Author: DC
January 2011
Word count: 990
When I joined my current gym I was given as a “free gift” [#1 Free gift! With every purchase of an insanely overpriced gym membership!] a single half-hour session with a personal trainer. When the day came to have my session, I very nearly didn’t go because I assumed that the person I was about to entrust half an hour of my physical wellbeing to would be like the caricatured drill-sergeant trainers that you see in movies. Usually played by a guy in very tight shorts, and altogether too much spandex. You know the type, the “quitters never succeed! Are you a quitter? Are you a man or a mouse” breed of psychological bully who harass you into doing “just one more set”, their sole achievement being that you never want to go anywhere near a rowing machine ever again. But eventually I convinced myself that they couldn’t all be like that, and when I got to the gym I was relieved to look around the room and see several very friendly-looking trainers offering helpful advice and not yelling Kanye tweet-style ‘motivational messages’ at people. Then my trainer turned up. Jason. Tight shorts, spandex and shouting. Within five minutes he’d come out with such gems as “when you come hear you have to leave your tired at the door” and “you must be mentally stronger than your body is physically weak”. His defining moment, however, came ten minutes in. I had just finished stretching in ways that my body will never forgive me for, and as I moved off the mat I smiled at the man who was about to take my place, and wished him good luck. At which point Jason turned to me and said “focus. There’s no place for friendship at the gym”.
I never had another session with Jason, who spent six months glaring angrily at me whenever I went near him. But his words stuck with me and I thought of them again this week. I was bored of stationary-bike cycling, and thought I’d put my iPod on to distract me (I have a small, pink gym-only shuffly. Manly, huh?). I’d forgotten that, just after Christmas, I had wiped my usual mix of sugar-rush gym music from Pinky, and instead loaded her with an end-of-year mix that my friend Dusty had made for me. He has been making mixes for years, from the themed (I currently have mixes called “A Bit Gruff”, “For The Summer” and “Early Emo”) to the you-have-terrible-taste-if-you-don’t-like-this-band (my protestations that I just don’t get Morrissey didn’t stop Dusty making me a complete Morrissey mix), but his best are always the annual best of the year compilations that he puts together. I’d only recently received the 2010 version, and for some reason I sort of thought that I might not enjoy it as much as I had done the 2008 and 2009 versions. I figured that I knew most of the good albums and great songs that had come out during the year, and that while it was nice to have lots of them on the same tape it would all feel a bit familiar.
Within two minute, I had to stop the bike, move away from the TV blaring out “Ministry of Sound Running Trax 2011”, and go stand in the rarely-used and therefore blissfully quiet fitness room in the gym, just so that I could have another listen to the first song on his mix, without background noise or sweating middle-aged men distracting me. I’d never heard the song before. I’d never heard of the band. I’d been half-listening while trying not to die of post-Christmas exercise overload. And it was great enough to grab me straight off. [# that song was “I’m Gonna Change Your Life” by The Thermals. Just a kick-ass, dark, snarky, sexy song]. A couple of tracks later it happened again. And then again. The mix was dotted with songs that I’d missed, or that were by bands I’d never heard of, or that I had downloaded but for some reason not appreciated. I must have looked like I’d gone crazy, sitting there on a bike, sweating and dishevelled, but smiling to myself while skipping back to repeat these great songs.
It made me realise that Jason was wrong, and that there was room for friendship at the gym. In fact, that there is room for friendship, and for actual reminders of that friendship to appear, pretty much anywhere these days. A huge number of people now carry digital music players of some form or another – iPods, cellphones which can handle music files, laptops with iTunes. Some people even play it retro, continuing to rock the Discman or Walkman or Minidisc player long after most people have moved on. As a result, most people have access to songs wherever they are or whatever they are doing. And while a lot of people put together their own music collections, I’d be willing to bet that the majority of people have at least one or two tracks in their collection that they have been sent via email by one of their friends, or that they’ve ripped from a CD that someone lent them, or that they have downloaded from a blog or from iTunes based on a recommendation from their brother or sister or that creepy guy who hits on your every time you go into Starbucks. Each one of those recommendations or transfers or lendings is a minor act of friendship, an indication that someone has thought about you enough to let you know about something that they think will make you smile, or make you rock out. And as long as you’ve got those songs with you then there really is room for friendship anywhere – at home, at work, even at the gym.
Happy New Year to all, and I hope you have a wonderful, musical time of it all in 2011.
