The first few years I was climbing I only climbed trad, onsight, and I overachieved to a certain extent. I would have songs in my head involuntarily whenever I found myself in that zone, usually but not always triggered by having a thought that involved words in the lyrics. The song would start playing in my head and I’d do the moves without distraction. The music would be playing absolutely vividly and I’d be enjoying and appreciating it in a way that I’d rarely done before, like when I’d first heard it and I’d sometimes reach the belay with a greater appreciation of it than before, the feeling of success making it seem even better. If I think of some of the routes I did in that state I can clearly remember the song and vice versa.
As I moved more into sport climbing and redpointing and became stronger and better at climbing but more risk-averse and less spontaneous I learnt to harness the “song in the head” technique voluntarily. As I set off up a route I knew the moves for but hadn’t led clean yet I’d get my breathing going steady and start a particular pre-selected song in my head like I was pressing play- part of the routine method that Guy mentions Jerry recommending. It was like when I used to pay gigs- the show would start and the butterflies would vanish, then it would be the end almost as soon as it began. The summer I did all my hardest redpoints (not hard in the grand scheme of things but hard for me) I had one particular tune that worked a treat.
I listened to that song for the first time in years this evening when I first started thinking about writing this post and I could remember certain redpoints, the feel of some holds I’d forgotten about and subtle things about the atmospheres of crags I haven’t been to for years. Wild.
Since I had to start climbing from scratch again I’ve only been psyched for onsight trad and the music (and in some ways my climbing) is more like it was when I first started- not planned and not always there. I’m not sure how much of that is due to the style of climbing and how much is due to the fact that I’m much less in control mentally (when climbing!) than I used to be though.
A lot of this is surely related to how much I love music and how much of a musical and auditory-focused person I am but it’s also, I think, due to my relationships with climbing and music. I’m very confident about music- I feel like I understand it at an absolutely fundamental level and nothing about it intimidates me.
Climbing, no matter how much I do it and learn about it, always feels like something I can’t fully “master” in that way and I have never felt the confidence in the act of climbing that I have in creating, performing or analysing music. As well as the distracting and occupying element of the “song in the head” method I think it brings some of the confidence I feel in one world into the other one. Many of the songs in my redpoint playlist, I now realise, have affirmative and/ or reassuring lyrics…