well thank you got to run with you know my name is gordon the coolest and i'm the host today the guest host and my guest is jack cole jack is the author of many books most recently a collection of essays called bone over ivory and jack is a runner and a writer and a musician a pianist and that's what this book is about it explores the relationships among running writing and being a musician it was such a pleasure to read these essays i really really enjoyed them thank you going in your mind how are writing writing and music connected for me it's because they're also tucked tile i think having been a pianist all my life that i can safely say but one never knows a piece of music as well as the person who has had to learn it and internalize it physically and i would say that all the great ideas of civilization are hard to know to the degree to which someone who has had to work them out themselves and who physically write them unless they've done that i don't feel that i know things that i've read as well as i've had to then wrestle with them as a writer and the landscape around me even though i'm a native to long island i don't think i knew it nearly as well until i confronted it as a runner even over being a walker because i think for all the years i would walk my dogs and walk in a dreamy aspect thinking i was learning the landscape in a way that a driver never would it still didn't teach me until i was a runner one is not level and i think in civilization what makes us so deluded about the actuality of the world is that we're confronting in civilization all the time level surfaces and i think runners more than anybody confront the truth of the physical world because they're always finding out what things really are in terms of creation so they're all tactile running writing and music for me yes and i did forget to mention you are a native of long island born in long island i was born on manhattan island great in a sea and your house spittle on amsterdam avenue  and then i guess as soon as my mother and i were discharged we went to flushing where my mother and father lived and i guess that certainly is on long island no new york city person will will count it and no long island it will count that but i think it counts ok yes i will say i am a native alright let's talk about the book a little bit i want it will get back to talking a little bit more about your running sure i want to i want to talk about the book so how did it come to be there's an essay in the book called a transcendentalist love story yes and at the moment that story ends which is as honest as i could make it in terms of autobiography where the story ends a few hours after that i had an appointment for lunch with a colleague a wonderful mentor figure in my life is name is michael johnson he's a american journalist a music writer who's based in bordeaux but he was visiting with his wife his children who live in the boston area and i met for lunch with him hours after the story that's in this essay both her and i told him the story and he looked at me and leaned back with a kind of writerly looked at his face and said well that would be a good story to write and i said i wasn't ready for it because it was the end of a romance kind of story yes and he said well give me something about the list sonata which is a piece that means a lot to me and that put in motion a series of essays that were composed over about me be twelve or thirteen months and they all had in common a thread of the three elements that you've mentioned running writing and music that's fascinating so the idea of the book was born out of a real experience that you just had and then the st essay was suggested by this mentor if yours yes which was in a way a distraction from the immediate story that is occurred right and then what happened is they all seem to have in common despite the disparate elements of learning writing and i keep thinking i have this three and i can track them running writing music and what which is the one that i know the least about i feel like i know a fair amount about running and writing i hope i know a little bit about what i think you know more than you suspect i think a lot of people i think so i think a lot of people of its who are very poetic intellectual level being very very tactile running and practicing are so close they depend on our ability to endure repetition yet and turned your repetition with imagination and repetition looking forward to a result that we can't  present that is true i mean my extremely limited experience with music was about six weeks of piano lessons as a child and then some later choral music in young adulthood and high school and college but you know no talent and no no illusion of ever pursuing that in an in a serious way but yes even ion going into running thinking was another solitary thing never met more gracious and loving people than i have through running and it's such an equalizer because one can't be dishonest in it the person crosses the line st unless you did it by some sleight of hand right is the superior runner so one has to accept their place in it very quickly yes and do you see parallels to writing in music there or maybe not so much in the act of humility as in the fact that even though it's social it's still remain or that where once you're going to run into really invested in the work out aspect of it eventually people to a degree fall silent at a track workout or race yes but i've been told sometimes that as i mentioned the book i've been accused the track workout must not be working hard enough because if you can hear me talk at a much yeah i would i would disagree with that i think the ability to be social in a track workout in a race and indicates a level of relaxation and comfort with discomfort if that makes sense not not comfort in the sense of oh you know this is just a lark but you're on what you said that i feel a skill to yeah yeah should not feel guilty so which is your favorite essay in the things that you like to say loved it and is about a friend of peter clan who i met through the north running club on long island we're both made of long islanders and i showed him a trail that we had run and we both conceded that while we've been here all our lives and here this magic world was really just a few feet off the pavement of the forest and we quickly resolved to formalize it into a club where anyone was welcome to join us but now years later though we still have our meetings we still remain book by robert richardson of william james and this it talks about how william james was present for the great san francisco earthquake ok i didn't know that and when he woke on the morning that it happened this is a paraphrase himself as the earthquake was going on speaking to nature he was he said go it more as if he was preaching for the cosmos to reveal itself again in the most thrilling possible way yeah and i must say i've ordered the company of my colleague peter know because we've sought of course we don't seek out earthquakes or asteroid has an essay or you like a one of those tornado change you know or we have found that the we live in a great metropolis it becomes the most private of places sometimes as vast and  empty as west texas in the middle of suffolk county soon if you choose the right hour to go interesting wow well yeah no i enjoyed that essay very much thank you that was on founding a running club from the journal of the unanswered question not so why is that why do you not as a musician one might think of course you listen to music while running that's a fair question i think maybe one of the most practical or predictable answer somewhat of a busman's holiday leaning into an instrument all day right and then do right think that you would want to hear it right that's the true but to me one of the great glories of being a bipedal what a miracle it is that we can get out of bed every day and move and be witness to what for the most part of  to whatever we wish to see is that miracle it is people forget i catch myself and break myself whenever i feel cranky but wow what a chance to be able to rise out of bed and not only move but then to start to move it will at the speed that i can command yeah and to me to wear headphones would be to block out what i call the chance to hear the unbidden is the best thoughts i think that come to any writer or those that are not agent lee one's own i find that the cliche of the writer with their forehead being classed by an angry and crumpled paper behind the shoulder is something of a cliche i've been in that position now but as a journal to the style of emerson i've always imitated that practice of writing on all given subjects every day whatever comes to me and then leaving an index trail so i can find it later so that i have this record will be unbidden and then didn't comes best to me whether it is as pianist a musician when i'm in the woods running through the unbidden that do you mean since whatever your whatever comes to you yet running and you don't plan it you don't you know think ok i'm going to i don't know you know come up with five new essay ideas on this one or whatever you just let it come to you exactly because i've been eating well thank you because i feel if i go in with an agent idea usually nothing comes and then it's funny if i don't however then i am presented with a problem usually of trying to come up pneumonic devices to remember the things that come i was very flattered by one of the blurbs for bone over ivory and from a composer an author named  because what he reacted to more than anything else in the book and i was flattered by his reaction because he's a man of great great learning and writing and composition is he reacted to the analogy that only came to me as a runner which is and i'm sure you've encountered this in trail running that we don't have to look down we've become more masterful and i'm sure you've seen pianists a lot of people ask pianists why don't they have to look at their head right right because the black keys are a great tactile hint about where you are all the time and roots in the forests always serve almost as black keys to me fascinating yeah it will do for me i mean i can't compare it to the experience of being a pianist but i'm sure there are all sorts of things that you perform in your own home when the lights go out yes or early in morning that are bright very much akin to what a pianist does and i think runners are performing that task all the time so it was very flattered one of the composer an author of his stature reacted to that which was not a musical reaction so m connecting the engagement the physicality of being honest with being a runner being around there right right so i just want to go back a little bit to your your your writing process and in your journaling process your view every day can you explain that a little more because i'm not i know who emerson is and you know that he was a great writer an essayist and thinker philosopher what was his process of journaling every day you were talking about earlier sure probably the great heritage is for all the great body of journals from when i was a child or at least the late teenager and in my early twenty's or have the kind of quotidian notion that i'm going to write down what happened that day whatever it is like this for lunch and i saw my friend jimmy on the street but only later did it start to hit me that i should record the things that are peculiar that come to all of our minds and we usually as a numbers and say as says reject them because they're our own so i just got used to making a habit of that and then stealing from his idea for obama borrows this too of keeping a very very careful index or naming the topic and then that bled over into my running journal i like all this yes i want to ask about your running enjoy now looking at that and seeing how it evolved into yet to simply a nd main journal entry thing and so i've had to start to index it the numbers are still there humbles they are now to say three miles and some terrible pace that i'm only able to keep right now but running has become again a challenge of having to have pneumonic devices to remember the things that come in mainly when i run more than being at a desk the desk becomes the transcription time and the running becomes the running time interesting it sounds like it's the two are inseparable they really are at this point now you're not as old as i am do you mind my asking how old you are and so i am now forty nine so does your journaling are you old school the write it down in a notebook with beach and it's beautiful and we've all perhaps looked over our shoulder to see our footprints but of course the waves come in almost immediately a face those print right what i find is a mistake in writing electronically  temptation to create a beautiful foreground comes to quickly interesting and what i have when i write i see all of the rejected ideas old rejected syntax now but later on i find may ha mistake so i find writing on a computer is like running too close to the surface if you want to see a record of your journey right so i think it's way better to confront the mess right and leave it so if you you know i don't want to say make a mistake but like sure a better or different way to say something you just would cross it out and yes so i leave that and then sometimes literally underneath the cross outs right and the other day i was finding that in writing a new essay i don't know why this is become now a new thing in the journal to meditate you seem to favor the older entry true thing as if i trust the person who still has the same idea but thought it at another time right right it was almost like a plagiarism of oneself that's a good way of putting it tell me about yourself as a runner a little bit more are you competitive in time driven you know if you race a lot earlier you is wanting something else for you when i st started it was to relieve myself of sitting in a practice from all day i was right it stood upright and playing as an accomp and for my own solo work right and then i sitting all day as a pianist of course yes and then at st i took to it just simply to move and regain what i thought was my natural athletic early twenty's self could play soccer and never had to think about it and then i went to a running club my mother i think back in our hometown had seen some of the north running club with a jersey i went to a meeting and i sat there really kind of with the snide idea in my head i did these people care about their times and all those things seem people who do the work you haven't realized a lot of work to do that and why and just bigger and more exciting and more complex and fascinating all the time every year it's truly one of the glories i think of not just the sporting world but of mankind there's everyone getting together and doing that it's it's yeah i mean where else does so many people come together to move peacefully yes and environment well said we're not going to have our th next year two thousand and twenty will be the  new york city marathon and do the numbers still admit of more participants and holding steady around fifty thousand last year we had i think was fifty one thousand eight hundred something so pushing up a little bit but when we have waves now we've had that for a number of years there for waves so it's not fifty thousand people all starting at once but at the end of the day you know we move fifty thousand people through the city so maybe five bridges it is amazing it's extraordinary have you moved away from competitive running  race less now than you used to do is that just speak as you're slower forgive me for saying that most of us do slow down as we get on her interest change or is it a combination of both maybe a combination of both and maybe recovering i thought was the glory of walking that one can pause and yet i decided to become like the observant walker but still running right yeah and that is in that the essay about the unanswered question yes you and your partner  side already so running close seemed to be the skeleton key to looking at your own landscape maybe because it broadcasts as you were mentioning about how peacefully fifty thousand people travel through the city that a runner concealing anything right and you know you're intentions are peaceful yes and i was i joke then if and there have been maybe two or three times when someone has mentioned that we maybe shouldn't be there you're already in the actual fight so yeah  and it doesn't matter you know in the context of what you're doing it doesn't matter and there are no filters you know when you're when you run with someone you let your guard down and you know maybe it's because you do sense as we were saying before that the runner the person is means you no harm you know is just being in something to try to better himself or herself and just sort of be open to to the world to the syrians of being alive and being a physical being well writer i think feel that what i like to still stand by is the notion that text is a step a little further in interpretation that we can all document with a camera what we have done but we still haven't interpreted it so i think maybe in fact again my colleague peter clam had asked me once to meditate whether or not we should use the cameras and if i was going to resist it why write and in my journal that's what i wrote that i still felt that what i was compelled to go home and write up the run yes that then i interpreted things about it as opposed to feeling that i was contented that i had documented it yes so i feel that two things are accomplished in the journal that one documents that then they're compelled to see what the greater essence is now that does get lost in social media but  alone like stopping to take a picture with it and but i've become a convert so we'll talk ok i need to learn i like this it's good to know even if you decide at the end of the name no that's not for me i think personally i think it's  good to know because it's really so many people have come of age as runners who i interact with anyway who who know nothing else you know or who have never run without recording it on stop sharing it on the route that you're on run it regularly oh this is the the rd fastest you've ever run well which can make you a little crazy i'm going to sort of ignore that what's next what are you running what are you working on as a writer as a musician as a runner all of the above seeing will think you next mainly gordon i just continue the process where they all compliment each other and usually i were kind of in a hack like way as a pianist the whatever comes my way and then that's not a bad way to room whatever it may be and i found that's where than the journal comes into play you know and so oftentimes the running of the music is accomplished in one fell swoop and then usually how do i process all that in the days to disappear into the woods in my running your running shoes a wesome well i can't wait to read whatever's coming thank you for that and it's been such a pleasure talking with the owners is mine thank all of mine too thank you very much thank you so much this was such a pleasure talking with jack cole the author of bone over i very and i also want to thank will sanchez have got around with will and the manhattan neighborhood network this was great thank you gordon pleasure and we didn't we didn't even talk about everything that i had on my list  so flattering on again gordon when you're someone i'm a runner's limitations like i have i'm still getting over knowing what you have accomplished so i have i would have a one million questions i feel like the wrong being interviewed and we couldn't reverse roles so i'm going to know what is the what was the catalytic moment for you as a writer i mean as a child that you need to suddenly knew you were faster than others or know that i just loved it and yeah i didn't know that i was faster than others until my mid twenty's really didn't i i ran as a kid i just ran all the time you know we played chase around the neighborhood i would run home from school i would run to school and just that feeling of being out outside and going over ground and the love that from the moment i st stood up and i green board in the coolest and i've been a guest host today i'm gonna run with will and i just really want to thank will sanchez for this show it is such a pleasure to listen to the interviews to watch them and to just feel the camaraderie with all the other runners who have been on the show all together runners that watch the show it really brings us all together as a community here in the greater new york area and to know that people are watching and listening all over the world so i'm really appreciative of that and i'm also creative with new york road runners for giving me the opportunity to come on the show they're always very supportive when i have a role on the show and i know they have a great partnership with will as well so i think you got to run a lot my name is jack cole and i'm a pianist and an author and i'm forever grateful to will sanchez and his entire team and especially today to gordon who is for her generosity and her intellect and all two questions and discussing the grand topic of running and i'm also forever grateful to long island and all my friends and family there who always supported the notion that running is just as worthy a pursuit as anything in the arts