THE RACKET : LIST 21 - A Runner's High.

I've been running a lot lately. You know trying to shake loose the stagnation of quarantine by getting out and moving the old body. My knees hurt and some of my shirts won't kick the smell of sweat no matter the washes, but it's good. And I feel good afterwards. 

I don't really think of running as exercise. Because when I think of it as exercise I don't want to do it because exercise seems - in my peabrain - connected to vanity and I'd rather watch movies then have a six-pack. To get myself out on the mean streets of San Francisco, lilac purple handkerchief wrapped around my face, dodging other humans, I think of it as "time to listen to music." And it is, really, just that, an uninterrupted period of time where all I can do is try not to suffocate as I struggle to breath and listen to music. It's incredible.

Seemingly, the running and the listening has gotten into the bloodstream because this playlist feels like a run. There's the kick-off of guitars as you find your footing and then the incremental increase in speed as your runner's high kicks in and your moving faster and faster until your legs are burning and you can't take it and you drop the gear to a lower speed just to get home. And then you cruise home, speed sloughing off, your brain screaming at you until you're almost walking and the world is beautiful (or not) and you're just enjoying what you're looking at and then you're leaning against a light post panting but happy, or happier, or just so exhausted it doesn't matter.

And seemingly, the movement, the energy, the pull of the open road found itself into our music, because this playlist feels like a drive across great distances. It feels like waking up on that first day, early in the morning, with the urge to go and be somewhere else. It feels like those first few hours when you and your companions are still getting up to speed, still feeling out the rhythms of the interstate. It feels like the moments when the destination is the last place you want to be and the road itself just carries you along in a warm cloud of movement. And when it's all over, the last song of your road trip, the first song of your re-entry into good old-fashioned life, always sounds a little off, but somehow it still captures what you're missing.

Maybe it'll help to get you out and moving.

Or maybe it'll do the moving for you.