Posted on by Peter

Johnny Depp, Theseus and Mrs. S’s Kayak

“A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned,” he said, “for he will be going out on a day he shouldn’t. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drowned now and again.”—John Millington Synge, The Aran Islands.

Credit: Pixabay contributor 51581

If you’ve watched any movies since the late 1980s, you will have listened to a musical genius named Hans Zimmer. His movie soundtrack credits and multiple awards include:

  • The Lion King
  • Dune
  • Gladiator
  • The Dark Knight
  • The Thin Red Line
  • The Last Samurai
  • Inception
  • Interstellar
  • Man of Steel
  • The Dark Knight Rises
  • Mission Impossible
  • Blade Runner 2049
  • 12 Years a Slave
  • Rain Man
  • Driving Miss Daisy
  • Thelma and Louise
  • Madagascar
  • The Da Vinci Code
  • Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Kung Fu Panda
  • Sherlock Holmes
  • The Amazing Spider Man 2
  • Dunkirk

etc., etc.

Hans Zimmer in 2018. ColliderVideo, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The man is astounding.

Now, when I got to thinking about Hans Zimmer, Johnny Depp, Mrs. S, Ancient Greece and Schrödinger’s cat it wasn’t a series of straight-line mental leaps, A to B to C. Rather, the connections were all via obscure winding byways and uncharted back alleys. The reflection on Hans Zimmer, for instance, started with Mrs. S’s kayak—which I’ve blogged about before—and the fact that I’m a photographer by hobby.

Mrs. S sometimes lets me use her kayak, and, of course, I take a camera.

Into the Green. © Peter Staadecker, 2023.

Kayaks and photography are an awkward combination. Cameras need two hands to operate and a stable platform. Kayaks need the same two hands to paddle—even while you’re photographing—and stable they ain’t. All of this led me to buying a thing called a “GoPro Max 360”. The GoPro corporation has never revealed to me whether Max is short for Maximillian, Maxwell, Maxine or Maxime. What I can tell you is that you mount the little camera on your kayak (or on your helmet if you’re a biker, skier etc.) and it films continuous video in all 360 degree directions while leaving your hands free to paddle a kayak, or steer your bike or whatever.

When you get home, you then edit the footage to produce the final cut of you paddling your kayak through rivers and reeds with views of herons, ospreys and water lilies.

Heron

Great Blue Heron. © Peter Staadecker 2024

Dreamy.

But that kind of video doesn’t lend itself to narration. Me saying “There’s a heron,” and then me saying, “and there’s another,” might work for David Attenborough, but it’s never worked for me. Which leads to the idea of adding a musical score to kayaking videos (1). You can see that I’m closing in on the topic of Hans Zimmer. Soon we’ll also get to Johnny Depp, Theseus, how Theseus’s father died from being a know-it-all, and even Schrödinger’s cat (if it’s there). They’re linked. Patience.

So now when I plan future kayak voyages, I have several possible scores already playing in my head.

One song that I can see accompanying a future kayak trip is “Hoist the Colours” from one of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. Yep, Johnny Depp; and no surprise, it’s set to Hans Zimmer’s music. And for that someday kayak trip, I can’t decide which of half a dozen radically different covers of “Hoist the Colours” I like best. Feel free to leave your preferred version in the comments below. I may go with your recommendation.

One line from “Hoist the Colours” that catches me is this one:

“… Some men have died
And some are alive
And others sail on the sea…”

This division of humankind into three classes – living, dead, and unknowable – was well understood for millennia. Seafaring, until only the last century, was a high-risk venture with a large proportion of ships being wrecked and all aboard drowning and/or vanishing without trace (2). Once a ship left sight of land it became a question mark. It might return with all alive, it might return with only some alive, or it might never return. For the ones left on shore, those at sea assumed a new state of existence: maybe dead, maybe alive; a question mark; a black box whose inner status would only be revealed if and when the black box returned to shore. (Shades of Schrödinger’s cat!) And that might take years. The long wait was still true in relatively recent times. As a boy, I knew an old man who in his youth was shanghaied in Cape Town harbour in the early 1900s. It took him ten years to return home.

Black box with Schrödinger’s cat hale and hearty inside (or is it?) Credit: Pixabay contributor 35393.

Anacharsis, a Greek/Scythian in the 6th century BCE wrote:

“There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.”

(I know about Anacharsis because I quoted him in my book “A Glimmer of Light”. And if you’re a quote geek you’ll find more strange and wonderful quotes there, one for each chapter heading.)

The lines from “Hoist the Colours” mirror Anacharsis so closely, that I expect the lyricists knew all about Anacharsis and the black box state of being for those at sea.

This black box—this question mark hanging over those at sea—crops up also in the Greek myth of Theseus. Theseus sailed from Athens to Crete to slay the Minotaur. Why the Minotaur had to be slain, why the Minotaur’s parents kept the Minotaur trapped in a labyrinth, why they turned him into a cannibal—human flesh only and no vegetables at all—is a whole other rabbit-hole. Modern psychologists, social workers, courts, dieticians and shock-radio show hosts à la Howard Stern would have a field day. Anyhow, after Theseus slew the poor Minotaur, he sailed back (I mean Theseus sailed back, not the Minotaur—are we clear?) to Athens.

Theseus slaying the Minotaur: Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Theseus’s father, Aegeus, peered at the approaching ship and, in a fit of father-knows-best, decided he knew—even before the ship came close—whether his son was aboard, and whether his son was alive or dead. That’s a tricky thing to know, given that a black box is—by definition—totally opaque. Unfortunately, Aegeus, the know-it-all, got it wrong. He decided his son was dead. In his sorrow he threw himself into the sea and drowned.

Oops.

And what a let-down for all of us millions of subsequent father-knows-best type fathers. Aegeus set us a poor precedent. Our only defence now is to remind our children that, while the Minotaur with the body of a man and the head of a bull was real, the part about Theseus’s father making a mistake was a total myth.

And if all of those connections between Johnny Depp, Theseus, Mrs. S’s kayak and Schrödinger’s cat sound too obscure, just enjoy the music. Here are links to different versions of “Hoist The Colours” that I’m considering for future video/kayak trips.

Let me know your favourite. Your vote counts.

Here also, is my current list of other kayak theme music that I’ve either already used in kayak (or even non-kayak) videos or am thinking of using in a future video. It’s tough to keep up on this list because I use songs, and then have to think about new ones. Anyhow, here goes:

I’m sure I’ll think of others with time, or maybe the kind readers of this blog will suggest some. Either way, I think I’ve covered every style of music in that list (OK, slight exaggeration, but still).

Like these? Only some? Hate some? Have more suggestions? Leave a comment and let me know. And please, remember to tell me which version of Hoist the Colours you prefer.

***

Footnotes:

(1) Example of my kayak videos with music: Kayaking November

(2) England alone counted almost 400 shipwrecks in 1884. That was the year the Mignonette was sunk. I see that figure in my research notes for when I wrote about the Mignonette in my book “The Twelve Man Bilbo Choir“.

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