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The latest Evening under Lamplight features Cool Men – a wide variety of characters, many unsavoury, some few a bit more attractive – but all worth attending to. So take up the invitation to attend and join us for this internationally acclaimed (yes, I can really say this with a straight face) radio programme, first broadcast on Cambridge 105 on Sunday, 8 August 2010.
Keeping focused on air
(I must first apologise for the cruel way Vivaldi was cut off in the beginning of the show. It was not meant like that.)
[Here is a copy of “The Sinking Ship” as read on this week’s episode.]
The Sinking Ship, by Robert Louis Stevenson
“Sir,” said the first lieutenant, bursting into the Captain’s cabin, “the ship is going down.”
“Very well, Mr. Spoker,” said the Captain; “but that is no reason for going about half-shaved. Exercise your mind a moment, Mr. Spoker, and you will see that to the philosophic eye there is nothing new in our position: the ship (if she is to go down at all) may be said to have been going down since she was launched.”
“She is settling fast,” said the first lieutenant, as he returned from shaving.
“Fast, Mr. Spoker?” asked the Captain. “The expression is a strange one, for time (if you will think of it) is only relative.”
“Sir,” said the lieutenant, “I think it is scarcely worth while to embark in such a discussion when we shall all be in Davy Jones’s Locker in ten minutes.”
“By parity of reasoning,” returned the Captain gently, “it would never be worth while to begin any inquiry of importance; the odds are always overwhelming that we must die before we shall have brought it to an end. You have not considered, Mr. Spoker, the situation of man,” said the Captain, smiling, and shaking his head.
“I am much more engaged in considering the position of the ship,” said Mr. Spoker.
“Spoken like a good officer,” replied the Captain, laying his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder.
On deck they found the men had broken into the spirit-room, and were fast getting drunk.
“My men,” said the Captain, “there is no sense in this. The ship is going down, you will tell me, in ten minutes: well, and what then? To the philosophic eye, there is nothing new in our position. All our lives long, we may have been about to break a blood-vessel or to be struck by lightning, not merely in ten minutes, but in ten seconds; and that has not prevented us from eating dinner, no, nor from putting money in the Savings Bank. I assure you, with my hand on my heart, I fail to comprehend your attitude.”
The men were already too far gone to pay much heed.
“This is a very painful sight, Mr. Spoker,” said the Captain.
“And yet to the philosophic eye, or whatever it is,” replied the first lieutenant, “they may be said to have been getting drunk since they came aboard.”
“I do not know if you always follow my thought, Mr. Spoker,” returned the Captain gently. “But let us proceed.”
In the powder magazine they found an old salt smoking his pipe.
“Good God,” cried the Captain, “what are you about?”
“Well, sir,” said the old salt, apologetically, “they told me as she were going down.”
“And suppose she were?” said the Captain. “To the philosophic eye, there would be nothing new in our position. Life, my old shipmate, life, at any moment and in any view, is as dangerous as a sinking ship; and yet it is man’s handsome fashion to carry umbrellas, to wear indiarubber over-shoes, to begin vast works, and to conduct himself in every way as if he might hope to be eternal. And for my own poor part I should despise the man who, even on board a sinking ship, should omit to take a pill or to wind up his watch. That, my friend, would not be the human attitude.”
“I beg pardon, sir,” said Mr. Spoker. “But what is precisely the difference between shaving in a sinking ship and smoking in a powder magazine?”
“Or doing anything at all in any conceivable circumstances?” cried the Captain. “Perfectly conclusive; give me a cigar!”
Two minutes afterwards the ship blew up with a glorious detonation.
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Is the Captain the antithesis, or the embodiment of this sentiment? Lovely show, RLA. I really enjoyed the Langston Hughes readings – you struck just the right tone.
Hmm, the captain is as caught in abstract thought as the princess in “The Song of the Morrow”. The “philosophic eye” keeps him from engaging in life. (And it’s people like him who insist on the formalities like shaving every day, no matter what else is going on. My old tutor Paul Fussell in his book Wartime calls this “chickenshit”: petty regulations that have nothing to do with the mission on hand.)
In the end, the captain seems to be suddenly shaken from that abstracted position and realises that to live “gloriously” always means defying the present situation (which always advises caution) by enjoying the moment. The “thought for the morrow” cripples us, makes us too cautious, and keeps us from engaging with things (like cigars) for their own sakes. It’s better to blow up in glory.
Or, as Langston Hughes put it, “I play it cool and dig all jive.” That’s the way he stays alive, but it’s the way the captain makes his glorious exit. So it can go both ways.
RLA
Enough of all the clever word play, what would have been cool would have to have ended with some Gerry Mulligan or Miles Davis, but hey appreciated all the same from the Pyrennes in France so that’s more international aclaim!
You’re right. If we’re going to use the word “cool”, we might as well show the kind of thing it was originally meant to describe.
I always thought that George Chakiris, donning his signature purple shirt in West Side Story was really “cool.”
“Just play it cool boy…real cool…”