Run the Song: Writing about Running about Listening

A revelatory exploration of the relationship between music and running by one of our foremost music writersOut the front door, across the street, down the hill, and into Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. This is how Ben Ratliff's runs started most days of the week for about a decade--sometimes listening to music, not always. Then, at the beginning of the pandemic, he began taking notes about what he listened to. He wondered if a body in motion, his body, was helping him to listen better to the motion in music.He runs through the woods, along the Hudson River, and into the lowlands of the Bronx. He encounters newly erected fences for an intended FEMA field hospital, and demonstrations against racial violence. His runs, and the notes that result from them, vary in length just as th