Listening for the Call: The Yoga of Sea Shanties

Accompanying recommended spotify playlist can be found here.

Loren, when are you going to teach a yoga class that involves Sea Shanties? If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked this question. . .
Well.
I’d have a nickel.
Which brings us up to speed.
I tried to talk myself out of this one, because it feels a little far fetched, even for me, but, as any sailor cannot ignore the call of the sea, I was powerless to ignore the persistent and siren-like call of the the sea shanty.
I’ve loved sea shanties since I went to and worked at a camp where we happened to sing a lot of them. There are different types of sea shanties I believe, sea shanties that are meant to provide rhythmic accompaniment for work are a prominent variety, but the ones I love are the sea shanty love songs. Instead of the heteronormative traditional man pines after woman (or vice versa) story, these stories are about people (usually men) pining after THE SEA. Yes. It’s that general. Not waves, not whales, not things that live in the sea, not boats, well, sometimes boats, but mostly THE SEA. And this is a love so great it usually trumps the call of the fair lass back at home. A salty ocean spray is to the singer of the sea shanty what a steamy make out session on a bridge is to a more traditional, land-locked (and one wonders, inferior?) love affair. The singer of the sea shanty enters this amorous relationship without the guarantee, or really even the hope, of reciprocation or of security within the relationship, The guarantee is actually often certain loss and, if I’ve learned anything from these songs, about 99% chance of your own death (and definitely the cabin boy’s). The singer of the sea shanty goes knowingly into this unstable and one-sided relationship. Why? For the sunsets and sunrises, for the ocean spray, for the breaches of whales, for the isolation, for the horizon, these things being enough to compensate for any future grief or death. The singer of the sea shanty lives for the exhilaration of the present moment, not for the future payoff.
These songs are about heeding a call, and, I would offer, they are about listening for said call. These songs describe the experience of being beckoned by the unknown to pursue something greater than the mundanities of the everyday, an experience of the soul, a purpose.
I am reminded of Victor Frankl’s words from Man’s Search for Meaning, in which he describes the call of life, or the questioning as he puts it:
“For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day, and from hour to hour…One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it… each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life.”
Like the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen with the trees we are not in a monologue with life, but in a dialogue with it. The question is not “what do I want from life?” The question is “what does life want from me?” What uniquely can I offer? Is it a call to the sea, or to write a book, or to be a therapist, or to build the grand canyon out of legos, or run for political office, or determine the best chocolate chip cookie recipe? How will I contribute to this world? To my community? We listen, life calls us where we need to go. It is up to us whether we heed the call. The singer of a sea shanty hears the call, and cannot but answer, regardless of what may come next, or at the end.
What is it that only you can give to the world? How does life call to you, and what is it asking? What is your purpose— today at least, or this week, or this year?

These songs invite me to partake in my own love affair with life, tumultuous and unpredictable though it may be, promising it’s own horizon, it’s own glorious sunrises, it’s own desperate griefs. They invite me to listen for the call towards my work and my own horizon and to follow the current, the push, that life gives me in that direction. They inspire me to stand on the dock, face dusted with salty spray, and to look forward and dream. They invite me to yearn for what might be. They invite me to move with integrity towards the unknown. They invite me, in Theodore Roosevelt’s words, to step into the arena and to participate fully in the experience of life, the victory and defeat.

I’ll leave you with a couple verses from The Mary Ellen Carter, written by Stan Rogers. This is a song in which a ship goes down, but the crew loves the ship so much they go back to raise it back up off the ocean floor and salvage it. They go back to raise a sunken ship from the sea. If that is not commitment and love, I don’t know what is. I love this song because it is the only sea shanty I’m aware of (and I know I’ve only dipped my small toe into the ocean of sea shanties that exist out there) that directly brings metaphor into its lyrics, shifting the message disarmingly from the ship, to the singer. It catches me off guard every time, to all of a sudden be singing about myself instead of about the ship, and I get a little misty-eyed each time. Or is that the ocean spray?

And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broken and life about to end
No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Then like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!

May we rise again.