Before They Were Night Vale: You're the Expert (Patreon)

(note: read this passage before you listen to the audio file above; i think it'll make more sense if you do. -jeffrey)

Not all of these entries are BEFORE we were Night Vale, of course, and this particular piece I wrote was from summer of 2020. I almost said at the height of the pandemic, but that's not really true. We don't really know where the height of the pandemic was or will be. But, it was at the height of us, as a globe, taking it seriously, I think.

And it was super depressing and stressful and traumatizing for us all. I was feeling angry when I wrote this, but upon re-reading it (and recording it) today, I don't feel the same kind of anger. Maybe that's because my writing didn't properly capture how I was feeling nearly 2 years ago. Could be that. Or it could just be that my present day performance of it, both in my head as I read it or on the microphone as I recorded it, isn't able to find the same emotional resonance.

It's not that I'm not angry any more. I am. But it's a different, less combative anger. It's a more resigned feeling, like when you have a headache, but you get busy and forget about the pain. Only the pain is still there in your head, affecting everything you do. You're just not consciously thinking about it. And every so often you pause in your activity, and the headache feels like it's coming right back. It never really left though.

This play I wrote for the Neo-Futurists' podcast HIT PLAY (it's a great podcast, go give it a listen). And I performed it with Cecil Baldwin. The intention of the play was to allow me to talk over someone, to not really listen to them, to not be directly mean to them, but also to not make them feel good or included. (Sounds fun right? I'm really selling this play to you, aren't I?)

But like I mentioned in my previous BTWNV entry, I miss doing theater, and one of the things you can do in live performance is engage the audience directly. To be welcoming or antagonistic toward strangers. And with "You're the Expert?" I just needed someone to point my anger toward.

Looking back, I don't think this comes across as rage-y as I'm making it sound. I'm really not that rage-y a person I guess. I'm more shady than screamy. Anyway, here's the transcript, and if you'd like to play along with a real-live voice, I recorded it for you to. I only ask that when you listen you answer along, out loud. Do it, it'll be fun. I'm charming as hell (I'm not. I'm the grumpy dad archetype.)

You're the Expert
Jeffrey Cranor, 2020

JEFFREY: Hey, ____.

My cats catch wasps now. They don’t get stung – the cats – maybe its their fur that protects them. Why do you think they don’t get stung, ___?

[____ gives a reasoned answer here; the rest are all brief responses]

You sound like a real scientist.

The cats toy with the wasps for upwards of 45 minutes never actually killing them, but leaving them to die on their own. Hurting them joyously, reveling in the pleasure of abuse and power. It’s nature. It’s instinct. It’s just what they do.

Robert Browning said “So a fool finds mirth, makes a thing and then mars it till his mood changes and off he goes?” I think Bob meant God designating hell on Earth, “desperate and done with” but they – the cats – are behaving like the shittiest of deities, and maybe one of those wasps was the Bert Browning of his office, never living long enough to have written the pest queendom’s best verses.

What’s a poem you think about a lot, ___.

The literary mind on you!

I will store this poetical wisdom like I store kale in the crisper: smugly at first but with metastasizing guilt as it rots, undevoured, into pulp.

How will that make you feel?

I probably won’t ever tell you one way or the other. We don’t talk much. But I like you. I like you a lot, because you’re human and you are speaking to me, and any words, however brief and ignorant of the 45 years of my life’s privileges and struggles are these days like a compassionate stroke on my back by a mother who loved me so as a child but recently asked me to accept the Lord when I told her the world was bringing me down.

And oh god, do you have a therapist, ___?

I don’t. I used to. Trying to save money these days, though. Every day my showers get angrier, and my dreams get more pervasive. I don’t gotta tell you, right?

All of this to say that the cats catch wasps now and I’m glad, because it’s too much to do myself. Everything is hard, harder than it used to be, and they say it’s okay. They – the cats say this. They say it with their actions, not their mouths. They’re experts at doing one thing for up to 45 minutes and then napping the rest of the day. So I’ll just reply to this one important email – the one that was sent 4 days ago with the subject line “quick question” – and then go lay back down. It’s fine. The new normal people call it. Quarantimes, some say. A ‘Rona routine, it’s termed.

What do you call it, ____?

You’re a linguist now, huh?

Panic isn’t a solution. Guilt isn’t a strategy. All time now is you time now. And by you, ____,  I mean me. And by me, I mean my displaced disquiet. And I’m taking this out on you, _____. I’m the sayer of this play’s lines, and by allowing you the merest briefest ad libs, I can control you in a way that I cannot control anything else. I can toy with you, protected from your sting by my thick fur, until I am bored and tired, or until I have maxed out the time allotted to me in this show. That’s what we do when we’re scared: dominate and dismiss, because it’s easier than coping with the ghost of hope, with nature, or worst, with ourselves. I don’t gotta tell you, right?

Right, ___?

[_____ responds in brief]

I mean, you’re the expert.