A Note to The Runners
Thoughts about creativity, activity, and Josh Lynott's book launch.
Notes Night Run
Twelve weeks ago, with jet lag still clawing at my feet and my suitcases not fully unpacked, a friend from Amsterdam sent me a TikTok link. As the clunky interface on Safari opened up,
’s face flooded my screen for the first time. He said that he was hosting this run club in Melbourne, that it was pace inclusive, and that after running 5k, people sat down on the floor of an art gallery to write poems onto their runner bibs and drink tea. He called this making “running real again—” I had no idea what he meant.
That Wednesday, after some internal deliberation, I laced up my running shoes and waked to At The Above, a gallery space in Fitzroy from where the runs were held.
5.2 km with interspersed panting conversations, one bashful poem, and a cup of ginger tea with honey later, I started a Wednesday ritual.
I’ve been back almost every week since then, often dragging along a friend or one of my roommates, signposting my time and experience in Melbourne with red-faced selfies, poems, and cataloged runs.1
On October 2nd 2024, I met up with a friend in the Carlton fountain, and we walked to the gallery for what would be my 12th and final Notes Night run. Upon arrival, we said hello to Josh, and carefully pinned our bibs to our bodies. Then, I grabbed lights to put on our shoes and around our necks, and turned to look at the gallery, that through the weeks had housed three different exhibitions and was now almost ready to house Josh’s. At the back of the room, a few old bibs were placed on the floor, filled with words from runners of weeks past, and I tried to find one of mine to no avail.
Josh whistled to call our attention, before reminding us that this was the end of his eighteen-week project. The gallery was packed with people, most of which I recognized, but still when he asked who was there for the first time, a few hands went up, so he gave us the run-down. Notes Run Club goes hand in hand with A Note to The Runners, a book, and exhibit of poetry about the mental and physical sport of running. In Josh’s words, “It’s a cross-pollination of my two loves: running and poetry.”
We bounded down the stairs of the gallery and into the night air. The day had been warm and sunny, and a bit of heat still radiated off the pavement. 40 or so people, all wearing a bright light, hit their feet against the ground in group formation.
One of my favorite things about Notes, is the way that the people on the outside stare at us. It must be a strange sight, a group of lit up individuals running in a pack along the busy streets of the city. In more than one occasion we've gotten cheers, and claps, and for a few weeks, I wrote all of my post-run poems, from the perspective of a random person who reacted to see us running.
Halfway through, we stopped at a random wall. Except it wasn't a random wall. In the middle of a small alley-like street in the border between the neighborhoods of Collingwood and Fitzroy, a large poster, advertising Josh’s exhibition, was put on a wall.
It was quite minimal, mostly white, with the date, address, and his name in the center. In front of the wall, there was a cardboard box with red markers. The crowd went wild. We all wrote something, some people thanking Josh, others providing their own reflections on running, art and community, and a few leaving messages to encourage those passing by.
After we all wrote our piece, we finished the run back to the gallery, and for the last time, I unpinned my bib, wrote a poem, and drank some tea.
A Note To The Runners
A couple of days later, on October 4th, Josh was launching the book and exhibition, and told us to show up on time. I rallied my friends and arrived only fifteen minutes late. The entire gallery was bathed in a red light, and it was fun to see people I had only seen in athleisure, wearing “every day” clothes and full faces of makeup.
The walls of the gallery were fully lined with the poems that we’d all written over the last eighteen weeks, and screens looping videos of people running and writing were interspersed with large prints of some poems in the book. Despite the attention to detail to the walls, it was impossible not be drawn to the treadmill in the center of the room, where a runner was getting stared at like an animal at a zoo.
As time passed, runners switched out, and quickly I started recognizing more and more faces of the community that had been created around this club, take on the treadmill “stage.” Over the course of the three-hour opening, friends and members of Notes, ran a relay marathon, to both emphasize the 42.2 poems in Josh’s book, but also to highlight the community aspect of the art project that he carried through.
The exhibit was about poetry, art, and running, but by having the performance aspect be so crucial to the launch, Josh reminded viewers that all of those things don’t really mean much if they are not buttressed by the community that keeps them going. He effectively showed how art, creativity, and community are not just something that people have, but rather — in the least cliché way possible — a way to live.
The exhibit was a celebration of this way of life, of an eighteen-week experiment that created a community and took a cohort of people that were not poets or runners or either, and made them both.
Does Running Fuel Creativity?
Even after the first Notes run, I could have said yes. I could have gone on and on about how running removes the friction of a blank page, how it makes the writer forget that people could judge what they are writing, how doing something hard physically pushes them to think better about themselves, how like in an art class, community breeds better writers. Perhaps that would have been premature, but after eighteen weeks, my observations stood. The walls were lined with words from people that eighteen weeks ago would have been scared to write them. The walls were lined with fears and joys— truths.
These findings don’t necessarily surprise me, I’ve written about the connection between runners and photographers before, and predictably it extends to other disciplines, for example Japanese author Haruki Murakami, has a whole book on his running practice which is accidentally also about his writing practice.
In my opinion, what creates this bridge between runners and creatives is that doing a hard thing makes it easier to do another hard thing. It is often said that sometimes running is more mental than physical. Training the mind to push those boundaries of what it thinks is “hard,” can yield benefits in all areas of life by creating more resilient and strong individuals. Creativity is frequently hard in similar ways, so getting good at running, can not only yield better creatives, but also better people.
Josh’s poems delve into this. One of them talks about how running, as in the act of putting one foot in front of the other, isn’t really hard, but what is hard is being consistent and keeping up with the commitment that running entails.
Running isn't hard... and you know that. But I'll tell you what is hard. To be consistent. To be disciplined. To find a path back from injury. To lose and show up again. To go backwards before you go forwards. To run the time they said. To listen, I mean to really stop and listen. To choose running over sleep over work over their plans, your plans. Getting out of bed. Don't bother with that. I think they thought it would all go smoothly that growth would be linear that it would all go to plan. That your body would trust you. So now you know, running is the easy part.
Josh’s poems read like a praise to runners for running, but also to running itself for the role that it has in his life. He delves into the complexities of his relationship to the sport, and continuously highlights how it has made him both a better creative and a better person.
The book is amazing. It’s small and thin, with great typography, and strong messages. Josh constructs sentences in creative ways to convey important ideas, and plays expertly with the space in the page, to keep the reader curious, and to make his writing read with predetermined and well-thought-out rhythm. Josh uses the thin veil of running to write about creativity, community, and what it’s like to be human. He celebrates the sport, but also celebrates those who do it with him, and who have become better people through it. His words leave lasting impressions, and the exhibit as a whole is a testament to what creativity can be.
To me, Notes Run Club, and A Note to the Runners, reminded me that art can be about community and performance, that everything in our life is deeply intertwined and that progress in one area is often synchronous with progress in others. Notes redefined poetry and running, it quieted down the voice that typically panics when faced with a blank page, and brought honest thoughts and ideas to the surface. In the end, both projects were a celebration of both physical endurance and mental toughness, of running and creativity, of individuality and community, and a host of lessons and experiences that will stay with me.
— S
If you’re in Melbourne, catch the exhibit At the Above until October 13th. If you’re not, you can find Josh on Instagram, or you can follow his Podcast. You can also buy his book “A Note to The Runners.2”
Everyone but me is on Strava. I’m more into Nike run club
the gallery has signed copies, and it also ships worldwide