Recording as Six Missing, ambient artist TJ Dumser creates music that encourages mindfulness and positive lifestyle habits. He combined both practices through running, but a few years ago, he lost both his love of the run and the mental clarity that came with it. He explores that period of his life in Six Missing’s upcoming project, Gentle Breath.
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Growing up, TJ knew that his father, a runner himself, wanted him to play sports, but all of that “outsideness” held little appeal. He tried running every so often, but it only served to convince him that he wasn’t a runner, and once he got out of school, he put away his running shoes for good – or so he thought.
While he was living in New York and finding success as a musician, he discovered that he had another talent. “I figured out that I was really good at drinking,” he says. “And so that became a thing that I did and I did a lot of. And when the time came to really get on the mat with that part of myself and decide that that had to go, that’s when I started thinking, ‘Well, if I can be really good at these things that are not good for me, can I try doing some things that might be good for me?’”
Since running had always been a presence in his life through his father, he decided to give it a try and started a Couch to 5K plan. “I got myself out and went for a jog. Great. Day one, done. I felt okay. Kind of hated it, but let’s try day two. This app is telling me what to do. I will do what this app is telling me. And I just followed each step along the way each day, hating it a little bit less. And then there were some days that I hated it a lot and didn’t want to do it. But the thing that I started to clue into was how much of a life lesson I’m learning from this. It’s like, not every day is easy. Not every day do you wake up feeling energized, ready to do your to-do list.
“And it was kind of strengthening that muscle in me to say, ‘I don’t feel like running today, but I’m going to go do it because this is good for me. It’s helping me. It’s clearing my head. And by the end of it, I know that I will feel better.’ So if I could just think through to the end of the run, if I could get to that point where I was cooling down and I was proud of myself for doing something that was difficult, then that’s the thing that I have to put in my brain. And at the same time, I was going through withdrawal and depression and anxiety and really hard, terrible days of quitting substances. So the two together were very parallel. And I used running almost as the way to coach myself through getting sober, getting healthier, and just taking each day by day.”
Even on the hardest days, he was determined to see the plan through. “It was just non-negotiable. This was going to be the thing that I was going to do so that I didn’t have to feel bad about giving up on it. I decided that I was going to make this happen and be a part of my routine, a part of my life. And so I did. And had I not done that, I probably would have done what most of us do when things get difficult in the beginning, just go, ‘Well, I’ll try something else. Maybe I’ll come back to this next week.” And all of a sudden, I’m not doing it. I didn’t want that to be the case. I just said, ‘I’m not gonna stop until I get to running a 5K without stopping and not feeling like I want to throw up on my own feet.’”
He finished the plan and ran that 5K. His distances increased exponentially until one day he ran 13.1 miles without even intending to, just because he was so locked into the joy of the run. He had discovered the meditative aspect of running, “that sweet spot of stride and pace and breath and music and visuals.”
His newfound passion for running intersected with his other passion, music, leading him to explore new forms of musical expression. “I think the through line between the music that I make as Six Missing and the journey that I went on with running was becoming mindful and becoming more attuned to my own self and my own body and my own emotions and my own feelings, and really just the headline being, ‘awareness’.
“When I finally started to get into a kind of enjoyable groove of running, and started to find those moments of mental clarity where you come to this calm, clear-headed state, when I started hitting moments like that in the runs, my music started hitting those moments as well, and I wanted to more or less create soundtracks for people to usher in those moments a little bit easier. I just tried as best as possible to capture those little windows of mental clarity and create while in those, because I feel like there’s a deeper resonance that comes through that connects with a listener who can hear that that’s where I’m creating from, versus just trying to make something cool to make some money.”
TJ had sworn to himself when he started running that he wouldn’t quit. After moving from New York to Austin in 2020 though, he did. He would go for months without going for a run, and he struggled to come to terms with the fact that something that had been such an important part of his life was gone.
Just as TJ’s early work as Six Missing reflected the joy he had found as a runner, Six Missing’s new project, Gentle Breath, is a reflection on the dark time in his life after the move to Austin and his journey through it. “Gentle Breath is kind of an admission of things not being so wonderful right now, but my intent with it is to be listened to from start to finish. And in doing so, you can hear the record starts really kind of uncertain and dark and intense and anxious, and as the record carries on, it lightens up and it ends on a somewhat positive note. I think that just acknowledging the deep darkness brought me to a lighter, maybe more spacious, mind.
“That’s kind of like where I was and am currently with my running relationship. I ran almost every single day when I lived in New York. And when I moved to Austin, I blamed so much of it on Austin, but it’s not Austin’s fault. I struggle a lot to get myself out even three days a week. Instead of just ignoring that, I had to call that out and say, ‘Okay, this is just the chapter that we’re in right now. Doesn’t mean that you’ll never run again. Doesn’t mean that you can’t get that back.’ And perhaps it means that my relationship with it when I do come back around to it is going to be that of greater respect, greater gratitude and perspective.”
To help get himself back into a positive relationship with running, TJ has put together a playlist of some of his favorite meditative and ambient pieces, by himself and by other artists, to listen to while he runs. In the hope that it can help others to tune out the noise in their head and take in their surroundings, he’s shared it on Spotify.
One of the biggest teachings of meditation is “begin again,” a philosophy that TJ has embraced. “Just start,” he advises. “Whatever that might be, just start. Don’t wait until you’re ready because you’ll just get stuck waiting.”
Photo credit: Andrea Mendoza
Resources:
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