Latest / Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep / A Quiet Hour of Muggle Stillness

Transcript

A Quiet Hour of Muggle Stillness · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Metaphorically, not in the way that all books in this
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: library dream, in their slow, tide-like breathing, in their soft
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: emanation of light and warmth. These books are sleeping the
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: way people sleep. Their covers are closed. Their spines are relaxed.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Their pages are still, completely still, not even the faintest
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: whisper of a turn. And their glow, that soft, warm
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: glow that all books in this library emit. Is dimmer here, gentler,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the glow of embers, rather than flames, the glow of
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: someone who has fallen asleep by a fire and whose
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: face is lit by the last of the light. There
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: are perhaps fifty books on these shelves, maybe sixty.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Each one is different.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Each one has its own color, its own texture, its
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: own particular way of sleeping. Some sleep on their backs,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: their covers facing up, their titles, if they have titles,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and not all of them do, visible in the dim light.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Some sleep on their sides, leaning against their neighbors the
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: way tired children lean against each other on a long
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: car journey. Some sleep face down, as if they have
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: simply dropped off mid-page, mid-sentence, mid-thought, and have not yet
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: woken up to finish. I know these books.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Not all of them.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I have not read all of them, and I am
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: not sure all of them can be read, at least
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: not in.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: The way that books are usually read.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: With eyes and words and the sequential, Processing of meaning,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: some of these books can only be read by holding them.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: By feeling their weight, by letting.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Their warmth seep into your hands and their stillness seep
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: into your mind, some of them can only be read
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: by sleeping with them. By placing them on your chest
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: or beside your pillow or in the crook of your
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: arm and letting the act of sleep itself be the reading.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: The book dreams and you dream.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: And somewhere in.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: The space between your dreams the story passes from one
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: to the other, like a whisper passing across a crowded
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: room understood not by the words but by the intent.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: There's one book on these shelves that I have read
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: many times. It is small, smaller than the others, which
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: is unusual for this room, where size seems to correlate
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: with depth of dream and the smallest books have the
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: shallowest sleeps and the largest books have the deepest.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: This one is small, but it is.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Old, very old, older than the library itself, which means
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: it is older than the castle, which means it is
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: older than most things that exist in England, and possibly
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: older than most things that exist anywhere. Its cover is
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the color of the sky.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: At midnight, not black, not blue.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: But that particular shade that exists only in the very
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: deepest part of the night, when the sky has turned
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: so dark that it seems to have weight, seems to
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: press down on the earth like a hand laid gently
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: on a sleeping child's forehead. The cover is smooth, but
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: not the smoothness of something manufactured the smoothness of something
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: that has been touched by so many hands over so
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: many centuries. that the oils of human skin have polished
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: it to a finish that no craftsman could achieve. The
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: book has no title on its cover. It has no
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: title on its spine. It has no title on its
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: first page or its last page or any page in between.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: It is a book without a title, which means it
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: is a book that has not yet decided what it
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: is about, or a book that is about something that
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: cannot be contained in a title, or a book that
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: was written before the concept of titles was invented, in
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: some very old time when stories were told rather than written.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: And a story did not need a name because it
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: was the only story there was. When I hold this book,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: and I hold it often, when I am tired, when
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the day has been long, when the castle has gone
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: quiet and the fire has burned low, and the only
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: sound is the distant, almost inaudible hum of the enchanted
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: ceiling in the great hall, which never quite stops humming,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: even when it is showing nothing but stars. I feel something.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Not a story. Not a plot.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Not a character or a setting or a theme. but
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: a feeling, a deep, slow, warm feeling that begins in
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: my hands and moves up my arms and settles in
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: my chest and stays there. Like a coal placed gently
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: on a hearth, like a hand laid gently on a wound,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: like the particular quality of silence that settles over a
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: room when someone you love has just fallen asleep. And
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: you are the only one still awake and the watching
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: of their sleep is the most peaceful thing you have
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: ever done. The feeling is this, you are not alone.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: You have never been alone, even in the moments when
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: you felt most alone, in the dark, in the quiet,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: in the space between one breath and the next, you
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: are not alone.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: You are held.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: You are held by the same thing that holds the
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: stars in their places and the tides in their courses
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and the seasons in their cycles.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: You are held by the quiet, patient.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Unceasing attention of a universe that notices everything and forgets
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: nothing and keeps somewhere.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: In some library deeper.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And older than this one, a record of every moment
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: of kindness, every act of courage, every whispered word of comfort,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: every hand.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Held in the dark. That is what this book says.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: That is what all the books in.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: This room say, in their different ways, in their different voices,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: in their different languages and scripts and traditions.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: You're not alone. Rest. You are held. I place the
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: book back on its shelf.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: It settles into place with a soft sigh, the sigh
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: of a story that has been told again and has
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: enjoyed the telling. The other sleeping books shift slightly, the
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: way sleepers shift when someone moves nearby and then settle again.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: And the room is still, and the library is still,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and the castle is still. And we are still and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the night goes on. She appears when you are not
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: looking for her. That is how you know she is
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the real librarian and not a imitation. The real librarians
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: in any library, in any world, have the ability to
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: be present without being seen, to be heard without being noticed,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: are the custodians of silence, the guardians of stillness, the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: people who keep the world quiet so that the stories
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: can be heard. The librarian of dreams is old. Not
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: old the way people are old, not old in the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: way that suggests decline or frailty or the slow diminishment
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: of faculties. Old in the way that trees are old,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: old in the way that stones are old, old in
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the way that the library itself is old. with a
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: depth and a solidity and a permanence that suggests she
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: has been here since the beginning and will be here
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: until the end, and that the beginning and the end.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Are very, very far apart.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: She's small, shorter than me, which is not saying much.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I am not particularly tall, but she's small in a
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: way that goes beyond height. She is small in the
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: way that some things are small because they have been
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: compressed by time and pressure and the slow, patient accumulation
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: of wisdom into something dense and concentrated and powerful. The
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: way a seed is small, the way an atom is small,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the way the most important things in the world are
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: always smaller than the least important things because importance does
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: not require size, and size, more often than not, is
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: inversely proportional to importance. Her hair is white, not the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: white of age, but the white of moonlight, of fresh snow,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: of the inside of an eggshell, of the first light
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: before dawn. Her eyes are dark, very dark, almost black.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: The color of the sky at the very deepest part
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: of the night when the stars have dimmed and the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: moon has set and there is nothing left but the
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: darkness itself, which is not empty but full. Full of
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: things that can only be seen by the kind of
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: eyes that have been looking.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: For a very long time. She wears a robe.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: It is not the kind of robe that professors wear,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: not the kind with colors and crests and the formal.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Stiffness of authority. This robe is soft.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: It is the color of old parchment, and it moves
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: when she moves the way water moves when you stir it.