Hello all, I'd like to begin with a brief introduction, and I love you.
My name is Sarge. I am a 20 year old poet and artist, and this summer I was one of only 11 kids accepted into the Youth Documentary Academy, or YDA, in my town. It's an 8k scholarship I was awarded, and with it, I got to make my first film this year. Filmmaking is my dream.
My world premiere to hundreds of people comes up in a little over a week. But I want your help.
I am making a media pairing for my film. I've begun by making a website with different information and custom assets. It's styled like an old 90's page (which I never truly saw, but I figure might be a selling point.)
The pages on my website include music, pictures, films and videos, art, and texts.
For the texts page, I have a literature section. I would like to include book pairings with brief descriptions.
So I would like to ask your recommendations. What books do you think reflect Sonder? What books make you feel human, or relate to humanity and individuality and everyone having their own life.
I prefer succinct, rich, and complete works. But I will accept anything- as this, too, is ny attempt at compiling a connection of many different people.
For those wondering, now, the big reveal:
Sonder is defined as:
"the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk” (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
I would love your help, and your input. These recommendations will be put on the website and shared with hundreds to thousands over time.
You are all incredible, unique, and it is a treasure that you're here.
Thank you, I love you, I appreciate the help.
– Sarge
by Queer-Oddball38
2 Comments
I had to look up what Sonder means. But the definition gives us one book that encapsulates the word:
Sonder is the profound realization that every person you encounter has a life as complex and vivid as your own, with their own ambitions, worries, and routines. This neologism was coined by John Koenig for his project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and captures the feeling of understanding that you are merely a background character in the stories of countless other people.
How about Spoon River Anthology. This is a book of poems where each poem is the epitaph of a deceased resident of the town of Spoon River, written from their first-person perspective after their deaths.