"I have been one acquainted with the night." Videos like this take a LOT of work; you can show your support and gain access to behind-the-scene commentary on www.patreon.com/clarkelieson
Existence is the weirdest rabbit hole, it’s such a dumb fact that everyone accepts, but the more you dive into it, the more your brain unravels lmao. Great video!
Used to be a high school night shift janitor. Schools with nobody in them at night are liminal af. So is the factory I work at once I'm the last one there and half the lights are off.
I'm sad janitorial positions are so often at night. the only time I've felt comfortable in that role is at a 24 hour grocery where I could at least be with other people. I wish to do the job more only I am afraid of the night time loneliness
@Pablo Moreno Cordón When you cross that threshold it’s like stepping into another dimension of consciousness. Quite simply “oneness”. People are constantly evolving; first as the 4 elements, then animals, then humans. We had to learn survival, then use that for relationship to self, then use the self for relationship to others (leadership/cooperation) now what? Oneness is probably the next step, since in order to enhance relationship in packs we must have compassion to avoid instability. The problem is, people can either serve others or serve the self using this oneness. Manipulation or charity. Dark or light. It is polarity just like ions polarize to influence their environment. Humanity currently is really not in favor of the negative because the negative drains others; it’s like a black hole as opposed to a white hole. Conquering or respecting is the difference. Could possibly explain UFO presences being aliens; they are positively polarized and want to respect our free will. Or in this case, they don’t trespass on restricted airspace to land. There will even be humans saying “it’s a costume” too, just shows we’re not ready for that contact.
I read an interesting theory that our aversion to “liminal spaces” is a survival instinct. For animals, if a normally busy and safe area is deserted, it means that something bad or dangerous is happening. Who knows, though. It’s interesting that this is a universal feeling everyone gets.
This. I think liminal spaces are intriguing on a more primal level. Nobody builds a building for it to be uninhabited. That juxtaposition in many "liminal space" imagery is what gives it that uncanny vibe. Occasionally, someone makes a very interesting point, but most of these videos have turned into pseudo-intellectual wank at this point.
Existence is the weirdest rabbit hole, it’s such a dumb fact that everyone accepts, but the more you dive into it, the more your brain unravels lmao. Great video!
The strangest thing in the universe is to be a self. Lol how is it not strange to anyone else when it's the only thing there is, thus the strangest thing. All we are aware of is our awareness/experience of what we are told to me an external reality. We pop into existance as something we call a self, and accept that?! Like wtf even does it mean to be at all. And we believe what we are told about reality by authorities who only want to control and have no care about truth.
@@Mr.CreamCheese69 just because an individuals self/consciousness exists, does not mean it’s the only thing there is, billions of years without us, and the universe was still here ticking away, no human was here to “experience” it but that’s about it
If you look at birth being the start of your journey and death being you final destination then life becomes a liminal space with seemingly no escape. Which perpetuates the feeling of unease we get when thinking about life or death because of the the fear of the unknown. I'm not sure if that was the intended undertone of the content but that's what I got from it. This video is amazing and has so many layers that could be peeled back and explored.
I cannot agree, as we don't know what preceded our birth (if anything.) When I am in a liminal space, I know what preceded my getting there. I also anticipate something concrete after passing through such space. Liminal spaces seem to be empty of meaning, just like life itself, but at the same time there's no need to transcend this seeming meaninglessness. I get the analogy, but there are some critical parts that break it IMO
“Moments frozen in time” are perhaps the most comforting things for me. I have a hard time accepting that things change but finding places that are untouched by time bring me relief. This also plays into my fascination with abandoned cities.
I feel very similarly. An interesting thing to consider about time, if you think about a time line, all the points on the line exist all at once. Not to say that all the events on the time line happened at once, but that the points on the line that mark the moments all exist at the same time on the line when you observe it. Because any given moment in time will have some discernable impact on the moment following it, these moments are linked by cause and effect. The universe is infinite/ infinitely expanding; infinity by definition is everything. What if every moment in time is actually its own frozen infinity, a stand still "state of reality" an entire universe frozen in a single moment for infinity that the consciousness briefly moves through in order to construct its reality. The forward momentum of time is based on perception, as all moments already exist, we just simply have to travel forward linearly to perceive them, as any given moment in time can effect the following moment(probability). For example, the linear alphabetic path from A-D looks like ABCD. To follow that path out of order (AFGD) is not to travel in a line. To further elaborate, if you are going down the alphabet in linear order, B must come after A, and C must come after B. Apply this same thought process to reality and the individual moments that make it up. Reality is only the way it is at Noon because it was the way it was at 11:59. In other words, because something has happened it is immortalized in time, the effect that past moment had on the current one is and will always be (theoretically) measurable. Basically, Cause and Effect creates the linear forward flow of time, it is cause and effect that allows the universe to transition between it's infinite potential states that all always exist alongside each other due to the nature of infinity. With an infinity of moments to get to, how else could consciousness logically get between them? By following the principle of least action.
Go Urbexing , abandoned buildings are the best places to find Liminal space , truly liminal space because streets at night can still have the odd person/ car or 2
Also places where humans aren't are really comforting to me because humans have been the only creatures to ever try to prey upon me, especially not even for survival, but sport.
I absolutely love and adore the eerie feeling of liminal spaces. I’ve often wished for a video game that was nothing but a liminal space to walk around and explore for hours
Guild Wars 1 had a place in it's endgame called "The Ravenheart Gloom" which i thought was the scariest place in the entire game. It was a grass field that was pitch black beyond your torch light, and it was basically just grass in every direction. I never knew why it was so scary, but this video actually puts explanation as to that.
Not quite liminal space but Disco Elysium does a fantastic job of providing eerie atmospheres and aesthetics that feel similar to the feelings that liminal spaces invoke.
Not related but related: Working as a DJ, one of my most uncanny feelings is when a big nightclub is just opening for the evening - music is blasting and disco lights are flashing, but no one is there yet. It's like a huge production for no one. It always makes me feel oddly philosophical, like "who is this for?" That "who is this for" feels like a 5th part of the definition of liminal space angst. Why are the lights on if this place is empty? Why is a fountain on in the middle of the night? Why is someone keeping the place clean?
Former nightclub manager here. Always found clubs I'd run or visited during the day to be fascinating, as all the facade, smoke and mirrors were gone, leaving just a shadow of themselves...
This philosophical feeling hits me deeply when I'm in a building with a high degree of architecture thought into it, like a government building or hospital when absent of people, like an empty videogame map, or a physical loading screen, like the lounge area of a VR game
When I was in college, I used to work in a large shopping mall. May favorite space in the whole mall was the back service corridors that ran behind all the shops. Long poorly lit grey halls that curved and turned so you could never see the end. It was rare to actually run into anyone there, and it was quite literally liminal space. I would spend any extra time before and after work just walking the length of them to enjoy it and soak in the darkness.
@@AmanKumar-ir3dt I like ghosts and I am not afraid of the dark literal or metaphoric. The same things are there in the light as in the dark, but they are just harder to sense. Treat them with a little respect and they respond in kind.
As someone who's been mentally and physically sick for a long time it is calming for me as it reminds me of all those nights I've been awake at night, wondering around, and feeling happy as now it is my turn to enjoy everything that exists. As day is too much, night is calm and perfect.
My introduction to liminal spaces? Squidward when he was alone and ended up desperately looking for a way out once he was consumed with what he oh so wanted.
I used to get that eerie feeling every time I had to go into work (grocery store) super early in the morning while the lights were dim and nobody shopping. Dark isles, untouched groceries and all alone. Not to mention really tired. If I let my imagination run for just a little I could swear that place felt haunted but only when I let myself feel it.
@@shinjite06 I kinda liked it though 🙂 maybe because I knew it was only temporary, like at 3am I have the place to myself and it’s like being in on a secret. But I know in a few hours the day shift will show up, and the clients and it will be a busy, vibrant place again
Currently been working in the night shift at a mall department store where they turn off the lights after midnight. Pretty scary but also calming to be standing in a place where you know there are normally Karens fighting and children crying. (the reason i'm in this place is to fulfill web orders without being interrupted by daytime customers)
@@shinjite06 yeah true same for studying, but i tell u, one night when i was just watching videos after my study session, i found out on yt about this project called The caretaker, a musical album long 6 hours that simulates what having dementia feels like, so i checked one of those essay videos like this one that explain the subject really meticously, and i tell u, it was something like 2 am in the night, and i was shitting myself out of fear of something so real and common, i immedialty realize that i was alone in the night and that i was isolated from any human contact that could just emotionally support me a little, and the quiet and chilling night suddently became my enemy, i was scared of the silence and every little noises around like a little baby, really an unique experience. The same night i shared my discovered dementia project to my friend who also used to sleep really late, and after 20m or so, he was Sooo mad at me for how scared and traumatized he was😂
if you guys are a fan of liminal spaces i'd recommend steven kings "the langoliers" its where this group of people wake up on a plane and they become literally stuck in the past and they're the only ones left
He had been flying passengers long enough to know a good bit…about their group psychology. When a passenger freaked out, few if any of the others ever moved. Most air travellers meekly surrendered their option to take individual action when they entered the bird, sat down, and buckled their seatbelts around them. Once those few simple things were accomplished, all problem-solving tasks became the crew's responsibility. Airline personnel called them geese, but they were really sheep ...
Is it strange that I’m actually comforted by liminal spaces? I often fantasize about being alone in the world, just so I could explore the empty city I live in without any restrictions. So I could go back to places in my past where so much of my life happened, and yet I can’t go back ever again. The idea that liminal spaces are nothing itself is very interesting to me, because I never knew why I wanted to do that to myself. It would drive me insane, literally, but now I have a theory. I think it’s because being in nothing reminds me that I exist. I’ve gotten this feeling lately that as I grow older, I’m getting further away from home. Everything in my childhood was the ultimate familier, and as time has changed, so has the world become less and less familier to me. Maybe I want to be in those places because they’re as close to familier for me as anything could be at this point. That’s sad isn’t it? That the world is so uncomfortable to me now that these liminal spaces offer more belonging to me. Idk I’m just speaking off the cuff here.
My parents are old enough to have seen a lot of the big box stores they grew up with, or saw constructed, the landmarks of their local area, close/be demolished. It's a literal representation that the world that they once knew will never exist again.
This sounds like every stoner. I just want to find a spot to walk around and smoke with no one in sight, but some tweaker always has to spawn in and "ruin" it. I swear those guys just spawn in random locations. I've met some in the weirdest places. I met one in the dark in an abandoned house once, he scared me so much, but he turned out to be pretty cool aside from obviously being a bit zany.
@@chicka-boom7540 places with darker tone will always be unsettling and unnerving.. but light liminal spaces have a vibe that urges me to take a shit fr.. like that shit is transcendental and right above your anus you just have to go to the bathroom to take it off and feel relieved.. i catch that kind of vibe, so welcoming that you wanna shit
@@naraka2.082 yeah, i always loved to just think of all the things i could do, but i dont have the ambition to do so, being alone is better when soemthing lets you not have a consience
I used to be a huge pothead and when I quit smoking everything looked like those liminal space photos, like I was generally more aware of my surroundings.
I'm still a huge pothead, but I occasionally get this feeling too... Though, I am a hardcore nightowl, so basically everywhere is liminal. My sleep is basically inverted. (Sleep at sunrise, wake at sunset.)
@@aj3852 It honestly did at first but I just tried to tell myself I knew all the places that looked unfamiliar and i been there before and had my own experiences at these places so they weren't these strange things to look at but it was honestly really difficult to keep myself grounded
I used to work for a cleaning company who did overnight jobs in places like clinics, hospitals, and stores. Seeing places that are normally super well-lit and busy be totally empty and dim is a weird cross between fear and contentment I can't describe~
I worked in an old TB hospital that had been turned into a nursing home and all they did was just paint everything so it was sort of the reverse effect of a dark place being oddly artificially light and bright. It made me feel the way you describe- between fear and contentment.
I was in an apartment block in Sydney and I visited the 'pool level'. It was locked with a series of keys which I borrowed from my Aunty. She let me know the place was never used by the tenants and I could see why. The elevator stopped and the doors opened to a corridor with a locked door at the end. Behind that was a bright blue swimming pool surrounded by shiny black tiles and fake plants. There was no window in sight. I went for a swim while trying to avoid imagining a naked, water rotted corpse pulling me down into endless depths of bright blue water. There was another key for the adjacent bathroom. Which led to another corridor. The corridor was dark and narrow and there was female and male change rooms on opposing sides. I already felt too deep within this chasm but my chlorine stung eyes begged for a shower. The air in the change room was dull and the whole place seemed like it had just been barely maintained by a hurried janitor maybe once a month at best. The change room bent behind a corner where there was yet another room to a Sauna. I opened the final door and looked into a dishevelled, non functional sauna room. This was surely the depths of hell.
That's exactly like these old towers I used to work security for, they had an old pool and empty saunas and I would patrol a gym and sauna 3 levels below ground every hour every night, there were rumors among the security guards of ghosts in the parking lot 4 levels underground with cars that hadn't move in years. Some nights my radio would pick up random chatter on patrols, a child mumbling something unintelligible, police saying they're chasing a suspect through a building and other guards would hear these from time to time. I too swam in the pool eventually leaving due to building unease and we also had old male and female changing rooms. The most eerie aspect of this place was that under these 3 towers in a city in the US, connected to the parking garage were a series of hallways and tunnels with dusty storage rooms, data rooms and other rooms I had no access to, they were connected by stairwells but each level was built unique and guards would get lost down there sometimes. On one wall in a hallway deep underneath one of the towers was a dragged handprint and streaks of shoe marks at the bottom and nobody had any explanation. We also had a man that looked healthy and well dressed in his 20s come in one day and say he lived there and then proceed to stand there and stare at us, we had to make him leave after half an hour of him ignoring our questions and simply saying he lived there.
@@tor4472 the man in his 20's might probably be a ghost lol I have a feeling. Wow, that place is a combination of liminal space horror and the supernatural. I wonder where that was 🤔🤔
You're right about the feeling being different from seeing an empty room vs seeing a shadow in a room. For me, an empty room makes me feel watched, uncomfortable yet comfortable enough to stay in the room. If I see someone is in the room, my thought would be just to get tf out
I have been living with this feeling my whole life, every time I see a picture and fail to describe or even catch the feeling, and now I just discovered that this has a name, and that others know and feel the same is indescribable. The thing with the liminal spaces, is that they give a feeling you can't catch or describe, yet, you are 100% sure that it has something to do with our whole existence.
@@clarkelieson I suppose I thought the point was too explain why many find the images unsettling. This video did touch on something that isn't explored very often: the idea of existence itself is more disturbing than nothingness. Since I was a little boy, my mind has occasionally entered this state in which existence itself seems like a quantum-shattering paradox. Why does existence exist? HOW does existence existence? How is there anything other than pure and absolute nothingness? This goes beyond simple existential philosophical questions like "What is my purpose in life?" or "What is the meaning of life?" and enters deep into the realm of physical scientific paradox. I know that even if nothing else exists, and even that all that I perceive is just a projection of whatever my consciousness is, my consciousness in and of itself is something that exists. When I think deeply enough about the nature of existence, it makes no sense to me that existence can or should exist, yet it does, and thus my consciousness wants to implode on itself; I feel like I just want to shut down my brain, but I can't, and I just have to close my eyes and distract myself with other thoughts until I leave that state of mind. It's probably the most disturbing mental feeling I've ever experienced. I liken it to what a conscious computer or sentient AI in a sci-fi story must experience when confronted with a system-wrecking paradox or mathematical problem. I experienced it mostly as a child, as the older I became, my mind became filled with more distractions and I became more adept at employing these distractions to avoid falling in the state of mind. Today, I rarely experience it, and when I do, it's only for a few seconds as opposed to the agonizing dozens of seconds I typically experienced in my youth.
@@dreamlandnightmare I have had the same thoughts. The answer I came up with is that *nothing* cannot exist and therefore there has to be something. As far as liminal spaces, I find it strangely comforting. But, I go into this dark reflective place in my mind. With some of the images presented, I would prefer wide open areas to be outdoors with big landscape and the interior spaces to be a little more closed in around me with the possibility of one exit being viable...like a little 'hiddey' hole of my own.
I never understood why the gym at my high school felt so...emotionally draining when I went to practice by myself before school started. The yellowish lights warming up and humming with electricity made my soul feel as empty as that gym was. Thinking back on that feeling, it even seems like it gave me this intense existential dread; like purgatory. I'm not fond of liminal spaces.
My room is lit with 2 flourescent tube lights both ancient and they hum very loudly and being in there alone with them turned on makes me feel empty and sad
@@dougr8646 look i absolutely love liminal spaces but that is not the vibe. No one should have to "sack up" and learn to enjoy something they have no need to enjoy in the first place
Wow I used to do that when I was 16/17 in highschool. I still think about it too this day. It was such a blank, cold, eerie feeling. To be in a place so bare yet grotesque. Hearing the one ball bouncing. My heavy breathing as the workout intensifies. And the sound of my sneakers on the gym hardwood floor.
I find it fascinating how, something I've always been interested in even before the concept "liminal spaces" was a thing, is now something people find "frightening"
I love liminal spaces. They honestly just make me feel at peace, and the “nothing” feels almost like acceptance. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m feeling them wrong? Who knows.
Liminal spaces are ... places that have had their original purpose of existence abandoned. They are different than, for example, a gloomy forest, because a forest does not have an intended purpose like say a building or corner shop has. We know their purpose and feel both sadness and freedom from them having no inhabitants, no claimers of ownership, but also no further function. Unlimited opportunities in front of us, but dread and uncertainly around it, kinda how it feels when you take your first journey head on.
Am I going crazy or didn't this video have a warning at the start not to watch it if you have existential problems/anxiety or some sort of preface along those lines
My example of purgatory/hell is driving up an empty mountain road with lots of twists and turns at night. It's seemingly never ending, who knows how close or far away the top is? And there's no one else around to confirm it isn't a dream. But it isn't. Home is an hour away, but that hour feels infinite.
Especially how anything beyond the glow of headlights appears to be oblivion. Reality might as well be generating as we traverse the road, with nothing existing beyond and behind it.
@@johnbrown1290 the darkness adds to the feelings of isolation. I don't know what's worse, a desert mountain with nothing but rocks and sand, or a wooded mountain with the trees hiding whatever might be inside. Either way, it feels alien. No perception of your relative location, for all you know you've teleported somewhere totally unknown. Didn't I just pass that strangely shaped rock? Where did the moon go? I guess I didn't notice it's absence before. Are those headlights? No, must've been a reflection.
@@chicka-boom7540 absolutely spot on. Grainy images of dark mountain roads do it for me more than deserts. Is that impossibly black void beside me trees? A river? A ravine? Are those glowing eyes ahead or just a reflection of some sign? Driven through way too many of those irl praying not to get a flat or breakdown, the thought chills me to my core.
I've been into liminal spaces since before they were popular. The idea of it is nostalgic and sad, two feelings I seem to be addicted too. I miss the colorful walls and the cozy locations as a kid. The world has changed so much that I feel like we miss the old days at an all time high. Great documentary brother! Subscribing. ❤
Grew up in kansas, we would definitely have a better understanding than someone who lives in a perpetually busy city. The thought of walking around my town at night is dreadful.
@@st_orlie dude I love liminal spaces. I'm not from Kansas but my house is an entire liminal space and I love being the only one awake at night in that house
New Mexico as well. Inside the cities and towns things are normal, but outside that? It's nothing but an Hanna Barbera background that loops a few times and then suddenly a city renders into existence.
What’s so terrifying is that we have already encountered most of these images, realities, dreams and have already pushed them far back into our subconscious… either because they unsettled us or because we no longer needed these memories in our present new world. This just proves how incredibly imaginative a child’s mind is. How our brains can easily mash up different vivid memories into one seemingly endless nightmare.
This raises some concerns about purposefully created spaces that inspire dread as a tool to augment the perception of reality and a tool to manipulate emotion. In the same vein that public housing projects. Prisons and schools have similar designs. Is this a form of social engineering? Excellent video! Very thought provoking and well done
chances are that these spaces inspire dread because of our preconceived associations we've had instilled by schools and hospitals etc. it's kinda a chicken or egg first thing.
Probably not.. turns out most of these buildings that fit the bill are just the most convenient designs for the economy etc, but the only way they become liminal is when they meet the right set of circumstances, similar (although respectfully different) to how a beautiful forest in the day can become a lonely dark isolated area at night under the correct circumstances with the right individuals and mindset
why do these images bring me comfort? they only make feel reassured, like theres more to explore and more to be curious about. they reaffirm infinite possibility, which is the very nature of existence
Hello! I am doing a master's thesis in architecture on liminal spaces and I am pleased to have found your video. I have had problems finding references and bibliography on the matter (especially from my area) but your video has given me more multidisciplinary tools to continue. I thank you infinitely. Greetings from Mexico. 🥰
This video made me cry at the end. Something about that emptiness really got me. I’ve been really into liminal spaces and what they mean, what they reflect about the waking world. And I think it’s the emptiness in them that draws me to them. I take walks in the middle of the night often these days because I’m suffering from this weird anxiety that I can’t seem to rid myself of unless I walk, the uncanny-ness of these nighttime walks makes me feel normal. I think that’s why something about that last poem broke me. It makes me feel as if I myself am liminal, and that would make sense as I am going through adolescence. It’s interesting how the environment reflects us as we project onto it. Thank you for this video, I found it really enlightening and I’m happy for the existential crises it gave me lmao.
It can be interesting to think of how differently people can view these images and ideas. As someone who grew up in a very rural area, tended to be more nocturnal and solitary, and now works solo night shifts as an adult, these concepts are very familiar to me, yet in no way unsettling. Great video tho! It's nice to hear someone else reflect on it, and gave me some great sources to read up on.
I remember watching kids’ shows when I was little and getting so incredibly freaked out by the liminal spaces in them. I was like 6 and stopped watching them certain shows cuz it scared me. Nice to finally understand it lol
especially like the Amazing World of Gumball, when the backgrounds are photographic and only superimposed animated characters inhabit them, the brain can sort of look past the slideshow that is the characters, and see the desolate space behind them all, the juxtaposition makes it feel even more eerie.
Couple of things: 1. I live for this stuff, I'm absolutely mesmerized by the idea of liminal spaces. 2. 7:19 I wasn't expecting to see my own cover art in your video, that was a really cool surprise!
Ooh, I'll look for that. Haven't gotten that far yet. I just wanted to share that the image at 4:48 is the ceiling of a tiny chapel in downtown Dallas. Hardly a liminal space. I've only been inside it once, popped in and out, as there was a tiny wedding service going on at the time.
I know nobody cares, and it’s only there for a brief moment, but I took the picture of the gymnasium at 8:24. It’s from Åsveienhallen in Trondheim, Norway.
I think one thing that always gets me about liminal spaces or just the concept of the dark room that feels so lived in, yet no one is there, is just the imagery of how many different types of experiences went on there. It's both calming and unsettling to imagine kids laughing at a playground, then seeing an image of that very place at night. Hotels give me kind of a similar feeling. I'm staying in a room that God knows how many people have been in. And so many things have happened here, but I'm unaware of. It's almost like a room full of spirits. Maybe it's just my overthinking. This probably makes no sense, lol.
Naw it makes complete sense, and I've thought the exact same thing. So many stories have taken place in our world, and we will never know the vast majority of them. It's a melancholy feeling.
I love to see younger people looking deeply into this world around us. When I was a young man it seemed like there were many of us like this. Today people seem to be so superficial, just skimming the surface of this existence. Not all, but fewer than before. I really enjoy your work.
I've never met a single person who asks deep questions! Everyone I've ever met is just cruising along living a complete lie. Lying to themselves amd everyone around them. It's getting pretty disgusting...
@@mikehunt8375 The majority of people I know do ask such deep questions even those society would deem stupid can’t shake such things from their mind. Most people just don’t bring it up because it’s not exactly a casual conversation topic as well as usually makes both parties feel worse after discussing having to both begrudgingly accept that most questions don’t have an answer we can ever knoe
As a kid I was generally very cheerful and imaginative, always daydreaming and escaping away to idealized realities and epic fantasies, and I had a very specific pattern (that pattern being an inevitable, migratory change in thoughts and ideas, which is still present in me today. Its like daydreaming about one character archetype or genre, and then becoming infatuated with another and moving on to that). So when my parents divorced I didn't really notice anything. I didn't notice my thoughts becoming gradually more and more bleak, I didn't really notice that I was thinking more and more about my parents being together again and being happy, I thought it was all a part of that "migratory" shift of topics in my head. Well, as my mother moved out, the house became increasingly barren, all the familiarity was plucked out of it and only a little bit was left. Watching this video I have begun to realize that coming home and my angst becoming conscious, my first experience with philosophical thought was because the home that I had lived in for so long would suddenly become a liminal space every night. I would spend time in those quiet rooms brooding and trying to understand this sudden surge of emotions and thoughts. And of course I knew what was around the corners, I knew what lie behind the exits, but because of my fragile state of mind I would almost... "choose" to forget. I would be stuck in limbo, or rather an actual liminal state of mind, where my desires and thoughts drove me to fantasize that everything could be okay again, I could see my family together again, and I would tell this to myself so much that I began to believe that's what I would see around every "exit" and corner, my family. I tricked myself into creating a sense of nothingness in my own house. And all these years I couldn't understand those memories of those ominously lit and sparingly filled rooms. I couldn't understand why those emotions always came up whenever I was in those specific environments and thought it might just be a result of my young age and not understanding a whole lot about myself, but now I see how liminal spaces have impacted my life and the way I matured so much more. So thanks for this :)
I've always found myself drawn to liminal spaces, there's something cozy and secret about being in a place on your own, especially if it's somewhere that's normally public and crowded. I've worked solo shifts nights for the past decade, so I've made it work for me. Wandering down the empty hallways of a sleeping hotel at three in the morning in a liminal space I've made my own never gets old for me. I think people that don't mind being on their own for long periods of time are a lot more comfortable with them.
I love these spaces! They make me feel free and full of possibilities, like going to a place where anything can happen and there's no one there to hold me back.
like when you were a little kid and wandering a hotel and found an empty concert hall, you just wanna run full sprint around it and cartwheel in a place normally crowded by people
The subreddit is really sticky about the traditional meaning of of liminal space when I'm just there for pictures that make me feel like the last person on earth.
I like liminal spaces. They’re anxiety inducing, but they’re very comforting at the same time. Sometimes, we like being in or seeing something that reminds us of a transitional space, since we’re afraid to continue to our destination. Our destination, our fate could be positive or negative. We don’t know, we want to know, but that causes more anxiety than the transitional space itself. So we remember these spaces as places where we can put aside what comes next in our lives for a moment, and that feels good.
Liminal spaces are fascinating, aren't they? Because actual experience naturally provides context for practically any space you're in--such as, "the exit I came through is out of sight but I know where it is", or, "my friends are standing beside me, just out of my view"--it could be said that liminal spaces of the particular nature discussed in this video are seldom compatible with reality. Even if a place leaves you uneasy, there is usually a way to leave it. In the mind, however, things are different. Liminal spaces are native inhabitants there. Saved as snapshots of experience from which the context has dissolved with time, they are the blurry settings of the millions of isolated moments our memory documents under forgettable headings. We do not remember much about these places; why would we? Why should we care to recall where the exit of these forgotten places lie? Who remembers every hallway they have ever walked? From those old memories, they sound stale echoes when we encounter images like them, summoning nostalgia or old, childish fears. These fragments might return all on their own to haunt us in dreams and nightmares, bits of our pasts carrying all of the psychological debris of living. Like many dreams, they may have no exit except waking, and no population save the dreamer, left alone to confront the tide. One could say that they are a form of psychological-urban decay, because it is the omission of purpose and context--things which one must know--that makes their particular combination of elements seem so desolate. Well researched, very articulate, beautifully presented. This was a real treat to watch. 8:52
I like the idea of these rather plain transitional places being 'burried' in our minds during our childhood, only to resurface as pseudo mirrors to our current conceptions of these images that our brains naturally form.
This really nails that unsettling night shift vibe, in a way I've never been able to articulate. I used to work a corporate security gig across every imaginable shift, and the locations I exclusively saw at night were never as creepy as the ones I saw at both day and night. For the former, empty was just normal. But going from a busy workplace one day, and a ghost town the next, was really off-putting. The main security office felt like a Save Room, and the only place I could really relax. Shift work and sleep deprivation go hand in hand though, so I'm sure that's partly to blame. Also the production quality here is great, I really enjoyed the whole presentation. I hope the Almighty Algorithm continues to serve this channel well.
Am I going crazy or didn't this video have a warning at the start not to watch it if you have existential problems/anxiety or some sort of preface along those lines
There’s a really great horror miniseries that I watch frequently, sometimes every night, called The Langoliers. It’s based on the book of the same name by Stephen King and it has so many comparable elements with liminal spaces, making it one of my favorite miniseries ever and a lot of the stuff you mention in here and a lot of things about liminal spaces is in there. The isolation, the empty airport that was left behind by time and something ambiguous beyond the horizon and beneath the clouds that the 10 passengers on American Pride Flight 29 couldn’t identify what it was. The transition between the past towards the future. You make a great explanation on this and it’s one of my favorite videos about liminal spaces. You’ve narrowed it down to layman’s terms which is another extremely great thing about this explanation. 10/10. Subscribed.
As a lover of all things eerie and dabbler in philosophy, I found this video immensely educational and enjoyable to watch. Thank you for the high-caliber content.
After hours of looking at liminal spaces, I struggled to grasp and describe the feelings I felt. Yet somehow this video perfectly describes it. Brilliant and insightful video, great job 👍
Wow! I now know why I feel unsettled when cleaning buildings late at night. The feeling that I'm not supposed to be there. That I'm going against the natural order of things by being out when most ppl are asleep. The eeriness of the dimly lit halls and statues in one of the massage parlors I clean at 2am. This video was able to put into words those restless feelings. Great job!
Honestly, I appreciate you making a video about this. It's super fascinating. I grew up in a super snowy state and I would often take walks at night time. The quiet stillness, the snow smooth and seemingly endless in the dark. It was always so unnerving yet calming and overall super weird, but that's why I would do it.
The older i get the more i realize nostalgia is one of the hardest feelings to go through, Familiarity with something that doesent exist anymore is more lonely than actually being alone
As a writer of altered reality, this video was intellectually stimulating and inspiring to better world-building. You can definitely see the effort you put in to this and it resulted in a professional and enlightening video. As always, well done!
This was so well done, I have been obsessed with liminal spaces for about a year ever since I fell down the youtube rabbit hole. The anxiety it induces in me is truly remarkable, I have even had vivid dreams of these spaces. This is what I would believe Hell would be like, endless corridors that produce true terror, hallways that look familiar but aren't, things that should feel and look normal but are horror inducing, the macabre of a manufactured world that we can't fully understand.
this is that odd feeling i’ve never been able to elaborate during the day of how strange reality is. even somewhat removed from existence in itself, the seemingly mundane reality of surroundings. and it only was this way because i had been acquainted with the night, even attracted to it, the calmness and strangeness of it all felt more right than it ever had when the sun rose up again
These spaces may be unnerving because they touch on something that is known within but forgotten. That there is no one and nothing ever happens, it's all no thing. We are imagined by the Only. It's truly beautiful beyond words. David Lynch is a master of delivering this reminder in his movies and Twin Peaks.
None of these pictures made me uneasy or raise in me some sort of "existential dread". Actually, I found them quite pleasant, soothing, and comforting. I'm a loner by nature, though. I guess consciousness is in the eye of the beholder.
I dream often about being in liminal spaces like these without any reason why. Looking at these photos for me is like screenshots of what I’ve probably seen. It’s really strange, only difference is that sometimes I dream in black and white, which could make it more unnerving
I broke my brain once, went into a psychedelic induced thought loop of absolute psychosis. I lost both time and space, and I forgot both who I was and what I was doing. I forgot I was on a substance and believed I was in a very lonely universe, happy to have found my girlfriend as she was there with me talking to me. I had zero concept of others, or what she meant to me, but I was glad to be near someone else. Bit for a few moments, when I forgot I was human, and there was no way out. This is the feeling of these images in my opinion. Alone, without time, forever. Yeah this stuff spoops me the fuck out :P
Been going through existential crisis lately and even learning about surrealism and such in class. Liminal spaces have always been incredibly interesting to me. Very great video and I learned a lot of new stuff!
When you talked about the land not being important, I realized that you are correct that when you see it all from so far away, it doesn't matter, however, since I am a first time home owner now, I can tell you right now, when you zoom into someone's life, there is a reason that that choice was significant. I'd argue that with the slope on that hill, it was best to think about the pros and cons with that land. How steep is the hill? What type of soil is it? How close is it to the entrance of the property? Is there sewage or is it gonna have to be septic? We are small and what seems insignificant, but because we are still here within this existence, it matters to us because it affects us. If you were to be God like and not worry about things like eating and health and protection and all of that, then yes, it wouldn't matter, but each individual self (no matter if illusion or not) still has their own experience in which that is the very reason they are to be here, for that very experience in which they make for themselves. It's an interesting concept as the farther away you are from it all, the less it matter, but when you are in the middle of it and it affects you, it matters very much.
Me and my friend where having a similar conversation last night over a cig, like what are we really doing here? Just existing and enjoying our time till it’s over none of this stuff really matters not until you zoom in and give yourself your life and your goals a purpose, but regardless of what purpose you believe you have there really is none it’s just something we make up for ourselves like another form of ego humans have so much ego we are just Energy dancing around for ourselves like Jim Carrey said
During months long covid pneumonia, I experienced waking and dream time hallucinations. These spaces, which I then knew nothing about, became a regular thing. Along with a peculiar smell, I can't begin to describe.
I spent almost 12 years in a prison cell, ever since I feel comfort on being on my own in a small empty space, I don't have a TV in my bedroom and I've always kept it plain where as the rest of my house isn't, I feel I can't sleep in a busy room, too many furnishings etc...
@@hombreg1it was 11 years and 3 months I spent in prison (Scotland U.K) I was 18 when I got sentenced and I was 30 when I was released, I've been out since January 2017 so I've had a decent shot at being back out in the community but even so I still feel safer when I'm on my own, I get quite anxious outside in busy areas, it's even worse when I'm in a queue, I get really self conscious and start to get sweaty, heart starts to race and I can feel the paranoia start to kick in, been to a couple doctors about it and they say its like a type of ptsd I have after all the years of always being on edge while being in custody (you don't really get much time to let your guard down in the jail tbh) aye so like crowded areas, busy places etc start to set it off for me...i need my safe place basically and my bedroom is where I associate this safe place, I can rest, go to sleep and spend as much time on my own as I need, I have good days and I have bad days...i think you've definitely hit the nail on the head though with the empty room (sparsely furnished) as being a safe place though, I've tried to have a TV and alot of furnishings in my room but it just feels strange and I have a really uncomfortable sleep, the rest of my house is pretty well furnished, big 60 inch TV, xbox, sound bar etc in the living room for when I'm chilling but my bedroom has always been just plain white walls, a wardrobe, chest of drawers and a bed 🤣🤣 I know it's weird and I know it's partially because I must be a bit institutionalised or something, I just thought I'd share, thanks for reading
@@thatannoyingguyinthecommen5970 Thank you for describing your experience in so much detail. I feel a lot the same, but have no prison experience to explain it.
@@AmbrosiaZeroone appreciate the time you took to read what I had to say (was worried my TH-cam name might put people off reading or believing what I had to say/write) I believe it was being in prison from such a young age that conditioned my mind to feel safe in a small, quiet and empty room, I have quite an irrational fear of busy built up areas aswell and associate crowds of people as a danger zone basically (I have never actually tried to explain this to anyone other than a doctor btw so I might not be using the right words or explaining it clear enough) all my time spent in jail/prison the only time a crowd would gather was either if something was about to go down or was already in the process of happening so 'for me' that's where the fear of crowds came from since being released, I was never a paranoid person before I went to prison, I had never been a self conscious person before going to prison, I never knew I paid so much attention to my surroundings either until I was released and caught myself doing things like facing an entrance when sat down somewhere (to see who's coming and going) I can't be seated with an entrance to my back, I have to see who's coming in which does cause a bit of bother for me and if I can't then 9 out of 10 times I'll leave where ever it was I was in, like I said its totally irrational fears I have now...id be really interested in hearing/reading your own personal experiences with this kinda stuff BTW if you'd like to share that is, Sean 🏴🏴🏴
I feel the same, some places, usually those that look very maze-like and complex give me a feeling of adventure and excitement, wanting to explore these places.
I used to do overnight security at a semiconductor plant. Huge complex. Hallways full of empty offices, clean rooms and mechanical rooms. Just three of us in the whole place. Pretty much the same liminal vibes. You get used to it, but every now and then, you hear something(or imagine you hear something) and you find yourself walking just a little faster.
I instantly fell in love with the liminal space / backrooms community back in 2020 when covid-19 first hit here in the u.s. There’s something special seeing these series of images in a way that feels eerie beyond most vocabulary we can offer, I’m sure most can agree. Almost like a sort of stretched valley between what we can think of as an immediate threat, or a margin of uncertainty. There lies perhaps, the true nature of distinct human fear...... .....In horrifying symmetry.
You have done a solid job in this video. I wish you the very best, most meaningful life with love, work, endurance, and joy. I am a retired professor with a PhD who taught year round for 35 years, a master (final) editor of legal and scientific documents, and a writer with an editor in NYC. As a loner whom others find scary, I have worked hard at being nonthreatening and normally failed. Your post means a lot to me, and I appreciate the limbic lostness of the world it proffers up.
The worst dreams I have are the dreams where I think I know the edge of my world and then as I walk outward it starts to dissipate. My view then changes and I realise that I am now outside of the world I knew. This is the true horror of consciousness, that there is no end, that our minds are playing tricks upon us.
@Darryl Revok Yeah. Unfortunately, father taught me nothing really, and not a good role model either. Shitty family culture, no other good male role models in life either. Abandoned by my older brother at an early age too. Still struggling with career, been suicidal, and struggle to attract any loyal people. Add to that living in the times of isolation, lockdown, financial ruin and moral decay. I try to do everything right, improve my conditions, but can't seem to make any real connections anymore, just feel like an orphan in this world.
I felt anxious about issues in my real life, this video transported me elsewhere and opened my mind. Thank you for a thought provoking video which pulled me out of my slump.
I always feel both drawn and a little creeped out by liminal spaces, as if it's infinite potential calls out for me to come home, and yet my limited ego is scared. Perhaps liminal spaces are the reminder that life is way more than what we make of it. And that if only we were open and brave enough, we'd be embracing the uncertainty fully, enjoying the infinite potential that life has to offer, without this overpowering urge to preserve our concepts and thus our understanding of life and self. Liminal spaces are the doorway to insanity, which is secretly home. For everything emerged out of chaos, and everything will break down into chaos once again. Waves of chaos and order, of life and death, of me and no me. We want security, but never realize that security only exists in an insecure world. Just how light can only shine where it is dark. Thank you for the video.
I keep noticing the eerie Half-Life music in this video, and now I can't stop thinking about how many scenes like these there are in the Half-Life universe.
Slightly off topic and it sounds dumb, but I just realized liminal is the root word for subliminal. I'm so used to hearing the latter my entire life, while I was only introduced to the former relatively recently. I just never made the connection.
Yeah, not at all dumb. It's something one becomes faster and faster at the more one looks into etymology and other languages. But yeah, most people don't realise where a lot of words come from. I'm pretty sure my brother was in his late teens before seeing suddenly that "submarine" was "sub" as in under, plus "marine" as in ocean. I myself had a facepalming WELL OF COURSE moment the other day when someone pointed out that "disease" came from "dis" and "ease", i.e. not at ease, something upset.
this whole video gave me goose bumps.. and I also ended up journaling about it because I'm literally going through a liminal space because of crazy life changes, hence why I'm here.
@@kittervision agreed... some people are weak, but you’d ~maybe~ feel bad finding that someone killed themselves over the video. Or is that just weeding out the weak? Who knows
@@kalebbryce that puts on each of us the responsibility of rushing around and saving each individual person who is at the end of their rope. The best psychiatrist isn't capable of that. Better that we appreciate our ability to chill and take things in. Opportunities to "save" people are uncommon. ( and it's fair to assume that most of us would already take those opportunities if they came up )
I feel like I cane across this video at the right time. Its currently finals week at my college, and people are moving out of their dorms back home. Due to travel reasons, I was allowed to stay a day later than I was supposed to, and so I've just been waiting for this day to end. The campus is just empty. The buildings are unlocked, and I was just walking through them one last time before I go and this video really just described that feeling for me. Walking through the empty hallways filled with artificial light in the buildings I thought I had once known.
I feel like I've been thinking this without thinking this. Thinking about space always gave me this feeling, and now that I'm able to associate this feeling to a word or phrase, it have given me a better understanding of my thoughts.
I'm a an extroverted person. I enjoy taking long walks and meeting new people, but I get anxious around crowds. I've recently developed a paralyzing fear of something about people that nearly made me fall over last night on my walk to the store since I don't drive. This makes liminal spaces so tantalizing and calming for me. The fear of the unknown will always get to people in one way or another, but I just want to see what's there. I want to take in the surroundings and see what could be behind every door and marvel at any details I can find. Liminal spaces are exciting if you find mundane details such as cracks or rocks interesting.
I don’t know why but this comment made me realize that I don’t like liminal spaces not because somebody isn’t there but because somebody might be there
@yeah idk I'm not sure. It might be from the past few years. I haven't exactly gone out to do anything other than work, I haven't even had the drive to do so.
Thank you for writing this comment out. I’m quite certain I’m an introvert, but have a love for pictures of liminal spaces because I just want to insert myself into them and EXPLORE!!! It’s like, a new place I’ve never been and it always seems so inviting to me !!!
The notion, sense and ontological challenge created by a liminal space, which is practically a place for people but without any people, is the fact that it obliges you to rethink and redefine yourself, since the concept of relationship is non existent and the choice of playing a social role is an impossibility. This is why I have always liked liminal spaces, since my young age. It always provided me with a feeling of psychological freedom which would eventually fall into nothingness.
I actually like interacting with liminal spaces in person because of the philosophical headspace they put me in (I like the quiet, the aloneness, the feeling of being slightly out of place from the rest of the world), but being female usually means that I end up being too afraid of being attacked that I can’t enjoy these spaces for long. Liminal places where people aren’t supposed to be, like closed stores, schools at night, abandoned houses, etc just make me wary that if I do encounter someone else - they’re not there for anything good. I’m essentially unable to fully step into the liminal space because I can’t shake off the fear of the real world (which is, unfortunately, pretty legitimate). Makes me sad.
I've always thought it more being, not so much you're trespassing, but more "this space is still functional, there's no sign of catastrophe or disrepair, so how come there's nobody here? What could possibly make people vanish that quickly without causing damage to the building too?"
I actually find liminal spaces oddly comforting. Something about being in an in-between place that has a raw existential truth to it. Life is always in flux, every changing. The journey is the destination, or something to that effect.
The journey is where its at, too many people trying to get somewhere, which is usually no where in the end or a deflated feeling but just being able to absorb the moment of being in a liminal space is like touching the edge of infinity for a brief moment.
You've done an amazing job of explaining a very complex concept/feeling. Watching this, I realised Stanley Kubrick understood the emotional/existential affect of liminal spaces very well - it's what makes The Shining and 2001 so particularly unsettling. PS. Subscribed and look forward to exploring your channel.
Am I going crazy or didn't this video have a warning at the start not to watch it if you have existential problems/anxiety or some sort of preface along those lines
I just wanted to drop by and say that this was a blast! You've obviously done your research :) The one dimension to think about, too, is the idea of the cosmic-especially as it manifests in the works of Thomas Ligotti and Eugene Thacker. They both tackle this concept from the perspective of horror. Truly awesome material, man.
On one of the rabbit holes of YT, I came across the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire of 1977. Between the combination of the descriptive narration and a few images of its interior, I felt the stress of “no exit”. Over the years I have explored a lot of homes and buildings in the Northern California area constructed in mid-century design and they all have a vacant feeling in their design. Even in an occupied house, all of the rooms feel vacant and I feel like it’s because those spaces were intended to be filled with the vibrancy of life, but feel like they’ve been deserted.
i absolutely adore liminal spaces. i love the idea of just existing, unchanged & unaffected by anything outside my control. there is this comfort in it that i can't really put into words but i can feel it, heavy and hard in my chest. i suffer from pretty bad anxiety and adhd but somehow all that goes away when i look at pictures of spaces that are liminal. the idea of being in a room that smells vaguely like something i know but can't put my finger on, with bleached-out floors and walls, with just a single chair and a thousand hallways leading away from this one spot is just really interesting. it is like constantly being in one of my nightmares right before everything goes bad, when it is still strange but not dangerous. i can understand how liminal spaces & the ideas behind them can upset people. most people don't want to be locked in somewhere with only themselves or the threat of something else, something horrifying and unreal.
"I have been one acquainted with the night."
Videos like this take a LOT of work; you can show your support and gain access to behind-the-scene commentary on www.patreon.com/clarkelieson
hi
Idk why but uk driving theory hazard perception tests give off a liminal space vibe
feel loss iffeeeeeee......
Your pronunciation of superfluous is funny and shows you've only ever read the word, never using it in conversation.
Existence is the weirdest rabbit hole, it’s such a dumb fact that everyone accepts, but the more you dive into it, the more your brain unravels lmao. Great video!
“Please don’t watch this at night” me sitting here in the dark at 2am
Exactly me at 2h08 am right now
Me: 👀👀4:30am..
🤣🤣
Same 😄🙃 1:15
2:36am here.
Me, working night shift, with nothing else to do 😅
Used to be a high school night shift janitor. Schools with nobody in them at night are liminal af. So is the factory I work at once I'm the last one there and half the lights are off.
o7
I'm sad janitorial positions are so often at night. the only time I've felt comfortable in that role is at a 24 hour grocery where I could at least be with other people. I wish to do the job more only I am afraid of the night time loneliness
I would love that 💚
@Pablo Moreno Cordón When you cross that threshold it’s like stepping into another dimension of consciousness. Quite simply “oneness”. People are constantly evolving; first as the 4 elements, then animals, then humans. We had to learn survival, then use that for relationship to self, then use the self for relationship to others (leadership/cooperation) now what? Oneness is probably the next step, since in order to enhance relationship in packs we must have compassion to avoid instability.
The problem is, people can either serve others or serve the self using this oneness. Manipulation or charity. Dark or light. It is polarity just like ions polarize to influence their environment. Humanity currently is really not in favor of the negative because the negative drains others; it’s like a black hole as opposed to a white hole. Conquering or respecting is the difference.
Could possibly explain UFO presences being aliens; they are positively polarized and want to respect our free will. Or in this case, they don’t trespass on restricted airspace to land. There will even be humans saying “it’s a costume” too, just shows we’re not ready for that contact.
Same with skateboarding at empty schools early in the weekend morning
I read an interesting theory that our aversion to “liminal spaces” is a survival instinct. For animals, if a normally busy and safe area is deserted, it means that something bad or dangerous is happening.
Who knows, though. It’s interesting that this is a universal feeling everyone gets.
I agree, it's definitely a lot simpler than all this current youtube navel-gazing asserts.
@@matturner6890 omphaloskepsis is beneficial though in conjunction with the Jesus prayer
@@shawcrow5780 lmao I was about to say that
This. I think liminal spaces are intriguing on a more primal level. Nobody builds a building for it to be uninhabited. That juxtaposition in many "liminal space" imagery is what gives it that uncanny vibe.
Occasionally, someone makes a very interesting point, but most of these videos have turned into pseudo-intellectual wank at this point.
@@matturner6890i agree i think this video is way over complicating it but i still think the ideas are interesting
Existence is the weirdest rabbit hole, it’s such a dumb fact that everyone accepts, but the more you dive into it, the more your brain unravels lmao. Great video!
The strangest thing in the universe is to be a self. Lol how is it not strange to anyone else when it's the only thing there is, thus the strangest thing. All we are aware of is our awareness/experience of what we are told to me an external reality. We pop into existance as something we call a self, and accept that?! Like wtf even does it mean to be at all. And we believe what we are told about reality by authorities who only want to control and have no care about truth.
I also find the act of not existing (death, before you were born) unravels the brain even more
@@MrFredstt I don't think it unravels it If it helps one make sense of life
@@Mr.CreamCheese69 just because an individuals self/consciousness exists, does not mean it’s the only thing there is, billions of years without us, and the universe was still here ticking away, no human was here to “experience” it but that’s about it
@@Mr.CreamCheese69 breathe you'll be ok🤣
I find liminal spaces absolutely fascinating. Almost to the point of hypnotizing, actually.
dude, i just wanna find out why they're sticking to me so much lately, im obsessed!
Same bruh
Same, they're literally my dreamscapes transcribed physically
Same I just love looking at them especially with ominous music
You’re not alone
If you look at birth being the start of your journey and death being you final destination then life becomes a liminal space with seemingly no escape. Which perpetuates the feeling of unease we get when thinking about life or death because of the the fear of the unknown.
I'm not sure if that was the intended undertone of the content but that's what I got from it.
This video is amazing and has so many layers that could be peeled back and explored.
I agree with you with life being the ultimate liminal space. I find it comforting though.
I cannot agree, as we don't know what preceded our birth (if anything.) When I am in a liminal space, I know what preceded my getting there. I also anticipate something concrete after passing through such space.
Liminal spaces seem to be empty of meaning, just like life itself, but at the same time there's no need to transcend this seeming meaninglessness.
I get the analogy, but there are some critical parts that break it IMO
@@skorlupkaskorlupkovich2415 - Life certainly has meaning. It is up to you to determine what it it is.
And then there's dreams
@@zaybxc1 I wish I was nice enough to make a persons day
“Moments frozen in time” are perhaps the most comforting things for me. I have a hard time accepting that things change but finding places that are untouched by time bring me relief. This also plays into my fascination with abandoned cities.
I feel very similarly. An interesting thing to consider about time, if you think about a time line, all the points on the line exist all at once. Not to say that all the events on the time line happened at once, but that the points on the line that mark the moments all exist at the same time on the line when you observe it. Because any given moment in time will have some discernable impact on the moment following it, these moments are linked by cause and effect. The universe is infinite/ infinitely expanding; infinity by definition is everything. What if every moment in time is actually its own frozen infinity, a stand still "state of reality" an entire universe frozen in a single moment for infinity that the consciousness briefly moves through in order to construct its reality. The forward momentum of time is based on perception, as all moments already exist, we just simply have to travel forward linearly to perceive them, as any given moment in time can effect the following moment(probability). For example, the linear alphabetic path from A-D looks like ABCD. To follow that path out of order (AFGD) is not to travel in a line. To further elaborate, if you are going down the alphabet in linear order, B must come after A, and C must come after B. Apply this same thought process to reality and the individual moments that make it up. Reality is only the way it is at Noon because it was the way it was at 11:59. In other words, because something has happened it is immortalized in time, the effect that past moment had on the current one is and will always be (theoretically) measurable. Basically, Cause and Effect creates the linear forward flow of time, it is cause and effect that allows the universe to transition between it's infinite potential states that all always exist alongside each other due to the nature of infinity. With an infinity of moments to get to, how else could consciousness logically get between them? By following the principle of least action.
Go Urbexing , abandoned buildings are the best places to find Liminal space , truly liminal space because streets at night can still have the odd person/ car or 2
@@castlewhale4746 I really love this concept! Thanks for sharing 😊
Also places where humans aren't are really comforting to me because humans have been the only creatures to ever try to prey upon me, especially not even for survival, but sport.
I found my people!!
I absolutely love and adore the eerie feeling of liminal spaces. I’ve often wished for a video game that was nothing but a liminal space to walk around and explore for hours
Guild Wars 1 had a place in it's endgame called "The Ravenheart Gloom" which i thought was the scariest place in the entire game. It was a grass field that was pitch black beyond your torch light, and it was basically just grass in every direction. I never knew why it was so scary, but this video actually puts explanation as to that.
Not quite liminal space but Disco Elysium does a fantastic job of providing eerie atmospheres and aesthetics that feel similar to the feelings that liminal spaces invoke.
@@anarchotrashrat Oh that's reminds me also. Yume Nikki and the 3d remake from the indi developer are really good liminal experiences too.
Try the Stanley Parable.
@@compassionate2000I LOVE that game!
Not related but related: Working as a DJ, one of my most uncanny feelings is when a big nightclub is just opening for the evening - music is blasting and disco lights are flashing, but no one is there yet. It's like a huge production for no one. It always makes me feel oddly philosophical, like "who is this for?" That "who is this for" feels like a 5th part of the definition of liminal space angst. Why are the lights on if this place is empty? Why is a fountain on in the middle of the night? Why is someone keeping the place clean?
Yea clubs are wierd places conceptually haha
Former nightclub manager here. Always found clubs I'd run or visited during the day to be fascinating, as all the facade, smoke and mirrors were gone, leaving just a shadow of themselves...
This philosophical feeling hits me deeply when I'm in a building with a high degree of architecture thought into it, like a government building or hospital when absent of people, like an empty videogame map, or a physical loading screen, like the lounge area of a VR game
"If this walls could talk, they would say nothing" lmao.
“If these walls could talk, they wouldn’t dare speak about what they’ve seen.”
"If these walls could talk, they would deem you too insignificant to start up a conversation"
"If these walls could talk they would say....
Fuck Joe Biden."
A fly on the wall has a purpose
When I was in college, I used to work in a large shopping mall. May favorite space in the whole mall was the back service corridors that ran behind all the shops. Long poorly lit grey halls that curved and turned so you could never see the end. It was rare to actually run into anyone there, and it was quite literally liminal space. I would spend any extra time before and after work just walking the length of them to enjoy it and soak in the darkness.
U weren't scared of Ghost?
@@AmanKumar-ir3dt I like ghosts and I am not afraid of the dark literal or metaphoric. The same things are there in the light as in the dark, but they are just harder to sense. Treat them with a little respect and they respond in kind.
@@kimwelch4652 Million Dollars worth thinking, I never thought of that...
@@kimwelch4652 What's your age btw if you don't mind?
@@AmanKumar-ir3dt I'm within sight of official retirement, not that anyone in the US can afford to actually retire.
As someone who's been mentally and physically sick for a long time it is calming for me as it reminds me of all those nights I've been awake at night, wondering around, and feeling happy as now it is my turn to enjoy everything that exists. As day is too much, night is calm and perfect.
Yay!
My introduction to liminal spaces? Squidward when he was alone and ended up desperately looking for a way out once he was consumed with what he oh so wanted.
true or the episode when spongebob is at the bottom of the ocean
exactly my thoughts!!
Or the episode for no spongebob day where spongebob was alone and went crazy
@@perhaps5095 l
Did way too much acid and had that exact scenario play out..
“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein
"Any pithy saying can be attributed to Albert Einstein."
- Mark Twain
@@ernststravoblofeld "social media will be the end of civilization"
- Plato
"The problem with Mark Twain is nobody is checking his fake quotes on the Internet."
- Vladimir Lenin
“Black gorillas”
- Kim Jung Un
"what's ligma?"
-Ghandi
I used to get that eerie feeling every time I had to go into work (grocery store) super early in the morning while the lights were dim and nobody shopping. Dark isles, untouched groceries and all alone. Not to mention really tired. If I let my imagination run for just a little I could swear that place felt haunted but only when I let myself feel it.
This is what working the overnight shift feels like. It’s not scary at all, it’s quiet and contemplative.
It can be scary in the way you feel disconnected from the rest of humanity.
@@shinjite06 I kinda liked it though 🙂 maybe because I knew it was only temporary, like at 3am I have the place to myself and it’s like being in on a secret. But I know in a few hours the day shift will show up, and the clients and it will be a busy, vibrant place again
Currently been working in the night shift at a mall department store where they turn off the lights after midnight. Pretty scary but also calming to be standing in a place where you know there are normally Karens fighting and children crying. (the reason i'm in this place is to fulfill web orders without being interrupted by daytime customers)
@@daisyviluck7932 I'd kill for that type of time alone in a liminal space
@@shinjite06 yeah true same for studying, but i tell u, one night when i was just watching videos after my study session, i found out on yt about this project called The caretaker, a musical album long 6 hours that simulates what having dementia feels like, so i checked one of those essay videos like this one that explain the subject really meticously, and i tell u, it was something like 2 am in the night, and i was shitting myself out of fear of something so real and common, i immedialty realize that i was alone in the night and that i was isolated from any human contact that could just emotionally support me a little, and the quiet and chilling night suddently became my enemy, i was scared of the silence and every little noises around like a little baby, really an unique experience. The same night i shared my discovered dementia project to my friend who also used to sleep really late, and after 20m or so, he was Sooo mad at me for how scared and traumatized he was😂
if you guys are a fan of liminal spaces i'd recommend steven kings "the langoliers" its where this group of people wake up on a plane and they become literally stuck in the past and they're the only ones left
He had been flying passengers long enough to know a good bit…about their group psychology. When a passenger freaked out, few if any of the others ever moved. Most air travellers meekly surrendered their option to take individual action when they entered the bird, sat down, and buckled their seatbelts around them. Once those few simple things were accomplished, all problem-solving tasks became the crew's responsibility. Airline personnel called them geese, but they were really sheep ...
I remember that film!
The book is awesome. If actually forgotten about it. I might give it a re-read now. ❤️🤘
The movie version did a good job of capturing the empty feeling of the "past" airport.
Watched that film a couple of weeks ago god is was so bloody creepy
Is it strange that I’m actually comforted by liminal spaces? I often fantasize about being alone in the world, just so I could explore the empty city I live in without any restrictions. So I could go back to places in my past where so much of my life happened, and yet I can’t go back ever again. The idea that liminal spaces are nothing itself is very interesting to me, because I never knew why I wanted to do that to myself. It would drive me insane, literally, but now I have a theory. I think it’s because being in nothing reminds me that I exist. I’ve gotten this feeling lately that as I grow older, I’m getting further away from home. Everything in my childhood was the ultimate familier, and as time has changed, so has the world become less and less familier to me. Maybe I want to be in those places because they’re as close to familier for me as anything could be at this point. That’s sad isn’t it? That the world is so uncomfortable to me now that these liminal spaces offer more belonging to me. Idk I’m just speaking off the cuff here.
Damn girl.
I get you.
yesssss, that's exactly how i feel omg you explained it so well
You described it so well,i think i recognize what you are saying.
My parents are old enough to have seen a lot of the big box stores they grew up with, or saw constructed, the landmarks of their local area, close/be demolished.
It's a literal representation that the world that they once knew will never exist again.
This sounds like every stoner. I just want to find a spot to walk around and smoke with no one in sight, but some tweaker always has to spawn in and "ruin" it. I swear those guys just spawn in random locations. I've met some in the weirdest places. I met one in the dark in an abandoned house once, he scared me so much, but he turned out to be pretty cool aside from obviously being a bit zany.
The liminal room images have never made me feel unsettled. They always seem welcoming, like a place I’d like to be all alone.
This
Even the grocery store, 20:02 ? That one bothered me more than most of them.
@@chicka-boom7540 places with darker tone will always be unsettling and unnerving.. but light liminal spaces have a vibe that urges me to take a shit fr.. like that shit is transcendental and right above your anus you just have to go to the bathroom to take it off and feel relieved.. i catch that kind of vibe, so welcoming that you wanna shit
The problem is that if there's something threatening out there, you're the sole target.
@@naraka2.082 yeah, i always loved to just think of all the things i could do, but i dont have the ambition to do so, being alone is better when soemthing lets you not have a consience
I used to be a huge pothead and when I quit smoking everything looked like those liminal space photos, like I was generally more aware of my surroundings.
very true tbh
I'm still a huge pothead, but I occasionally get this feeling too... Though, I am a hardcore nightowl, so basically everywhere is liminal. My sleep is basically inverted. (Sleep at sunrise, wake at sunset.)
Nearly all of these pictures freak me out , didn’t all of the things you saw scare you ? Or do you cope with these images better than I do ?
Also idk if you have the answer to this but why does weed interfere with liminal spaces in our head ? I don’t understand why
@@aj3852 It honestly did at first but I just tried to tell myself I knew all the places that looked unfamiliar and i been there before and had my own experiences at these places so they weren't these strange things to look at but it was honestly really difficult to keep myself grounded
I used to work for a cleaning company who did overnight jobs in places like clinics, hospitals, and stores. Seeing places that are normally super well-lit and busy be totally empty and dim is a weird cross between fear and contentment I can't describe~
I worked in an old TB hospital that had been turned into a nursing home and all they did was just paint everything so it was sort of the reverse effect of a dark place being oddly artificially light and bright.
It made me feel the way you describe- between fear and contentment.
I was in an apartment block in Sydney and I visited the 'pool level'. It was locked with a series of keys which I borrowed from my Aunty. She let me know the place was never used by the tenants and I could see why. The elevator stopped and the doors opened to a corridor with a locked door at the end. Behind that was a bright blue swimming pool surrounded by shiny black tiles and fake plants. There was no window in sight. I went for a swim while trying to avoid imagining a naked, water rotted corpse pulling me down into endless depths of bright blue water. There was another key for the adjacent bathroom. Which led to another corridor. The corridor was dark and narrow and there was female and male change rooms on opposing sides. I already felt too deep within this chasm but my chlorine stung eyes begged for a shower. The air in the change room was dull and the whole place seemed like it had just been barely maintained by a hurried janitor maybe once a month at best. The change room bent behind a corner where there was yet another room to a Sauna. I opened the final door and looked into a dishevelled, non functional sauna room. This was surely the depths of hell.
This was a good read. 👍
Woah that’s super interesting but somewhat uncomfortable to imagine
That's exactly like these old towers I used to work security for, they had an old pool and empty saunas and I would patrol a gym and sauna 3 levels below ground every hour every night, there were rumors among the security guards of ghosts in the parking lot 4 levels underground with cars that hadn't move in years. Some nights my radio would pick up random chatter on patrols, a child mumbling something unintelligible, police saying they're chasing a suspect through a building and other guards would hear these from time to time. I too swam in the pool eventually leaving due to building unease and we also had old male and female changing rooms. The most eerie aspect of this place was that under these 3 towers in a city in the US, connected to the parking garage were a series of hallways and tunnels with dusty storage rooms, data rooms and other rooms I had no access to, they were connected by stairwells but each level was built unique and guards would get lost down there sometimes. On one wall in a hallway deep underneath one of the towers was a dragged handprint and streaks of shoe marks at the bottom and nobody had any explanation. We also had a man that looked healthy and well dressed in his 20s come in one day and say he lived there and then proceed to stand there and stare at us, we had to make him leave after half an hour of him ignoring our questions and simply saying he lived there.
@@tor4472 the man in his 20's might probably be a ghost lol I have a feeling. Wow, that place is a combination of liminal space horror and the supernatural. I wonder where that was 🤔🤔
@@foxeswozere It was also a place that had many elderly that refused to go to nursing homes, the mornings on top of the towers were spectacular though
You're right about the feeling being different from seeing an empty room vs seeing a shadow in a room. For me, an empty room makes me feel watched, uncomfortable yet comfortable enough to stay in the room. If I see someone is in the room, my thought would be just to get tf out
Dont worry punpun. The shadow is god. Oh god oh god, tinkle tinkle ho!
not unless if you're not sure if the shadow is a person or just your imagination
@@thy7411 ....what?
@@Anthony-pq4vr his profile picture. If you know, you know
Hmm... describe your experience with your eyes closed.
I have been living with this feeling my whole life, every time I see a picture and fail to describe or even catch the feeling, and now I just discovered that this has a name, and that others know and feel the same is indescribable. The thing with the liminal spaces, is that they give a feeling you can't catch or describe, yet, you are 100% sure that it has something to do with our whole existence.
As an introverted loner, "liminal spaces" bring me comfort. I hate crowds and crowded, noises places.
@@clarkelieson I suppose I thought the point was too explain why many find the images unsettling.
This video did touch on something that isn't explored very often: the idea of existence itself is more disturbing than nothingness. Since I was a little boy, my mind has occasionally entered this state in which existence itself seems like a quantum-shattering paradox. Why does existence exist? HOW does existence existence? How is there anything other than pure and absolute nothingness? This goes beyond simple existential philosophical questions like "What is my purpose in life?" or "What is the meaning of life?" and enters deep into the realm of physical scientific paradox. I know that even if nothing else exists, and even that all that I perceive is just a projection of whatever my consciousness is, my consciousness in and of itself is something that exists. When I think deeply enough about the nature of existence, it makes no sense to me that existence can or should exist, yet it does, and thus my consciousness wants to implode on itself; I feel like I just want to shut down my brain, but I can't, and I just have to close my eyes and distract myself with other thoughts until I leave that state of mind. It's probably the most disturbing mental feeling I've ever experienced. I liken it to what a conscious computer or sentient AI in a sci-fi story must experience when confronted with a system-wrecking paradox or mathematical problem. I experienced it mostly as a child, as the older I became, my mind became filled with more distractions and I became more adept at employing these distractions to avoid falling in the state of mind. Today, I rarely experience it, and when I do, it's only for a few seconds as opposed to the agonizing dozens of seconds I typically experienced in my youth.
Same here! I was looking to be spooked but I still enjoyed itm
This dude! So many people are adrqid
Same...unless I'm drinking.
@@dreamlandnightmare I have had the same thoughts. The answer I came up with is that *nothing* cannot exist and therefore there has to be something. As far as liminal spaces, I find it strangely comforting. But, I go into this dark reflective place in my mind. With some of the images presented, I would prefer wide open areas to be outdoors with big landscape and the interior spaces to be a little more closed in around me with the possibility of one exit being viable...like a little 'hiddey' hole of my own.
I never understood why the gym at my high school felt so...emotionally draining when I went to practice by myself before school started. The yellowish lights warming up and humming with electricity made my soul feel as empty as that gym was. Thinking back on that feeling, it even seems like it gave me this intense existential dread; like purgatory. I'm not fond of liminal spaces.
My room is lit with 2 flourescent tube lights both ancient and they hum very loudly and being in there alone with them turned on makes me feel empty and sad
I like them. Just sack up and learn to enjoy it.
@@dougr8646 I both love em and feel sad around em depending on my mood
@@dougr8646 look i absolutely love liminal spaces but that is not the vibe. No one should have to "sack up" and learn to enjoy something they have no need to enjoy in the first place
Wow I used to do that when I was 16/17 in highschool. I still think about it too this day. It was such a blank, cold, eerie feeling. To be in a place so bare yet grotesque. Hearing the one ball bouncing. My heavy breathing as the workout intensifies. And the sound of my sneakers on the gym hardwood floor.
I find it fascinating how, something I've always been interested in even before the concept "liminal spaces" was a thing, is now something people find "frightening"
I love liminal spaces. They honestly just make me feel at peace, and the “nothing” feels almost like acceptance. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m feeling them wrong? Who knows.
I agree. It took me out of the video when they were described as terrifying and such. To me it’s dreamlike and humbling.
Liminal spaces are ... places that have had their original purpose of existence abandoned.
They are different than, for example, a gloomy forest, because a forest does not have an intended purpose like say a building or corner shop has. We know their purpose and feel both sadness and freedom from them having no inhabitants, no claimers of ownership, but also no further function. Unlimited opportunities in front of us, but dread and uncertainly around it, kinda how it feels when you take your first journey head on.
I agree! I find liminal spaces very comforting.
Am I going crazy or didn't this video have a warning at the start not to watch it if you have existential problems/anxiety or some sort of preface along those lines
It's the constant absolute guarantee that the nothingness will exist forever and never be altered by time. As someone with OCD, I like this feeling.
My example of purgatory/hell is driving up an empty mountain road with lots of twists and turns at night. It's seemingly never ending, who knows how close or far away the top is? And there's no one else around to confirm it isn't a dream. But it isn't. Home is an hour away, but that hour feels infinite.
Fuck dude, the imagery was spot on👌
Especially how anything beyond the glow of headlights appears to be oblivion. Reality might as well be generating as we traverse the road, with nothing existing beyond and behind it.
@@JorgeSantos-cc5vw thank you (:
@@johnbrown1290 the darkness adds to the feelings of isolation. I don't know what's worse, a desert mountain with nothing but rocks and sand, or a wooded mountain with the trees hiding whatever might be inside. Either way, it feels alien. No perception of your relative location, for all you know you've teleported somewhere totally unknown. Didn't I just pass that strangely shaped rock? Where did the moon go? I guess I didn't notice it's absence before. Are those headlights? No, must've been a reflection.
@@chicka-boom7540 absolutely spot on. Grainy images of dark mountain roads do it for me more than deserts. Is that impossibly black void beside me trees? A river? A ravine? Are those glowing eyes ahead or just a reflection of some sign? Driven through way too many of those irl praying not to get a flat or breakdown, the thought chills me to my core.
I've been into liminal spaces since before they were popular. The idea of it is nostalgic and sad, two feelings I seem to be addicted too. I miss the colorful walls and the cozy locations as a kid. The world has changed so much that I feel like we miss the old days at an all time high. Great documentary brother! Subscribing. ❤
knew i'd see "The back rooms" here...classic yellow wallpaper
Backrooms concept is awesome
among other things
Charlotte Perkins Gilman would approve.
That was a trip
Ha yes
Living in Kansas makes outside liminal spaces an every day occurrence.
I lived there for a few years. These photos just make me feel homesick for my time there.
Grew up in kansas, we would definitely have a better understanding than someone who lives in a perpetually busy city. The thought of walking around my town at night is dreadful.
@@st_orlie dude I love liminal spaces. I'm not from Kansas but my house is an entire liminal space and I love being the only one awake at night in that house
I could take a photo of my backyard and it would literally become a liminal space photo 😔😐
New Mexico as well. Inside the cities and towns things are normal, but outside that? It's nothing but an Hanna Barbera background that loops a few times and then suddenly a city renders into existence.
What’s so terrifying is that we have already encountered most of these images, realities, dreams and have already pushed them far back into our subconscious… either because they unsettled us or because we no longer needed these memories in our present new world. This just proves how incredibly imaginative a child’s mind is. How our brains can easily mash up different vivid memories into one seemingly endless nightmare.
This raises some concerns about purposefully created spaces that inspire dread as a tool to augment the perception of reality and a tool to manipulate emotion. In the same vein that public housing projects. Prisons and schools have similar designs. Is this a form of social engineering? Excellent video! Very thought provoking and well done
chances are that these spaces inspire dread because of our preconceived associations we've had instilled by schools and hospitals etc. it's kinda a chicken or egg first thing.
Probably not.. turns out most of these buildings that fit the bill are just the most convenient designs for the economy etc, but the only way they become liminal is when they meet the right set of circumstances, similar (although respectfully different) to how a beautiful forest in the day can become a lonely dark isolated area at night under the correct circumstances with the right individuals and mindset
So fucking interesting I luv this
I recently watched a video where someone talked about exactly that and yeah its a thing
Great comment
why do these images bring me comfort? they only make feel reassured, like theres more to explore and more to be curious about. they reaffirm infinite possibility, which is the very nature of existence
Same!
I address this in my next video on the philosophy of Internet aesthetics
@@clarkelieson cool. excellent video!
Same
For me they provoke a feeling of reverie. My own private space to drift in thought without interruption or awareness of time.
Hello! I am doing a master's thesis in architecture on liminal spaces and I am pleased to have found your video. I have had problems finding references and bibliography on the matter (especially from my area) but your video has given me more multidisciplinary tools to continue.
I thank you infinitely.
Greetings from Mexico. 🥰
This video made me cry at the end. Something about that emptiness really got me. I’ve been really into liminal spaces and what they mean, what they reflect about the waking world. And I think it’s the emptiness in them that draws me to them. I take walks in the middle of the night often these days because I’m suffering from this weird anxiety that I can’t seem to rid myself of unless I walk, the uncanny-ness of these nighttime walks makes me feel normal. I think that’s why something about that last poem broke me. It makes me feel as if I myself am liminal, and that would make sense as I am going through adolescence. It’s interesting how the environment reflects us as we project onto it. Thank you for this video, I found it really enlightening and I’m happy for the existential crises it gave me lmao.
Bro just chill and graduate high school
It can be interesting to think of how differently people can view these images and ideas.
As someone who grew up in a very rural area, tended to be more nocturnal and solitary, and now works solo night shifts as an adult, these concepts are very familiar to me, yet in no way unsettling.
Great video tho! It's nice to hear someone else reflect on it, and gave me some great sources to read up on.
I remember watching kids’ shows when I was little and getting so incredibly freaked out by the liminal spaces in them. I was like 6 and stopped watching them certain shows cuz it scared me. Nice to finally understand it lol
especially like the Amazing World of Gumball, when the backgrounds are photographic and only superimposed animated characters inhabit them, the brain can sort of look past the slideshow that is the characters, and see the desolate space behind them all, the juxtaposition makes it feel even more eerie.
Courage the cowardly dog was that cartoon that explored liminality, which in turn made it very eerie for us.
Couple of things:
1. I live for this stuff, I'm absolutely mesmerized by the idea of liminal spaces.
2. 7:19 I wasn't expecting to see my own cover art in your video, that was a really cool surprise!
Ooh, I'll look for that. Haven't gotten that far yet. I just wanted to share that the image at 4:48 is the ceiling of a tiny chapel in downtown Dallas. Hardly a liminal space. I've only been inside it once, popped in and out, as there was a tiny wedding service going on at the time.
I know nobody cares, and it’s only there for a brief moment, but I took the picture of the gymnasium at 8:24. It’s from Åsveienhallen in Trondheim, Norway.
I think one thing that always gets me about liminal spaces or just the concept of the dark room that feels so lived in, yet no one is there, is just the imagery of how many different types of experiences went on there. It's both calming and unsettling to imagine kids laughing at a playground, then seeing an image of that very place at night. Hotels give me kind of a similar feeling. I'm staying in a room that God knows how many people have been in. And so many things have happened here, but I'm unaware of. It's almost like a room full of spirits. Maybe it's just my overthinking. This probably makes no sense, lol.
Naw it makes complete sense, and I've thought the exact same thing. So many stories have taken place in our world, and we will never know the vast majority of them. It's a melancholy feeling.
I love to see younger people looking deeply into this world around us. When I was a young man it seemed like there were many of us like this. Today people seem to be so superficial, just skimming the surface of this existence. Not all, but fewer than before. I really enjoy your work.
@Darryl Revok Good point
OK Boomer
I've never met a single person who asks deep questions! Everyone I've ever met is just cruising along living a complete lie. Lying to themselves amd everyone around them. It's getting pretty disgusting...
@@thomsboys77 you told me. Perfect example
@@mikehunt8375 The majority of people I know do ask such deep questions even those society would deem stupid can’t shake such things from their mind. Most people just don’t bring it up because it’s not exactly a casual conversation topic as well as usually makes both parties feel worse after discussing having to both begrudgingly accept that most questions don’t have an answer we can ever knoe
As a kid I was generally very cheerful and imaginative, always daydreaming and escaping away to idealized realities and epic fantasies, and I had a very specific pattern (that pattern being an inevitable, migratory change in thoughts and ideas, which is still present in me today. Its like daydreaming about one character archetype or genre, and then becoming infatuated with another and moving on to that). So when my parents divorced I didn't really notice anything. I didn't notice my thoughts becoming gradually more and more bleak, I didn't really notice that I was thinking more and more about my parents being together again and being happy, I thought it was all a part of that "migratory" shift of topics in my head. Well, as my mother moved out, the house became increasingly barren, all the familiarity was plucked out of it and only a little bit was left. Watching this video I have begun to realize that coming home and my angst becoming conscious, my first experience with philosophical thought was because the home that I had lived in for so long would suddenly become a liminal space every night. I would spend time in those quiet rooms brooding and trying to understand this sudden surge of emotions and thoughts. And of course I knew what was around the corners, I knew what lie behind the exits, but because of my fragile state of mind I would almost... "choose" to forget. I would be stuck in limbo, or rather an actual liminal state of mind, where my desires and thoughts drove me to fantasize that everything could be okay again, I could see my family together again, and I would tell this to myself so much that I began to believe that's what I would see around every "exit" and corner, my family. I tricked myself into creating a sense of nothingness in my own house. And all these years I couldn't understand those memories of those ominously lit and sparingly filled rooms. I couldn't understand why those emotions always came up whenever I was in those specific environments and thought it might just be a result of my young age and not understanding a whole lot about myself, but now I see how liminal spaces have impacted my life and the way I matured so much more. So thanks for this :)
I've always found myself drawn to liminal spaces, there's something cozy and secret about being in a place on your own, especially if it's somewhere that's normally public and crowded. I've worked solo shifts nights for the past decade, so I've made it work for me. Wandering down the empty hallways of a sleeping hotel at three in the morning in a liminal space I've made my own never gets old for me. I think people that don't mind being on their own for long periods of time are a lot more comfortable with them.
I love these spaces! They make me feel free and full of possibilities, like going to a place where anything can happen and there's no one there to hold me back.
yea i had wired dreams where if go further the stranger it becomes. i wish coudl get some DMT.
like when you were a little kid and wandering a hotel and found an empty concert hall, you just wanna run full sprint around it and cartwheel in a place normally crowded by people
Thats why I enjoy dreaming when I do.
The subreddit is really sticky about the traditional meaning of of liminal space when I'm just there for pictures that make me feel like the last person on earth.
/r/abandonedporn any better?
I like liminal spaces. They’re anxiety inducing, but they’re very comforting at the same time. Sometimes, we like being in or seeing something that reminds us of a transitional space, since we’re afraid to continue to our destination. Our destination, our fate could be positive or negative. We don’t know, we want to know, but that causes more anxiety than the transitional space itself. So we remember these spaces as places where we can put aside what comes next in our lives for a moment, and that feels good.
Liminal spaces are fascinating, aren't they? Because actual experience naturally provides context for practically any space you're in--such as, "the exit I came through is out of sight but I know where it is", or, "my friends are standing beside me, just out of my view"--it could be said that liminal spaces of the particular nature discussed in this video are seldom compatible with reality. Even if a place leaves you uneasy, there is usually a way to leave it.
In the mind, however, things are different. Liminal spaces are native inhabitants there. Saved as snapshots of experience from which the context has dissolved with time, they are the blurry settings of the millions of isolated moments our memory documents under forgettable headings. We do not remember much about these places; why would we? Why should we care to recall where the exit of these forgotten places lie? Who remembers every hallway they have ever walked?
From those old memories, they sound stale echoes when we encounter images like them, summoning nostalgia or old, childish fears. These fragments might return all on their own to haunt us in dreams and nightmares, bits of our pasts carrying all of the psychological debris of living. Like many dreams, they may have no exit except waking, and no population save the dreamer, left alone to confront the tide.
One could say that they are a form of psychological-urban decay, because it is the omission of purpose and context--things which one must know--that makes their particular combination of elements seem so desolate.
Well researched, very articulate, beautifully presented. This was a real treat to watch.
8:52
I would pin this wonderful, well thought-out comment if that didn't mean that that would replace my current one. Well said, friend, well said.
@@clarkelieson best one
Your comment was a beautiful and thoughtful contribution, thank you. 👍✌
I like the idea of these rather plain transitional places being 'burried' in our minds during our childhood, only to resurface as pseudo mirrors to our current conceptions of these images that our brains naturally form.
This really nails that unsettling night shift vibe, in a way I've never been able to articulate. I used to work a corporate security gig across every imaginable shift, and the locations I exclusively saw at night were never as creepy as the ones I saw at both day and night. For the former, empty was just normal. But going from a busy workplace one day, and a ghost town the next, was really off-putting. The main security office felt like a Save Room, and the only place I could really relax. Shift work and sleep deprivation go hand in hand though, so I'm sure that's partly to blame.
Also the production quality here is great, I really enjoyed the whole presentation. I hope the Almighty Algorithm continues to serve this channel well.
Lol a save room, like resident evil or silent hill type situation. Love it. 😂
Am I going crazy or didn't this video have a warning at the start not to watch it if you have existential problems/anxiety or some sort of preface along those lines
My mom was a teacher. I used to go with her to help set up her classroom during the night. Imagine an entire school during the night. Creeeeeepy!
There’s a really great horror miniseries that I watch frequently, sometimes every night, called The Langoliers. It’s based on the book of the same name by Stephen King and it has so many comparable elements with liminal spaces, making it one of my favorite miniseries ever and a lot of the stuff you mention in here and a lot of things about liminal spaces is in there. The isolation, the empty airport that was left behind by time and something ambiguous beyond the horizon and beneath the clouds that the 10 passengers on American Pride Flight 29 couldn’t identify what it was. The transition between the past towards the future. You make a great explanation on this and it’s one of my favorite videos about liminal spaces. You’ve narrowed it down to layman’s terms which is another extremely great thing about this explanation. 10/10. Subscribed.
As a lover of all things eerie and dabbler in philosophy, I found this video immensely educational and enjoyable to watch. Thank you for the high-caliber content.
After hours of looking at liminal spaces, I struggled to grasp and describe the feelings I felt. Yet somehow this video perfectly describes it. Brilliant and insightful video, great job 👍
Wow! I now know why I feel unsettled when cleaning buildings late at night. The feeling that I'm not supposed to be there. That I'm going against the natural order of things by being out when most ppl are asleep. The eeriness of the dimly lit halls and statues in one of the massage parlors I clean at 2am. This video was able to put into words those restless feelings. Great job!
Honestly, I appreciate you making a video about this. It's super fascinating.
I grew up in a super snowy state and I would often take walks at night time. The quiet stillness, the snow smooth and seemingly endless in the dark. It was always so unnerving yet calming and overall super weird, but that's why I would do it.
As a Canadian, I can agree with this statement, having some hot chocolate or coffee as you walk is the best thing too.
The older i get the more i realize nostalgia is one of the hardest feelings to go through, Familiarity with something that doesent exist anymore is more lonely than actually being alone
As a writer of altered reality, this video was intellectually stimulating and inspiring to better world-building. You can definitely see the effort you put in to this and it resulted in a professional and enlightening video. As always, well done!
For sure.
What’s some of your work! I’d love to see it. Altered Reality is an incredible subject that I’ve tried and failed at lol
@@jseth you heard of backrooms?
@@JHINYT Heard the term but forgot what it meant. Looked it up, and that's solid stuff. Endless empty/stuffy rooms are always interesting
This was so well done, I have been obsessed with liminal spaces for about a year ever since I fell down the youtube rabbit hole. The anxiety it induces in me is truly remarkable, I have even had vivid dreams of these spaces. This is what I would believe Hell would be like, endless corridors that produce true terror, hallways that look familiar but aren't, things that should feel and look normal but are horror inducing, the macabre of a manufactured world that we can't fully understand.
this is that odd feeling i’ve never been able to elaborate during the day of how strange reality is. even somewhat removed from existence in itself, the seemingly mundane reality of surroundings. and it only was this way because i had been acquainted with the night, even attracted to it, the calmness and strangeness of it all felt more right than it ever had when the sun rose up again
These spaces may be unnerving because they touch on something that is known within but forgotten. That there is no one and nothing ever happens, it's all no thing. We are imagined by the Only. It's truly beautiful beyond words. David Lynch is a master of delivering this reminder in his movies and Twin Peaks.
yes eraserhead was viscerally disturbing. Ive seen more graphic movies but that one is just...odd..
None of these pictures made me uneasy or raise in me some sort of "existential dread". Actually, I found them quite pleasant, soothing, and comforting. I'm a loner by nature, though. I guess consciousness is in the eye of the beholder.
Me too but the low quality pictures were creepy
Of course it is, sentience is the most subjective thing humans experience. Nothing wrong with being alone, or wanting it, it's peaceful
even the freddy fazbear?
Really?! Majority of these pictures gave me immense anxiety
Same
I dream often about being in liminal spaces like these without any reason why. Looking at these photos for me is like screenshots of what I’ve probably seen.
It’s really strange, only difference is that sometimes I dream in black and white, which could make it more unnerving
Starting this video with Everywhere At The End Of Time playing in the background really fits the vibe
finally found this comment
I KNEW I RECOGNIZED THAT SOUND
Ending on it was a fine choice as well.
I broke my brain once, went into a psychedelic induced thought loop of absolute psychosis. I lost both time and space, and I forgot both who I was and what I was doing. I forgot I was on a substance and believed I was in a very lonely universe, happy to have found my girlfriend as she was there with me talking to me. I had zero concept of others, or what she meant to me, but I was glad to be near someone else. Bit for a few moments, when I forgot I was human, and there was no way out. This is the feeling of these images in my opinion. Alone, without time, forever.
Yeah this stuff spoops me the fuck out :P
Shut up. You either think way too much, or you’d took something and couldn’t handle it. Either way whoopedoo.
@@Bianchiboy As foolish as the sun is hot.
What psychedelic did you do? I've had a very similar experience on dmt and it terrified me to my core.
Maybe don't do drugs.
This definitely sounds like Ketamine.
This video broke my mind. It literally sent my entire mind into complete and utter raving and wrenching madness. It broke me.
Been going through existential crisis lately and even learning about surrealism and such in class. Liminal spaces have always been incredibly interesting to me. Very great video and I learned a lot of new stuff!
When you talked about the land not being important, I realized that you are correct that when you see it all from so far away, it doesn't matter, however, since I am a first time home owner now, I can tell you right now, when you zoom into someone's life, there is a reason that that choice was significant. I'd argue that with the slope on that hill, it was best to think about the pros and cons with that land. How steep is the hill? What type of soil is it? How close is it to the entrance of the property? Is there sewage or is it gonna have to be septic? We are small and what seems insignificant, but because we are still here within this existence, it matters to us because it affects us. If you were to be God like and not worry about things like eating and health and protection and all of that, then yes, it wouldn't matter, but each individual self (no matter if illusion or not) still has their own experience in which that is the very reason they are to be here, for that very experience in which they make for themselves. It's an interesting concept as the farther away you are from it all, the less it matter, but when you are in the middle of it and it affects you, it matters very much.
Me and my friend where having a similar conversation last night over a cig, like what are we really doing here? Just existing and enjoying our time till it’s over none of this stuff really matters not until you zoom in and give yourself your life and your goals a purpose, but regardless of what purpose you believe you have there really is none it’s just something we make up for ourselves like another form of ego humans have so much ego we are just Energy dancing around for ourselves like Jim Carrey said
During months long covid pneumonia, I experienced waking and dream time hallucinations. These spaces, which I then knew nothing about, became a regular thing. Along with a peculiar smell, I can't begin to describe.
Smells are a big part of memory for some reason
im doing a thesis on the subject and so glad i found this video!! i cant even imagine how much work went into it, every bit is so so so helpful tysm
Yooo u doing a thesis on liminal spaces!? I want to read it!
@@sheikhabrarhossain7926 haha me too buddy but i've barely started it soooo
Nausea -- that feeling you get when you watch your favorite liminal spaces video 14 times
I spent almost 12 years in a prison cell, ever since I feel comfort on being on my own in a small empty space, I don't have a TV in my bedroom and I've always kept it plain where as the rest of my house isn't, I feel I can't sleep in a busy room, too many furnishings etc...
I wonder if this is because after 12 years, you relate sparsely furnished, spartan rooms with a safe place
@@hombreg1it was 11 years and 3 months I spent in prison (Scotland U.K)
I was 18 when I got sentenced and I was 30 when I was released, I've been out since January 2017 so I've had a decent shot at being back out in the community but even so I still feel safer when I'm on my own, I get quite anxious outside in busy areas, it's even worse when I'm in a queue, I get really self conscious and start to get sweaty, heart starts to race and I can feel the paranoia start to kick in, been to a couple doctors about it and they say its like a type of ptsd I have after all the years of always being on edge while being in custody (you don't really get much time to let your guard down in the jail tbh) aye so like crowded areas, busy places etc start to set it off for me...i need my safe place basically and my bedroom is where I associate this safe place, I can rest, go to sleep and spend as much time on my own as I need, I have good days and I have bad days...i think you've definitely hit the nail on the head though with the empty room (sparsely furnished) as being a safe place though, I've tried to have a TV and alot of furnishings in my room but it just feels strange and I have a really uncomfortable sleep, the rest of my house is pretty well furnished, big 60 inch TV, xbox, sound bar etc in the living room for when I'm chilling but my bedroom has always been just plain white walls, a wardrobe, chest of drawers and a bed 🤣🤣 I know it's weird and I know it's partially because I must be a bit institutionalised or something, I just thought I'd share, thanks for reading
@@thatannoyingguyinthecommen5970 Thank you for describing your experience in so much detail. I feel a lot the same, but have no prison experience to explain it.
@@AmbrosiaZeroone appreciate the time you took to read what I had to say (was worried my TH-cam name might put people off reading or believing what I had to say/write)
I believe it was being in prison from such a young age that conditioned my mind to feel safe in a small, quiet and empty room, I have quite an irrational fear of busy built up areas aswell and associate crowds of people as a danger zone basically (I have never actually tried to explain this to anyone other than a doctor btw so I might not be using the right words or explaining it clear enough) all my time spent in jail/prison the only time a crowd would gather was either if something was about to go down or was already in the process of happening so 'for me' that's where the fear of crowds came from since being released, I was never a paranoid person before I went to prison, I had never been a self conscious person before going to prison, I never knew I paid so much attention to my surroundings either until I was released and caught myself doing things like facing an entrance when sat down somewhere (to see who's coming and going) I can't be seated with an entrance to my back, I have to see who's coming in which does cause a bit of bother for me and if I can't then 9 out of 10 times I'll leave where ever it was I was in, like I said its totally irrational fears I have now...id be really interested in hearing/reading your own personal experiences with this kinda stuff BTW if you'd like to share that is,
Sean 🏴🏴🏴
You may enjoy Shaun Atwood’s channel. He is a UK based activist who spent time in the notorious “Sheriff Joe’s” prison. TY for sharing your story
Is it weird that liminal spaces actually excite me and make me want to explore, more than horrify me?
You’re not alone....
lmao same they don't horrify me at all
I feel the same.
I feel the same, some places, usually those that look very maze-like and complex give me a feeling of adventure and excitement, wanting to explore these places.
Same but sometimes
I used to do overnight security at a semiconductor plant. Huge complex. Hallways full of empty offices, clean rooms and mechanical rooms. Just three of us in the whole place. Pretty much the same liminal vibes. You get used to it, but every now and then, you hear something(or imagine you hear something) and you find yourself walking just a little faster.
it must feel eerie that you know your colleagues are "somewhere", there is activity here, but you cant see it, and you cant get to it if you had to.
I instantly fell in love with the liminal space / backrooms community back in 2020 when covid-19 first hit here in the u.s.
There’s something special seeing these series of images in a way that feels eerie beyond most vocabulary we can offer, I’m sure most can agree.
Almost like a sort of stretched valley between what we can think of as an immediate threat, or a margin of uncertainty. There lies perhaps, the true nature of distinct human fear......
.....In horrifying symmetry.
You have done a solid job in this video. I wish you the very best, most meaningful life with love, work, endurance, and joy. I am a retired professor with a PhD who taught year round for 35 years, a master (final) editor of legal and scientific documents, and a writer with an editor in NYC. As a loner whom others find scary, I have worked hard at being nonthreatening and normally failed. Your post means a lot to me, and I appreciate the limbic lostness of the world it proffers up.
The worst dreams I have are the dreams where I think I know the edge of my world and then as I walk outward it starts to dissipate. My view then changes and I realise that I am now outside of the world I knew. This is the true horror of consciousness, that there is no end, that our minds are playing tricks upon us.
I’m genuinely confused as to why some people can’t image themselves beyond what is immediately presented to them in the images.
I think he means you can't use your imagination to actually know the surroundings. What's really there can be anything or nothing.
At least you got a wife and kids 😤
@Darryl Revok
Yeah. Unfortunately, father taught me nothing really, and not a good role model either. Shitty family culture, no other good male role models in life either. Abandoned by my older brother at an early age too.
Still struggling with career, been suicidal, and struggle to attract any loyal people. Add to that living in the times of isolation, lockdown, financial ruin and moral decay.
I try to do everything right, improve my conditions, but can't seem to make any real connections anymore, just feel like an orphan in this world.
@Darryl Revok you're such a badass dude teach me your ways
@Darryl Revok I was being facetious
I felt anxious about issues in my real life, this video transported me elsewhere and opened my mind. Thank you for a thought provoking video which pulled me out of my slump.
I've worked overnight for eleven years. You eventually become one with the darkness. And so does your soul.
8:55 bruh literally eyeballs
Gave me a mini fright when I locked eye contact
OMG I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE THAT GOT SCARED I-
yeah that was scary
The way you describe it with disgust or how others call it scary is the opposite for me. J find liminal spaces comforting and serene.
Where’s the disgust and anxiety coming from?
It’s all in the mind.
@@epsteenwusmerdered9878 no shit sherlock
I always feel both drawn and a little creeped out by liminal spaces, as if it's infinite potential calls out for me to come home, and yet my limited ego is scared. Perhaps liminal spaces are the reminder that life is way more than what we make of it. And that if only we were open and brave enough, we'd be embracing the uncertainty fully, enjoying the infinite potential that life has to offer, without this overpowering urge to preserve our concepts and thus our understanding of life and self. Liminal spaces are the doorway to insanity, which is secretly home.
For everything emerged out of chaos, and everything will break down into chaos once again. Waves of chaos and order, of life and death, of me and no me. We want security, but never realize that security only exists in an insecure world. Just how light can only shine where it is dark. Thank you for the video.
i think you are overthinking it
I keep noticing the eerie Half-Life music in this video, and now I can't stop thinking about how many scenes like these there are in the Half-Life universe.
Slightly off topic and it sounds dumb, but I just realized liminal is the root word for subliminal. I'm so used to hearing the latter my entire life, while I was only introduced to the former relatively recently. I just never made the connection.
That sort of connection has been occurring to me more often since viewing words from their sources - not dumb at all
@@akristen4971 they just sound so obvious in retrospect I feel funny sometimes 😂 but etymology is definitely fascinating
I noticed the same thing. Very interesting!
Yeah, not at all dumb. It's something one becomes faster and faster at the more one looks into etymology and other languages. But yeah, most people don't realise where a lot of words come from. I'm pretty sure my brother was in his late teens before seeing suddenly that "submarine" was "sub" as in under, plus "marine" as in ocean. I myself had a facepalming WELL OF COURSE moment the other day when someone pointed out that "disease" came from "dis" and "ease", i.e. not at ease, something upset.
then there's the game superliminal
this whole video gave me goose bumps.. and I also ended up journaling about it because I'm literally going through a liminal space because of crazy life changes, hence why I'm here.
“Don’t watch this at night” * does it anyway *
Stupid disclaimer if u ask me. People are weak!
@@kittervision agreed... some people are weak, but you’d ~maybe~ feel bad finding that someone killed themselves over the video. Or is that just weeding out the weak? Who knows
@@kalebbryce that puts on each of us the responsibility of rushing around and saving each individual person who is at the end of their rope. The best psychiatrist isn't capable of that. Better that we appreciate our ability to chill and take things in. Opportunities to "save" people are uncommon. ( and it's fair to assume that most of us would already take those opportunities if they came up )
I feel like I cane across this video at the right time. Its currently finals week at my college, and people are moving out of their dorms back home. Due to travel reasons, I was allowed to stay a day later than I was supposed to, and so I've just been waiting for this day to end. The campus is just empty. The buildings are unlocked, and I was just walking through them one last time before I go and this video really just described that feeling for me. Walking through the empty hallways filled with artificial light in the buildings I thought I had once known.
I feel like I've been thinking this without thinking this. Thinking about space always gave me this feeling, and now that I'm able to associate this feeling to a word or phrase, it have given me a better understanding of my thoughts.
Honestly when I look at the liminal images I don't feel angst bc when I imagine myself there I image the exit is just not in the picture
I'm a an extroverted person. I enjoy taking long walks and meeting new people, but I get anxious around crowds. I've recently developed a paralyzing fear of something about people that nearly made me fall over last night on my walk to the store since I don't drive.
This makes liminal spaces so tantalizing and calming for me. The fear of the unknown will always get to people in one way or another, but I just want to see what's there. I want to take in the surroundings and see what could be behind every door and marvel at any details I can find. Liminal spaces are exciting if you find mundane details such as cracks or rocks interesting.
I don’t know why but this comment made me realize that I don’t like liminal spaces not because somebody isn’t there but because somebody might be there
@yeah idk you asking me or the op commenter
@yeah idk I'm not sure. It might be from the past few years. I haven't exactly gone out to do anything other than work, I haven't even had the drive to do so.
Thank you for writing this comment out. I’m quite certain I’m an introvert, but have a love for pictures of liminal spaces because I just want to insert myself into them and EXPLORE!!! It’s like, a new place I’ve never been and it always seems so inviting to me !!!
The notion, sense and ontological challenge created by a liminal space, which is practically a place for people but without any people, is the fact that it obliges you to rethink and redefine yourself, since the concept of relationship is non existent and the choice of playing a social role is an impossibility.
This is why I have always liked liminal spaces, since my young age. It always provided me with a feeling of psychological freedom which would eventually fall into nothingness.
I actually like interacting with liminal spaces in person because of the philosophical headspace they put me in (I like the quiet, the aloneness, the feeling of being slightly out of place from the rest of the world), but being female usually means that I end up being too afraid of being attacked that I can’t enjoy these spaces for long. Liminal places where people aren’t supposed to be, like closed stores, schools at night, abandoned houses, etc just make me wary that if I do encounter someone else - they’re not there for anything good. I’m essentially unable to fully step into the liminal space because I can’t shake off the fear of the real world (which is, unfortunately, pretty legitimate). Makes me sad.
As a woman that is so true but if bring protection and keep an eye out everywhere you should be fine
I've always thought it more being, not so much you're trespassing, but more "this space is still functional, there's no sign of catastrophe or disrepair, so how come there's nobody here? What could possibly make people vanish that quickly without causing damage to the building too?"
I actually find liminal spaces oddly comforting. Something about being in an in-between place that has a raw existential truth to it. Life is always in flux, every changing. The journey is the destination, or something to that effect.
The journey is where its at, too many people trying to get somewhere, which is usually no where in the end or a deflated feeling but just being able to absorb the moment of being in a liminal space is like touching the edge of infinity for a brief moment.
You've done an amazing job of explaining a very complex concept/feeling. Watching this, I realised Stanley Kubrick understood the emotional/existential affect of liminal spaces very well - it's what makes The Shining and 2001 so particularly unsettling.
PS. Subscribed and look forward to exploring your channel.
Am I going crazy or didn't this video have a warning at the start not to watch it if you have existential problems/anxiety or some sort of preface along those lines
I just wanted to drop by and say that this was a blast! You've obviously done your research :) The one dimension to think about, too, is the idea of the cosmic-especially as it manifests in the works of Thomas Ligotti and Eugene Thacker. They both tackle this concept from the perspective of horror. Truly awesome material, man.
On one of the rabbit holes of YT, I came across the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire of 1977. Between the combination of the descriptive narration and a few images of its interior, I felt the stress of “no exit”. Over the years I have explored a lot of homes and buildings in the Northern California area constructed in mid-century design and they all have a vacant feeling in their design. Even in an occupied house, all of the rooms feel vacant and I feel like it’s because those spaces were intended to be filled with the vibrancy of life, but feel like they’ve been deserted.
I love that the album Everywhere at the End of Time and Liminal spaces go hand in hand so often because they both give off very similar vibes.
frrr!!
i absolutely adore liminal spaces. i love the idea of just existing, unchanged & unaffected by anything outside my control. there is this comfort in it that i can't really put into words but i can feel it, heavy and hard in my chest. i suffer from pretty bad anxiety and adhd but somehow all that goes away when i look at pictures of spaces that are liminal. the idea of being in a room that smells vaguely like something i know but can't put my finger on, with bleached-out floors and walls, with just a single chair and a thousand hallways leading away from this one spot is just really interesting. it is like constantly being in one of my nightmares right before everything goes bad, when it is still strange but not dangerous.
i can understand how liminal spaces & the ideas behind them can upset people. most people don't want to be locked in somewhere with only themselves or the threat of something else, something horrifying and unreal.