A colleague had asked me on Friday for my reaction to Prince's death and the first thing that came out of my mouth was, "I can't believe it. I thought he was immortal."
She also asked if I was a fan. I have liked Prince since the day I heard "1999" when I was eight years old, but I never really considered myself a fan. However, the more I thought about how much his death impacted me, the more I realized that perhaps I was. So I wrote her an email and in response, she told me it was so well put that I should post it.
This, of course, is a blog about running and Phish, but there is a connection to Prince. Phish has covered "Purple Rain" several times and "1999" once (on 12/31/1998, natch). I got to see them do the former on 12/30/1994 (at Madison Square Garden, where I would see the man himself do it a decade later), in which Jon Fishman did a solo on the vacuum cleaner that was not only startlingly musical but truly soaring; and 7/4/2012 at Jones Beach, as part of my favorite first-set ever. Oh, and as my friends Meredith, John and Marshall can confirm, I found myself dancing on a table to "I Wanna Be Your Lover" at the M Lounge at last year's Phish festival, Magnaball.
So with that connection in place, here was what I had to say about Prince in the wake of his death:
Prince is one of those musicians that transcends time and pop culture and genres and fads. He simply “is”. I can’t even bring myself to use the past tense.
So yes, I guess I am a fan. But the fact of his constant being kind of led me to forget about him for a while. You don’t think about the sun and the moon every single day, but they are always there. And when you stop to take notice, you realize how amazing they can be at any given moment, especially in those moments like a beautiful sunset or a bright full moon. That is Prince.
I have all the albums from the golden era of 1984 (Purple Rain) to 1992 (that symbol thing). Around the World in a Day was a total musical game changer for me and I was only 10 years old. I was obsessed with "Raspberry Beret" in particular.
After 1992, I dropped off, but came back every so often and each time I did, I was just as blown away as before – like with the triple-CD ‘Emancipation’ album from 1996 and ‘Musicology’ from 2004.
The latter finally get me out to MSG to see him play an incredible live show. The dude did everything – tore it up on electric guitar, piano and bass, and even did a little acoustic set in the middle of the show. After he played a super-sexy slow jam (I think it was “On the Couch”), I turned to my friend and said, “I think Prince just made love to me.” He was that intense and intimate in his delivery.
The question came up about how we can mourn someone we do not know. But if you believe that a true artist like Prince puts his heart and soul into his music, then the question is irrelevant because we do know him. On some emotional or even spiritual level, we know him. We know his desires, his fears, his loves, his losses.
Maybe some of the sadness comes from the fact that we connect with him on such a raw, personal level but he never knew us - that we never got to tell him our own hopes and dreams and loves and how they were shaped by his art. We’re extremely affected because his music touched our lives in a personal way; and even though we know that millions of other people feel that same connection (so how personal can it really be?), we are totally OK with the one-way love affair that we all share for this one magnetic personality. We are not only OK with it, but we embrace it and, when he dies, each other.
The beautiful thing about art, though, is that it’s forever. For the rest of my life, I can keep going back and listening to all those great Prince records and keep feeling that feeling. In a sense, I suppose I was right – he is immortal.
One could say I got bitten by the race bug rather quickly after my first race - so much so, that I was eager to not only run another race, but run a longer race. Somehow, I landed upon the Southern Ocean County Hospital Great Causeway Challenge, a mere three weeks after my first race outing, 10 years ago today, April 22, 2006.
A decade hence, I have absolutely no idea what possessed me to drive 100 miles from Parsippany to Manahawkin by myself on a Friday night after work for a small 6.2-mile race early Saturday morning, with no plan whatsoever other than to run the race. I drove around the area late Friday night looking for a place to stay because I had not even bothered to set that up in advance, finally happening upon the Barnegat Motel after swinging by the high school where the race would start the next morning.
Because I did almost no research, I found out that the event also included a 30-mile bicycle race. There were about 60 people in the event, a third of which ran the 10K, with a third biking the 30 miles and the other third doing a biathlon.
I remember the start at the school and a turnaround point in the middle, but honestly, I do not have much of a recollection of the race itself. I recall enjoying the surroundings despite the lack of supporters, volunteers, or even other runners. I remember thinking that it was downright funny that I came in second place overall, simply due to lack of competition. But hey, I got my first medal as a result!
But most of all, I had accomplished a new feat. Sure, I was already doing eight-mile training runs, but increasing the race distance soon was a big deal. In the coming months, I would do some more 5Ks and up the distance yet again. And by the summer, I would also start writing a blog about it.
Hot on the heels of my successful return to marathon running, I am officially registered for my 15th marathon (in my 14th state!):
The Shipyard Maine Coast Marathon on May 15, a point-to-point race in Maine from Kennebunk to Biddeford!
I am extremely excited about this for a few reasons:
I am taking it seriously, but not too seriously
Instead of the intense training through which I put myself for the Myrtle Beach race, I am instead stepping back to using my own 10-week modification of the Hal Higdon Intermediate 2 program. No speed work, just mileage and a few pace runs. I plan on running a 3:14:00 or better, but I am not even considering trying for anything near a PR.
Short turnarounds can be fun
After Myrtle Beach, I felt like I still had a lot of energy to spare and did not quite want to lose the fitness and distance that I had built up. Sure enough, during the next week I ran a total of 29 miles after only two post-marathon rest days. I have done some shorter turnarounds than this (six weeks between Clarence DeMar and New York City, eight weeks between Fortitude for First Descents and Central Park), so it should be no problem.
I missed a whole year
2015 was a bust, with zero marathons, thanks to my back injury. Time to catch up!
New state, baby!
Maine, here I come!!
This past year, I was fortunate enough to attend all four shows of Phish's New Year's Run at Madison Square Garden in New York. Twenty years ago, I missed the first three, but attended the ultimate one (at that very venue) regarded for quite some time as the greatest show ever. It was my first New Year's Eve show.
Little had I known on Dec. 31, 1995, Phish had already been tearing it up for three nights. On Dec. 28, they rocked the Centrum in Worcester, Mass., playing with nonstop energy as they ripped through the classics of their early days ("The Curtain", "Possum") and kicked out the big jams in "Tweezer" and "Slave to the Traffic Light". A 1995 show that starts with "Split Open and Melt"? I am all ears.
Newer fare like the still-evolving "Taste That Surrounds" and the still-stretching "Down With Disease", not to mention "Stash" and "Fluffhead", gave the first set of Dec. 29 a lot of meat, but the star of that show was the surprise epic "Bathtub Gin -> The Real Me -> Bathtub Gin" in Set II.
When they brought the party to Madison Square Garden on Dec. 30, the mondo jams and fiery playing kept coming. Even with "David Bowie", "It's Ice -> Kung -> It's Ice", an excellent "Mule Duel" and a raucous "Run Like an Antelope", there was still plenty of gas left in the tank for the amazing night to come.
My brother and I had amazing seats on the floor of MSG on 12/31/95, and danced up a storm to our first encounter with "Punch You in the Eye" and got a big kick out of our first "Colonel Forbin" story (with Tom Marshall singing "Shine"). It was only our fourth show and we were up close on the biggest night of Phish's year.
You have probably heard the official release (and if you have not, then do so!)
, so I do not need to tell you how much Set II rocked out like gangbusters right from the huge "Drowned" opener that segued beautifully into "The Lizards". "Runaway Jim" was pretty hot, too, but even that was no match for the way-out "Mike's Song" that led into the strangest set ending yet - a digital delay loop from Trey that grew out of the jam and faded away without the usual "Weekapaug Groove" sandwich. I remember wondering just what the heck to make of it.
During set break, I witnessed what most of the audience probably never noticed - Jon Fishman came onstage and had someone shave his beard. Could this night get any more odd, I wondered?
Yes.
Giant Van de Graff generators sparked to life, sending bolts of light all around the stage, three mad scientists (Trey, Page and Mike) turned knobs as crazy sounds emanated, and a platform containing Fish as Old Man 1995 was raised above.
Lights flashed! The countdown commenced!! And at the stroke of midnight, the platform broke apart revealing Fish reborn as Baby 1996!!!
Huge balloons descended from the rafters while the rest of the band played a beautiful "Auld Lang Syne". With Fish back at the drums, we finally got our "Weekapaug" and the first jam of the new year had everyone dancing, dancing, dancing. The gorgeous segue into one more 'Quadrophenia' song, "Sea and Sand" provided only a few minutes of quietude before the ridiculous knockout punches of "You Enjoy Myself", "Sanity" and "Frankenstein", not to mention the rip-roaring encore of "Johnny B. Goode".
It was 1 a.m. and we had been through a wild ride. We left Madison Square Garden sweaty and spent as we headed downstairs to catch the next train to Ronkonkoma, but not before I picked up a piece of one of those balloons which I still have to this day.
It would be almost 10 months until I saw Phish again, but having the memory of that show made the wait a little better.
I distinctly remember laying on the concrete bleachers in Brookdale Park in Bloomfield, N.J., telling my mom on the phone how nervous I was.
In my eight months as a runner I had run greater distances than three miles. Heck, I had done eight by then. But this? This was a race. And races were for real runners and that was not me. I was just a guy who ran (and not a whole lot), not a "runner".
That was 10 years ago today at the Building Tomorrows 5K, my first race ever.
It happened completely organically. After weighing in at 175 pounds in 2003, I started frequenting the gym, first at the Y then at William Paterson University, a few days a week. By August 2005, I had grown accustomed to my semi-daily workouts, so when the Rec Center closed for maintenance for a couple of weeks, I decided to hit the pavement.
I jogged. In my old sneakers and sweatpants. Sometimes in jeans. On Route 46 in Parsippany. I had no idea what I was doing. But I kept doing it and I liked it; and I had no desire to go back to elliptical machines.
So by the time my friend Elaine told me about the April 1 5K at Brookdale, I should have been totally ready, but I was absolutely terrified.
It is weird how certain little details come back in my mind. I do not recall the start, but I remember that it did not take long for the fear to turn to joy while running along the park's paths. At the end of a downhill I recall smiling to the volunteers as they cheered me on. I even remember that "American Idiot" by Green Day was playing on my first-generation iPod Shuffle (courtesy of my big brother) at that moment.
I also distinctly remember getting freaked out at the uphill climb into the home stretch and the elation of crossing the finish at 22:51 (7:21 pace) – 64th overall, 58th of 229 males, and fifth of 22 men age 30-34.
It was the start of something amazing and addictive in my life. It has become the focus of my attention for a decade, the basis for the goals I strive to attain.
Ten years later, I still often run at Brookdale Park, and I still can not help but smile when I do.
