Brenda Martinez
19 FEBRUARY
Look around the liminal space of January 2021. As we logged onto work for the first time on January 4th, many of us were greeted with a Slack error message. Suddenly, we faced digital silence, during a time when the digital connection is everything. It was jarring, though the jokes on Twitter were priceless. And so began the first week of January 2021: With the same chaotic energy of 2020.
January is usually a moment to restart, where we try to settle into the vibe of the new year. But this January, it feels like we’re in limbo. Maybe that’s not much of a surprise; the month, after all, is named for the Roman god Janus, the god of transitions. He presides over doorways and other transitory spaces, and is often depicted with two faces. One face looks towards what has been left behind; the other faces what is just ahead. What’s missing in most depictions is the space between the past and the future: the liminal period.
This January is that liminal period, the in-between of the past year and the future year, between who we have been and who we could be — as individuals and as a collective. It’s a disconcerting time to occupy, where there’s no beginning and seemingly, no end. We’re stuck, waiting for things to come to fruition. The COVID vaccine exists but its distribution is slow. We’re in between presidents, with limited knowledge of what the current president is even thinking because he’s been banned by every major social platform. This waiting period is not entirely unfamiliar, though; the culture hasn’t had true beginnings or ends for some time and the 2020 quarantine was essentially one long liminal moment.
To grapple with this feeling, the internet has tried to create a visual language to explore liminal space. Liminal spaces can be as intangible as time or as tangible as actual, physical locations, like a hotel hallway or an abandoned mall.There are subreddits and Twitter accounts, YouTube essays and TikTok videos, all dedicated to exploring the unfamiliar familiar. The internet’s language for the liminal, though, rarely provides any real ways to deal with its unease. Perhaps that’s because there really is no sure way to deal with it, beyond finding a way to simply exist in the discomfort of the liminal and make peace with the unknown.
Maybe that’s the last thing anyone wants to hear. After all, who can stand not knowing? To that, I offer The Monoliths.
Liminal structures in their own right, the first monolith sprang up in November, appearing in a secluded area of Utah. Another appeared in Romania. Then California, then the UK, then Bolivia, Australia, and on. The monoliths appeared and disappeared without rhyme or reason. Many have tried to take credit for them, whilst others cynically describe them as a marketing move. Even through various explanations, there are no definitive answers; the monoliths are simply mysteries that broke up the newscycle in 2020, that continue to pop up in 2021. They occupy, for now, a liminal time, where we wait for another one to emerge and disappear again. That time is a space for us to exist in the discomfort of not knowing, right alongside the hope of what may come.
Love, Brenda