Running is driving yourself birdshit crazy over the perfectly engineered mixtape: #14

Mix #14: Nevermind That Storytelling Taxidermied Moose Head

G and I spent last night watching 1998’s Prefontaine biopic, Without Limits. Mesmerized by Billy Crudup’s cheekbones (which rise, terrible and majestic like the cliffs of Dover from the sere plain of his face) as he ran endless, slow-motion laps, I knew the hour was nigh for a new running mix. One unholily combining Fleetwood Mac remixes, Swedish power metal, dreamy French electronica, and Senegalese pop.

The joy of watching a movie like Without Limits is inherent in its unabashed nostalgia and shameless naval-gazing. Donald Sutherland, playing Oregon capofamiglia Bill Bowerman, muses early on in the film: “Running, one might say, is basically an absurd past-time upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning, in the kind of running you have to do to stay on this team, chances are you will be able to find meaning in another absurd past-time: Life.” The mix (below) celebrates continuities between the Prefontaine era of filmy shorts and today’s decidedly more international, colorful, estrogen-driven running scene. Too often, running seems the province of the lonely. On occasional, gloomy runs, I’ll feel like I’m watching a Mickey Rourke film on loop. Without Limits is (an, at times, admittedly cornball) attempt to remind us of our common bondage to the past, and to one another, in the face of the bleak and unforgiving uncertainties of living, along with its existential nastiness.

In my blacker moods, Sutherland’s backwashed runner-as-philosopher schtick might have caused me to quietly vomit into my shirtsleeve. But maybe I’m still giddily coasting on the rainbow-Koolaid fumes of Obama’s election. Or maybe moving to Texas has put chinks in the cold exoskeleton of irony I’d fashioned protectively about myself in order to weather day after day of living in Reno, Nevada. Maybe it’s because I’m in a hyper-functional relationship that makes me suspiciously happy. Maybe I’m growing up. I mean, my girlfriend and I went to the outlet mall last week to buy pants for teaching and I ended up eating really terrible food court pizza and, somehow, someway, being okay with that. Let’s just hope I’m not mistaking equanimity for complacency. Will somebody sic the counterculture German Shepherds on me if I start talking about “how underrated Tom Clancy is,” or betting on UFC matches?

1 / Jackson Browne – Running on Empty
2 / Fleetwood Mac – Never Forget (Cut Copy Lifelike remix)
3 / Flying Lotus – Fall In Love (J Dilla tribute) (Put on some good headphones and marvel at this, pls)
4 / Air France – No Excuses
5 / Cheikh Lô – Bamba Sunu Goorgui
6 / Midwest Product – A Genuine Display (Telefon Tel Aviv remix)
7 / MF Doom – Charnsuka (instrumental)
8 / HammerFall – Hearts On Fire
9 / New Order – True Faith
10 / Daft Punk – Make Love