I’m a huge dork and will get super interested in anything that sits still for long enough. I’m curious about how things work, what stories they tell about us, and the endless flow on effects of things. If my brain gets to the point it’s thinking ‘and then what’, I’m usually hooked. This means I have the capacity to get stoked about absolutely anything. Want to know the latest thing I’m fascinated by and curious about?
Do you know what the Nutbush city limits and a caterpillars cocoon have in common? The latin word Limen. It means threshold, doorway or limit. I’m most preoccupied of late with its place in the word liminality. I’m not going to go into the origins of the word, because you can explore that yourself. But it is a term used to describe something that is neither here nor there; it is betwixt and between. It is not one, nor is it the other. It something of it’s own, but without the context of what it is between, sometimes the thing would be nothing. Remember that cocoon I mentioned before? A cocoon is a liminal thing, because it isn’t hosting a caterpillar, nor is it hosting a butterfly. It is something in between, but it is neither.
I’ve started seeing liminal places and spaces and things everywhere now. An elevator. It’s not a room on any floor, and it’s its own thing. It wouldn’t be anything without the building to host it. Within that building it is a threshold all in its own right. These photos, taken at golden hour are an excellent example. Dusk, dawn, twilight. These are times that are neither night nor are they day. They are their own thing, but without the other, wouldn’t be the threshold to the next. Have I confused you yet?
The sound of a phone ringing. You’ve hit dial, but it hasn’t connected to the person on the other end yet. It’s ringing. You’re not not making a call, but you’re also not really on a call either. A bit like the old sound of a dial-up modem making the sounds of an underworld monster singing the song of its people while trying to connect to the internet. It’s the yellow/orange light between red and green.
When rock climbing, it’s any point in between your starting point and your end point. You’re not on the ground. Gravity dictates that if you move inadequately you will fall back down but if you continue on you will reach your end point. It’s a place where you are on the threshold between falling and rising but are dancing in the place betwixt the two. You will either send, or you will descend and you alone keep yourself between the two.
The most fun place I have found this is working on the floor as an actor. Shakespeare *new* about the threshold. For example, between the past and the future is the present. Shakespeare understood the power of this threshold, and he wields it fully with the word now. In the opening of Troilus and Cressida, he begins with a detailed painting of the feud behind the whole story, describing the slights, the armaments and the locations of the tension. Once he’s done that, he drops the audience straight into the thick of it: ‘Now, expectation, tickling skittish spirits on one and other side, Trojan and Greek, sets all on hazard…’
Did you notice in there the other liminal space he mentions? The middle of the battle. The place between the two sides. He puts the audience right on the threshold of the tension, the exact point the sides meet, the heart of the conflict.
Several acting techniques help identify even more ways of finding the threshold. Laban and Chekhov both have done work around the 6 directions of space. These are forward, back, up, down, left, right. But in the middle of all these directions, on the threshold of each one, is the actor. You can see the threshold in Hamlet’s speech, ’to be or not to be, that is the question’. He spends the whole monologue with the audience, on the threshold between choosing life and death and they hover there with him, on that edge. Lady Macbeth has it too with her ‘come you spirits who tend on mortal thoughts…fill me from the crown to the toe’. See that? From the space above, to the space below, placing her in the middle, as the threshold.
Why is having a person as the threshold such a fascinating thing? To me, this place of in between is where I most learn and grow. It is a place of limitless possibility, it is where anything can either begin or end.
Anyway, I’ve nerded on about this enough. I hope you’ve had your curiosity stimulated.
Here are some pictures that Goldfields Girl and I had fun making a couple of weeks ago. It was a study in purple, exploring golden hour light and testing my new focus for giving directions to my photography assistants.
Photo assistant: Goldfields Girl
Dress: The Pretty Dress Co
Headband: old Alannah Hill belt.
Give me a fence in a photoshoot, and apparently I won’t be able to resist the urge to climb it.
At least all this rock climbing is helping me with photo shoots. Here is me balancing on one but cheek on a fence and not falling off. I guess you could say that sitting on the fence is a liminal space. A bit like Hamlet, eh? Him and his sitting on the fence. Or Macbeth’s when he’s trying to decide if he should kill the king. I’m rambling now.
– L
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