A brief study into liminal spaces
Time isn’t real here
Dead Week - the week between Christmas and New Years where time doesn’t feel real. No real work gets done, there’s no use in starting anything new. You’re full of cookies and just feel kinda stuck. You spend a lot of time waiting. In airports (coughSouthwestcough), in line at the post office, and for responses to emails. This whole period time has a real blurry feel to it. Not quite there yet. A liminal space built into the Gregorian calendar.
A liminal space refers to the place where a person is in a transitional period. Waiting rooms, airports, and hallways are common examples of liminality in the physical world, but liminality can also be a feeling. Feeling like you aren’t quite there yet, more unsettling than a journey but a necessary unavoidable part of getting there (wherever and whatever there means to you).
Liminal spaces are often inspiring to me. I do my best writing on airplanes and waiting around for whatever to happen, but this year dead week seems to have gotten a hold of my muse. I’m struggling to get this newsletter out before the end of the year (hence it comes almost 24+ hours late, sorry!) even though when I wrote the draft I was chock full of ideas and prose.
But ya know what? It’s okay. Liminal spaces exist for a reason and that reason doesn’t need to result in productivity. Maybe this years liminal week has come to force me into more rest. To live peacefully with not creating output and just existing for just a brief moment. It’s more than okay to just exist. To just wait. To just be.
With that, I want to thank you for reading and subscribing. It means a lot to me to have a small internet audience to write for each week and I look forward to writing more in 2023 about whatever topic comes to mind. I hope you all have a wonderful time during the liminality before real life starts again in January. Enjoy being here now.
Here’s my small list of songs that have a “liminal” quality to me:
1. Labyrinth - Taylor Swift
The first time I ever listened to this song I felt like I was walking down a tunnel of lights. An illuminated hallway leading to a beautiful forever. Taylor sings to us her insecurities about falling in love knowing well enough that it hasn’t ever worked out for her in the past. As she treads water through her innermost emotions in this song she comes to her own conclusion - she can’t ever find love unless she’s willing to dive in. The biggest risks result in the biggest rewards and the most broken of hearts must keep on breaking. Then all at once you reach your destination and someone catches you when you fall. This song is about the doubts before the journey begins. The waiting room before you fall.
Favorite Lyrics: “You would break your back to make me break a smile”
2. Blackbird - The Beatles
Blackbird is a beautiful meditation Paul McCartney wrote about the Civil Rights Movement in the 60’s and the lyrics embody the hope that a liminal space can provide. While we’re only waiting for that moment to arrive, we don’t know what’s in the future. It could be painful, or it could be wonderful. We just don’t know until we get through with the waiting part. The hope that living in the present moment gives us for the future is something to bask in and this song is just a gorgeous listen. So many layers and interpretations occurring in just 2 minutes and 18 seconds - no wonder The Beatles have defeated liminality entirely and became timeless. Hope can be a liminal space, but a warm one.
Favorite Lyrics: “All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise”
3. I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Death Cab for Cutie
I still can’t get over that this song came out 15 years ago. The song itself seems to flirt with the idea of a certain purgatory. A space between life and death. Not quite heaven and certainly not hell. The music video depicts Ben Gibbard alone in a room with liminal quality as the floor opens up into a mysterious black hole. When the cameras pans into the hole, the song becomes faint. This suggests a deep hole, a well of sadness - only for it to be revealed as quite shallow. Just as that visual metaphor depicts - sometimes it’s not that deep - it’s just in between. Emotions and settings. In between’s are a fine place to be sometimes.
Favorite Lyrics: “If there’s no one beside you, when your soul embarks, I’ll follow you into the dark.”
4. The Suburbs - Arcade Fire (the song and the entire album)
This entire album (The Suburbs - Arcade Fire) was released just as I was graduating high school in 2010 and entering one of the most liminal summers of my life. I remember playing it over and over again as I drove through my own suburb craving the day I would inevitably leave for college. It was a time when all my friends were still living at our parents houses but without curfews. A time when goodbyes trickled in as people began to leave for school. Scattering across the country. The last few moments of our childhood. We weren’t quite children. We weren’t quite adults yet either. Teenage years - the liminal era we all know too well. Waiting to be grown to become who we always were. This song would have played over the opening credits of the film that was the summer of 2010.
Favorite Lyrics: “Sometimes I can’t believe it, I’m moving past the feeling.”
5. Motorcycle Drive By - Third Eye Blind
Third Eye Blind will remain one of the most underrated acts to come out of the 90’s. Their 1998 debut Third Eye Blind is full of nostalgic bangers including this one. Genius describes this song as the “ultimate break up song” and I have to agree. The song feels like the end of the a hallway. You’ve already moved through the pain of the breakup and are finally ready to embrace what is on the other side. This song feels like the last moments of liminality before a new journey begins. A great song for the years end. I have so many favorite lyrics and moments for this song I’ll just say - please give it a listen and have a happy new year!
Favorite lyric: “I’ve never been so alone, and I’ve never been so alive.”