Last summer began and ended on bridges. The first bridge was on the western edge of Dartmoor. A friend of mine suggested we sit on a bench and meditate. I knew there was something important about this moment, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
The second bridge was on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, and I was out walking with family this time. Again, I was aware that there was a lesson here for me, but I couldn’t understand what it was. After some reflection, I realised that bridges usually join two identical – or similar – types of terrain. The bridge enables us to cross the divide without actually experiencing the transition itself. From this perspective, bridges hide or at least reduce our exposure to the threshold. They are a type of coping mechanism.
Humans have always been fascinated by thresholds. We decorate our doorways, we celebrate the changing of the seasons, and occasionally we stop to marvel at a sunrise or gaze peacefully at the setting sun.
Occasionally, we find ourselves caught between states, and that gives rise to the eerie feeling that has been termed ‘liminality’. It is where something has passed, but has yet to be replaced with what is to come. This liminal state has its own quality. Dawn and dusk are good examples. Abandoned buildings and spaces are another. People may have moved on, but the structures themselves have yet to return to the earth. They stand there as maddening memorials to both permanence and impermanence.
The barber and the backrooms
Last week, I was having my six-weekly haircut, and I noticed the barber was watching a YouTube video about Backrooms, a movie I have really been wanting to see, and a movie that is clearly connected to liminal spaces. It turns out, that the barber had watched the film but didn’t ‘get’ the ending. He was watching an explainer to try to resolve his questions. Looking back at it now, in the context of this post, I realise that this is an example of how many of us crave certainty. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m wondering whether the director deliberately creates an unresolved story that mirrors the horror of the backrooms – an eternal inbetween place that will forever defy reason.
When we explore our mythology, it becomes clear that we have always been fascinated and afraid of inbetween states. Aren’t the backrooms just a modern twist on the religious concepts of limbo or purgatory? A 21st Century folk tale about being spirited away and trapped forever in the land of faerie where nothing is what it seems?
The ocean of change
In the modern world, we get so caught up in the tasks of the day that we hurtle through, over and under transitions. Night becomes day, we close the front door, open the car door and cross rivers, fields and forests in the blink of an eye. We blitz through our ‘to do’ lists, cram fuel into our bodies, call up electronic entertainment on demand and then collapse into bed.
But beneath these blocks of structured activity flows an eternal-lapping ocean of chaotic energy. It is the source of our creations, but also the force that will eventually reclaim them. I wonder if the backrooms – and liminal spaces in general – are the battleground of conscious and unconscious forces, where the products of our creative will are fragmented and projected into the backdrop of eternity.
Image attribution: “Thebackrooms” by Marcelo Sandoval, CC BY 2.0