#yeah I know there are probably about seven zillion posts about this floating around

[ollieofthebeholder]

I'm sure this has been said before, but not by me, so.

Listening to today's episode of @re-dracula, this bit...

"I greatly fear I have distressed you." "Oh, no, not distressed me," she replied, "but I have been more touched than I can say by your grief. That is a wonderful machine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of your heart. It was like a soul crying out to Almighty God. No one must hear them spoken ever again! See, I have tried to be useful. I have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did."

...hit me like a ton of bricks.

Because for all I've been reading this line for years...I've never heard it. Or more crucially, I've never heard the lines, the entries, leading up to it. I've read Jack Seward's words, but they don't have the same impact written out, do they? Which was Mina's point. Written out, typed on impersonal paper, you're just seeing the words on a page.

But hearing them? Hearing the resigned sigh when he laments his lost love, the hope when he first mentions Van Helsing, the worry over poor Lucy, the anger when he berates himself for not being able to figure out what's wrong and fix it, the break in his voice when he sympathizes with Arthur? Jesus Christ Almighty, Mina wasn't kidding. A wonderful machine, but cruelly true indeed.

And it's a podcast. It's out in the public. How darkly ironic that we've all heard his words, and we're going to keep hearing them because I, for one, intend to add an annual re-listen of this podcast to my repertoire for years to come. For all these years, we've read his words. Now we, too, "hear [his] heart beat, as [Mina] did".

And honestly, I love him all the more for it.