Summary
Overview
Music critic Ben Ratliff discusses his unique approach to listening to music through running, arguing that running can transform passive listening into an active, immersive experience. After feeling disconnected from music despite having state-of-the-art listening equipment, Ratliff discovered that physical movement helped him truly inhabit the music in ways stationary listening never could. For the NYC Marathon, he curated a five-borough playlist that demonstrates how running can unlock deeper appreciation for music's spatial, rhythmic, and emotional qualities.
From Music Critic to Disillusioned Listener
Ben Ratliff's career as a music critic began with a transformative Miles Davis concert in his teens, which launched decades of professional music criticism for The New York Times. He particularly cherished reviewing live performances at venues like the Village Vanguard, where improvised jazz could create moments of beautiful confusion. However, a visit to a renowned mastering engineer's studio in Maine proved unexpectedly disappointing—even with pristine audio equipment, he couldn't connect with the music the way he hoped, leaving him searching for a new way to truly listen.
- Seeing Miles Davis as a teenager—with his unconventional stage presence and strange chord voicings—inspired Ratliff to become a music critic
- The Village Vanguard became a special venue where improvised performances could create moments where listeners got pleasantly lost
- In Bob Ludwig's mastering studio with optimal equipment, Ratliff expected to 'get inside' the music of Miles Davis's 'Kind of Blue' but felt nothing
- This disappointing experience made him realize he needed to find a completely new way of listening to music
" I saw many, many things there because you're below the ground. It's a little bit like the experience of being in an airplane where you're just like you're in some other sphere. And the concerns of what's happening on the planet Earth seem far away. "
" I think I meant more of the former, but what the idea of the music being inside my body, I suppose I wanted that too. And that also wasn't happening. It made me think about that. Like, it also made me realize my desire that, well, what do I want? I think I want to be the music, essentially. "
The Running Revelation
During the pandemic, Ratliff began running regularly and unexpectedly discovered that physical movement transformed his relationship with music. Rather than using music to enhance his runs like most people, he realized he could run to enhance the music—treating running as a tool for deeper listening. This inversion fundamentally changed his approach, making all music feel like live performance and allowing him to inhabit songs spatially and physically in ways he never had before.
- After running, Ratliff felt energized with 'crazier thoughts' and better writing—thinking became one of the greatest parts of running
- During the pandemic, after one particular run with music, Ratliff felt he had 'listened better than I've ever listened in my life'
- Most people listen to music to improve their running; Ratliff inverted this to run in order to be a better listener
- Running transforms all music into live music, creating a performance moment where the listener is actively present
" I realized that I could actually run into the heart of the music itself. and that running could be a way of taking the measure of music in a way that I really hadn't done before. "
" The experience that you're describing of like feeling that the music is in you and around you, you're in the world with it. It sort of reinvigorates the way that you are hearing the music itself. "
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