In the summer of 2013, I remember being at home on one of my days off. I was enjoying a day off, lazily scrolling around on the internet, when half of my dashboard on Tumblr turned into a haze of purple photos with some strange eyeball looking graphic with audio clips attached. It was my introduction to the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. I’ve been a fan ever since.
A couple days ago, I had the great luck to be one of the very last ticket buyers to see the cast and creators of Welcome to Night Vale read for the Selected Shorts series put on at Symphony Space. There was even a fun special appearance from John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats singing and playing piano.
Not only was it a phenomenal experience to see the faces behind a podcast I’m such a fan of, but it was great to be exposed to some fantastic works of literature–some of which I’d heard before, but most of which was new to me. “The Voice of Night Vale,” Cecil Baldwin, read Shirley Jackson’s “The Beautiful Stranger.” If you’ve ever listened to Baldwin’s narration of the podcast and read any of Jackson’s work, just try to imagine combining the two–they go together like a hand in a glove. Also read were short plays by the New York Neo-Futurists, a theater group through which many of the cast members of the podcast became acquainted. The final reading of the night was from one of the creators of the podcast, Joseph Fink, who read one of his own poems, entitled “Let Me Tell You About New York City,” a hilarious take on living in “The Big Apple” (or, as Fink refers to it, “N’awlins”).
I’m always on the lookout for more things to read. I love the sensation of walking into a bookstore and seeing titles I’ve never noticed before. Getting lost in my school’s library is one of my favorite hobbies. According to Google Chrome, Goodreads.com is my 7th most visited website, in between YouTube and my email. To have a night surrounding myself in words was…well, I would say it’s too good to put into words, but I’m sure one of the writers whose works was exhibited at Symphony Space could figure out a better way to describe it than I ever will.
-Kirsten
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