They say it, but they might not have needed to. The folks in The Green Apple Sea tell us that they've figured out how to feel their own bodies and subsequently how to trick their own heartbeats. We think that this just means that they've learned to not let so much panic set in at times when most people can't help themselves. They've learned that toning it down and trying to smell the roses, instead of planting yourself right into the roaring motors, might be a better way to go. There's a lot of talk about heartbeats here and they're given great significance, as if they did hold all the cards. They are the ringleaders and we're just holding the leash - knowing that we could be over-powered at any time and completely handled and upturned.
These blasted things keep pretty strict schedules, but they do get unruly at times and that's when it would be nice to know how to operate their governors, just as The Green Apple Sea seems to. They seem to be able to compose themselves in the diciest of situations. For instance, if one were in an airplane and an engine had just exploded and the pilots had turned the other engine off to do a necessary test and you were just gliding, it would be nice to control your heartbeat rather than claw through the seat in front of yours with your fingernails, feeling that you're going down. It would be nice to have that disposition to believe that you were going to make it, that nothing was going to end you, or even come close to ending you.
There's a sullen sky and a sad shoreline with a dead whale beached on it in the song, "Whale Watching," but the waves are coming in and the sun's browning skin so there's a sense of strange normalcy blowing in the air. It's a Sunday morning and the streets are quiet. There's a feeling that we're going to "get out of this place alive" and, as foolish as it sounds, it's believable and we toast the feeling.