Another Great Day at Sea. Geoff Dyer
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shuttled and recoiled in a din of massively contested force.
‘We caught one,’ said Jefferson, as if we were sitting quietly on a lake in the Adirondacks—leaves turning brown in the fall, a few clouds—and had hooked a sleek and especially valuable fish.
8
Travellers to Thailand will be familiar with the way that when the national anthem comes on the radio everyone stops whatever it is they’re doing—issuing you with a ticket for a train that departs from Chiang Mai for Bangkok in two minutes—and listens. It was the same here with the Captain’s daily address to the ship’s company. We were in a walkway—of course we were in a walkway, we were always in a walkway—on our way to the chapel, but froze, mid-stride, as the Captain reminded everyone that it was ‘a great day to be at sea’. I suppose it was, given the sun, clear skies and the lack of typhoons and incoming torpedoes. What I didn’t realize was that the Captain always told everyone what a great day it was. Despite this, he always managed to re-italicize or re-emphasize the ‘great’, as though yesterday had not been quite as great, and today, while in many ways indistinguishable from the interminable days that had gone before, was somehow better and greater, thereby raising the possibility that tomorrow might be even greater. It became a standing joke among the crew, and I wondered what would happen when they were making their way back across the Atlantic in November, in Force 9 gales and twenty-foot waves: would he manage to maintain their belief in something they already regarded with a degree of affectionate irony? For now, they expected and looked forward to these daily affirmations of greatness, would have been sorely disillusioned, possibly even mutinous, if he’d summed up the day as merely ‘tolerable’, ‘OK’ or ‘fine’. There was something very American about this ability to dwell constantly in the realm of the improvable superlative.
The next part of his speech was devoted to publicizing the achievements of the Avenger of the Day, a member of the crew who had been selected for his or her outstanding work irrespective of what that work happened to be.
After this it was down to emailed suggestions from the crew about how things could be improved, how the great days at sea could be made greater. On the one hand, this was a way of turning gripes into suggestions for problem solving: the toilets (the heads) employed a new vacuum system that was prone to blocking and so, at any one time, a number of lavatories seemed to be out of action. This, evidently, was an ongoing source of grievance, one that the Captain was always having to address. On the other hand it was part of the larger ethos of individual and collective improvement that pervaded the ship. I was always seeing little notices exhorting the ship’s company to do better. Sometimes these would take the form of generalized encouragement: ‘STOP looking at where you have been and START looking at where you can be!’ Other times they would encourage the traditional pride of a given department or division—‘Setting the standard for excellence’—which bled, naturally, into rivalry. Among the various squadrons of the air wing there were constant and competing reminders and claims to be ‘The Tip of the Spear—Stay Sharp’. The Spartan (Helicopter) Squadron’s ‘Command Philosophy’ was broken down into increments:
Take The Fight To The Enemy And Win
Bridge The Gap Between Good And Great
There Is Great Honor In Service To Country
Everyone Is Important
Be Meticulous Stewards Of The Assets We Employ
I loved these and the many other reminders to do better, to improve, but my favourite was somewhat uncertain in intention and effect: ‘It’s not broke you’re just using it wrong.’
Being English, having grown up in a land of out-of-service payphones and faulty trains, my immediate response to this was ‘But what if it is broken?’ What I really liked, though, was the way that the message demonstrated and reflected its own irrefutable truth: that the language, while broke (as opposed to broken), still functioned in spite of being used wrong (incorrectly).
9
When we eventually got to the chapel we were shown around by Commander Cameron Fish—Fish the Bish as he was known during a stint with the Royal Navy. In his late forties, I guessed. He had a narrow face, narrow as the prow of a long boat, but he was at pains to emphasize the breadth of religious belief on the boat. The chapel was there in accordance with constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, not because they were evangelical, he said, sounding more than a little evangelical. Accordingly the chapel changed function—changed religion—depending on who needed it and for what at any given time. The numbers attending were broadly in line with the churchgoing population of the United States—if an adjustment was made for the fact that a disproportionate part of the ship’s population was from the Christian heartland of the South and the Midwest. There were, the Bish thought, maybe twelve sailors on board who were Jewish by religion, fifteen or twenty Muslims and eight Buddhists, but right now the chapel was being readied for the Pentecostal Bible study class.
The Bish asked Curtis Bell, who was leading the class, if we could stick around. Curtis was wearing a digital camouflage uniform and large spectacles (specially designed, it seemed, for close study of books with many words in very small print). The extreme gentleness of his manner stood in sharp contrast to his heavy, perfectly shined boots. I suspect his impulse, understandably, was to not have us there, but he wrestled quickly with his conscience and, with great courtesy, didn’t simply agree to let us stay but invited us to do so.
There were only seven people in attendance but that’s enough, once the singing starts, to constitute a congregation and choir. One of the women led the singing, setting up the call—‘Glory to his name’—joining in the response and moving on to the next call: ‘Down at the cross’. I love gospel, especially like this, with no instruments, just uplifted American voices and loose rhythmic hand clapping. To be honest, within thirty seconds the atheist’s spirit was moved, tears were trickling down his unbelieving cheeks. Christianity! American Christianity! African American Christianity! The choir of voices, the chain of hands clapping, the promise of freedom and the history of acceptance, resilience and resistance—of breaking the chains—that is there in every line. Oh, I could feel the happiness of it, the joy of being ‘wondrously saved from sin’ even though the whole idea of sin—and, consequently, being saved from it—was complete nonsense. But it really was a lovely hymn and when it ended I could feel the whole hallelujah-ness of it in myself and the warmth that comes from being in the presence of good people.
Having brought the singing to a close the sister whose name I did not catch moved on to the next phase of the evening.
‘I give you all the Glory, all the Honour, all the Praise. Thank you. Thank you for your Holy Spirit. Thank you for sending down your Son to die on the cross.’ Thank you for this and thank you for that, thank you for everything, and a special thank you—this was me, extrapolating—for the suffering that gives us the opportunity to thank you for the possibility of bringing our suffering to an end. It was a massively extended and spiritual version of impeccable manners.
‘Alright! We are in for a treat tonight. Amen. We’re gettin’ this man full of fire. He’s gonna come down and give you what thus sayeth the Lord. He’s gonna take you up on each scripture. He’s gonna break it down so that you know exactly what this scripture meant. He’s not one that takes scriptures out of context. He’s gonna make you understand so you’re like in kindergarten. Make it plain as day. Amen. He’s a true man of God. He follows the spirit, he leads by the spirit. He does everything in decency and orderly. Everything is all of one accord. Amen. I give you none other than brother Curtis Bell.’
Before brother Curtis could take the stand there was another round of singing. It only a took a line—‘There is power in the precious blood of the lamb’—and there I was, back in it again, in the small tide of voices ebbing and flowing, calling and calling back.
‘Pow-er . . . ’
‘Power