Comfort in the Liminal
Using music to find a way in the dark
One thing I’ve learned about trawling Youtube for playlists that can simultaneously soothe, motivate and energise me is that there are a lot of people out there looking to name and exorcise a feeling of vanishing. An existentialist fog, or a void-like breeze, that touches everything with an eerie shade of unreality. Thousands of people are, every day, searching for musical backdrops to locate and quench a feeling of disconnection—to find very specific liminal spaces in their minds, and, I think, trap them by seeing them clearly, by making them knowable. Like a made-up city in a recurring dream, by focusing on the brickwork of these amorphous sensations, perhaps they become less daunting, more comfortable. These audio spaces are hyperspecific in their descriptions: you are inside a Monet painting, the last night bus, study like Nikola Tesla creating inventions, falling asleep in the car on a rainy afternoon. There is fragile beauty in each of these curations—they attempt to pinpoint exact, personal emotions in a relatable way, and as unlikely as it seems, millions of views for each video proves that the sharper these hypodermic references are, the more they hit the mark.
Where the void (a term used in BPD circles and treatment to reference the absence of or inability to define emotion—the void can last moments or days depending on the episode) can be a black hole taking in and vaporising thoughts of comfort, in these playlists I can find ways to play with its distortion of reality. Daydreaming has always been my preferred state of being, and learning to find and clarify these powerful places in my mind has been empowering. Liminal spaces have always fascinated and terrified me—there is something so unnerving about a bus stop at 2am, a burnt out car on a country layby, the shuttered and abandoned buildings of a purpose-built retail park gone to ruin. I notice that it’s only human-created places that give me these chills. Nature is never abandoned, always busy, constant and alive. In considering this, I’ve learned to counter the void with the fields and woods around my house. In a way, these playlists have helped me take a healing step, and I owe much to their mysterious creators.
Other Stuff
One of my current favourite playlists—it’s actually a mix by Christian Loffler accompanied by video taken from the beach in Northern Germany near where he lives
My Stuff
I’ve not had much stuff published recently as I’ve not been in a position to write often, however if you follow Pellicle I’ll be writing much more in the coming months. I also have a feature commissioned for an upcoming issue of Hwaet! zine, and am still writing for Glug and Ferment. My book, published by Wine52, will be available later this year.
I’ve also taken the step to disconnect my Twitter account. I’m working hard to live more in the real world, and my biggest hope is that this will reflect positively on my writing. We’ll see.
