This week’s choice is “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne, which is an oblique tribute to those friends who ran in the London and Manchester Marathons last weekend, as well as a comment on reaching a point where it’s hard to see which way to turn.
I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on.
Jackson Browne (1948—)
Poem 385. Running on Empty
Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
Lookin’ back at the years gone by like so many summer fields
In ‘65 I was seventeen and running up 101
I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on.
Running on empty
(Running on) runnin’ blind
(Running on) running into the sun
But I’m running behind
Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive
Trying not to confuse it with what you do to survive
In ‘69 I was twenty-one and I called the road my own
I don’t know when that road turned onto the road I’m on
Running on empty
(Running on) running blind
(Running on) running into the sun
But I’m running behind
Everyone I know, everywhere I go
People need some reason to believe
I don’t know about anyone but me
If it takes all night, that’ll be alright
If I can get you to smile before I leave
Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I don’t know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes, I see them running too
Running on, running on empty
(Running on) running blind
(Running on) running into the sun
But I’m running behind
Honey, you really tempt me, you know, the way you look so kind
I’d love to stick around, but I’m running behind
(Running on)
You know I don’t even know what I’m hoping to find
(Running blind)
Running into the sun but I’m running behind
I was looking for poems about running and found it difficult to choose one that spoke to me, so I thought of songs instead—this song isn’t about running as such but it was used as the background to Forrest Gump’s repeated crossings of the USA.
It also speaks to me because it seems to be about someone who fears they have lost the things that bring meaning to their life. The first verse seems to be regretfully looking back to the age of 17 so many years ago, the confidence that we all seem to have in our late teens and comparing it with the doubt that comes later when life has tempered our self-assurance with experience and as the years pass like fields passing the windows of a car, we reach a point where like the song, “I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on.”
The chorus emphasises this feeling of exhaustion and uncertainty—the metaphor of running towards the blinding sun so that your path is uncertain and perhaps unsafe but you cannot see. The last line of the chorus suggests the pressing need to get to our destination even if we can’t see how we’ll get there.
The second verse distinguishes between the things we “do to survive” from those that “keep your love alive”—perhaps the tension between holding down a day job and the desire to find love. Again, we see the wistful reflection that at the age of 21, we feel we are masters of our own fate, but at some unidentifiable juncture, we find that we have left the motorway and are negotiating a back road.
The bridge expresses the idea that everyone, everywhere, needs something to have faith in, but speaking for himself, it’s enough to make a lover smile before he moves on.
In the next verse, he considers his friends who he used to rely on when times were tough and he sees that they are no different: everyone is travelling with little or no idea of their destination or indeed the route they’re following.
At the end of the song, we see him tempted to stay with his lover—there is something about her (“you look so kind”) that makes him want to “stick around” but the incessant urging to pursue his route is driving him away from her.
I like this song because it expresses so clearly the feeling of a life that has become uncertain: where the route and destination are unknown, when previously they seemed to be clear and definite.
The official video montage of the song is on the Jackson Browne YouTube channel.
Congratulations to my friends who ran in and completed the London and Manchester Marathons last Sunday, this choice was for you (at least partially)! It’s also for friends and family who have taken up running, whether with the Couch to 5k programme or in some other way—I’ve got as far as the couch!
I apologize if this Poet’s Day seems a little unpolished, it has been written between a number of competing pressures. If I have the time to review and edit it into a more satisfying form, I will do so but I promised myself I would publish a Poet’s Day article every Friday and I haven’t missed one yet.