Talking music with author Katie Arnold
Her new book is out today.
This week, I’m expanding the scope of Someone Else’s Songs to include, well, someone else: writer, journalist, ultrarunner — and expert practitioner of the playlist-making arts — Katie Arnold.
With her 2019 memoir, Running Home, she pulled off the rare feat of writing a running-centric book that non-runners could enjoy. I was fortunate enough to interview her when it came out, and enjoyed our conversation about her book’s meditation on family and grief and running. (Unfortunately, the resulting piece has disappeared completely from the internet, thanks to the infinite wisdom of the corporate parent of the publication for which I wrote it.)
When I saw she had a new book coming out, I reached out immediately. Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World (Parallax Press), out today, concerns the aftermath of a rafting accident that shattered Katie’s leg — no small concern for an ultrarunner — and how it impacted her marriage and motherhood journeys.
Katie writes like a good running partner: Witty, charming, honest, with a conversational style that has you looking up and realizing you’ve gone farther than you planned. Oh, and you’re somehow rejuvenated from the whole experience. (Hmm, has anyone coined the phrase “Reader’s High”?) The book is introspective and philosophical in equal measure, as Katie movingly wonders (and tests) what, exactly, she’s capable of, through the lens of Zen philosophy.
But it’s also funny. One moment she’s lovingly describing her husband’s forehead, the next she’s informing us “It was around this time that Steve got a chia pet.” (A few pages later: “Not dying is always my first goal in running.”) The book portrays marriage realistically without leaving the reader feeling icky afterward — not easy! — and explains Katie’s struggles without being overly self-deprecating or solipsistic. If you’ve ever been equally baffled and awed by how fragile, yet resilient, we are as humans, you’ll want to give it a read.
You can find it at Big Bezos, of course, but consider your local independent bookshop, or Bookshop.org. And be sure to subscribe to her Substack and follow her on the socials.
Naturally, I wanted to ask her how music played a role in her work, and in her life. She was kind enough to take part. As she wrote in an email: “I was psyched to do this. I love music and could talk about its connection to writing and running all day.”
What follows is a lightly edited version of our email interview, followed by a playlist with all the songs she mentioned. Enjoy. (And get her book!)
Tell me about your new book. What inspired it?
A river accident on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho in 2016 was the catalyst, where I saw the shape of the book and its story — it was, as they say in screenwriting, the inciting incident.
But I had to finish Running Home first (I was writing that book that summer) and so it took me a while to come back to it, and see that it was indeed the start of the next book. I call it a secret sequel because you don’t at all have to read Running Home first or at all, but Brief Flashings is absolutely in conversation with that book, continuing to explore the themes that have always fascinated me as a person and writer: family and art, freedom, expression, stamina — but not just the physical kind.
You mentioned that music is a major part of your life. Has music impacted writing this book in any way? If there were a soundtrack, what might be on it?
I definitely have a soundtrack for this book, like my previous book. I almost always have a soundtrack in mind for my life, it’s ongoing, and always growing. Of course I haven’t really made it in reality, it just exists in my mind. Songs that remind me of times in my life, that I return to again and again when I want to recapture that feeling or remind myself of who I was and still am.
I am going to release a playlist for Brief Flashings but for now I will tell you that it opens with the song ”Idaho” by Gregory Alan isakov and includes Men at Work and Eddie Money’s greatest song of all time, “Take Me Home Tonight.” So you can see it’s pretty eclectic. Plus there’s Cat Stevens’ inimitable “Trouble” thrown in the middle, one of the greatest songs ever.
You mentioned your love of making playlists. What’s your approach?
I make a different playlist more or less at the start of every season. I just keep adding to it until it feels done, and this is the playlist I run with for that period of time. So at first, there are only a few songs but it grows fairly quickly and organically. I name my playlist for a mood or an idea that I am running and living with that season, or by the lyrics of a song I build the playlist around.
The one I’m on now is called Road to Nowhere (after the Talking Heads song) because I love how it encapsulates one of my favorite ideas in Zen, which is that of not-knowing. Being open to the mysteries and not having everything mapped out or even logical or explainable. Road to Nowhere to me means we are all moving along on our path and sometimes, if we’re lucky, we have no idea where we’re going. Those are the times we’re really open to life and it can move us in ways we didn’t expect. Can you imagine how boring life would be if everything was mapped out and predictable?
Where do you stand on the hot topic of whether to run with music?
Definitely yes, but not all the time. Music helps bring me into my body and mind together, and actually makes me more present when I run; like a kind of alchemy, the songs stir ideas in my imagination just as the mountains do. Though you can’t get so reliant on music that you can’t run without it. I just listen to myself and some days I want to hear nothing but birdsong. Also I only listen through earbuds, never out loud (rude to passersby) and not so loud I can’t hear my surroundings.
Is there anything else related to the overlap of writing, running / health, and music that I should ask about or mention? These topics certainly seem to be in alignment on a sort of spiritual level, if you will.
Music as mental health — I think from a young age I looked to music as both an escape from the world and a way to enter more deeply into it. Like most adolescents and teens I associate different periods of time and experiences in my life with music. Wham was the soundtrack of my first, seventh-grade junior high dance. I became a runner to INXS, got my heart broken to Corey Hart (cheese I know). Fell in love to The Joshua Tree.
Listening to music is like running and being outside, it’s where I feel most connected to myself and my story. It was also a relief when life sucked or you were sad or confused to lose yourself in music. I think it’s one of the greatest forms of creative expression. Listening to music, even if you can’t make it yourself, is also a form of creative expression—the songs you gravitate to to tell your story are yours alone if that makes sense.
“From a young age I looked to music as both an escape from the world and a way to enter more deeply into it.”
And now, to the music…
A song that reminds you of childhood
“The Things We Do for Love” — I have a distinct memory of this song playing on the DC radio station WASH, playing out of the speakers on either side of our couch as I lay under one of the end tables, listening to the bass pump out of the speakers. I could relate to the lyrics, “walking in the rain and the snow,” because it seemed like, even then, we did a lot of hiking and walking, in inclement weather. It seemed like a sad song to me, also, because it was around the time my father left, but it was also hopeful because it was about love. I was probably four at the time, and it’s my first memory of a song that was not a lullaby.
“American Pie,” my mother sang the chorus all the time when we were kids. “Drove my Chevy to the levee,” I had no idea what it meant, but eventually I learned every line in every verse and my friends and I belted it out in the summers we were teenagers…The summer my daughters were 4 and 6, I taught them the lyrics, too, and they still know all the words. I think it appealed to my slightly dramatic writerly side, wondering what it meant “this will be the day that I die.”
A song that reminds you of family
“Woyaya” — Art Garfunkel. I remember my dad playing this a lot when I was younger, and then when he died (when I was much older), we put this as part of his memorial. It’s also a pretty great summation of ultra running.
Anything by Bruce Springsteen. Being from NJ, I love the Boss; his record Born in the USA was my first vinyl album I bought, at Scotty’s Record Shop in Summit New Jersey. (I can still smell the scent of new albums in their plastic wraps; the Police Synchronicity was the first cassette I bought). But of all the Bruce Springsteen songs, I love “Thunder Road” the most because my husband and I danced to it at our wedding. I love the opening line, “screen door slams…” Besides music, screen doors slamming is the soundtrack of my summers. “Dances across the porch as the radio plays” feels like every night of my teenage summers.
The last song that made you cry
“Both Sides Now,” one of my faves of all time, for the way it examines the complexity of human life and love. It’s also very Zen, neither this nor that, but both sides at the same time. Before I realized any of this my dad and I danced to it at my wedding (the slow version). On the topic of Joni Mitchell and crying songs, “Circle Game” always makes me tear up. I only need to hear the first lines and I will start to cry which makes my daughters laugh.
The last song that made you laugh
“Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night” [“I Gotta Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas]. Played it when I was in labor. It was a lonnnng night, not very good, until it was amazing!
A song that reminds you of home
k.d. lang “Helpless,” haven’t taken this out of the CD player since my dad died. He had an extensive CD collection and after he died, I was so overwhelmed by grief I only grabbed a few and this was one, I had never listened to it but immediately fell in love with it and decided that it was one of his favorite albums, too. I have literally not taken it out of my CD player since 2011.
A song that inspires you
“Bad” by U2. “If I could I would let it go”—idea of surrender is so Zen, releasing our ego, our small wants and demands, and wake up instead to this moment, which is very much the big idea behind Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World. It’s so simple but so difficult at the same time. “I’m wide awake, I’m not sleeping” — it’s how I aspire to live. These lyrics never fail to astound me.
A song that helps you write
“North” by Sleeping at Last. I played the whole album Atlas:1 on repeat as I wrote Running Home, finishing the last chapters at MacDowell, a writing residency in New Hampshire. “North” especially is very evocative of writing and how our stories change with time but also remain the same, the ones we retell over and over. I also very much love “West” — a very hopeful song that even in difficult times, as the lyrics say, “we’ll be just fine.” I believe this down to my bones. And the song “Sun,” also captures how I try to see the world and time — endless and finite at the same time. “We may fall in love every time we open up our eyes” — this is not because we only see beauty and goodness but because we see the world as it is.
Also my 13-year-old daughter playing “Canon in D” by Pachelbel on the piano after dinner always helps me write.
A song that helps you run
Cat Stevens’ “Miles From Nowhere” (demo version—insane beat and opening), “Sky Full of Stars” has an amazing tempo and it always makes me think of my dad, and how I wish I could see me run now.
A song you think our readers / listeners should know about
Anything by Donovan Woods. I just discovered him this year and I love his songs and lyrics. “Portland Maine,” “Another Way,” and “It’ll Work Itself Out” are just a few, but there are so many. He sings with his heart.
Also I love Michael Bernard Fitzgerald’s “Our River“ — also about time and rivers, which are so central to Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, the inextricable current of water and time that moves us along.
Exit Music, via a follow-up email from Katie:
I forgot to add that I love the song “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John, for reasons I can’t articulate but it makes me happy every time I hear it and can’t help but belt along. And not that you asked*, but my favorite song by T-Swift is “Marjorie” because it reminds me of my grandmother and how the ones we love are never totally gone from us.
*True! But given that at least 25% of the Underwoods listen to Taylor 100% of the time, I should’ve. Here’s the video — and be warned, it’s a tearjerker. It also makes a perfect segue for the next edition of Someone Else’s Songs. Until then…