Welcome to Night Vale - 202 - The Day After the Day

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Unfortunately, Valentine's Day has happened again. Weather: “I Went Swimming to the Middle of the Sea” by Raising Cain https://raising-cain.bandcamp.com/ Transcript available at http://welcometonightvale.com/transcripts 2022 US / CANADA / EUROPE TOUR DATES for “The Haunting of Night Vale” http://welcometonightvale.com/live Hot Night Vale merch! https://topatoco.com/wtnv Patreon is how we exist! If you can, please help us keep making this show: http://patreon.com/welcometonightvale/ Music: Disparition http://disparition.bandcamp.com Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin. http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Check out our books, live shows, store, membership program, and official recap show. Produced by Night Vale Presents. http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Nightville, it is Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from April of 2026 with a couple of cool things coming up. First off, we're going to be in Europe touring our newest Nightville live show, Murder Night in Blood Forest. We're going to be in Edinburgh, UK, on May 27th. We'll be in Manchester on the 28th. We will be in London on May 29th, and we will be in Amsterdam on May the 30th. You can get tickets for these shows at Welcome to Nightville.com slash live, and hopefully we'll have more. shows coming up later this year. Who knows? Just get on our newsletter. Go to Welcome to Nightville. Sign up for our newsletter. We will send you emails twice a month to let you know all of the news that you need to know about Welcome to Nightville. One of the big news things to tell you right now

is that our other hit podcast, Alice Isn't Dead, is coming back on April the 13th, written by Joseph Fink, produced by Disparition and starring Jacica Nicole. More episodes of Alice Isn't Dead return on April the 13th, so make sure you are still subscribed to that podcast. Finally, do you want some cool Nightville merch? Go to Welcome to Nightville.com, click on store, and we have all kinds of cool t-shirts, things for the summer, tank tops, beach towels, and if you like coffee mugs, if you want calendars, if you want backpacks, all kinds of cool stuff there. So check out Welcome to Nightville.com And click on store, click on live. If you want to see our live shows, we will see you in Europe. And hey, thanks. Let's have a heart to heart.

It'll be quick. I don't think I'm supposed to have it outside my body for too long. Welcome to Night Vale. We tried to prevent it. We tried to avoid it. We tried to deny it. To pretend that if we did nothing, maybe it would pass us by. But unfortunately, for the first time in five years,

Valentine's Day has happened again. I know that all of us survivors must be rattled, barely hanging on, gaping up at the sun and disbelieving the light, but know that you are not alone. We are all survivors, and Valentine's Day is behind us. What choice have we but to try to put our world back together to move on from here? What choice have we but the continuance of time, time which is simultaneously merciful and without mercy, driving the bad toward us, but also sweeping it safely away into the past. Valentine's Day is over. Now the recovery begins. But first, the news. The sun has risen. Now this might

not seem like news to you. Oh, it does that every day, you tell me, it will do it tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that, you pedantically lecture. But think about what a miracle that is. That this cosmic object without which there is no life, without which there is merely barren rock floating in a great nothing, that the sun returns to us day after day like a dependable mother coming home from work. In the journalism business, there is a lot of focus on the negative and the rare. Take, for instance, airplanes.

We report on even the most minor of mishaps that occur in commercial flight, but do not report on the thousands of successful takeoffs and landings every day. The common success is not news. The vanishingly rare failure is. As a result, you might get the impression that flying is not safe, but that's an incomplete picture. The truth is that everything is not safe. Flying is just part of everything.

Same with the sun. We don't report on its successful rising and setting and so you think it common or often don't think of it at all. Ah, but here you are, a journalist, reporting on something common and positive, you say, really testing the limits of my patience, because you have not let me finish. The sun has risen today.

But it will not tomorrow. You think a plane crash is bad? Just wait. This has been the local news. In international news, wars. Probably. I mean, usually, right? Also, trade.

Trade is very important. Because that is how numbers go up. And if numbers not go up, then you got wars. There are also trees, of course, internationally and nationally, but less of them than before. We like trees. This is not for the trees' sake. It's because it turns out we need trees, and so we like them before, you know, we can sort of take or leave. Internationally speaking, thinking on a global level now, like really big, there is politics.

Politics is the art of the possible. I'm sorry, I misread. Politics is the art of explaining why nothing is possible, even though almost everything is. Seems like a real messed up slogan to me, but what do I know? I'm not a politician. The important thing is to think globally. but act locally. So think about, for instance, Antarctica.

Cold, right? But act locally. Locally, it's pretty warm. It's hot even. It's a desert. So go for a swim in your friend Lepida's pool while thinking about Antarctica. And that's how we'll really make a change.

This has been international news. From my window. I see only destruction. Oh, and Leanne Hart, who is waving at me and mouthing a big high. Hi, Leanne. I like your hatchet today. Yeah, it matches your shoes. It's very cute. But other than Leanne, I see only destruction. A teetering, a crumbling. The hollow remnant of, the last remaining brick of, the empty,

field where once there was. This destruction exists in our hearts as well. Every loss in the physical world is reflected ten times in the memory of everyone who bore witness to Valentine's Day. And there has been so much loss. We are each of us a hall of mirrors, exponentializing every little hurt until it overwhelms. Today is the day after. The day. The Hallmark store is an absolute wreck. The Hallmark elves are trying to sweep it all up,

but they look exhausted, and some of them mangled by what happened. More soon, but now, traffic. Once there was a town, it doesn't matter which town except those who live there for whom it mattered quite a lot. The town had roads and houses and three schools, and, two Wendy's. The two Wendy's were both on the same side of town. No one knew why. The point is that this town wasn't a special town, it was just a town, which is to say a bunch of people, most of whom didn't know each other living in a space that had been defined by people who had long since died. And yet, the people in this town, they felt something about their town. It wasn't pride, exactly, but it wasn't an absence of pride either. More like a sense of belonging. The town was them

and they were the town. And it was arbitrary, but it was theirs. And so it mattered to them. Because in the grand scale, not much belonged to them. A bit of grass or gravel, a few walls, a sink or two. And the idea of this town, so they felt protected. of what they had. Eventually, the town ended. All towns eventually will. It was not dramatic when it ended. No one even had to move.

The town was swallowed by a larger city. Now it was just one neighborhood in a city with 18 schools and five Wendy's, although the Wendy's were still very close together and no one knew why. The children who lived in that town felt some loss at the change, but their children didn't, and their children's children had no idea that the town had existed.

For them, they belonged to the city, and the city belonged to them. It was arbitrary, but it was theirs, and so it mattered to them. This has been. Traffic. And now, our daily audio puzzle. As usual, you have six attempts to guess a five-letter word. I'll tell you what letters aren't in it. There is no B, V, D, A, E, F, C, ellipses or umlouts.

To the disappointment of your insufferable writer, friends, there is no M-Dash. None of the Wing-Ding characters are there, nor any of the ancient Nordic runes. There is the Egyptian hieroglyph that's a detailed portrait of a pin-tailed duck. It is in position 5, so think about words that end with a little duck picture. There is no O. There is a U, but a U. it's not in the word, it's just nearby. The sixth letter is Y, but it is both silent and invisible. As a hint, the meaning of the word is grandly but foolishly, as in the style of a 16th century jester.

Okay, you have six guesses. Good luck. This has been your daily audio puzzle. The city council has declared a state of emergency from a beach resort in Brewery. which is where it says they should go in the Night Vale Emergency Plans. See, they shrieked, it's written right here. In the event of a catastrophe, the city council must immediately go to a really nice, like at least four-star resort in Bermuda. I pointed out that they were the ones who wrote those plans, but I was shouted down by their many voices.

The only council member that stayed was of course the intrepid Tamika Flynn, who managed the blood donation program for the, the injured. She did this by repeatedly stabbing vicious librarians with a harpoon while they tried to wrap their tendrils and toothy jaws around her, then collecting that blood and handing it out in little Ziploc bags marked fresh blood with a smiley face. She really is so considerate. Fortunately, it appears that Carlos and Esteban were totally safe from Valentine's. Carlos is more of a St. Patrick's Day guy and Esteban is, you know, a four-year-old. As for me, I did what every nightbill citizen is taught to do in the event of Valentine's Day.

I ducked and covered, held on tight to the nearest table leg and screamed, oh no, oh help, oh please, over and over until it seemed like things had settled down. And now a word from our sponsors. Today's broadcast is brought to you. It was given. You did nothing to receive it, and yet, here it is. Do you ever think about what it was required for this broadcast to reach you? Not just my hard work, nor the work of my producers, nor of station management,

whatever it is they do inside the caverns they've dug beneath their office, nor of the interns who sacrificed time and other things to the cause of your momentary diversion. No, it is also the labor of the steelworkers who made the girders for our tower. The engineers and day workers who constructed it. The electricians who made it same with radio waves. All of these people brought this broadcast to you. Do you feel grateful? Do you often feel grateful?

Today's broadcast is brought to you. Think on that. This has been a word from our sponsors. Wreckage upon wreckage. We walk through a street strewn with boxes of chocolates and red crape and shattered buildings. asphalt buckled under the seismic expression of yearning hearts. Each of us has been affected in our own way. Jackie Fierro says that her pawn shop has been inundated with teddy bears,

and she doesn't think she'll ever be able to sell enough of them to find the structure of her shop again. It's buried under a good four miles of them, she sighed, Leaning back on the hood of her 2007 Ford F-150, Sarah Sultan, president of the Nightville Community College, who is a fist-sized river rock, says that she suffered severe injuries during the disaster and cannot heal. Because she is a fist-sized river rock, and so has no healing capabilities.

My niece Janice said that the registry of middle school crushes, which she keeps on her desk, no longer afraid of its secrets, but enjoying it as a memento of adventures past. Anyway, she said that the registry burst into flames, and she only prevented my sister's house from burning as well by grabbing the registry with her bare hands and hurling it out the window. In the process, her hands were burnt quite badly, and she is being attended to at Nightville Hospital.

They tell me she should make a full recovery. soon. Also, she accidentally threw the registry out of her window and right into her neighbor's window burning down their house. Ah, well, Pobody's Nerficht. What are we to do? The day after the day. What else is there? But to exist and to observe the weather. to wash away the scars. I lay my armor down beneath the dog with tree, and I slept beneath the stars. And I flew into the sky, far away from our lives,

because I knew that if I stayed, you all let me die. From your cherry lips you wished me to be well. You told me stories of my soul. And when the demons came and dragged me down to hell, he left me strung upon the pole. And I fell into the night, far away from your life, because I knew that if I stayed, you'd only let me die. I found a falling map of all the seven seas,

down amongst your traveling shoes. I found a photograph that brought me to my knees. It used to be of me and you So I sailed into the wide far away Out of sight Because I knew that if I stayed You'd only let me die So I went swimming to the middle of the sea

With nothing left for me on land I knew I'd never lay with you beneath the trees Or sleep upon the sand So I'll fly into the night Far away from our lives Because I know that if I stay You'd only let me die It's something else here now

Something new From exclusively on Paramount Plus It's the series Stephen King Calls Scary as Hell Everything here is impossible But it's also real Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now.

We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. The day after Valentine's, we woke like it was any other day. But it was not any other day. The day after Valentine's, we looked hard at everything around us because it should have been different.

But it was not. different. We were different. The day after Valentine's I went to the Ralph's and bought four oranges and a box of cereal. Just that, just four oranges, just a box of cereal. And it felt the same, but it felt so different, and I struggled to put into words my own experience. There is a gulf shaped by trauma that is invisible even to the sufferer. We do not see the crevasse even as we fall into it. The day after Valentine's, I ate a picnic in Grove Park with Carlos and Esteban and Dana Cardinal and Pamela Winchell. Carlos ate little. He said he wasn't hungry.

Dana ate her fill, but said it didn't taste like much. Everything seems a little duller today, she said. Not quite itself. But everything was the same. It was Dana that was different. Pamela Winchell expounded for several minutes on the meaning of emergency. It was a coping mechanism and it comforted her. Esteban rolled around in the grass and giggled.

Any lasting effects from Valentine's Day were buried in him and would only surface later as a tremble or a habit that he would not understand. The day after Valentine's, we said, It's over, but we did not believe it was over. We believed it would never be over that we would always be living the same sad and terrifying minute, breathing the same stale air, thick with our own fear. But we are not in that moment anymore. But we were.

Some part of us is, still, the day after Valentine's was a rebuilding, a recovery, a return to form. A back to business. Bury the bodies and stand up the fences. It's time to move on. We relentlessly devour the past and regurgitate it as the future. We are always caught in a moment that is no longer what was, but is not quite yet what will be.

We live our entire lives in between. In between joys. In between tragedies. in between picnics with friends. And so, the day after Valentine's, we did what we did any day. We may do. We moved on. We continued to live until we couldn't anymore.

Stay tuned next for an old episode of Frazier. It's the one where Fraser finds the doorway to the other Seattle in his bathroom mirror. May it bring you some comfort. And from the day after Valentine's to whatever day it is when you hear this, good night, Nightvale. Good night. Welcome to Nightvale as the production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craneer and produced by Disparition.

The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Dysperition. All of it can be found at dispirition.bancamp.com. This episode's weather was, I went swimming to the middle of the sea by Raising Cain. Find out more at raising-cane.com. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvail.com. Or follow us on Twitter at Nightville Radio.

Or stay up until you see the sunrise and think, well, there that thing is again. Check out Welcome to Nightvale for info about the Welcome to Nightveil novels. There are three of them, telling stories. you will never hear on the podcast. Today's proverb, all dogs go to heaven, even dogs who have done a murder. There are so many murder dogs in heaven. Hey, it's Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from spring of 26 and did you know we are on tour in Europe? Welcome to Nightville. We'll be live on stage in Edinburgh on May 27th, Manchester on May 28th, London on May 29th, and Amsterdam on May 30th. This

brand new live show is called Murder Night in Blood Forest, starring Cecil Baldwin, Symphony Sanders, me, and live original music by disparition. These tours are so much fun, and they're for the diehard fan and the Nightvale new kid alike. So bring your family, your partner, your co-workers, your cat, whatever. They don't got to know what Nightville is to like the show. Tickets to these shows are on sale now at Welcome to Nightveil.com slash live. Don't let time slip away. Get your tickets. Don't miss us when we're in your town because otherwise we'll all be sad. Get your tickets to our Europe Live tour right now at welcome to nightvale.com slash live and hey thanks