Running with(out) music

I love music.

Listening to my ipod, going to concerts, practicing my harp, playing in a folk group, singing along to Bob Dylan while I’m doing the ironing (a habit picked up from my dad) – music is, and always has been, a huge part of my life.

My earphones go in as soon as I leave the house in the morning and they stay in until I get to the office. They go in again when I leave to get my lunch and yet again when I head home. Am I missing out on the sounds around me? Well, yes, obviously. But this is central London. Do I really need to hear horns blaring, motorists and cyclists yelling at one another, and other commuters on the bus having the most inane conversations on their phones as loudly as possible? I don’t think I’m missing out on anything.

It won’t be any surprise to know that when I run, yep, I listen to music. Until a few weeks ago, it hadn’t even occurred to me that this might be considered a bad idea (yes, I already knew that some people don’t listen to music while running but I figured it was just down to personal preference). Then, at running club, our instructor mentioned that she had recently given some advice to a beginner runner who was keen to run a half-marathon in the next year or so (good luck to that person. I’m simply aiming for a sub 1-hour 10k!). One piece of advice was “stop running with your headphones in”.

Er, what?

All around me the other women in the group were nodding and mumbling agreement. Was I the only one out of the loop on this one? How had I missed the no-music message? I tried to imagine it: running without my music. Surely, it would be harder to run with nothing to distract me from that fact that I was, y’know, running.

Now, maybe it really is just me. Maybe my own thoughts are really boring. Here are my thoughts while running without music (i.e. at running club when I’m not talking to someone else!).

“I’m running. Running. Still running. Yep, still running. My legs hurt. Run. Run. Run. Am I at the back? Running. Yep, definitely at the back. Running. Have been overtaken by everyone. Running. Even that OAP who isn’t part of the running group and is in fact just walking along the street. Still running. Can I stop soon? Running. Running. Running.

Riveting stuff. So, at the risk of looking like the running-novice I still am, I had to ask:

“But why? Why is music bad? And how can you run without music without becoming completely bored?”

First up, here’s why it’s bad:

-You can’t hear your feet hitting the ground so you don’t have any sense of how well you’re running.

-You can’t hear your breathing.

Then there are the (im)practicalities:

-some races don’t let you run while listening to music (I’ll be avoiding these I think!)

-Ipods and MP3 players are unreliable – what if you run out of battery power? What if it’s raining and your Ipod gets wet and breaks?

-when you’re training outside, you can’t hear anything apart from your music so you’re unaware of your surroundings, which is pretty darn unsafe.

As to avoiding the boredom:

-Count your steps, give yourself your own internal rhythm rather than relying on music

-Run with a friend

I decided to give it ago and, this week, left my trusty ipod at home and went for a run.

Um. Yeah.

It didn’t go so well.

I was quite bored after about five minutes. Completely bored after ten minutes. I called it a day and stopped running somewhere around twelve minutes.

I came back home. I grabbed my ipod. I set off again. I ran for my planned 40 minutes no problem.

What does it all mean? Am I worryingly addicted to my ipod? Will I ever be able to run without music? As ever, when faced with difficult questions I turned to the oracle that is the Internet to ask “running with music – yes or no?”

Turns out I really had missed the boat on this one as it seems to be one of the most popular debates about running. And, as with all Internet debates, calmness and rationality go out the window and it’s all about picking a side, digging your heels in and slinging some mud at anyone who disagrees with you.

According to the all-knowing Internet, if you listen to music while running you’re just a wannabee runner, a plodding, rude pavement pounder who wants to shut out the world and ignore those around you. If you don’t listen to music while running, you’re a self-righteous, holier-than-thou type who likes making other people feel bad because they can’t run as well as you.

See, a typical Internet debate.

My own take for the moment is that my need for music has something to do with the fact that (*whisper it*) I don’t love running. Sure, I like it a lot more than I ever expected to when I first joined my running group. I’m running pretty regularly and I’ve even given up a few Saturday mornings to the Hampstead Heath Parkrun. But the “runner’s high” so far remains pretty darn elusive. I definitely don’t hate running and I’m not going to give up but for the moment I still need to be distracted by something I do love while I’m finding my running feet.

And surely running with music is better than not running at all…

QQ reviews...The Daily Fail

*Disclaimer: Yes, my brother was in this play as a member of the ensemble. No, I didn’t get free tickets, a free drink, or anything else to influence my review!

Another trip to theatre-land for QQ this weekend, following my youngest brother as he makes his London stage debut.

The Daily Fail: The Musical was performed at Waterloo East Theatre from 15^th – 20^th October. A new production from The Untold Theatre Company, the musical is based on the recent hacking scandal and Leveson Inquiry, and tells the story of two Essex girls who want to become rich and famous even though they have no discernible talents.

The play has a strong cast, with standout performances from Charlotte Mitchell and Samuel Haughton. Mitchell brings a vulnerability and sweetness to Dim Trashtrashian so that you end up caring about the character, rather than simply laughing at her stupidity. She also displays excellent comic timing and her disastrous attempt to make a sex tape was, for this reviewer, the funniest scene in the play. As “fairy godmother” Rupert Murdoch, Haughton steals every scene, and cleverly suggests the true streak of malevolence and self-interest lurking below the character’s fake smiles and high-camp façade.

Mitchell and Haughton were also two of the strongest singers in a talented cast. Kate Hume was another standout singer, performing as Dim’s best friend London Clinton. The two lead actresses complemented each other well and showcased some impressive harmonies in their duets. Performing without mics, the entire cast projected their voices very well, although occasionally the backing track was simply too loud and it was difficult to hear some of the solos (this was particularly true during Stephanie Hockley’s first solo as junior writer Anna Prentice. Hockley has a sweet, appealing voice, and the lyrics in this piece [or what I could hear of them] were some of the sharpest and smartest in the play, but it was very difficult to hear her over the backing track).

Special mention has to go to Rachel Kelly’s superb choreography. This was complex, clever, and brilliantly delivered by all the cast members. The opening number – Extra, Extra – was a high point, with the cast executing with aplomb a challenging routine in a limited space.

As the character names above no doubt suggest, subtlety isn’t this play’s strong point. Characters are drawn with broad brushstrokes and generally don’t develop (the dumb blonde London Clinton, the idealistic and naïve journalist Anna Prentice, her evil, power-mad editor Rebekah Brooks [sorry, I mean “Anna Fender”], and her morally dubious colleagues Gail Force and Holly Wood).

The plot and writing starts strongly with a great opening number neatly problematising the cult of celebrity and its effects on the general public. London and Dim’s early scenes and songs also showcase writer Fiona O’Malley’s talent for lampooning the current celebrity age, when becoming famous simply for being famous appears to be a legitimate “ambition” for many people and mass-produced reality TV shows offer a fast-track route to “celebrity” status. O’Malley uses the first act to highlight the hidden dangers of the fame game, particularly in Anna Prentice’s first song, in which the lyrics deftly highlight the virgin/whore rhetoric that so often characterises that mass media’s depiction of women in general, whether famous or not. 

In the second half, the plot loses its way somewhat and it’s difficult to know what message O’Malley is trying to get across. As the media turns on the manipulated London and Dim, there is an odd scene in the Daily Fail offices in which Rupert Murdoch appears to regret the part he has played in the girls’ current plight, while Anna Fender admonishes him for being weak, berating him for being afraid of his true character. What are we to make of this scene? It’s particularly confusing given the inconsistency in characterization: the Rupert Murdoch character has his name unchanged but is transformed into a magical “fairy godmother”, while Anna Fender is simply Rebekah Brooks with a different name, her character following the media’s depiction of Brooks as a hard-nosed, power-hungry media player.

Further confusion is caused by the abrupt ending. From the somewhat incoherent scene described above, we move to London receiving a visit from Anna Prentice, who tells her that Dim didn’t sell stories about London to the press, the truth was that her phone had been hacked by unscrupulous journalists. The best friends are reunited and, together with Anna Prentice, they decide to write a play about the hacking scandal. They’ll call it The Daily Fail. Cue the final number.

Now, I’m all for leaving things open-ended and letting the audience come to their own conclusions, but this takes it a little too far. What does O’Malley want to say about the press, about celebrity culture, about our role as consumers of mass media? She touches on all of these themes in the play and it would be great to see her develop them further.

Quirk-o-meter rating: ***

The Quirk-o-meter:

***** = Quintessentially Quirky

****= Really rather wonderfully quirky

*** = Quite quirky

** = Brief moments of quirkiness

* = Not very quirky at all

An afternoon with Clara

With Nano finished and Christmas done and dusted for another year, I finally have a bit of free time to get back to blogging (one of many New Year’s Resolutions is to try and blog more regularly).  The run-up to Christmas is always a bit manic, the big day itself tends to leave me somewhat frazzled – especially as it was my first time hosting the whole shebang this year – and with a new job and a move to London looming on the horizon in the next fortnight, 2013 looks to be getting off to a hectic start too! So thank goodness for the next few days, which are a much-needed holiday. I don’t have much planned, apart from catching up with some old friends. And today, I decided to spend some time with one of my oldest friends. Clara.

I’ve known Clara since I was 11. We met in Surrey and have pretty much gone everywhere together ever since. I don’t get to spend as much time with Clara as I would like, so days like today are a real treat. Clara, as you have probably worked out by now, is, of course:

My beautiful harp.

She’s a clarsach (or clarseach, or clairseach…hence the name: Clara the Clarsach. What?! I did say that I was 11 when I got my harp!) – a concert-strung, Celtic beauty with 34 strings, a maple frame and hand-painted designs on the side.

I’ve been playing the harp since I was 9 and, after 2 years of renting a harp from the local education board (yep, you really can rent just about anything!), my parents decided that the harp and I were developing into a fairly serious relationship and that I should have one of my own. And so we went to Pilgrim Harps (www.pilgrimharps.co.uk) to find Clara.

Over the past 20 years (great, now I feel old!) I’ve played, practised and performed at lots of different events from weddings to corporate Christmas dinners. However, I’m really not a natural performer, so in some ways the harp and I must seem like an odd fit. It’s a flashy instrument, a bit of a showstopper. When people come to visit, Clara does tend to attract attention and I sit there, waiting for the inevitable ‘go on, give us a tune’ comments to start.

And, because people tend to get the wrong end of the stick and think I’m being really precious if I don’t play something, more often than not I’ll pluck a quick reel or jig and hope that will be enough. I’m an introvert – not at all a performer. I love playing as part of a group, or providing background music (that’s just adding atmosphere, people are too busy eating canapés and quaffing bubbly to really pay attention to the music – and that’s fine by me) but put me centre stage and things tend to fall to pieces. Faced with a solo performance, you can pretty much guarantee that my hands will be so clammy they’ll start to slip off the strings, I’ll make mistakes in pieces that I know by heart, and my right leg will start to shake uncontrollably (the left leg never gives me any such trouble!). Really, I would have been better off staying in the background with my recorder!

Of course, there are exceptions and every so often I’ll leap out of my comfort zone and do something like this:

That’s me playing at a (very good) friend’s wedding. I love being able to add something to such a special day and it's always lovely to be asked, but I’ll only do it if I have a) plenty of notice (i.e. plenty of time to practise, practise, practise) and b) it needs to be for a very good friend!

So I love days like today. It’s just Clara and me. I have enough time to tune every one of those 34 strings, replace the ones that need to be changed, and play my way through a repertoire of old favourites and practise new pieces. I’m a fan of mixing it up, so I’m as likely to play Death Cab for Cutie or Bob Dylan, as I am a traditional Irish air.  I’m hugely in favour of everyone having a ‘selfish’ hobby like this. My harp is just for me and it’s really just for my own enjoyment.  Practising makes me happy (and a better harper!) and that’s it. It doesn’t keep me fit or help me to lose weight. It doesn’t make me more intelligent. It’s a million miles away from my 9-5 office life and won’t improve my career prospects. It doesn’t benefit anyone else apart from me.

And, I think that's okay. Sometimes, a little bit of selfishness is just what the doctor ordered and, after an afternoon with my harp, I'm feeling relaxed, happy, and just about ready to start tackling the chore that is packing for our move to London!