I dissociated to Soulja Boy at Orangetheory.
On the treadmill, struggling through a Push pace, my heart rate flirting with the Yellow Zone. That’s when the gym playlist transitioned from a synth remix of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” into “Turn My Swag On.” My mind hopped up out my body. Hovered in the air, latching onto Soulja Boy.
I watched my hand reach out to increase the treadmill’s speed. Noticed my legs extending further. Feet flying faster. Heart rate racing into Red. Calories: burning, burning, burning, burning, burning. I was aware that I would stop, when the instructor called time. But not a second before. My body, on its own, could make it. It would be fine, and “I”—whoever “I” was—would be better off apart from “My” body, floating in the ether, locked into a mantra: “I got a question, why they hating on me? I got a question, why they hating on me?”
Usually when I run all I can think is, “I got a question, when can I stop running?” If I’m outside, I’ll tell myself that I can stop and walk when I reach that tree, or the intersection, or the river, or whatever. I try to trick myself again whenever I get to the assigned destination but more often than not I do stop. I walk because I think I’m too tired to run. I allow my mind to control my body, in order to prevent my body from experiencing pain or discomfort.
The mind and the body are obviously connected, because the mind is in the body and part of it, but it’s also kinda different because that seems to be the one spot (for me) where the inability to exercise comes from. My mind and my body both feel better after working out, but it takes a lot to trick them—separately, and together—to put in the effort. I know I can run three miles—because I did it once, and then wouldn’t stop bragging about it, even though people told me it wasn’t that impressive—but my brain won’t stop telling me to not.
If you would have told me in 2008 that in 2024 I’d be dissociating to “Turn My Swag On” at Orangetheory I would have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve been experiencing this disorienting feeling that I am a lost time traveler more often lately. I think this happens in your 30s. After the Orangetheory workout I looked at “X,” saw a “Zillow” listing for a mansion in Chicago, with the comments “That walk score tho” and “Fake News.” In 2008, I might have been listening to Soulja Boy, but none of those words would have had any meaning.
I am an old man now, and the world is completely unrecognizable.
The only constant between 2008 and now is that “Turn My Swag On” is timeless. If you would have asked me in 2008 if I thought it was a good song, I would have said “yes, and I have a question, why are all the old people hating on Soulja Boy?”
I never understood why “Old people,” AKA the people my age now, thought Soulja Boy represented the decimation of hip-hop. He wasn’t Nas, but he wasn’t the harbinger of the apocalypse either. He was original and fantastic.
“Turn My Swag On” isn’t even the best song on iSouljaBoyTellEm, which is unfortunately not an undisputed classic. The song doesn’t come close to anything on SouljaBoyTellEm.com, which doesn’t come close to the raw originality of early single versions of “YAHH” and “BAPES.” But it’s still so good, this many years later.
Anyone who knows me knows how I talk ad nauseam about my deep appreciation for Soulja Boy. How he made it seem like any funny and charismatic teenager from the middle of nowhere could easily make a song and become a superstar. Except that he was the only one could do it, in his own unique way. I’m not going to talk about him any more here.
I am going to talk about “dissociating,” because I don’t think I know what that word means, even in 2024.
I don’t know if I’ve ever actually “dissociated.” Are people nowadays using that term to describe feeling “detached”? Or is it a real, frightening, psychological response? I suspect the people I know who’ve told me they’ve dissociated on ketamine had a drastically different experience than what I endured on the Orangetheory treadmill.
More likely, the familiar cadence of Soulja Boy yell-singing about hopping out of bed and turning his swag on—blaring through the gym speakers while my body was in overdrive—had the opposite effect of dissociation. “Turn My Swag On” didn’t snap my head out of my body. Instead, it made my mind more attuned to my body’s physical reality. Like, the song helped show me that it was okay to keep running. I could, even, run faster. I didn’t need to stop. I was in my body the whole time, I just felt better about it.
I wondered if there was a psychological study about “dissociation and music.” Turns out there has been. I found this article from Psychology Today about how people use music as an escape from themselves. But the examples described didn’t directly relate to my own experience on the treadmill. It could have been that the music wasn’t just an accompaniment, but it “played an active part in shaping” my real-life experience. That’s often true of music, though, and this was different.
I did find a good piece in Pitchfork by Jayson Greene that goes in-depth on the history of the term “dissociation,” including a report on how kidsthesedays are, in fact, redefining what began in the late 1800s as a psychiatric term related to mental dysfunction to mean something closer to “detachment.” Greene’s essay rightly posits that the ongoing relentless onslaught of horrific news targeted to our individual feeds has led to various forms of dissociation as popular coping mechanisms. When faced with the trauma of unchangeable doom, humans tend to escape. Often this means getting outside of yourself in one way or another. The Psychology Today article would agree with Greene that music can be a conduit for such detachment. Like ketamine or meditation, “Turn My Swag On” can get us there.
In a much smaller, inherently privileged sense, the exhaustion and certain future soreness from pushing cardio exertion to the max could have been enough “trauma” to make me dissociate. It was hard to think about making my body move while worrying about the negative effects that movement might potentially have on me. It was easier to get lost in the music.
Except I didn’t quite get lost in the music. I became a part of it. I felt myself in the song, and all of its warm comfort. My mind was floating around the room with the sound waves, vibrating from the weight rack to the mirror that showed my reflection: an aging unhealthy guy who needs to run faster if he wants to keep eating Chocolatey Chip Pancake Pop Tarts into the nursing home. I both was and wasn’t that guy, who did appear to be turning his swag on. It was a strange experience. Almost psychedelic, and similarly difficult to describe.
Greene’s article mentions that the process of “reintegration,” or “reconciling traumatic memories” that dissociation helps people evade, “can be painful and lifelong.” Obviously, running on a treadmill is not a significant trauma, and comparing my experience to real examples of dissociation is starting to feel trite and uncouth. But I have noticed that my difficulty to articulate what happened when the Soulja Boy came on, despite my recognition that it was significant, means that something unordinary (for me) did occur. In this case, it was beneficial. Locking into “Turn My Swag On” helped me stop thinking and start running. I probably shouldn’t call that “dissociating,” but that’s what it felt like, so I’ll redefine the term here yet again.
I don’t have a conclusion to this saga, and once again I am too in my own head, thinking that I’ve bored you with another pointless newsletter. Or worse, I’ve completely misrepresented a psychological term. If you’ve read this far, though, maybe it wasn’t that boring. Or maybe you can email me back and tell me what you know about dissociation, or Soulja Boy, or both. If you’re interested in the topic, you can learn more in that Pitchfork article. I just figured I’d let ya’ll know.