Thresholds
Hi, and welcome to a new set of words in the same old civilization of screens!
A lot has changed in my processing, planning, and movement since the last issue - primarily because of this 5th(?) wave, which is something I did not anticipate two months ago. I actually thought we’d “rounded the corner,” and that something I’d previously felt in myself and in connection to this world was about to be felt again.
I imagined I would approach the streets taking signals from my feet instead of my head, trading in calculation for intuition and casual two-looped, bunny ear energy. I envisioned concerts, Penn Station at rush hour, and periodic clubbing.
That’s not exactly what happened.
And if it weren’t Omi, something else would have eventually shown up.
Instead of rejecting this reality with a full-on meltdown, I’m training myself, through wisdom gained over two years of brute interiority, to accept these disappointments as dynamic thresholds - points at which things change or break, recalibrating sometimes out of necessity and others, free will and personal choice. It’s like speculative fiction but speculative non-fiction, with portals and other fantastical elements that are constitutionally dystopic and super boring.
That’s why this is the Thresholds issue!!! Give me a THRESH! (THRESH!) Give me a HOLDS! (HOLDS!)
For a listen to my Moon Glow Radio set on the topic, check out EP 3 here on Mixcloud.
The playlist without commentary is archived below. Please pretend this is a gramophone and not some maligned digital service provider ;)
Thresholds - the fuck are they?
I’ve been reading lengthy etymological takes on the word as well as panic rants and infighting these takes seem to have caused. Turns out “thresholds” isn’t easy to pin down, AND etymologists are sassy academics!
Thankfully the dictionary, a friend to us all, breaks it into much cleaner applications: threshold as entrance, [figurative] outset, end or boundary, limit.
Some thresholds are personal and limited to the internal galaxy that is you. By “limited,” I don’t mean to suggest that the galaxy is impenetrable; rather, that at the end of the day and without outside coercion, it’s YOU who will decide if, when, and how to respond to the emotional and/or physical cues signaling your galaxy’s tipping point.
I’m thinking about personal thresholds in this way with the sloggy, sludgy track “A House Full Of Garbage” by Portugal-based psych rock band 10 000 Russos.
It’s just you and your tiny home. Three cups, five forks and one knife, four thousand boxes. I can’t work in this house full of garbage.
Certainly, these lyrics strike a very pandemic chord, particularly for those among us indefinitely working from home.
And I know that in many cases the ability to work from home is also just one more symptom of unearned privilege. Per the theme of thresholds and in the context of this playlist, however, I’m taking this imagery at face value as someone who has, since March 2020, predominantly worked from a tiny home outside the company of my species - and I know I’m one of the lucky ones.
(I recorded the first two radio episodes of HTFHTS from my toilet - lid down! - and this episode closed in my closet, the quietest space I have consistent access to in all 5 boroughs!)
My personal threshold (as in “tolerance”) around space upkeep and personal socialization has certainly shifted and established new baselines many times since this shit began. If you’d have spoken to me at the outset, the idea of being alone for any longer than a 24 hour period seemed untenable.
Now I have more inventive and adaptable means to preoccupy myself, entertain myself with my self. I genuinely think bouncing a ball is incredible fun. And I have more tolerance for the cold and nervous imp who lives inside me, as well as a much greater appreciation for the tiny dancer and comedienne who’s drawn in so many others in different spaces and different times, with warmth and with humor.
In terms of physical space, clutter, and upkeep - even at our lowest, there comes a certain point where EVERYTHING! HAS! TO! GO! and something - could it be fight or flight? - kicks into action.
It could mean rearranging things, getting rid of stuff, or just viewing it in a different light. Cutting board, you say? That’s actually a mobile ergonomic workstation particularly sized to prop laptops over kitchen sinks. Just notice how much creative risk you’re willing to take once you’ve noticed how narrow the walls have closed in! Your new threshold is your cheerleader.
Compare this threshold scenario to one that involves another or several other humans. “Skin” by Leslie Winer highlights personal thresholds, or emotional inflections points, as part of larger inter and intra-personal communications.
Between the fury and the moment
Between the time and my confessions
Between everything and everything else
Between the vision and the madness
Between the something and something like that
Between what I mean and what I say . . .
In any give-and-take, there’s potential to reach Theeeee outer limit. It’s the point where you will either explode and spill the beans, walk away, or do something else to advance or relieve some type of stasis in communication. And that’s often not easy. There can be fury! Visions! Madness! Humans are emotional beings!
Despite the emotionality of it all, there are particular moments and areas in my life in which I feel confident I know what lies on the horizon. If it’s not directly in my line of vision, it’s at least something that I confidently know I want and feel, for reasons I may not understand or be able to explain, that it lies within the realm of possibility.
A “threshold” in this way hits both the metaphysical as well as ultra-physical and literal. Allow me to dumb it down. A threshold is a door. (Do I know what a door is? 🧐 I think so.)
BenLaMar Gay’s “Oh Great Be The Lake” conjures this door/horizon image of thresholds.
Sum’n in that water
We know it’s there
Just east of view . . .
Dangling right above inner space
What’s stirring in that water? A buried pearl with enough mythos to cause a tidal wave? A misunderstood Nessie who’s as shy as the octopus? We know it’s there.
In other areas of life, I can’t tell you where we’re headed. Though the outlook looks and feels ominous, and this is where threshold feels like omen.
Throughout the radio episode I talk about us living and breathing in one big, fat “threshold culture.” When we are constantly told that we are surpassing thresholds (as in points of no return) in climate change, democratic failure, etc, we are seeing some thresholds (as in portals to lives we could have had) close off forever.
I speak about these things rather cheekily, because honestly it’s all I can do to not sink my own ship. Humor, sarcasm, and flippancy can be nice in this way. What else is there to do with something so insidious and widespread, something over which I, as individual, have such little control?
Here we are in the second month of 2022, and, when I pay it just the slightest bit attention, all I see are its artifacts. All I read, hear, and see is its coverage - the convergence and mainstreaming of dangerous powers and rhetorics all pointing to societal collapse.
Planet warming thresholds, herd immunity thresholds, voting thresholds, democracy thresholds … you get the vibes.
In the final weeks of 2020, the United States dropped below the “democracy threshold” to an “anocracy” - a volatile middle ground between democracy, and, as the name would suggest, autocracy. (For further reading on the index, check out the Center for Systemic Peace.) It rose, once again, some time into the 2021 leadership switch. But! And of course there’s a but. But, we see what we see, we hear what we hear, we read what we read.
And we know that this time next year, 2022 will be called 2023, and then, just as I swear I was standing on the steps of the Grand Army Plaza Brooklyn Library branch watching the first fireworks explode while texting (I’m only human) at 11:59:59 pm 2019 literally but figuratively yesterday, a single second will pass and it will be 2024.
I have no control over this.
Alas, we’ve come to a really somber point in this journey and I’m not sure how to leave it feeling that much better. I’m weary of this pull in my own life because the sorrow and the anger and the fear are all very powerful and very real.
But also, I’ve noticed positive shifts in myself and my thresholds for how I experience other things. Is that too vague?
Ok, let’s talk about fun again. (Remember I mentioned earlier that I love to bounce a ball with myself.) My threshold/baseline for what constitutes fun is much lower now than it used to be. It sounds negative, but it’s not! The opposite!
Even with the stymied, shittier options, I find that I find, and allow myself to have, fun in much less restrictive terms and with my full five senses, something I had not done in a previous life.
I don’t mean to enforce silver-lining thinking here because shit high-level sucks, and I’m possessed by and fully attracted to negativity, babes!
It’s just that fun exists, too.
So like with the playlist’s bookends, I’ll wrap this up with some uptempo sweetness.
Here’s the music video for “Stop Ou Encore” by Plastic Bertrand. In addition to highlighting a really fun song, it depicts with fine precision how I personally dance to any genre of music at any tempo in any setting at any time throughout all stages of life.
My threshold for killer moves has always been high.
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