Songbook #6: The Infinite Stroll

with Jeff Tweedy

Welcome to the sixth edition of The Songbook. Join the 132 subscribers of this newsletter by signing up below:

The Songbook is a personal compilation where I share my writing, as well as content that is significant to me in some way. Similar to how music punctuates our days, I’ll use songs I love as writing prompts (and will include a link to each song).

This week is a little different though. Jeff Tweedy, of Wilco fame, is one of my favourite songwriters, and he has an excellent Substack newsletter, Starship Casual. Rather than link to one of his many songs I love (such as Jesus, Etc., Laminated Cat, or I Am Trying To Break Your Heart ), I’m going to end with a quote from his most recent newsletter.

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I cut a deal with my son, Thomas. He’ll help me get my 10,000 steps a day, if I help him sleep. At this stage, from what I can tell, he loves nothing more than a long stroll, and his mother’s milk. Okay, he mostly just loves his milk. He is one month old.

What started with the early morning walk prescribed by Dr Andrew Huberman’s podcast, has now escalated into morning and evening walks. Give the young man half the chance and he will contrive a third walk from either mom, dad and/or granny.

I was walking him towards Keurboom Park last week when a lady in a Toyota slowed to walking pace next to me and wound down her window. Was I walking him down the wrong side of the road? Was she a new addition to my mom’s book club that I should have known the name of? 

“You’re a good dad,” she said with a smile, before she zooted off. Not every Thursday starts with a friendly jest from an old lady, before you’ve even boiled the kettle.

I really didn’t expect to be complimented for walking my son. Are the expectations of dads really so low? As I trundled along, I realised that this was wide of the mark. Dads generally have more flexibility than a generation ago where they were mostly required to be at the office by 8am sharp. She may be similarly impressed by my ability to unpack the dishwasher. 

I’ve always loved walking, but it was a personal activity that allowed me to unwind to an album of my favourite artist, gather my thoughts in silence or share a casual conversation. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Every walk is a sort of crusade,” which never really resonated with me until now. Walking with the goal of keeping Tom in a happy and sleepy headspace is a crusade — it’s high stakes for all concerned.

I cherish this time with Tom, and so does his mom. Seeing him peacefully doze is comforting and even though he does not have much to say, we feel like we’re continuously learning more about him. We mostly walk the same route: from our home, across the cricket club’s fields and a trip around the perimeter of the park. It gives us the opportunity to reflect on the day, and we try to articulate what we’re learning from being first time parents.

Seeing children play while their parents converse, makes me think about how important that sense of community will be in the years to come for our family. It was the stoic philosopher, Epictetus, that said that “You become what you give your attention to”. Walking provides me with the headspace to take simple observations and reflect on their significance. 

With two hands on the pram, the urge to check my phone for the latest notifications dissipates. The only reason I take my phone at all is for emergencies, of course — and to record my step count. Even the news websites of today resemble social media’s infinite scroll; as soon as you think you’ve consumed the content before you, more appears, demanding all of your attention, all at once. Like the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, it feels like we need to run as fast as we can, just to stay in the same place.

I wish I was independent enough to leave social media altogether, but I’m wary of cutting off my nose, so to speak. In the meantime, when I feel like I have surrendered myself to the algorithms of the infinite scroll, I try to remind myself of all the walks I could go on.

From Jeff Tweedy’s Starship Casual:

I think the thing we can take credit for with our kids, and be proud of and recommend to other people, is that we never talked down to them or acted like they were extensions of us that we needed to mold into something different than who they already are. Even very young we accepted them as fully-formed people. People we tried to get to know, and tried to help guide and set boundaries for, but not people we would get to make. I think that was a good approach, and I think they appreciated that.