This version of modernity is weird, but it isn’t unprecedented.

The word weird comes from the Old English wyrd. It dates back to the Wyrd Sisters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth — also known as “The Three Fates.” So when we say something is “weird,” what we really mean is fate: that which is inevitable. Predictable. Recurring. The feeling of having been here before.

Through a chance act of blackout poetry, modern voices mingle weirdly as characters in a medieval plague. The UNPRECEDENTED Project asserts that plagues are familiar; that humanity has survived before and indeed can survive again. These kinds of global tragedies are not apocalyptic, but rather cyclical. And the renaissance that always seems to follow — perhaps destined.