Arcadia by Andrés Reisinger, RAC, and Arch Hades.
Arcadia is a narrated, graphic film that journeys through our collective 21st century existential crisis. It is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary collaboration between artist Andrés Reisinger, musician RAC, and poet Arch Hades.
I saw Arcadia for the first time last April, at the MOCO Museum in Amsterdam while on my honeymoon. I felt almost hypnotized. Sometimes, out of nowhere, I remember a quote or a fleeting visual from this film and it's like someone has breathed into me. If you have 10 minutes, this video is sure to make you feel something. If you don't have 10 minutes, save it for later.
(Fun fact: This project made Arch Hades the highest paid living poet of all time.)
Excerpt from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.
Excerpt from The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
You took the last bus home
you took the last bus home
i still don’t know how you got it through the door
but you’re always doing amazing stuff
like the time when you caught that train
Perfectly Human
by Miles Walser
So you were born backwards.
Your heart covers 80% of your skin.
It is huge—and it is fragile.
You don’t know how to chain-link fence your feelings.
You will find your trust abandoned and bruised on the side of the road—
Do not leave it there—
Dust it off and put it right back under your shirt.
If you don’t learn to stop apologizing for yourself,
you will mirage out of existence.
See, someday, that 80% is gonna get you hurt.
You will tell a woman over and over that you love her,
and she will say nothing.
You will sob in public,
and people will just stare.
They will want to carve their names into you
and watch as the pieces fall off—
let them try.
Your heart is a geyser and for that you will always feel strange.
Most people shut down when they get over saturated with feeling;
most people harden into hate
–into indifference–
because the biggest risk we ever take is to love without fear.
You are not afraid.
You are a cathedral waiting to be filled with hymns;
you are an infinite playground;
you are sky-bound and sprinting,
so cover your heart in goose-bump armor.
It will only beat stronger,
beat louder.
Keep hoping.
Stand up on subways and shout compliments to strangers,
dance, poorly, in public if it makes you feel better.
Love until it hurts.
Then love more—you know how.
There will be days when you’ll wish you were numb;
when you’ll want to rip your heart off your body
and find something easier to take its place.
Collect those days like bricks
and marvel at the buildings you will make.
Stand on top, chest open, head up—
Nobody will ever see the world like you do.
Never try to be better than the best version of you.
You are not perfect.
You are perfectly human.