Latest / Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep / Quiet Stories for the Restless

Transcript

Quiet Stories for the Restless · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Quite see.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: On the right side of the corridor, there are paintings.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Not the kind of paintings that move and talk and
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: wave at you as you pass.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Those are in the other corridors.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: The busy corridors, the corridors that connect classrooms and common
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: rooms and places where things happen during the day. These
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: paintings are different. They are portraits of people sleeping. Every
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: single one, men and women and children and old wizards
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: and young witches, and, in one frame, a very old
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: cat with spectacles perched on its nose, all of them asleep,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: all of them breathing slowly, all of them dreaming whatever
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: it is that painted people dream. I have sometimes wondered
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: about that. What do painted people dream of? Do they
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: dream of the frames they live inside? Do they dream
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: of the corridor they hang in and the candle that
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: lights it, and the footsteps of the students who pass
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: by during the day? Or do they dream of something
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: else entirely, some private landscape, some interior world that is
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: theirs alone and that no one else has ever seen?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I think they must dream of something. Sleep is not
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: the kind of thing you can do without dreaming. Sleep
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: without dreams is just lying still with your eyes closed.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: And that is not the same thing at all. But
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I am speculating. And speculation, however pleasant, is not why
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: we are here. We are here to reach the library
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: of dreams. And the corridor, though it curves gently and
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: is very peaceful, is not the library itself.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: It is the path to the library.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And paths, however beautiful, are not destinations.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: So we walk.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: The warm stone beneath our feet, the moonlight through the
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: arrow slits, the sleeping portraits on the wall, the blue-white
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: candle floating ahead of us, leading the way with the
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: quiet authority of something that has led this way a
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: thousand times and will lead it a thousand more. And
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: as we walk, we breathe. And as we breathe, the
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: corridor changes.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Not dramatically.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Not suddenly. But in the way that a room changes
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: when you turn down the lights. Gradually, gently, as if
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: the darkness is not arriving but being remembered. As if
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: it was always there and has only now been noticed.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: The air grows cooler. Not cold. Never cold.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Cool the way a glass of water is cool on
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: a warm day. Cool the way a breeze through an
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: open window is cool. Cool in a way that makes
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: you aware of the warmth you are carrying inside you,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: which you were not aware of before, and which is,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: now that you have noticed it, the most comforting thing
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: in the world.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: The corridor narrows.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: The ceiling lowers. The candle flame dims from blue-white to
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: a soft gold, the color of late afternoon, the color
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: of honey, the color of the last light, before the
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: sun goes down and the stars come out and the
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: world turns its face to the dark and says, very quietly,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: good night. And then, ahead of us, where the corridor
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: ends and something else begins, there is a door. is
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: not an impressive door. That is the first thing you
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: will notice. After all the long walking and the warm
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: stone and the sleeping portraits and the moonlight and the
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: candle flame, you might expect something grand. Something carved with runes,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: something studded with silver. Something that speaks in a deep
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: voice and asks for a password and refuses to open
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: until you have proven that.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: You are worthy. This store is none of those things.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: It is made of wood. Old wood.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: The kind of wood that has been old for so
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: long it has forgotten what it was like to be young.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: The kind of wood that has a grain so deep
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: and so complex that if you look at it closely,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: for long enough you begin to see shapes in it
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: the way you see shapes in clouds. Except these shapes
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: do not move.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: They are fixed. They are permanent.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: They are the shapes of all the things that this
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: wood has been over the centuries, the tree it was,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: the forest it grew in, the rain that fell on
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: its leaves, the birds that nested in its branches, the
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: wind that shook it in storms, the snow that lay
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: on it in winter, the slow, patient work of sunlight
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: that turned its sap into strength and its rings into years.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: The door has a handle. It is brass, and it
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: is warm to the touch, not because the corridor is warm,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: though it is, but because the handle has been touched
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: so many times by so many hands over so many
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: years that it has absorbed some of that warmth and
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: holds it now the way a stone holds the heat
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: of the sun long after the sun has gone down.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: When you put your hand on it, you feel.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: All of those touches, not as memories, exactly, not as
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: images or voices, but as a kind of presence, a
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: kind of company, a feeling of being part of a
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: very long line of people who have stood exactly where
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: you are standing and done exactly what you are about
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: They does not creak.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Doors that creak are doors that have been neglected, doors
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: that have been closed for too long. Doors that have
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: not been opened by someone who understands them.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: This door has been opened recently.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: This evening, in fact, by the castle itself was opens
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: its doors at the hours when they need to be
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: opened and closes them at the hours when they need
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: to be closed. And which has been doing this, without fail,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: for 700 years and which will continue to do it
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: for 700 more. The door opens onto a room. It
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: is not a large room. It is not a small room.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: It is the size of a room that has exactly
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: the right number of books in it, which is to say,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: more than you can count, but fewer than you can imagine,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: and each one of them is doing exactly what books
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: do when they are left alone in a room with
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: good light and good company.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: They are resting.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Not sleeping, exactly. Books do not sleep the way people sleeped.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: But they rest, they lie on their shelves, and they breathe. Yes,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: they breathe. Very slowly. In and out, in and out
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: the way the tide breathes against the shore. And in
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: their breathing they dream. And the library of dreams is
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: the place where those dreams go. There are shelves everywhere.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Floor to ceiling. Wall to wall, curving away into the
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: distance in every direction, arranged not in the straight, orderly
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: rows of a normal library, but in the soft, organic
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: curves of something grown rather than built. The way a
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: forest grows, the way a coral reef grows, the way
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: a city grows, slowly, layer by layer, room by room,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: corridor by corridor, each addition shaked by the needs of
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: the book's rather than the plans of an architect. The
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: light in the library comes from everywhere and nowhere. There
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: are candles, hundreds of them, thousands maybe, floating at various
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: heights throughout the room, their flames burning in colors that
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: candles in the ordinary world.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Do not burn.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Deep violet, soft green, pale gold, the particular shade of
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: blue that exists only in the sky just before dawn.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: But these candles are not the primary source of light.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: The primary source of light is the books themselves.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Books glow. Not brightly, not.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: In a way that would let you read by it,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: but in a way that you can feel a soft,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: warm emanation that rises from the shelves and fills the
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: room like the scent of a good fire. like the
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: warmth of a cup held in both hands, like the
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: particular quality of silence that settles over a room when
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: everyone in it has fallen asleep at the same time.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: The air smells of old paper and candle wax and
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: something else, something sweet and warm and faintly magical, like
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: the smell of a room where someone has been baking.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: except the baking was done a hundred years ago and
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: the smell has never quite left. It is the smell
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: of accumulated story, the smell of 700 years of words,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: carefully chosen and lovingly arranged as