Summary
Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures about the sea.
The sounds of the sea, whispers into a wind phone and the dark, silent nights in Lyø, Denmark; a writer reflects on women dreaming of diving beneath the surface of the water; an Hawaiian surfer describes the exhilaration of riding through the barrel of a wave and stories from cliff-edge towns in the UK as the water comes ever-closer.
The Wave Featuring Clyde Aikau Music by Cabinet of Living Cinema Produced by Sarah Cuddon
The Widow of the Sea Produced by Nanna Hauge Kristensen
Dreaming Featuring Margaret Drabble Originally recorded by Sarah Cuddon for The Diving Venus
The View from the Edge Featuring Darcy Bayless and Juliet Blaxland who has written a book about her experiences in a cliff edge house called The Easternmost House. Produced by Chloe White and Jodie Taylor
Production Team: Andrea Rangecroft and Alia Cassam
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in 2020.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello, I'm Jacey Long. |
| 0:06.7 | Welcome to Shortcuts. |
| 0:07.7 | It's a new series, as they seem to constantly say in Pepper Pig is a lovely sunny day. |
| 0:12.7 | I'm in East London. |
| 0:14.0 | I'm in a little copse, which is surprisingly unsheltered from various noises. |
| 0:20.2 | So there we go. Today's episode is about something that I have |
| 0:24.0 | been yearning and desperate to visit and still obviously not yet done, which is the sea. And I would love it |
| 0:32.4 | if you live near enough the sea that you could go on your daily walk by the coast for you to listen to it there. |
| 0:38.0 | Otherwise, I hope that you get as much as I did from listening to people talking about it and being close to it. |
| 1:12.6 | ...and being close to it. I think it means a kind of freedom. It's the freedom of the body. You feel weightless, you don't feel sort of anchored to the earth. |
| 1:20.6 | But as you get over there, as I am, you feel heavier. |
| 1:26.6 | Each step somehow seems heavier, more gravity. And you lose all that in the water. |
| 1:34.0 | You just feel completely weightless again and it's a glorious feeling. |
| 1:41.2 | This is Shortcuts, Brief Encounters, True Stories, Radio Adventures and Found Sound. |
| 1:49.8 | Today, the sea, the sea. |
| 1:54.1 | You're in the curl of the wave and you're moving so fast. |
| 1:59.8 | The rain lashing against windows |
| 2:01.7 | and actually you get this strange thing |
| 2:03.4 | where brick dust falls out of the cracks. |
| 2:06.2 | You can sort of feel the cliff moving. |
| 2:08.8 | It really is like being out at sea |
... |
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