Albert Park

In recent weeks I fear I may have been a wee bit disparaging about Leonard Cohen, particularly with regards to his music’s usefulness while running. Probably too disparaging.

Now’s the time to set it right.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a reason they don’t play Leonard Cohen in gyms. There’s a reason your local “pump” class plays amped-up, dumbed-down “commercial dance” without the good bits, and it’s not just because they want to insult your intelligence.

No, high energy music is usually pretty good to get you going and low energy introspective stuff isn’t.

But not always! No, sometimes, when in the early to mid stages of the weekly long run, when staying cool and restrained is of the essence, what you need is calm, calm, calm music and something to take your mind off the relentless thumpety-thump of rubber on bitumen.

Doesn’t this get you thinking?

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
You were talking so brave and so sweet
Giving me head in an unmade bed
While the limousines wait in the street.

Or this:

Great Babylon was naked
oh she stood there trembling for me
and Bethlehem enflamed us both
like a shy one at some orgy.

And when we fell together
all our flesh was like a veil
that I had to draw aside to see
the serpent eat its tail.

This is the best one for me though, from the end of a song called “Queen Victoria” an otherwise incredibly urbane and literate song from Live Songs:

Confusing the star-dazed tourists
with our uncomparable sense of loss

Shouldn’t that be “incomparable”? Shouldn’t it? It bothers me.

These are the things that run through my head during running.

Running
A vomit-free run this lunchtime. You know things aren’t going well when the best thing you can say is you kept your lunch down. Today was helped a little by not having any lunch at all.

Anyway, it was a quick brief jaunt from my office in Lonsdale street down to Albert Park, around the lake and back. I pushed the pace a bit as I had a 2 o’clock meeting in a very confined space and I felt a preparatory shower was a good policy.