would get me going. I listened to Kanye’s “Jesus Walks” repeatedly, because the rhythm matched my urgency. M83’s “Midnight City” and MGMT’s “Kids” propelled me forward, but I still felt as if I hadn’t hit on the music that was right for me at that moment.

I kept walking every night, trying out new songs, desperately wanting to find something that had the cadence I needed. I walked slowly at first, looking at all the houses I was passing, wondering if the people inside those homes were happy, or if their perfectly manicured lawns and gardens were just facades masking their unease. Was everyone like me? Were we all outwardly pleasant to each other, smiling from our driveways, sharing pointers on keeping hydrangea bushes healthy, while inside we were constantly choking back tears?

I’d walk at dusk, see the lights turn on in some of the houses, and feel instant resentment toward the people in those living rooms, leading what appeared to be normal, complacent lives. How dare they!

So I walked faster, trying not to stare at the families playing basketball, the husband watering the lawn, the mother teaching the kid to ride a bicycle. I did not want to see this normalcy, this happiness. I wanted everyone to be miserable with me. I didn’t want to be alone in this.

Then I started running instead of walking. The happy people in those houses turned to blurs; the warm, inviting homes were objects that I no longer lingered on. The movement felt good. It felt right. I could sense the negative energy escaping my body. For thirty minutes, I felt free to let my emotions out, to feel everything I needed to feel, to make peace with my life.

I tried running to loud, pounding music. I made a playlist that included “Battery” by Metallica and The Exploited’s “Sex and Violence.” I thought the act of running deserved punishing beats. But those beats crossed up with my thoughts; so I made another playlist, one with Manchester Orchestra’s “Simple Math” and The National’s “Baby, We’ll Be Fine.” Morose music for morose times.

The cadence of the songs I chose was at odds with my pace. I cried a lot, my hot tears drying quickly as I ran. I would often have to slow my pace to catch my breath, or lean against a light pole while I quietly sobbed, hoping none of my neighbors could see me. It was all so cathartic and draining. I’d round the corner at the end of my run, feeling that I had emptied myself of any kind of emotion, that I had accomplished something by moving my body forward at that pace. Then I’d see my house—once a place of refuge and peace, now a tumultuous monument to myriad failings—and it would all come back.

I finally got so frustrated at my indecisiveness in choosing running music that I put everything on shuffle. I decided to let fate handle it.

Fate settled on Radiohead’s “Let Down.”

This was 2013, and I was in the same emotional state as when I first started listening to Radiohead in 1997, when OK Computer came out. The connection hit me immediately. I knew without hesitation that I was meant to run to this music. It wasn’t natural running music, but this wasn’t a natural run. I decided I’d play the whole album, starting at the beginning, and see how long I could run. The minute “Airbag” started, I knew I was going to find the headspace I was looking for. This album, combined with running my emotions into the ground, was going to cure me.

I ran to gather myself. I ran to shake things out of myself. I ran to get away from the sound of beer cans opening. I ran to escape the despair that hung over our home. I ran to drown out the noise in our lives. I ran to get into a headspace to find the strength I needed..

The running quieted the noise, if only for a short time.

I kind of ran for my life that day. OK Computer was pushing me, demanding of me a strength I didn’t know I had. I ran through “Paranoid Android,” dripping sweat in the middle of April. I ran through “Subterranean Homesick Alien.” I think I blacked out at some point. I was just so focused. “Exit Music (For a Film)”—a slow and laboring song that ends, We hope that you choke / That you choke propelled me. I got swept up in the sheer emotion of it, hearing my sneakers hit the pavement over the subtleness of the song, my breaths coming in short gasps. I could do this. I could keep going. I knew what was coming.

“Let Down” was one of those songs for me. It made my heart soar at the same time it caused me to despair. I felt hopeful, I felt optimistic, I felt crushed and, yes, let down. I knew what this song did to me. I thought about how many times I cried while singing:

One day i am gonna grow wings

A chemical reaction

Hysterical and useless

I felt that they had summed up my life in one 15-second burst. I ran down the street that would lead me back to my house, listening to the slow uptick of the song, Thom Yorke’s plaintive cry, the crescendo of Floor collapsing / Floating, bouncing back. Then came the part where I exhaled. Where I stood on the corner, facing my house, on the verge of letting out an absolute wail.

But I held it in. I took a few breaths and walked back into my dimly lit house—defused, debriefed, depleted, yet changed. I wasn’t going to be held down anymore. I was going to grow wings. I sat on the couch, took off my sneakers, collapsed into the throw pillows. He (trust me, his name doesn’t matter) didn’t notice anything different about me, which was fine. That was between me and Thom Yorke.

I adopted OK Computer as my running album, but I never got past “Let Down.” Not only because I couldn’t run for more than 30 minutes, but also because the song emptied me of every desire I had. It drained me.

I no longer run, but I do go for walks. I listen to my sad music while I look into the houses of my neighbors. I wonder if they’re happy, if they’re settled, if there are things going on inside that I might empathize with. But I no longer feel resentment when I see people out looking happy and content. I nod, I smile, I silently wish them well.

I walk at a slow pace, taking everything in, enjoying the night air. I no longer feel the need to move fast, to feel the pavement pound beneath my feet, to push myself forward. The adrenaline is gone, the pent-up emotions have all been spent. I’ll listen to “Let Down,” with its refrain of I am gonna grow wings, and get the sudden urge to run. But I’m no longer running from anything.

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