Why I Miss My Gym

Or Not …

William Sundwick

Virginia advanced to “Phase 3” re-opening more than two weeks ago. But, yes, cases of COVID-19 are still rising in the state. My local gym has posted a sign: “We’re Open!” (at 75 per cent capacity). Masks are not required for gyms, and only this week was an enforcement mechanism announced for the mask requirement and social distancing anywhere in the state – unannounced visits by state inspectors.

Why would any 73-year-old man, like me, want to return to his regular gym workout routine under such circumstances? The rational answer is certainly, “No reason, it would be dumb!”

The desire to return to “normal” – meaning old habits – is strong, indeed. And, each week when I weigh myself, noting the inexorable gain, and each day that I fill those hours I spent at the gym with some other activity (usually reading, or ordering grocery deliveries online), I feel the pang of loss. But the gym was boring, too, right? I had long ago given up the project of making a social outlet of my low-budget gym. There was no prospect of that succeeding. So, what is it, really, that I miss?

I miss my music. But my iTunes playlists are still on my phone. There is nothing stopping me from listening to those great dancing, heart-rate-exciting, tunes while exercising at home, or even NOT exercising at home! Is it the equipment in the gym that I miss? I have no equipment at home except for arm weights and a medicine ball. But a quick Google search reveals many hits for “exercising at home without equipment” – I can easily develop a cardio-intensive routine from those, it seems.

So, what is stopping me? Has the desire to return to normalcy overtaken the more prudent response of planning for a “new normal?” Indeed, my wife will continue her telecommuting routine indefinitely – she is always home, no need for me to fill empty slots in my day. It’s almost as if we were both retired.

Except for one glaring difference. There is no place to go on a regular basis!

That must be it. Not my music, not the gym equipment, certainly not the eerie lack of social interaction amid all the sweaty bodies at the gym. No, it is the simple fact that the gym was a place to go four times a week, for a forty-minute-plus stretch, then home, shower, change clothes. Such a captivating routine it was!

I have begun practicing a promising no-equipment cardio workout. Eventually, I may make it to the entire 50 reps for the whole two sets – an ambitious goal, for sure. I may need to scale back for age (jumping jacks really get me winded). I could even listen to my music once I get comfortable. Then, I will check if weight control is a secondary benefit. If so, drive another nail into the coffin of my old gym routine. Plus, I still have my daily 2.5 to 3-mile walks getting me out of the house and accumulating those 10,000 Fitbit steps.

Keeping the coronavirus away, and adding these new routines, may yet get me to 100, my oft-stated goal. If only I was more outdoorsy – I could then also derive pleasure from driving to other outdoor places that my neighborhood walks can’t take me. That would constitute such a lifestyle change, though, to be a bridge too far!

Compared with working parents worried about balancing their paychecks against getting the coronavirus, or whether their kids will even have school in a few short weeks, missing my gym workouts is surely a “first world problem.”

What Does My Music Library Say About Me?

A Rebuttal to the Personality Link

William Sundwick

Ever since I can remember, I’ve liked listening to music. My childhood was spent with a father who was a failed violinist in his youth. (He became an engineer.) But, while he never played for me, he was totally dedicated to the classical, mostly 19^th century, orchestral catalogue. He took off from Paganini and didn’t stop until Heifetz. Listening to music was very serious business to him. It was clearly emotional. I inherited the emotional content, if not the literature.

For me, dramatic always trumped soothing. Heavy was generally better than light. I adored Beethoven -- a love shared with my dad. Schumann, Berlioz, Brahms all get honorable mention. I liked the Russians, too – along with my mother – father not so much (no violinists).

Something happened to me culturally, however, when I got to high school, and obtained a driver’s license. With a little help from my friends, I discovered top 40 radio in the car. It became a social thing. My previous group of friends, intellectually precocious New York Jews, with holocaust survivor parents, had aided and abetted my classical predilections up to that point -- although none of us ever played an instrument. Driving around listening to radio in the car became a liberating experience. Independence at last!

Social acceptance changed tone in college. There, the driving force seemed to be “what’s new.” And, then, what would come next. Thus, the avant-garde invaded my mind, with musical, artistic, and theatrical dimensions. Grafted onto that avant-garde sensibility was social awareness of a different world – an underclass world of black people. Blues and avant-garde jazz were, in my mind as a college student, part of the same “movement.” I had already gained an appreciation for the left from my New York Jewish friends in high school – college gave me the chance to integrate all that into an aesthetic that would become my own.

I still listened to classical music in college but replaced the 19^th century romantics with baroque and more 20th century artists. I liked Shostakovich and Prokofiev symphonies.

After college, it became clear that the future lay with rock music. It was symbolic of the age, and drew from a fabulous, beautiful history of the great migration from the South to the industrial Midwest. Urban blues became my music. As it transmogrified into Chicago Blues or British Blues, it seemed to be part of an evolving tradition. A working-class artform.

I, too, became a worker. I may have been an intellectual worker, but a worker, nonetheless. Adding to that, I was slow to develop intimate relationships – adolescent “sturm und drang” didn’t disappear from my psyche until my late marriage at 35. By that time, I was dedicated to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. The revolution was still coming – in the future.

If there is anything at all to the psychological studies which claim to correlate musical tastes with personality, I might confess being a “systemizer” more than an “empathizer” – like my engineer father. This does tend to support the basic genres of music I like best. I prefer complex melodies and rhythms, and intense music.

One parameter for musical taste which is clearly bogus in my case is age. I’m still discovering new musical genres at age 71. I have only recently become a fan of heavy metal and punk/post-punk. It says something to me which is as valid now as it was when I was 20 or 25. I’ve never rejected my roots. Sadly, I never participated in creating music. But I still appreciate it.

Today the only time I listen intently to music is at the gym. This means I associate my music library with biofeedback (cardio) and may even use it for “productivity enhancement” (makes me pedal harder). This is a departure from my youthful serious listening, although that listening mode is still imprinted in my emotional affect. I still like sad songs (blues), especially when linked to social alienation and emancipation. I continue associating avant-garde with class struggle, opposing the mainstream.

When music stays “underground,” it is better than when it is commercially successful. I’ve never liked “soothing” or “easy listening” music of the pop world. I reject overly sentimental music, as it cheapens my own emotions. And, I steadfastly reject music with a conservative social message. Commercial Nashville usually epitomizes that -- although I still enjoy some Rolling Stones anthems like “Ruby Tuesday” or “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (both examples of Keith Richards lapsing into extolling market capitalism’s virtue).

Blues is good. The purity and depth of its sentiment is real. It’s mostly about struggle, as I see it. The world of rock, whether blues-based or more experimental (like heavy metal), strikes me as great when it features virtuoso musicians – vocalists, guitar players, drummers, especially. Harmonica and tenor sax can often give an extra treat to the ear, as well. They contribute a plaintive tone to a song.

But the beat must remain predominant. Even in experimental electronic forms, there must be an underlying regular, repetitive beat. Sometimes the beat gets lost but is heroically rediscovered in the denouement. Zeppelin were masters of this, especially “In My Time of Dying” and “Dazed and Confused”. “Noise rock,”  like Sonic Youth, has tried the same approach – the beat must be at the heart of the song, even if lost in the middle.

Rock anthems continue to have an appeal to me. They seem to be hymns, crying “we shall overcome someday.”  Often, they take the form of a personal story, but sometimes they preach. The underlying emotion is hopefulness, with a dash of triumphalism – arrived at mostly through resistance to malevolent forces. Two of my favorite anthems are from the Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter” and “Midnight Rambler.” The former is the preaching style, the latter more bluesy.

The singer-songwriter folk tradition also contributes much to my music library. But always a folk-rock beat and instrumental backup is added. Mumford and Sons made a big impression on me when they entered the scene about ten years ago. Banjo replaces lead guitar on their first two albums, but it’s unmistakably folk rock.

The main reason I can’t buy the link between personality and musical tastes is that my tastes are way too varied to be pigeonholed. Why would I want to define who I am, anyway? Different studies have come up with different dimensions of personality and music – there is an “extroversion” scale where the most outgoing folks like the music I like, but the introverted folks also like some of the music I like. The “neuroticism” dimension in different studies concludes that people who rank high in neuroticism like totally opposite kinds of music. Go figure.

I think it’s not about musical genres, but more the socio-cultural tradition you live in that determines your musical taste. Mine has been developing for 71 years. There’s quite a history behind it. If I share it with nobody else, I don’t care.

Who Killed the Anger?

Creative Tension in Rock Music

William Sundwick

First there was “blues.” It was raw. Sung and played by illiterate, marginalized sharecroppers in the Deep South. Somebody in New York decided that, if it could be made more pleasant, less painful to hear, especially if played by an ensemble of musicians (a “band”), it might gain a wider audience. That was called “jazz.”

Sometime before, during, and after World War II society began making lightning fast changes, via technology. The pace only intensified for the rest of the century, and into the 21^st. By mid-century, there was already noticeable tension between fans of “roots” music (folk and “traditional” delta blues forms), seen as simpler and “purer” forms of artistic expression, and more modern, sophisticated, urban fans who consumed a broader array of electronically reproduced music (radio, TV, stereo records).

That media-saturated urban group started showing the anger first. Rock-and-roll, especially the genre emerging from blues, was the first commercial expression of that anger. It was social alienation, clearly stated. Like big-band jazz, it was originally conceived as dance music. And, like jazz, as it became more “mainstream,” it would stifle creative impulses of young performers. They became frustrated by their inability to break through barriers enforced by taste-making record labels and radio stations.

It may have been marketing that saved them, but it was marketing of creativity itself. Artistic anger, alienation, became the marketable commodity. It turned out there was an audience for it. But, with success, sustaining anger becomes difficult. It seems only the uncomfortable, the struggling, can channel their creative impulses into the deep frustration and resentment that we associate with artistic anger. Creative tension between hungry and well-fed becomes an endless cycle.

This is where John Cage came from when he invented his experimental music. He was, essentially, raising his middle finger to the academic music “establishment.” It is also where Sun Ra and John Coltrane came from with their “avant-garde” jazz in the early sixties. It is where punk rock came from in the seventies. And, as we saw in the two previous entries of “Who Killed the Anger?”, it is where noise and experimental rock came from over the last thirty years. The eternal quest for “something new” is the motivation.

The first act in any revolution is to tear down the old system – or at least demonstrate against it! Revolution, not evolution, is the model. Evolution may be fine and, clearly, it’s the way of nature. But sometimes evolution is just too damn slow. The impatient among us will usually opt for revolution instead.

Indeed, the only thing that keeps us from violence in the streets is fear and doubt of our own moral rectitude. But, in music, revolutionary change seldom carries a moral component. It’s primarily aesthetic. Politics can be moral, music is almost always aesthetic.

Popular music, being consumed largely by young people, is especially fertile ground for the impatient and the frustrated. And, the upcoming Generation-Z shows no sign of being any less impatient, or alienated, than earlier youthful generations. The “silent generation” found early rock-and-roll, the later boomers had punk, “Gen-X” had heavy metal, and angry millennials have noise and experimental rock. Of course, not all members of each generation are equally afflicted by alienation and impatient anger. Many, perhaps through fear of their own emotions, have chosen instead to listen to milder “easy listening” music. Such music intends to erase anxiety with melody.  The anger is pushed down, repressed.

But the music I like confronts anxiety. It tells me to “deal with it!” For me, it’s about emotional catharsis as a solution to problems. If music is “in your face,” so much the better. Full disclosure: the only time I listen to music now is when I’m working out at the gym!

I do appreciate creative sounds, however. If a certain band has a trademark riff, mix or vocal that makes their songs easily identifiable, I am more likely to purchase them on iTunes. Uniqueness has equal weight to a biologically-driven beat that’s a good match for my cardio workout. I like music that encourages me to punish the equipment. “Pedal harder!”

Where do I find new music? Inadvertent listening on SiriusXM (often at the gym) and music-related discussion groups on Facebook are the tools I use to discover bands. They were my sources for Sonic Youth, AWOLNATION, and Deaf Wish.  Since I have no IRL friends who share my musical tastes, I rely on the virtual world for exposure. Sometimes my millennial younger son will contribute ideas, but his older brother has already moved on. Pandora in my car only occasionally, Spotify never.

And, yes, the secret personal drive behind all this: it does make me feel young, again!