The longer I live by the sea, the better I understand Meri Cetinić’s song “More”. It has two short verses about love, then sings the word sea roughly sixty times. There was simply nothing more to add. Repeating that one word, turning the song into a chant for the sea, creates the feeling of its size, importance, and holiness — the source of her life.
The sea is a living organism. Everything dwelling within it creates its singular character. It takes on the tone of the atmosphere, dances to the rhythm of the wind, roars at the tempo of a storm, rests beneath the sun… Its mood changes with the sky, sun, wind, plants, animals, and people — with everything around it. The sea does not exist separately. Every piece helps make it; every wave is woven from countless drops, and every drop expresses the whole sea.
For us mainlanders, sea equals beach equals sun equals swimming equals summer equals heat equals the smell of sun cream. We used to meet the sea from June through August and mostly tied it to those things. That is nowhere near the whole sea, or its full worth. Its real force, power, and truth can be felt more honestly during the other nine months.
An experienced sailor holds the sea in awe. I understand that now. The conditions in which you head offshore matter. One day the sea can be impossibly calm and peaceful — smooth as oil, as people say — and the next day three-metre waves are running wild. A person who travels by sea understands its language and its changes, knows what each shift of colour and wind direction means. The sea is a medium that dictates movement. Boats shape it with the waves they make, with the way their hulls cut the surface and the white foam that draws their route.
That familiar “sea scene” lifts us immediately; the cells deep in the body start to dance. It is a view that brings peace and the feeling that we have finally arrived. “Now I can stop and simply be, just as the sea is.”
