Arcadia

Arcadia - the song ‘Even in Arcadia’ is melodically lulling. Sleep Token transport you to your own private Arcadia. It would be a pity if someone ruined that vision, right? A pity, indeed. Arcadia is a social construct created to control us by Big Phanteon. Oh, wait. Wrong site. Given the context of the song, we can safely assume that the right definition to invoke here is a fictional land of happiness, where everything, absolutely everything, is perfect. There are so many examples of this concept in art that Norn could devote several separate essays to it, though what for, nobody knows. Everything has already been written, and the reader surely has access to the Internet.

In the context of the song’s title, it seems to be justified for Norn to mention a certain phrase (though she feels some inner resistance about it, unsure where giving dry facts ends and imposing an interpretation begins). But following Umberto Eco’s terminology, Norn will stick to the version that this is still intentio operis (what the work itself says), but definitely not lectoris (what the reader brings to the work). What does the piece seem to be telling us? The phrase ‘Even in Arcadia’ is most often linked with two paintings by Nicolas Poussin, titled ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ adding the word ‘I’ to Sleep Token’s title.

Both paintings show more or less the same thing - shepherds and a woman who, while walking around Arcadia, find a tomb with the inscription ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ carved into it. The sight gives them a shock, at least in the first version of the painting. What, a tomb in Arcadia? People die here too? Where can you get a refund? The thing about art is that you can interpret it your own way (which Norn practises gladly and with gusto), but in the case of these two paintings two main interpretations top the charts - the first, that it is simply the epitaph of a person who died in the land of happiness, and the second, that the words are spoken by Death itself, thus manifesting its presence absolutely everywhere.

Can another interpretation be made? Of course. The woman in the second painting stands with her hands on her hips in the classic ‘what have you lot been up to this time?’ pose, and one of the shepherds looks at her as if he wanted to convince her that graffiti on a tombstone is a great idea. In the first painting, on the other hand, everyone looks like students coming back from a party at dawn and studying (hard!) the night bus timetable as if it were written in hieroglyphs (but to be fair, if you’ve ever been a student coming back from a party in the dorms, you know there is a state a person can ascend to when every written text really does look like hieroglyphs). Does it make sense in the context of the song? Well… ‘Have you been waiting long for me?’ said the bus to the student. No. Don’t go there, Norn. On a serious note, there is a point to this absurdity - Norn very much wants to tell the reader that in every work of art there slumbers an infinite field of ela…ahem… interpretations, not all of them are right, some are outrageous, but each one can pleasantly stimulate our imagination.

Sometimes Arcadia is confused with utopia - while utopia is at least achievable in theory, in the case of Arcadia we are talking from the start about something that is unattainable. In keeping with that comforting phrase that life is about constant striving for something that doesn’t exist. Great. So what did Vessel mean? Norn doesn’t know. Maybe he was referring to a fairy-tale land of happiness, or maybe he was writing about his local shopping arcade of that name (every town probably has its own arcadia of consumerism; Norn certainly does, though it usually gives her a small panic attack). Both versions also fit the lyrics of the whole song surprisingly well.

Regardless of which Arcadia Vessel was writing about, Norn wholeheartedly recommends finding our own vision of Arcadia, something that resonates with us. And it’s better, though, if it’s a utopia and not an arcadia. That one at least exists (in theory). In Norn’s case, utopia would be financial liquidity and boiled potatoes sprinkled with a pinch of salt. Measure your strength by your own aims. It may not get you a platinum record, but it will help you survive everyday life, which, as we know, has nothing of arcadia about it.