Anybody who has known me for any of the last six or so years should know that Sea of Thieves is perhaps my favorite video game of my life. Minecraft held that position for a long time, but during those lonely years just after the pandemic began, Sea of Thieves took a very special place in my heart. Hell, it’s obviously a huge inspiration for the game I’m making even now. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it was a huge part of my current dream to live near the ocean someday.
For those who haven’t played Sea of Thieves, the game has instruments that allow you to play a number of shanties. One of those shanties is a song composed for the game called “Becalmed”.
That song was always special to me from the very first time I played it. I’d made a goofy character and honestly didn’t believe I was going to play much of the game back then. I was standing on the bowsprit of my brother in law’s sloop, letting the game randomly pick songs for me, and the gentle but melancholy melody began to play on my accordion that I just had to know the name of. It struck a chord with me. I searched through the list of shanties playing them one by one until I figured out which one it was. It didn’t mean much to me at the time, I just knew the song spoke to my soul in a way.
The Poem
Later on I would learn that the song has lyrics. If you visit the easternmost island of Snake Island, you’ll find a little book that contains them:
Our ship, she dreams
Of wind in her sails,
Of wind in her sails unfurled.
And shining as we cross the sea,
we cross the sea for home.
Then we'll all raise our voices,
a song in our hearts.
And set our eyes on distant shores
with wind in her sails again.
There'll be cheering and calling.
No more squabbling and brawling.
When we have the wind in our sails.
When we have our feet on the ground.
We'll sow our good fortune around.
There'll be feasting and pleasure.
No more rationing & measure.
When we have the wind in our sails.
The Lore
In the game’s lore, the song was composed by the members of a crew that was becalmed at sea, and they wrote the song to boost their morale and yearn for an optimistic future where the wind would catch their sails again and they’d finally be free to return home.
For those unfamiliar with the term, as I was when I first learned the song: “becalmed” is a term for being stuck because the wind stopped blowing, often for a long time, sometimes long enough to starve a crew. When I first learned it I pronounced it as two words: “be calmed”, because to me that’s what it was, a song that I found profoundly calming. And I suppose in the lore, that’s what it was meant to be as well. But the correct pronunciation is /bɪˈkɑːmd/ (or for those who don’t read IPA, just think the “be-” prefix in “bespoke” or “bemoan” or “bestow”, it’s the same prefix)
Holding Onto Hope
As you read more journals in the game you’ll eventually learn that the crew that wrote the song did eventually manage to get the wind in their sails again, and so did get to live out the optimistic dreams the song professes, at least for a while.
Death and The End
But there is a more melancholy, sad angle to the song too, if you don’t think of it as solely part of their concluded story, or you think of it through their perspective in that moment, especially through the perspective of the metaphors the song uses, intentionally or not, which were common during the age of sail.
And shining as we cross the sea,
we cross the sea for home.
This is the most obvious metaphor to me. To cross the sea for home was one of the most common metaphors for death. Historically a crew becalmed for a meaningfully long time would not have expected to survive. Often being becalmed for an extended time was the result of sailing into a nearly windless sea, like the Sargasso Sea, where a whole crew might starve or run out of water, leaving their silent dead vessel adrift and decaying in a sea, tangled amongst the seaweed. To a crew facing the possibility of such an end, perhaps singing such an uplifting song might have been a way to simply cope with the fear, to hold onto even a dwindling sliver of hope while they could still sing. And hope can be contagious.
Likewise, including a dark metaphor in the lyrics to your song of hope might be simply an embracing of fate. Knowing that if your fate is sealed, all you can really control is what you do with the time you have left and the options you have left. There’s no point in raging against an uncaring fate.
Of course, this reminds me of my favorite quote from Tolkien’s books:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
I’ve often turned to that quote whenever I’ve faced something horrible that has made me question my will to keep moving forward. I’ve even got a clip of this scene from the movie saved on my desktop. This song serves a similar role, like the musical version of the quote for me. A melancholy acknowledgement of what’s happening. It doesn’t try to paint the world more optimistically than it deserves. It simply carries one’s hope through the dark times because that’s all we can do. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
The Legend of Glitterbeard
There is a piece of lore from the game that’s also tangled with real life mourning: the story of Glitterbeard.
In the game, Glitterbeard is a legendary figure whose story is told through a number of journals scattered throughout a great many islands and every outpost. They tell the story of a pirate who was singularly focused on bringing people together and making a place that was welcoming to all.
Appropriately for such a legendary figure who cared so deeply about community, there is a special ritual that you can only perform if you’re able to get 8 players together on one server. A single crew can consist of a maximum of 4 players so at the bare minimum this requires 2 full crews to join together, in peace, to partake in a beautiful ritual of community.
All eight of you must coordinate together, stand in the correct positions, with the correct instruments, at the correct time of day, and play the song “Becalmed” together. And together for a few beautiful minutes you watch a tribute to Glitterbeard unfold before you.
Glitterbeard isn’t a fictional character. Glitterbeard is a beautiful tribute to a real person who worked at Rare, and a deeply moving one at that. You can read more about it here.
Given the context of this tribute, the choice of the song “Becalmed” and its metaphor of death and moving on to the next life is particularly pointed, whether that was the developers’ intent or not in the choice. But the clarity of the metaphor in this context also highlights the beauty of how the verses that follow that metaphor give a more positive view of the end.
Immediately after the verse about “crossing the sea for home”, every verse that follows describes a beautiful scene again: singing, traveling to distant shores, celebrations, peace, generosity, partying, and a lack of worries.
With the lines that follow, the metaphor of the song itself can be read in two ways, as I see it. The first is an optimistic song about holding onto hope until you finally overcome something difficult. The second is as a somber song about death that envisions a beautiful afterlife.
For years I used that song to sign off. I’d get all of our loot sold, say goodnight to all of my friends, pick up my pet and bring them to the dock, torch the ship with a firebomb, then find a beautiful spot to watch the sunrise or sunset and play Becalmed as I watched my ship slowly vanish into the sea. During that time I’d be thinking of all the fun we had. I guess in a way it was a eulogy for a moment now in the past, a way to honor the memories and the time I had enjoyed.
I remember listening to a beautiful cover of the song on YouTube and scrolling down to the comments section and reading a comment mentioning how, perhaps twenty years from then, when the game was gone and just a distant memory in all of our minds, we’d hear the song play and all of those memories would come back and I remember breaking down and crying when I read that.
The Shores of Gold
The next time the game made me cry with this song was after completing the Shores of Gold tall tale in Sea of Thieves for the fifth time. For those unfamiliar, the game imposes some difficult challenges that you have to complete to earn specific cosmetics called “curses”. These curses change the appearance of your skin in some way. I’d had a few of them by this point, but the one I’d wanted for a long time was the gold curse, one that makes your skin show patches of pure, shiny gold. To earn this, you needed to read every single hidden journal in, and fully complete nine different tall tales in a series called The Shores of Gold, not once, but five times each. That means completing, in total, 45 tall tale voyages, and sailing all over the world and exploring hidden corners to find 60 journals.
With a full crew to speed things up and split up to work in parallel, and assuming you’re playing as intended and not cheesing things, I suppose you could probably hope to complete this task in around 30-40 hours. Not in-game hours, actual real-world hours.
Going Alone
I decided that I wanted to do this alone. I was in a bit of a dark place and going through some negative feelings about myself at the time. One day I booted up the game and loaded into a sloop alone, no plan, no idea what I wanted to do, I just wanted to have a place to feel like myself and relax, and for some reason, that was the moment I looked at the journal to start the first tall tale in the Shores of Gold series, and I just thought to myself, “I’m gonna do it. The whole thing. And I’m not going to do anything else with my free time until I do.”
I’m not sure I understand all of why I wanted to do that. I know a part of it was a sense of stubbornness. I wanted to just name an insane task and power through it to prove to, maybe myself, that I could do whatever I wanted if I put my mind to it.
I spent literally every bit of free time I had for 2 whole weeks playing the game. I had COVID for a large portion of that time, which meant I was alone with my thoughts for days on end and the game became the singular thing I was doing, to the point that I dreamed about nothing but Sea of Thieves for multiple nights.
I’ll be honest, I had a lot of low points while I was playing. With all that time I was feeling sick from COVID, coupled with the negativity I’d already been dealing with, and a few moments where I was taking a breather on a tall tale and thinking about how much easier the task would have been with even one or two other players, and how I hadn’t even played with my usual group for months at this point. But I pushed through, because what else was there to do?
With each completed tall tale, I’d earn a new cosmetic of some kind, and I decided that since this gold curse was my goal, I’d wear, carry or put on my ship every cosmetic it gave me so by the end I’d have the whole story laid out.
Somewhere around 80 hours of playing for this singular goal, I had completed 8 of the 9 tall tales 5 times each. I now had to complete the final one, also called “Shores of Gold”, 5 times. The final phase is a boss fight that I went into fairly confident, but after fighting the boss for about 2 straight hours, I was realizing that something must be wrong and I must not be actually making progress if it was taking this long. While waiting to respawn after running out of ammo and food, I decided to do some research and realized that my whole fighting style that I’d used for as long as I’d played the game would be utterly useless for this fight, as the boss was almost certainly healing all the way in between every attack. I needed to switch to a whole different set of weapons, and play much, much more aggressively than I was used to doing. It took a few attempts, but eventually I got him, and completed that tall tale for the first out of five times.
Returning back four more times, I got better and better at this boss fight. The first one took three and a half hours. The second, maybe an hour and a half. The third, even less.
The Final Boss Fight
Returning to the island, Tribute Peak, for the fifth time felt like a sacred experience. I sailed toward the island in a sort of disbelief that it was really almost over. I prepared meticulously this time, and I wanted everything to be perfect. I positioned my ship just right, I had all the supplies I could need, I was ready.
I flew through the puzzles, almost able to complete them with my eyes closed at this point. In the final boss fight, I took a moment before entering the arena, realizing that when I next left that room, I’d have done it.
I went into the room, alone, armed with my carefully chosen loadout and the skills I’d earned through the previous 4 fights. I was almost surprised when, maybe 10 or 15 minutes into the fight, it was over. I watched the boss fall, the Pirate Lord began speaking his end dialog, and I picked up the Gold Hoarder’s skull. I remember my immediate reaction once the confusion of how quickly this fight had gone was me just yell-whispering “yes, yes, yes!” to myself over and over. It was like 6AM at this point and I’d played all through the night to get the last couple of voyages done.
As I walked out of the room, I was feeling some relief, some excitement, some almost bittersweet feelings as I realized that it was over and there was no more to be done.
Dawn, After a Long Night
Stepping out onto the sand of Tribute Peak, it was nighttime, but the eastern sky was lightening and the sun was about to come up. Suddenly, the song I’d barely noticed on the four previous trips to this island began playing.
It was a unique version of Becalmed, just for this tall tale. Slower, more contemplative, orchestral, victorious and uplifting.
I carried my prize to the top of the island and sat down on a ledge overlooking much of the island as I watched the sun rise, as the song played, as I let the reality slowly sink in: I’d just done it.
And there I cried, I can’t say exactly why it was though. I guess I felt like I’d proven what I’d come to prove. I’d been rewarded for it. I just thought the song was beautiful and watching the sun rise over the island was peaceful. And I knew I had so many stories to tell my friends when I played with them next. I knew I’d honed so many skills. I’d solo sailed every voyage, solo fought every battle, solved every puzzle on my own without anybody to split the work with, for just over 90 hours of real time.
I sat on my ship, and I put on the final cosmetic I’d earned. The gold curse. And there, behind the wheel of my lonely sloop, sailing along the coast of Tribute Peak, I took some triumphant screenshots of my pirate showing off all that I’d done.
And in that moment, the song came to mean so much more to me. It became like an anthem for me. I hear it and I think of the memories of every session I signed off, the fun moments I’ve shared with other players, the melancholy acceptance of what is and has been, the hope of better days to come, and that triumphant moment on Tribute Peak, watching the sun rising and crying as I realized that I can do crazy difficult things if I choose.
My Own Tribute Peak
It’s funny looking back on these screenshots now, because I remember feeling so on top of the world then, so at my peak, so much myself, but there was so much more to be done. I’d conquered a lot in the game, but the lessons learned still needed to be applied in my actual life.
Here is what my pirate looks like today:
I’m sure I don’t have to explain the difference.
At this point, for years I’d realized that I was trans, but I’d simply told myself that I just couldn’t do it. I recognized the problem, but I dismissed it because I was too scared to face the truth. Knowing that was part of why I was so down before taking on the Shores of Gold. But it wasn’t too long after conquering Tribute Peak that I finally just decided I was going to commit to a decision I’d long put off: coming out to family and friends, and actually doing something about the issue that had bothered me for around a decade by then.
The term Tribute Peak became my own code word for this process, because as I realized the road I was heading down, one that was so difficult I hadn’t been able to work up the courage before, one that I hoped would be worth it in the end, I remembered what Tribute Peak taught me. That all I needed to do was take that first step and every other step would follow.
But that’s a story for another blog post.
The Freedom of Having Nothing Left to Lose
As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been struggling to put into words what it is that I find so beautiful about the duality between meanings that Becalmed offers. The message of hope is easily inspiring, but the metaphor of death feels uncomfortable, even though I feel it adds a depth to the hope that took me a while to figure out how to describe.
It’s that the way the song presents an optimistic message while simultaneously acknowledging an acceptance of the possibility of a final defeat implies the freedom of having nothing left to lose.
In the song, they use that freedom to hope. Often when we face things that are scary or difficult, we find ourselves worrying about a lot of things, many of which are not in our control. Sometimes it pays to take a step back and really examine what is in your control when you feel yourself panicking.
The fewer things in your control, the fewer decisions you have to make, and the freer you are. And when all choice is ripped from your hands, then you truly have this freedom in full. Then your path is clear, and you are free to simply choose how high to hold your head, and how brightly to shine, in what might well be the last chance you get.
In coming out as trans, I knew that my timing was bad and that now is almost universally considered one of the worst possible times to do this. But my resolve to be myself even in the face of that comes from a hope that things will work out, and an acceptance that if they don’t, the idea of being forced to be anybody other than myself was worse than anything else. The world could take everything from me, but it can’t take who I am from me. I’ll hold onto the hope, burn the ships behind me, and be deliberate in choosing this as a hill I’d happily die on.
Likewise, in my career, even if the market is bad, even if corporations devalue my skills one way or another, I could go completely broke, but nobody can take away my passion for programming, for the career I’ve dedicated myself to. I won’t abandon it just because it’s been made more difficult. And that, too, is a hill I’d die on.
When I Have The Wind in My Sails
To bring things back from what might seem like a nihilistic perspective, truthfully I do believe that things will work out, though it’ll be a long, hard road to get there.
But what energizes me, much like the song Becalmed does for five of its six verses, is describing what I intend to do when I do get wind in my sails again. When I’m no longer becalmed.
I’ll do a few nice things for myself. I’ve got some art I want to commission an artist to make. And beautiful places I want to go visit to calm my mind.
I’ll do a few nice things for my boyfriend and our cats. They’re the ones giving me a reason to wake up every morning, and reasons to smile despite everything.
I’ll do a few nice things for my friends. They let me vent my feelings when I was still scared, and made me laugh more times than I could count.
When I’ve saved enough, I’ll buy that house I want in the Seattle area, and go live my life happily somewhere along the coast. I’ll take walks through beautiful nature often and actually love my home for the first time in my life. I’ll bring my friends and family to show them everything I love about it as often as I can. I’ll garden and do pottery and cook amazing meals for whoever is around.
And maybe I’ll sit down and write about all the pain that gets me there when I have a moment to catch my breath again.