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Transcript

Muggle Tales: a quiet walk with muggle friends · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Somewhere playing music on an instrument you cannot quite name. Drink.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It is safe. Everything in this room is safe. Now
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: are you comfortable? Are you warm? Are you ready? Then
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: let me tell you about the library of dreams. Let
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: me show you around. Not quickly. There is no need
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: for speed here. The library has been here for 700 years,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and it will be here for 700 more, and it
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: is not in any hurry to be anywhere else. Neither
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: are we. The first shelf you encounter as you move
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: deeper into the room, past the chair, past the table,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: past the gentle pool of candlelight that marks the boundary
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: between the reading place and the rest of the library,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: is devoted to what I can only call the stories
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: of weather, not weather reports, not almanacs, not the dry,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: factual accountings of barometric pressure and precipitation levels that muggle
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: meteorologists produce with such enthusiasm these are stories about what
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: weather feels like from the inside. There is a book
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: about fog. It is a small book, no bigger than
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: your hand, bound in gray cloth that is soft as
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: rabbit fur. When you open it, and you may open it,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: if you like, the books in this library do not
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: mind being opened, provided you are gentle. The pages inside
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: are not white. They are gray. A soft, Shifting gray,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: like the fog it describes, and the words on the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: pages are written in a slightly darker gray, and they
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: are arranged not in the usual straight lines, but in
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: swirling patterns, like mist moving across a hillside, and when
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: you look at them long enough, they begin to move.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Very slowly, the words rearrange themselves, drifting across the page
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: like clouds. forming and dissolving and forming again and as
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: they move they whisper, not loudly, not in a way
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: that would startle you, in the way that fog whispers,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: a soft, pervasive murmur that seems to come from everywhere
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and nowhere, from the air itself, from the stones, from
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the space between the pages. The words say things like,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I am the breath of the morning. I am the
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: space between the trees. I am the reason the world
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: looks new. For a little while each day, I am
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the thing that softens edges and rounds corners and makes
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: the familiar unfamiliar. Just for a moment, just long enough
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: for you to see it again, as if for the
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: first time. This is what the library of dreams contains.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Not stories in the ordinary sense. Not plots and characters
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and settings and resolutions. But the essences of things. The
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: feelings that live inside experiences. The colors that live inside colors.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: The sounds that live inside silence. Next to the book
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: of fog, there is a book about fire. This one
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: is larger. about the size of a normal novel, and
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: it is bound in leather the color of autumn leaves,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: deep red and burnt orange, and the particular shade of
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: brown that would turn just before it catches. The pages
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: are warm to the touch, actually warm. You can feel
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the heat radiating from them, a gentle warmth like the
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: warmth of a hand held near a candle, but not
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: above it, not close enough to burn, just close enough
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: to feel. When you open this book, the words are
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: written in a script that glows, faintly like embers. Each
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: word is a different shade of orange-red, and the light
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: they emit flickers slightly, the way firelight flickers, casting tiny,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: dancing shadows on your hands and the arm of the chair.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: The words say, I am the first thing humans learn
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: to control and the last thing they will ever forget.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I am warped in winter and light in darkness, and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the reason the world has stories at all. Because before
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: there was fire, there was only the dark, and the
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: dark had no stories. Because stories require a listener, and
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: listeners require light. And light requires me. I could spend
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: all night on this shelf alone. The book of wind,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: which is very thin and very light, and which tries.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: constantly to turn its own pages, as if it cannot
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: bear to be still. The book of rain, which is
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: heavier than it looks, and which smells of petrichor, that
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: extraordinary scent of dry, earth-meeting water for the first time
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: after a long drought, the book of snow, which is
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: cold to the touch and whose pages are white on white,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the words visible only when you hold the book at
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: a particular angle, when the light catches the slight indentations
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: of the letters and turns them into tiny valleys of shadow.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: But we must move on. Not because these books are
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: not worth lingering over, they are profoundly worth lingering over,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: but because the library has more to show us and
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the night, though long, is not infinite. And there are
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: shelves deeper in. Shelves that hold things the weather books
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: can only hint at. Shelves where the dreaming gets louder
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: and the stories get older and the silence gets thicker
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and softer and warmer. The way a blanket gets thicker
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and softer and warmer the more layers you pile on
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: top of it. Deeper now. Past the weather shelf. Past
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: a narrow gap between two towering stacks that smells of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: old ink and lemon polish. Past a floating candle that
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: has gone from gold to a deep, drowsy amber, the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: color of the last honey in the jar. The color
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: of the last note in a lullaby. This section of
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: forgotten things. This is my favorite part of the library.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: I am not supposed to have favorites. A librarian should
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: love all books equally, the way a parent should love
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: all children equally, and for the same reason. Because every book,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: like every child, is unique, and to love one more
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: than another is to misunderstand what love is. But I
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: am not a librarian, not really. I am a reader,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: and readers are allowed to have favorites. And mine is
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: this section, because the forgotten things are the things that
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the world has decided it no longer needs, and I believe,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: very strongly, that the things the world has decided it
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: no longer needs are often the things the world needs most.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: There is a shelf of lost names. Not the names
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: of people, though there are a few of those, tucked
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: away in the back, in small, leather-gowned volumes with gilt
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: lettering that has faded to the color of old bone.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: These are the names of things, the name of the
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: particular shade of blue that the sky turns just before
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: a thunderstorm which exists in no paint chart and no
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: color wheel and no dictionary, but which everyone has seen
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and everyone knows and no one has ever named. The
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: name of the sound that snow makes when it falls
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: on fresh grass is which is not really a sound
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: at all but more of a feeling, a soft, damp
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: hush that you hear more with your skin than with
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: your ears. The name of the smell that old brick
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: shops have, that particular combination of dust and glue and
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: paper and time that makes you feel, the moment you
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: walk through the door, that you have come home to
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: a place you have never been. These names are written
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: on thin strips of parchment, each one curled slightly at
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the edges, each one attached to the shelf by a
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: tiny brass clip that allows it to be lifted and
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: examined but not removed. The names are written in an
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: ink that changes color depending on the light. In candlelight,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: it is deep blue. In moonlight, it is silver. In
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the amber glow of the floating candles, it is the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: color of dark honey. And the names themselves are extraordinary,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: not because they are long or complicated or impressive, but
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: because they are exactly right. They are the names that
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: these things would have been given if anyone had bothered
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to name them. And the fact that no one did
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: is one of the great sadnesses of the world, and
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the fact that they are preserved here, in this library,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: in this section, is one of the great comforts. Next
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to the lost names there is a shelf of forgotten feelings.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: These are not