10. Running Up That Hill - (Placebo)

"If I only could make a deal with God / Get Him to swap our places..."
In my spare time, I like to think of myself as something of a runner. Not a future Olympian, mind you -- but I do enjoy a solid 5K or a distance run. Actually, I've been training for a 10-miler, of late, and so four days a week, I can usually be seen trotting up and down the streets of my neighborhood in a desperate attempt to make up for a long night of drinking and/or kick myself into a proper "performance" shape.

Good news? My split times are improving.

Bad news (a.k.a. "my worst enemy?)


(Yeah, I totally just went there).
Ok, so maybe not quite "The Hills" frequented by Brody, LC, Speidy, and the like (dear Lord, why do I know their names?!) -- but real life, actual hills -- as in the giant masses of land that seem to throw an unnecessary obstacle in my otherwise level playing field. Hills are like nature's own personal trainer: they make you sweat, they shred your muscles, and they kick your butt.

For today's blog entry, we're talking about hills.

We'll do this first by looking at Placebo's 2003 cover of "Running Up That Hill," originally titled "A Deal With God" and made famous by the phenomenally talented but largely forgotten Kate Bush way back in 1985. Now in Kate's version, the infamous "Deal With God" is actually a pact between two lovers to try and swap genders for a bit -- which is kinda' freaky naughty, when you stop and think about it.


Brandon Flowers: "Somebody told me / that you had a boyfriend /
Who looked like a girlfriend / that I had in February of last year..."

Yup. It's kinda like that.

But when Placebo decided to put their own personal twist on Bush's gender-bending deal with The Big Man Upstairs, they ratcheted up the darker imagery throughout the song so as to take what once sounded like a whimsical deal with God and instead twist it into something that sounds a whole lot closer to a full-on pact with The Devil himself. Suddenly, "Running Up That Hill" became a whole lot heavier, and a heckuvalot more important.

Personally, I prefer Placebo's version to the original (if only because they used it on an old episode of The O.C. -- dang, there I go again). But let's see why --

Today, we're talking about hills, right? Right. And since we mentioned my homespun running regimen, let's see if we can't take some workout advice from our friends in the band:

Placebo's Three-Step Hill Workout1) Make a deal with God
2) Get Him to swap our places
3) Be runnin' up that hill. Rinse, repeat.

The way Placebo tells the story, they've got this friend who's hurting, BAD. (kinda' like an out-of-shape runner, really). In short? The metaphorical "hills" of life are absolutely killing this runner-friend. And so when the lead singer sees his pal hurting, he immediately wants to help; so much so, in fact, that he's willing to "make a deal with God" and step right into his buddy's shoes in order to keep "runnin' up that road... runnin' up that hill" on their behalf.

It's a nice gesture. But the ominous tone of the instrumentation that underscores this line makes it pretty clear that our singer's efforts are not only in vain, but likely to be doomed, as well. At worst? He's forced to watch his friend suffer in silence. At best? He can trade spots with his runner pal, but he'll still be forced to run up what sounds like a absolutely torturous "hill" once the swap has been made.

And it sounds like he'll have to keep making that run over and over again. Maybe even to the point where it will eventually drive him mad.

Say, that reminds me of somebody I met waaaaaay back in a middle school lesson on Greek mythology:

Ladies and Gentlemen, say hello to Sisyphus.
Sisyphus, of course, is the rascally Greek fellow whose flagrant abuses of power earned him the ire of the gods themselves. As punishment for the guy's treachery, Sisyphus ended up with his own bizarro version of "a deal with god," as Zeus decided to condemn Sisyphus to a life of pushing a giant boulder up a hill -- OVER AND OVER AGAIN -- only to watch it roll right back down the hill every time he came mere inches away from making it to the top.

So basically, if we had to break it down according to Sisyphus' training regimen, it might look something like this:

Sisyphus' Three-Step Hill Workout1) Make a deal with (the) god(s)
2) Push a giant rock up a hill
3) Watch it slide back down. Rinse, repeat.

Sure, it's a fantastic workout (you should see how toned the dude's quadriceps were), but it's really a futile and ill-fated effort no matter how you slice it. Every day, Sisyphus was no better off than he was on the day before. And after a long enough stretch of time? It might even be the kind of thing that would drive the poor guy into madness.

Thankfully, there is one other literary voice of reason with a makeshift hill workout plan of his own.

Enter the genius that is:


William Freakin' Faulker

Faulkner's take on hills is perhaps best summed up by this ridiculously insightful line from his landmark 1930 novel, As I Lay Dying:

"Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down."

Faulkner seems to have learned from Sisyphus' mistakes.

As he says elsewhere, "the past is never really past," and today is really little else besides more of the same from yesterday. Hills are merely the biproduct of all of the stuff we never quite sorted out in the first place. So rather than fight the inevitability of obstacles and find ourselves consumed or destroyed by life's maddening repetition, perhaps it's best simply to tackle each new hill one at a time, and savor every new challenge as it comes.

Instead of "running up that hill" over and over again only to descend further into despair, perhaps we'd be better served simply to make the best of those rare moments where we're on top of the mountain and everything is going well -- mainly because we know there is bound to be another hill that'll require our full and careful attention waiting just around the bend. Take it slow, and enjoy the ride.

So one last time, for those of y'all keeping score at home:

Faulkner's Three-Step Hill Workout
1) Walk up hills
2) Ride down them
3) Get mind-numbingly drunk. Rinse, repeat.

But then again, Faulkner was a raging alcoholic -- and so perhaps we should take his workout advice with a grain of salt.

After all --

There really is nothing worse for a runner's training regimen than trying to tackle a major hill while you're wasted.

(Not that I'm speaking from personal experience, of course).