Latest / Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep / Soft Words for the Restless Hour

Transcript

Soft Words for the Restless Hour · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: 700 years, and it will sing it for 700 more,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: and it sings it now, in this moment, to you,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: to the sleepers, to the dreamers, to the readers, to
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the people who have found their way to this place,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: in this castle, in this world, and have sat down
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and closed their eyes and let the hum do its work,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: which is to say rest. Let go be held. Be safe,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: be home. The hum changes. Not in volume, the hum
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: is constant. Always constant. Never louder. Never softer. Always exactly
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the right volume, which is the volume of sleep, which
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: is the volume of rest, which is the volume of
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the deepest, most fundamental sound in the world. But it
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: changes in quality the way the candle changes in color,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: moving through a spectrum that has no name, from the deep, rich...
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: resonant hum of midnight to the lighter, brighter, more delicate
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: hum of dawn. The deep hum is the hum of
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the earth. It comes from below, from the foundations, from
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the place where the castle meets the ground. It is
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the hum of tectonic plates, of underground rivers, of magma
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: flowing slow and steady in the deep places of the earth.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: It is the hum of the planet itself, rotating, orbiting,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour while the
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: people on its surface sleep and dream and breathe and live.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: The lighter hum is the hum of the sky. It
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: comes from above. from the enchanted ceiling of the great hall,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: from the windows that look out onto the grounds, from
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the towers that reach toward the stars. It is the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: hum of the atmosphere, of the wind, of the rain,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: of the clouds that drift across the moon and cast
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: shadows on the sleeping world below. It is the hum
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of the cosmos itself, expanding, evolving, becoming, in its slow,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: patient unceasing way more itself with every passing moment and
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the hum in between the hum that is neither earth
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: nor sky but both the hum that is neither deep
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: nor light but goth the hum that is neither old
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: nor new but both is the hum of the castle,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the hum of the stone and the wood and the
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: glass and the magic, the hum of the people who
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: built it and the people who live in it and
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the people who sleep in it and the people who
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: dream in it and the people who will build and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: live and sleep and dream in it for centuries to come.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: The hum is the castle's way of saying, I am here.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I am holding. I am holding you. I am holding
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the world. I am holding the sky. I am holding
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the stars. I am holding the silence. I am holding
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: the darkness. I am holding the sleep. I am holding
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: the dream. I am holding the feeling. The bare, unadorned,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: uncomplicated feeling of it is good to be. And I
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: am holding it for you, and I will hold it
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: for as long as you need me to, which is always,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: which is forever. Which is the amount of time that
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the castle has. Which is all the time there is.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Sleep now. The hum is singing. The castle is holding.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: The library is watching. The books are dreaming. The librarian
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: is burning. The night watcher is watching. The silence is deep.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: The warmth is warm. The darkness is dark. The night
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: is night. And the hum, that deep, low, patient, ancient, beautiful, extraordinary, mundane, miraculous, tedious,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: magnificent hum, is singing you to sleep, has been singing
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: you to sleep, will continue to sing you to sleep,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: for as long as you need it, which is always,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: which is forever, which is now. There is a moment.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: In the very deepest part of the night, when the
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: darkness stops being dark, it does not become light, not yet,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: not for hours, but it stops being the deep, solid,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: impenetrable darkness of midnight and becomes something else. Something softer.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Something thinner. Something that has a quality to it. a texture,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: a flavor, like the darkness has been watered down. Diluted,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: mixed with a very small amount of something that is
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: not yet light but is the memory of light, the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: promise of light, the distant, almost imperceptible suggestion that light
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: exists somewhere, that it has not been extinguished, that it
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: is still out there, somewhere beyond the horizon, beyond the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: earth's curve, beyond the slow rotation of the planet, waiting
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: for its turn, waiting for the moment when it will arrive,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: as it always arrives, as it always has arrived, as
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: it always will arrive, regardless of what has happened in
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the night, regardless of the storms and the fears and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: the griefs and the losses and the endings, regardless of
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: all the things that have ended in the darkness, light comes.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Light always comes. This is the moment when the library
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: begins to stir. Not wake. The library does not wake
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the way people wake. With a start. With a gasp.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: With the sudden, jarring return to consciousness that characterizes the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: muggle alarm clock experience. The library stirs. It shifts. It adjusts.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: The way a sleeper adjusts when the blanket has slipped.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: the way a dreamer adjusts when the dream begins to change,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the way a body adjusts when the temperature drops by
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a fraction of a degree, and the skin, without being told,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: without being asked, without the slightest intervention from the conscious mind,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: begins to generate a little more heat, a little more warmth,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: a little more of the deep, internal fire that keeps
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: the body alive and the mind working and the soul dreaming.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: The candles change, not quickly, not all at once, but
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: in the slow, gradual way that everything in the library changes,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: one by one, candle by candle, shelf by shelf, corner
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: by corner. as if the change is being passed from
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: candle to candle like a whisper, like a rumor, like
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: a secret, from the candles nearest the door to the
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: candles in the deepest corners, from the candles that face
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the corridor to the candles that face the shelves, until
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the entire library is burning with a light that is
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: not yet dawn but is no longer night, a light
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: that is the color of the space between one breath
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and the next. a light that is the color of
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the space between one thought and the next, a light
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: that is the color of the space between one dream
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: and the next. It is the color of anticipation, not
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the anxious anticipation of waiting for a result or a
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: letter or a diagnosis, the peaceful anticipation of waiting for
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the sun, the anticipation of the earth, which knows the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: sun is coming. which has always known the sun is coming,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: which has never, not once, in four and a half
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: billion years doubted that the sun would come, the anticipation
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: of the tide, which knows the moon is pulling, which
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: has always known the moon is pulling, which has never,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: not once, in all the long patient history of the ocean,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: doubted that the moon would pull. The anticipation of the story,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: which knows the ending is coming, which has always known
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the ending is coming, which has never not once in
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: all the long, patient history of storytelling, doubted that the
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: ending would come, and that the ending would be good,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: and that the goodness of the ending would be the
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: same as the goodness of the beginning, which is the
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: goodness of being, which is the goodness of existence, which
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: is the oldest feeling in the world. The light grows. Slowly, patiently.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: The way the dawn grows. The way the tide rises.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: The way a story builds, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: chapter by chapter, from the first word to the last,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: with every word leading to the next word, and every
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: sentence leading to the next sentence, and every paragraph leading
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: to the next paragraph. in a chain of meaning that
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: is unbroken and unbreakable and beautiful, in the way that
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: all chains are beautiful, when they are made of the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: right material and held by the right hands and used
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: for the right purpose, which is to connect, which is
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: to link.