Your whales must be seen before they can be killed

- Herman Melville, MOBY DICK

Confidence gets most of the attention when people talk about elite performers in sport, but acceptance might be even more important. Without acceptance, confidence may be nothing more than self-delusion. At best, it is a bluff. At worst, it is going all in on a hand you haven’t even seen! Acceptance, on the other hand, allows you to honestly assess the situation and your experience of it. It is the practice of what a colleague of mine refers to as self-honest self-observation, which he makes even easier for athletes by having them start with the prompt, “When I tell myself the truth…” Once athletes take the time to honestly reflect on their current experience, they can shift their focus toward what they want to happen next. It becomes less about believing absolutely in success and more about accepting uncertainty but still committing to the effort fully. But, as that same colleague also likes to say, thinking is remarkably inefficient in this process.

This is where music enters the equation.

For no reason whatsoever*, I recently re-read my sister’s book on the women in John Brown’s family who made his (questionably planned) raid on Harper’s Ferry possible. It was supposed to be a break from investigating music and sport, but it proved otherwise in a section about the lasting impacts of Annie Brown’s direct involvement in the lead-up to the raid:

Decades later Ruth recalled, ‘Annie’s grief was terrible to see. She had known every man who fell in the fight, had been present at all their conferences, and was like a sister to many of them….She went about the house pale, silent, and tearless. She neither slept nor ate, and I feared for her reason.’ Concerned, Ruth arranged for a local music teacher to play ‘The Dying Warrior’ while Annie was around. She recalled how ‘the pathos of this sweet old song broke up the fountain of Annie’s grief, and she cried with a passion I shall never forget. She often said afterward that had it not been for that song she would have certainly gone insane, but the fit of crying relieved the tension of her feelings.’

from THE TIE THAT BOUND US: THE WOMEN OF JOHN BROWN’S FAMILY AND THE LEGACY OF RADICAL ABOLITIONISM by Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz

The music did what Annie’s mind wouldn’t let her or perhaps couldn’t handle at the conscious level. But it had to be seen to be killed. Or, in this instance, heard to be felt.

In working with athletes, I typically recommend some form of post-game reflection to help accept whatever happen and move on from it. This can be as simple as putting a number rating on the performance or as complex as an athlete decides to make it. Regardless of the form it takes, it seems to allow athletes to learn from what happened. It helps them hold on to what was positive and let go of what wasn’t.

The Annie Brown story makes me wonder what function music could serve in this process. Athletes often listen to music in the lead-up to a game, but I haven’t had many describe using it post-game. Perhaps it would be helpful, especially if it allows athletes to match their feelings at a level that goes beyond what they can articulate. You could even have each team member choose a song after each game to create a shared playlist where all could process the experience while enhancing community. Taking the idea a step farther, it would be interesting to create a playlist over the course of the season based on the post-game selected track that best captured how the athlete felt about the performance. At the end of the season, an athlete could listen to the arc of the whole experience much like they would an album. Or you could do any other number of creative things using music as the tool for reflection. Maybe it would help them accept whatever happened and move on with confidence to the next year!

Note: The issue art is a drawing of a cat looking in a mirror. My daughter recently added a mirror to her room and her cat is obsessed with it. It reminded me that reflecting is good, but you don’t want to spend too much time in that state. See issue 15 for a more detailed discussion of that idea.

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* Other than that it seemed like a relevant timeline for brushing up on the history of violence as a political tool; currently halfway through Kellie Jackson Carter’s WE REFUSE and also recommend that for anyone who wants a more complete picture of revolutionary movements.

Iballa Buranat, Anastasios Mavrolampados, Deniz Duman, Friederike Koehler, Suvi Helina Saarikallio, Geoff Luck, & Petri Toiviainen. 2025. Memory bumps across the lifespan in personally meaningful music. Memory, 1196-1216.

summary: The authors of this study explored lifespan patterns in music-related memory, with a particular interest in whether the ‘reminiscence bump’ - the peak in emotional connection to music from adolescence and early adulthood observed in Western populations - held up globally. They recruited 1891 participants from diverse geographical backgrounds and analyzed the release years of personally meaningful songs. The authors found support for the reminiscence bump observed in other studies, with emotional attachment to music peaking around age 17 for participants in the study. Males tended to peak a bit earlier (i.e., 16) and females a bit later (i.e., 19). Additionally, the researchers found that, across cultures, younger listeners tended to bond with music produced around 25 years prior to their birth (i.e., cascading reminiscence bump). Older participants also exhibited a recency bump, which led to some cases of more recent music overshadowing the adolescence bump from their youth.

potential application to sport: I see two applications for this research. The first is straightforward: learn what music athletes connect to most emotionally and incorporate that into their preparation. I once worked with a runner who found the most meaning in a song that he would listen to as a high schooler with his team ahead of meets. His experience lines up with this study, as he was exactly 16 at the time. The second application is conceptual. I wonder if athletes have a similar reminiscence bump with respect to their sport participation. In other words, is there an age when the connection to sport is most likely solidified? I have often had athletes refer to finding it helpful to reflect back to a time when the relationship with sport was about freedom, exploration, and joy. Whether that is a baseball athlete reminding his 30-year old self that his 12-year old self would take a year of rehabbing Tommy John on a Major League IL any day of the week or that runner who would reconnect with the feeling of just competing that he had at 16.

Check out a summary of the study at https://neurosciencenews.com/music-memory-neurodevelopment-29830/

Legendary swimmer Michael Phelps’ use of music was well-documented throughout his career. Phelps used music ahead of and between events to help him focus, manage emotions, and control his levels of energy. 

Check out one of the many articles detailing his use here or listen to an old clip of Phelps explaining his relationship with music below:

Acceptance means squaring up with the truth. Which brought some George Clinton lyrics to mind. Because the only way out is through!

So wide you can’t get around it
So low you can’t get under it
So low you can’t get under it
So high you can’t get over it
So high you can’t get over it

funkadelic ONE NATION UNDER A GROOVE

I subscribed to a Substack from Raymond Leone a while back and have enjoyed his posts around music therapy. Leone, who is a board-certified music therapist and the director of medical music therapy at A Place To Be in Northern Virginia, dropped one recently that fit in nicely with the issue’s theme:

For more, check out his Substack. Enjoy!

I searched for songs related to memory or mirrors for this playlist. Didn’t think too deeply about it beyond that but definitely enjoyed listening to some songs from the past and learning about some that were new to me!