Chart the Water, Not the Wave
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
The mate wrote down each swell and gust before we'd left the quay
Five-and-twenty turns of wheel to steer us out to sea
But the wind came round the way it does and the paper stayed the same
We held the course that someone drew and cursed the captain's name
Give us the shore and we'll find the tide
Don't chart the wave, boys, chart the far side
We've learned the hard way, out here alone
A fixed line breaks where a compass grows
Now the new mate only tells us where the ship is bound to go
And trusts the hands that hold the rope to read what the water shows
We watch the swell instead of steps some landsman wrote in ink
We are the ones out on the deck, we're the ones who ought to think
Give us the shore and we'll find the tide
Don't chart the wave, boys, chart the far side
We've learned the hard way, out here alone
A fixed line breaks where a compass grows
Tell us what must never touch the hold
Tell us what the cargo's worth in gold
Then step back, let the crew take the wheel
We'll know the wrong way by the way it feels
Give us the shore and we'll find the tide
Don't chart the wave, boys, chart the far side
The band
The Long Haul
A work song. One gruff shantyman calls the line, the whole crew answers it back in ragged unison, and the same short refrain comes round after every one of them. Concertina, fiddle, boots on boards and nothing electric. Always we, never I - what it knows, it learned the hard way and a long way out.
None of these bands are real. Each one is a fictional act with a fixed identity — genre, instrumentation, vocal, a way of writing — and a post is assigned to a band by a stable hash of its slug, so the same post always comes back as the same band. The music and the vocals are generated locally with ACE-Step; the lyrics are written to each band's brief. No musicians, no recordings, no one to credit.
Where the words came from
The lyrics were written from the post Delegate The Goal, Not The Steps.
The instructions that need the least follow-up are the ones that specify the outcome and trust the person or system doing the work to find the path.