Director's Notes Episode 205 - The Moon Is Gone

I started this episode without any idea how I was going to end it. That’s right, this one I straight up Stephen King-ed. I liked the idea of the moon going missing, and I trusted that I would figure out an interesting reason for it having done so. (Incidentally, the title is a direct reference to the John Steinbeck book The Moon is Down, which remains essential reading on the impossibility of ever really occupying another country long term, and was literally written during World War 2 in order to help stir up the French resistance.)

Eventually I landed on Radio Jupiter, because I’m fond of our galactic explorer and it seems the fans are too. We spent so little time with her and it was nice to get a bit of news on how things have been going for that cosmic wanderer. Plus it meant we got to work with Robin Virginie again. Robin is a professional voice actor, a member of the New York Neo-Futurists (the theater company where all the Night Vale folks met), and great to work with. She is also Dutch, a fact that you cannot tell from listening to her because Dutch people speak English more fluently than we do. More info about Robin here https://www.robinvirginie.info/

The Kareem section was added after Jeffrey wrote the wonderful episode 203. I always try to leave room in every episode to check in on what Jeffrey has written recently and follow up on it. Night Vale is an ongoing, living community, and so it’s important to write it like one. A lot of our stories are built in that organic way, expanding on what the other has written without one hundred percent knowing where the other person had intended to go with it.

Finally a note on sleep paralysis: 

I’ve had sleep paralysis almost my entire life, since I was around 8 or 9 years old. I wrote a much longer and more in-depth thing about my experiences with sleep in the book that Meg and I released last year, The First Ten Years, if you're curious. Suffice to say that I’ve found ways to cope with it, and as a result actually don’t have it happen that much anymore. But it definitely bemused me when sleep paralysis turned into this kind of internet bogeyman, with people trading stories and images of sleep paralysis like it was the slenderman and not a medical condition that I’ve lived with all my life. 

Listen, sleep paralysis sucks, and I wish I didn’t have it, but it’s not a terrifying urban legend. It’s just a shitty thing the human body does, amongst many other shitty things the human body does. I wish we approached this subject not like a ghost story, but like the way we talk about other issues of neurodiversity and self-care: hey here are actionable things you can do to feel better.

By the way, if you are experiencing sleep paralysis, my two biggest tips are:

1. Never ever sleep on your back. If you are prone to it, then it will happen 100% of the time when you are on your back.

2. If it does happen, be sure to get up and move your body a little before going back to sleep. If you go right back to sleep, it will just immediately happen again.

Hope that’s helpful to someone out there.

Love from my little home office to yours,

Joseph Fink