“Home is where the heart is. We found it one day in the sink. It hums things late at night, but they are not songs. Welcome to Night Vale.” (Fink, 2014 July 15)

(Wilson, 2014)

The interplay between narrative and meaning is how humans turn space into place. A space, whether physical or metaphysical, must have first narrative, then meaning applied to it, before it can become place. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (1977), features an anecdote in which two physicists visit Kronberg Castle, and how their perspective of the castle changes immediately when they imagine that it was where Hamlet lived. Through a (in this case, quite literal) narrative, meaning is projected onto a space, and it becomes place. When talking about a fandom, the narrative is the source material (in this case, the Welcome to Night Vale podcast), and it is through this source material that fans are able to create a community, to create a fandom--to create place out of mere space.

“I was also thinking about space. About how it is nothing, and then, a point which is just a single spot within the nothing, and a line which separates the nothing into two nothings, and how a plane is a patch of nothing and an angle just where two nothings meet, but all those things combined, with an object of points, lines, planes, and angles, an object with length and width and depth that can take up actual space. Until that object becomes something made of nothing – within nothing. An object can be a wall, a floor, a roof, a bed, a table, a dog, a door, a rug, a…a home” (Fink, 2014 February 14).
(Why yes, I do have a WtNV quote for every situation.)

So, narrative and meaning are essential elements to the transformation of space into place. It is a part of being human; it is seen all over the world, no matter how disparate the ontology (Kuttainen, 2015). In The Songlines (1987), Bruce Chatwin speaks of the Songlines, an Aboriginal Australian belief that holds that “…the Ancestors sang the world into existence” (p.11); that the songline “was both map and direction-finder” (p.13). Aboriginal Australians used the Songlines to structure a narrative through which meaning was made, and space transformed into place—and so does fans use their chosen text to create a community. Without the source material, the fans would have nothing to post about, and with it, fans posts, reblogs, and comments fandom into existence.

REFERENCES

Chatwin, B. (1987). The Songlines. London, England: Franklin Press.

Fink, J. (Producer). (2014, February 14). Condos [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://nightvale.bandcamp.com

Fink, J. (Producer). (2014, July 15). 50-Capital Campaign [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://commonplacebooks.com

Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives, and the Making of Place: Week 5: Stories and Places [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and Place: The perspective of experience. London, England: Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd.

IMAGE REFERENCE

Wilson, R [Artist]. (2014). Condos Logo [Image]. Retrieved from http://nightvale.bandcamp.com