Director's Notes: 187 - Citizen Spotlight: The Spire (Patreon)

One of my favorite painters is Pieter Bruegel, he of the 16thCentury Flemish Renaissance landscapes. Bruegel’s works were notable for fine details, many grotesque and comical. There was so much to see in each of his works. It wasn’t just about the technique, nor the wholeness of the image, but about the people within them. Every painting told a story.

Bruegel painted several versions of The Tower of Babel. Here’s one.

The tower is in mid-construction, and it is imposing, central, and ornate. But in the periphery is the quotidien life surrounding it: the village, the harbor, and the citizens at work, both in and around the tower.

The lore of Babel is interesting, of course, that humans wanted to build a tower to Heaven. And that they were united by a culture, a dream, and most importantly a language. But God said “oh hell no. no cats on the countertop.” And He not only destroyed the tower, but also their unified language. It’s a parable about hubris and mythical explanation for why so many people speak different vocabularies and syntaxes.

But what I find far more interesting in Bruegel’s depiction of the Tower of Babel are the individual people. Each one has a story. Each one has a job, a family, a wish (or three), and I love looking through this painting (and many of Bruegel’s other masterpieces) to find those stories.

See the fishers bringing in the boats. See the masons carving the stone corners. See the single man thumbing his nose at OSHA guidelines by climbing an unsecured 30-foot ladder 3 stories up the side of a building. Even the geese in the upper left are doing their own thing, oblivious to the need to reach God or even have a God at all.

Bruegel was an important discovery for me in my early 20s. His works helped me understand that for every epic tale, there are billions of individual, personal stories to explore. And in Episode 187 - Citizen Spotlight: The Spire, I wanted to dive into one of those lives: sculptor Saad Ibrahim.

One of the unheralded joys of writing for the Night Vale podcast has been the ability to create a character out of thin air and to give them a history and a conflict. I think about Breugel’s The Tower of Babel (also Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is another great one) every time I write a Night Vale episode. It’s a great reminder of the power of macro/micro storytelling.

- Jeffrey Cranor
May 1, 2021