All Hail

I’m nearly always late to get excited about trends.  I’m the anti-hipster—I only like things once they’re not cool anymore.  Most of the time it’s because I am reluctant to invest in any story, no matter the medium, unless I’m sure that I will enjoy it.  My time is way too valuable to waste.  While this protects me from some bad works, it also means I miss out on wonderful things unless someone who knows me strong-arms me into the experience.  Oddly enough, it is often Pinterest or Tumblr that convinces me to watch or read something.  Fans will post art or quotes from the story, and these things will persuade me that maybe I should actually check this story out.  This is how I was introduced to Night Vale.

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast which began airing in mid-2012 and just recently reached its 100^th episode.  It is written in the style of a small-town local radio show, featuring news, weather, traffic, local events, etc.  All of this might not be very interesting except that Night Vale is a place where very strange things happen.  An aircraft appears for a moment in the middle of a baseball stadium, hooded figures wander through the dog park (where under no condition are you to go, nor to take your dog), and various surveillance helicopters fly over the town, occasionally scooping up stray children.  And that’s just the first episode.

The host of the radio show and voice of Night Vale, Cecil, is a man with several mysteries of his own.  He is cheerful, humorous, profound, and inspiring.  Though initially just a voice on the radio, he soon evolves into a character of his own, struggling with imperfect relationships.  What I find most fascinating about him and the way he tells the story is the way he frames what can be a truly nightmarish life.  In Night Vale, surveillance is everywhere, magic and sheer weirdness destroy lives in every episode, and yet Cecil still talks about the goodness in life.  He reacts to horror and pain with humor and wisdom, making the best of the various strange situations and showing love for his home and his town despite its danger.

Night Vale truly does question the notion of what is normal.  There are several points in the series where Cecil wonders if he or the world even exist, or if it is all just an illusion.  Time travel, wars in space, and dark sacrificial rituals are de rigueur, and town-wide disasters happen so often that people tend to get bored of them.  What’s more, though, is Night Vale normalizes some things that still cause controversy in the so-called “real world”.  One of the running plot points for the show involves the development of the relationship between Cecil and the town scientist Carlos.  The show features disabled characters, non-binary characters, and characters with various religions and races, and they are all treated as if these traits are secondary to their value as thinking entities.  Indeed, Cecil offers support and understanding to artificial intelligences and five-headed dragons, so why not?  It is a powerful statement, I think, on how to respect others regardless of their viewpoints or backgrounds.

Most fascinating to me, however, is the beautiful and thought-provoking language, and this, I feel, can only be conveyed in the exact words, so here are a few of my favorite quotes.  Some of them are drawn directly from the podcast, while some come from the associated twitter, @NightValeRadio.

“The universe is unraveling, but how beautiful these moments within the dissolve.”

“Fear is consciousness plus life.  Regret is an attempt to avoid what has already happened.  Toast is bread held under direct heat until crisp.  The present tense of regret is indecision.  The future tense of fear is either tragedy or comedy.  The past tense of toast is toasted.”

“I could teach and preach and shout and explain, but no lesson is as powerful as the lesson learned on one’s own.”

“All the beauty of the world was made within oppressive limitations of time and death and impermanence.”

“Mostly void; partially stars.”

“Today you will meet a beautiful stranger.  Actually hundreds of beautiful strangers.  Everyone is beautiful and you know almost none of them.”

“ ‘Human being’, like ‘men working’ and ‘children playing’, is a sentence with a noun, a verb, and the possibility of an imminent disaster.”

“Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”

I highly recommend this exquisite, humorous, expansive work, still ongoing after five years.  Episodes are released twice monthly and can be found through ITunes or other podcast apps, on YouTube, or via their website, welcometonightvale.com. 

“Close your eyes.  Let my words wash over you.  You are safe now.  Welcome to Night Vale.”