Before They Were Night Vale: hologram ABBA (Patreon)

(NOTE: this story is not at all BEFORE i was night vale, but i just wanted to use this regular column to talk about how i think about art, even if it involves contemporary works outside of my own writing. - JC)

So in January of this year, I went to London to celebrate some friends' birthdays. (Y'all may know one of them: Sarah Griffin, fiction-writer and frequent guest on Random Horror No. 9.)

Anyway, Sarah was really into the idea of going to see ABBA Voyage. I didn't know what this was, but I like ABBA just fine, so I said let's do it. 

I didn't really know what it would be till I got there, and here's the basics. ABBA built a whole-ass theater on the east side, near Canary Wharf, for this show. It's sort of hologram meets giant digital display of CGI young ABBA singing their hits, including a couple of new tracks from their 2022 album, Voyage.

Like most people, I love ABBA, but have never thought about them much more than just "these songs are very enjoyable to listen to." But Sarah was shaking before the show. She was having a near-spiritual experience, so I asked why she felt so connected to this band.

I'll paraphrase.... It's because their music is so sad. These two married couples formed a band for Eurovision, won the whole thing, and then became instant pop icons. And for the next 8 years, their marriages fell apart, and most of their songs are about this. It's sad and beautiful and true.

And then the show started, and I was infected with this information. I hadn't really ever listened closely to ABBA. What's a super trooper? Who is fernando? It never mattered. And now every song I heard was a break-up song, with a catchy disco beat. 

I have been going through my own relationship upheaval and major life changes lately, and suddenly this music meant a lot to me. Plus the enormous visuals of mid-20s Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha, and Anni-Frid telling stories about their lives but as video game cut-scene animations... it was surreal and so so moving. 

I couldn't understand why it was touching me emotionally so much, beyond just poppy break-up songs. But I did understand my friend Sarah's deep connection to this band. I felt for them. I understood them. I, too, could be a literal screaming fan if I saw them on the street. 

I've thought about this a lot in the 2 months since I saw this. I've never fallen for a show like this show. And I think I've figured it out. 

Honesty. That's not the same thing as Accuracy or Factuality. Honesty in story-telling is about revealing who you are through fiction. The ABBA I saw was entirely computer generated, yet they felt more real that 90% of live shows I'd seen. And that's the thing. 

In a live show, the people you see on stage aren't really them. It's an act, even if they're playing themselves. When I emcee a Night Vale show. I say I'm Jeffrey Cranor. I talk like Jeffrey Cranor. I tell no lies up there. I am Jeffrey Cranor. And yet, I'm not really. I'm a facsimile of myself, packaged for public appearance. And the goal of my emcee performance is to appear as honestly me as possible, even if it's a performance.

These ABBA avatars honest to me. Their lyrics did too. And then there's the absolute bops that are their hits. Add to that my own middle-aged angst about marriage, family, and aging, and suddenly I'm a guy who didn't truly understand the religious impact of music until he saw a hologram concert at age 47.

Anyway, I'm a big believer in putting yourself into your art. You don't have to be purely autobiographical (except The Faceless Old Woman, that's pretty much a beat by beat of my life), but I find it much more human to reveal something of who you are in your books, podcasts, plays, poems, and/or songs. 

Even if you're playing a character, you're still you. Sometimes even more so.

-Jeffrey Cranor
March 9, 2023

PS: One fun sidebar to this. At ABBA Voyage, there was a live house band that played on a couple of songs. And when "Does Your Mother Know" came up on the set list, the live band performed this song instead of CGI ABBA. On the dance floor next to me was a 20-something woman who was higher than high. And she grabbed my shoulder (hard), pointed at the live band, and said, "Excuse me, sir. But are those people real? I don't know what's real."