The excrutiating greyness of normal
by Steve Xoh

I always listen to the same music when I run. On shorter runs I listen to my Liked Songs on shuffle, but on longer runs I have specific music for specific routes. I’m not sure why I do this, but I imagine it has something to do with the comfort of the music synchronising with particular locations. Over time, each bend, turn, or landmark becomes associated with a specific song or lyric, which seems to work as both a motivational boost and a navigation aid.

My current long run begins outside my flat, heads south-west through residential roads, leads out onto the southern bank of the Thames, crosses Hampton Court Bridge, follows the north bank to Kingston, and then loops back to where I began. My chosen music for this specific run is Pavement’s “Live Europeaturnén MCMXCVII” album. I can’t remember why this album ended up being paired with this route but, over the last year, they have become inseparable. I know that the Geddy Lee line in “Stereo” should be playing as I pass the hairdressers in Thames Ditton, the opening bars of “Stop Breathing” play as I begin the first part of the northern Thames towpath and if I make it to Kingston Bridge before “Range Life” has finished then I know that I have run a good time.

Running has become a very important thing for me. There are of course significant physical benefits to this, but the main reason that I do it is to support my own mental health. Often I feel a tension in my body or a horrible stuckness in my brain and running seems to shake all of this up in a way that allows me to access a more regulated and grounded state. Running also seems to help me find me a way out of creative stuckness. There is a point in each run where I suddenly seem to have access to a previously obscured plethora of creative ideas and abstract thoughts. If I’m stuck writing a talk or designing a workshop, I’ll often go for a run, knowing that by the time I get back I’ll have ideas, or at least that the stuckness will have loosened a little. Big, immersive projects like Sound of Silence (the world’s first silent podcast featuring special guests) emerged in this way. I have also found that running helps immensely when writing this Substack.

I’ve noticed that I go through a repeated emotional journey in writing these pieces that goes something like this:

1. “I really loved that last edition.” [Satisfaction]

2. “I don’t think I can write anything new that will be as good.” [Despondent]

3. “Oooh. I’ve suddenly had some ideas of what to write about.” [Excitement and flow]

4. I spend a few hours writing and then step back and think “Gah! this is rubbish. I can’t do it.” [Deeper despondency and self doubt]

5. I walk away and forget about it and hope nobody will notice if I never write again. [Give up]

6. I come back to it after about a week or so and, on revisiting it, think, “Actually, I quite like this” and see a way to tweak it to fall in love with it. [Excitement/flow]

7. I finish it, record the podcast version and send it out into the world.[Excitement and sense of achievement]

8. Go back to step 1
   
   

It is a frustrating process and, while it is somewhat helpful to realise that it is cyclical and that each stage eventually resolves itself, that is little consolation when I am in the despondent stages and thinking, “But this time there really isn’t any way out of this.”

I’ve come to use running as a way to help me through steps 4-6. Often, when I return from a run, I’ll re-read what I’ve written and start to see a form or a few threads that I like and want to develop further. Sometimes the flow state of running connects me with new ideas or themes that I want to explore. Very occasionally, the music I’m listening to directly inspires something.

This is rare, because listening to the same music on every run means there’s unlikely to be anything I haven’t already noticed. But on a recent run I heard a lyric in Pavement’s “Type Slowly” that completely unlocked the flow I needed to start writing this issue.

“People of the bay - it’s excruciatingly grey”
Stephen Malkmus, 1997

I felt quite depleted by the end of 2025 for various reasons. Emotionally heavy, bored, restless and frustrated. It felt like all the things that used to spark and ignite me no longer did and I was hungry for something without knowing what was missing. I realised that various circumstances, some beyond my control and some self-imposed, had constrained me, cutting me off from the kind of wanton fascination and experimentation that brings me to life. I also realised that December and the festive period had somehow channelled me into a way of living that felt far too '“normal” for me.

Hearing that lyric, whilst in the flow state of running, helped me put words to something I already intuitively knew: that “normal” feels excruciatingly grey to me. This might explain, in a strangely reassuring way, why my life has unfolded with as little “normal” as possible in it. Malkmus’s words, likely written about his experience of everyday San Francisco life, helped me realise that when I feel this deep frustration, boredom, and restlessness, there simply isn’t enough random, iridescent colour in my day-to-day.

Paul Watzlavick’s work about patterns of stuckness has been a big influence on me. Watzlawick describes these patterns as things that we instinctively reach for in order to resolve a situation, but which end up making it even more stuck. I like to refer to these as ever tightening loops of common sense, where we rely on the patterns of the past to help us escape from the patterns of the past. My rule of thumb for breaking out of a stuck pattern is to move towards the counter-intuitive, the nonsensical, the strange.

When everything feels excruciatingly grey, my default response can be to search for a better shade of grey. But without contrast, even grey loses its meaning. I’ve learnt that the way out of this stuckness is not to look for a less excruciating version of the same thing but to seek, or at least be open to, experiences and experiments that introduce a colour that doesn’t make much sense in my current day-to-day palette.