Welcome to Podcasts, Welcome to Nightvale
A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep; welcome to Night Vale…
Moving work this past week into the territory of sonic narratives has had me returning to the podcast app in my phone; revisiting my favourites over the years. This process inevitably brought me back to my favourite, all be it fictional, town in America: Night Vale. ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ is a fictitious radio show about a fictitious desert town in middle America. A town in which the bizarre and the mundane collide and all of it is relayed to us by sonorous voiced Night Vale Community Radio host Cecil.
The Night Vale Tourism Board asks that whoever is telepathically assaulting the tourists please stop
This podcast opened my eyes to what sound had to offer stories. I already knew the effect of a good soundtrack and script but this was the first time I found myself without want of any corresponding visuals what-so-ever. As a media student and an artist I have always found myself converting narratives in my head; its how I knew I wanted to make films in the first place. Whenever I read a book I would try and picture the way I might address the narrative visually but, as I listened to Cecil’s calming voice, I found no wish to turn him and the world he was relaying to me into a visual experience. What is fantastic about Welcome to Night Vale is the ridiculous and absurd events that take place and how calmly they are relayed to us. This absurdity perfectly plays into our imaginations. As Cecil calmly talks of sentient Glow Clouds entering the town and dropping animal carcasses, and world government helicopters abducting children our minds are set to the task of creating such scenes. This creative process is a key part of the narrative and something that would be destroyed were we, instead, to be given these images directly.
It’s election season again, and you know what that means! Sheriff’s Secret Police will be coming by to collect certain family members so that everyone votes for the correct council seats and there’s no confusion.
This concept is quite similar to the reason books still have value in an age of vibrant visual media creation. There is much to be said for allowing space for an individuals imagination to breathe and setting them to the task of creating a universe out of clues that are slowly delivered to us. Podcasts, however, diverge from books in the way they present a narrative. For one, a book can give you only a linear narrative. We can read only one thing at a time and so that is how the story is delivered to us. Sound however gives us the ability to set up a scene through a multiplicity of sonic elements. In this sense Welcome to Night Vale is not the most creative; its radio set up allows little external sound as it naturally takes place in a studio setting. It does, however still fit in the audio format well. The beauty of Night Vale comes from its presentation as a real place with real people who experience real events. taking hold of radio as a medium the creation feels like a real radio broadcast. They even add weather reports, local government announcements, and messages from sponsors. In audio format, Night Vale is real.
Stay tuned now for our two-hour special: “Car Alarms and their Variations”, brought to you commercial-free by Canada Dry
In video format I have no doubt Night Vale could be a reasonably popular cartoon or even live action if they could manage to find such a budget, but it wouldn’t live up to what it is as a podcast. Slowing building Night Vale and even the character of Cecil himself in my mind through the countless episodes is the spectacular gift of the narrative being produced in such a medium. Whenever I want I can return to Night Vale simply by listening to Cecil’s voice and it is so much more vibrant and powerful than anything the moving image could supply. Sometimes the imagination is simply more powerful than what we can turn into reality and Night Vale is a perfect example of that. Welcome to Night Vale opened my eyes to audio being a stand-alone medium to display a narrative and has held the position of my favourite podcast ever since.
And it is possible that I am alone in an empty universe, speaking to no one, unaware that the world is held aloft merely by my delusions and my smooth, sonorous voice… Goodnight Night Vale, Goodnight.