A Recurring Dream: A Cruel Mistress - Remastered

Season One Episode Fourteen "A Cruel Mistress" is one of the all time classics of Sleepy Time Mumbles, but it's been trapped behind the paywall where only delicious subscribers have been able to access it. Now, for your edification, may I... zzz... 

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SPEAKER_00 0:17

Good evening. And welcome to Dan Bane's Sleepy Time Mumbles. A podcast. You can't mess. I'm Dan Bain, and every episode I improvise a low stakes podcast for you to fall asleep to. Friends, I'm very thrilled to bring this episode out from behind the paywall. It's one of my favorites and has proved relatively popular with the general public as well. One of the few episodes I have received semi-regular feedback about. I've also not just not re-recorded, but I've re I suppose remastered as a way. I've put the original vocal track into the existing production process, I guess. And um so it would be too much to say it's a reimagining of the piece, but it is that's a more contemporized version. It's like when they remake a video game, but they just increase the frame rate or something. Yes. Very good. Um if you'd like access, of course, to the first four, three, four, I think it's four now, seasons of the show. They're available to subscribers. Subscribers help keep the podcast ad-free. So everyone can be mumbled to sleep without hearing about better help. That's a thing you could do, but not now. For now. Put down your phone. Turn off your screen. Close your eyes. Now it's time to be mumbled. Love an episode with a multi-part title.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Come along, my friend. Come down here. Come down the jetty and let us gaze upon the majesty of the sea. Ah she's a cruel mistress, the sea. She gives with one hand, she takes away with the other. And each of them her nails are sharp, and her skin is salty and wet. What does she give? Ah Why all my incomes are from the sea fish treasure more fish mostly fish and freedom for there is nothing more free than being aboard a boat with the sea in all directions. No land in sight, just the glassy horizon in a full three hundred and sixty degrees around ya to all compass barrens North South East West Northwest Southwest South East North West North by North West. All of the increments you know the increments you add more degrees of whatever you're closest to to get a bearing. That's the nautical term. And when in all directions, all points of the compass, all you can see are the breaking waves, the sea, the sky. That is where I find my peace. That's my safe place. Away from the travails of land, away from the travails of man, just you and your mistress the sea when you measure a horse, you measure by hands. When you measure a boat, you measure by feet. How many foot is a boat, and how many horses can fit on aboard it? Hands to feet, feet to mouth, foot and mouth disease prevalent on a boat with livestock. I never take a sheep on a boat. It's bad luck they say, and you never want bad luck on a boat. The luck of the sea is fickle. Sometimes what is good luck is bad luck, and sometimes what seems like bad luck can in turn seem to actually to be very fortuitous. I'll give an example. One time a piece of driftwood, a log hit the hull of my boat. The hull is the outside of the boat, that's the boat terminology. It hit the hull, and I thought to myself that will scrape the paint. I'm a bit cross about that. But then on closer examination 'twas not a log, but rather an overturned rowboat. And when I turned that rowboat up the right way, what did I find underneath it? Nothing and no name upon it. So now I also have a rowboat. It's tied up there at the back. It's made fast to the hull. I've lashed it to the hull. Made fast and lash our sailing terms. The terms of the sea. If you want to be on the sea, you must know the words of it. For there are for there's a language to the sea, and if you are not conversant in it, ye shall not be welcome aboard her. For she is a fickle mistress. A cruel mistress. Sometimes a storm will blow up many Beauforts strong. Beauforts is a measure of force used to measure storms at sea. That's part of the lingo, the langua franca of the sea. You're getting the message now, aren't you? You must know these terms. Sometimes a storm will blow up, a brew up from almost nowhere. A sudden gust, and all of a sudden, you are tossed about like a matchbook in a child's bathtub while it has a bit of a kick around. These are the images of the sea. This is the poetry of the waves. You'll be kicked about, turned about, flipped about, upside down, downside up, and if your mast is in the water and your hull is in the air, then you're in the danger, then you best take care. These are the rhymes of the sea. It's important to take a rum ration once a day. It's a tot you take a tot of rum, a single tot, but don't give it to a toddler. No toddlers drinking tots on my boat. And no more tots than one. Each man gets his ration. There'll be no drunken layabouts, I'll tell you that. Or there are punishments and there are punishments that are specific to the sea. Of course. That is for amateurs. No one hasn't walked the plank since eighteen thirty two the last actual recorded plank walking No You tie them to the mast and whip 'em with the cat and not an actual cat, no, because you cannot have a cat on a boat, for a cat on a boat is bad luck, and as aforementioned, we must avoid bad luck. We'll keel haul them, throw them over the bow and pull 'em out the stern. Let them run the length of the boat in that kind of instance. It's best if you're on a small boat, a small keel haulin' is quite a different matter to a large keel haulin', but the kind of disciplinary situation that you need to be doing a keel haulin tends to bring itself about because you have a large crew and a large crew, thereby enabling the chance that ill discipline is so poor and the need to reinforce that discipline upon said crew generally requires that one has a large boat. Ergo the keel haulin' when ye do it it's on a big boat. Ergo it's a bad keel haulin' What else? Scrub the decks both a punishment and a necessity. These decks don't scrub themselves, even though you might think they would should the waves break over the bows. The bows are the side of the boat terminology. But that doesn't clean the decks, for 'tis salt water. You must scrub it down. And we call this a swabbin. Swab those decks, boys. Swabbem good. Sometimes a punishment, sometimes a chore. Always important. So mind how you pour. You learn to read the clouds. The sky is nothing but a mirror reflection of the sea, and what you read in the sky is what you'll find in the sea. So look to the clouds, read 'em good. Read a page ahead of the book of the sea by looking to the sky. Look to the birds the punctuation of the sky book. They'll tell you they'll tell ya They tell you if land is near, they tell you land is far. They'll tell you if storms of ruin. They'll tell you if there are birds about. The birds are wise. Watch them. Watch them. There's always a lot of hoisting to be done on a boat on the sea. If you aren't willing to hoist, the sea is not for you. Pull those ropes, pull those ropes, boys, and unfurl the sails. Now pull those ropes again, boys, and furl them. Bring her about and man the cannons a superstitious lot, you say, sailors. Aye that they are. But when you're out there on the brainy deep, you'll see many a thing that will maybe change your mind about what is superstition and what is just good sense. Have you ever seen a Leviathan break the surface, a giant whale from the deep fire its plume of water from its blowhole, breaching the water, slappin' it down, swamping over the bows a giant creature of the deep and there are other ones. Have you ever seen a squid? Not a little squid, a fun squid, a squid that you might eat at a cocktail party. No, I speak of the giant squid and the colossal squid and the gargantuan squid and the really big squid. And when they come up from the briny depths, from the inky blackness that inculcates them from us when they break the surface full of spite and anger and ink. Then you will know fear. Then you will say, I wish I had been more superstitious. So you might ask, why then do I return to her time and time again? When she treats me so bad and is full of terrors. I do so for I love her, for there is nothing like a day with a cool breeze behind you, and the boat verily skipping across the waves, making good time across charted waters, a sweet cargo in the belly of the hold, be it treasures or be it fish, either one of them. And there is nothing I tell you, nothing that makes the pleasures of land sweeter than being away for them. Imagine, if you will, an enforced retreat from all that you loved, but also all that irked you, all that kept you trapped in the rat race, and instead a world contained entirely by the boundaries of a single bolt. All work, all problems, and all solutions to those problems to be found within your very view, within your arm's reach, unsolvable problems at that, the kind of problem that can be fixed by a hoistin' or a hammerin'. These are the simple challenges of the sea. Aye, there are dangers, but they're honest dangers. And I would never have anything else, I tell you that. They are the ones for me. One knows his place on a boat. The captain is the captain, the first mate the first mate. The cook is the cook, the cooper the cooper. The gunner the gunner, the navigator the navigator. There's a clear chain of command and a clear responsibility of duties. There's no confusion as to whose job was it to do that, and I thought I copied them into the email, and then whose responsibility was it to make sure that someone actually did that? None of that on the sea. If we're lost, it's clearly the navigator's fault. If the dinner is not good, we don't say it must be the cabin boy's fault. It's the cook's fault. Clear delineation of roles and responsibilities. I like that part of it. There's no mystery. You must keep watch. It doesn't matter what bell it is. That's how we do time on a boat, by how many bells it is. For if you just leave the boat to drift, or even if you leave it at anchor, someone must be alert and watching because the sea the sea knows when you're sleeping. That's when she likes to sneak up on you with her fingers and mayhaps it'll be she just wants to tickle you a little or mayhaps it'll be that she wishes to grab you and pull ya to her bosom and the bosom of the sea is at the bottom of the sea and you must resist that cruel embrace and ye do that by keepin' watch. You must keep your eyes peeled at all times, you must make sure the lights are lit red for port, green for starboard, so should another boat see ya, they know what way you're facin', what way you're a travellin'. Should ye see another boat and it be the daytime you can send them a message through semaphore. This is by holdin' flags out to your hands and placin' them in certain positions so as to spell out a word. 'Tis not a fast method of communication unless ye have mastered it, in which case it is as fast as sending any telegram, I tell ya that. Semaphore is the visual language of the sea. A boat must have a name. Irregardless of the size, breadth or length of her, she must have a name, for it is terrible bad luck to go to sea in a boat with no name. You must christen her upon the docks and christen her well. This is my boat. She's called all boats are girls too. Feminine boats for you never must place a man upon the feminine sea. You must hide him inside a feminine boat so as not to anger the sea. But if you put a woman on the boat you've got double feminine, and that could be bad luck. You must be terribly careful about these things. It probably doesn't matter if it's a girl dressed up like a boy because the sea cannot tell from a distance. But just be hesitant about that. Sometimes might be bad luck. Anyway, this is my boat. She's called The Poor Man's Carousel, for she takes me around and around, and I'm not but a poor man. Poor in treasures aye, but I am rich in experience, and I would not trade it for the world. What use are the petty baubles of civilization when I have tasted the raw power of the biggest thing on earth the ocean. I love her, and she will be the death of me. And I love her yet.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

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