#15 - second wind
You can listen to the playlist on Spotify or scroll to the end.
‘Second wind’ is the phenomena in running where an exhausted and out-of-breath athlete finds the energy to continue once again, returning back to or exceeding their earlier performance levels. As a self-described running hater, I don’t relate to this specific example, but the broader meaning’s quite universal. When you’ve been barely resisting sleep for hours but suddenly find the energy to power through the night, newly fueled by some combination of adrenaline, exhaustion, and perhaps sheer stubborness. Or a sports team’s down 2-0 but an unlikely goal gives them the momentum to turn the game around. Or you wake up exhausted and unmotivated, but you have a particularly good breakfast or run into an old friend and realize it might not be a bad day after all.
And there’s larger framing, too. When good news comes in and you find yourself dreaming in a way you forgot how to, or have been too scared to. Or you start a new project or have a good conversation with a friend and are suddenly excited about ideas and possibilities and excitement itself. You go through a few tough weeks, months, maybe years, then see yourself reverting back to an earlier version of yourself - one that was more passionate, more hopeful, more loving.
This is a playlist about that idea of experiencing your second wind, to varying extents, for moments fleeting or longer-lasting. Some songs are about the recovery, while others juxtapose it with its preceding experiences. It starts with Maggie Rogers’ Back in My Body, which begins with panic-ridden moments on her first big tour, followed by the resolve and relief at feeling back in her body, in control once again. Next is Japanese Breakfast’s vibrant and joyous Paprika, off her summer 2021 album ‘Jubilee’.
Later in the playlist, less due to its relevance and more because I just love it, is Little Simz’s Silhouette off her newly released album ‘NO THANK YOU’. Following her 2021 masterpiece ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’, I was surprised she was putting out another album so soon, but it has affirmed my belief that she is one of the most exciting, ambitious, and talented artists making music right now. Her lyricism is incisive, at once vulnerable and affirming, with the depth, confidence and beauty crafted with her words matched by layered and grand instrumentation. It’s been a good month for UK hip hop because the next track is Stormzy’s I Got My Smile Back off his similarly recent album ‘This is What I Mean’, which finds him thoughtfully, intentionally experimenting with his sound and growing more self-assured.
The playlist takes a somewhat sharp turn from hip hop to indie folk, which aptly describes my music taste. Faye Webster’s In A Good Way starts with the lyric “I didn’t know that I was capable of being happy right now, but you showed me how.” While she’s talking about falling in love, I choose to interpret it as Morocco reaching the World Cup semi-finals right in the middle of (grad school) finals season. We each have our priorities, I guess.
Making this playlist, I was thinking about this second wind analogy, and how well it tracks. In reality, a race gives you a limited window of recovery. Maybe you pick yourself back up and your opponents slow down a little and you make it after all, but at some point after slowing down, it will become physically impossible to not finish last. Life outside a race track doesn’t work like that, of course, and second wind is more like third and fourth and seventeen hundredth. And as much as we tend to simplify into binaries of perseverence and giving up, you can give up, fully, and then actually get back up again.
You can experience these moments of joy and possibility and ambition and slow down again shortly after, without that experience meaning any less. Rather than relying on athletic ability and willpower to kickstart that second wind, you have the shoulders of family and friends and mentors. And if you decide to abandon the race altogether and switch to a different track, that’s okay. And if you dislike running, as I do, you can walk or call a taxi or skateboard your way ahead, at whatever speed works.
10 songs
(Spotify)
Back in My Body - Maggie Rogers
Paprika - Japanese Breakfast
Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris - Hayley Williams
Silhouette - Little Simz
I Got My Smile Back - Stormzy
In A Good Way - Faye Webster
actually happy - BLÜ EYES
To Meet You There - Anjimile
Handmade Heaven - MARINA
Everything is Everything - Ms. Lauryn Hill
(The only reason the term ‘second wind’ occupied space in my brain is because my brother ran a Squash academy with the same name.)