Now, the present is the only real time. There is no past, and there isn’t a future. And there never will be. We think ordinarily of the present as an infinitesimal point at which the future changes into the past. And we also do a terrible thing. We imagine ourselves to be results of the past. And we’re always passing the buck over our shoulders.
So, you see, we’re always passing the buck and don’t realize that the past is caused by the present as the wake of a ship flows back from the prow. The wake doesn’t drive the ship any more than the tail wags the dog.
But the truth of the matter is: it all begins here! This is where the creation begins! And you’re doing it and won’t admit it.
— Alan Watts
I’ve come to see the extreme value in what I understand to be “liminal spaces”. A liminal space is a place where you are in between where you’ve come from and where you’re going - a crossing, or threshold - and the space can be physical, mental, emotional, metaphorical and sometimes even all of these things at once. It’s in these spaces that time slows down the most for me. I become free from the authority I imposed on myself in the world from which I came, and can use the newfound lucidity to examine who I am and where I’m going more easily - thus allowing me to tweak my ideas and chart a new course.
Finding and existing in liminal spaces is so rewarding because it gives you full access to reflection, which as an artistic person trying to live a positive life, is a gold mine. However, being in liminal spaces is also very expensive, and I don’t mean expensive as in dollars and cents. Being in a liminal space necessitates you NOT being in your normal life, or your day-to-day operations - you are absent. It’s exactly this absence that affords you the ability to look at yourself and your life more closely, and fills you with the energy to make choices. Choices have a cost, and you live with the cost forever. It’s important not to spend too much time in the liminal, because you are paying the cost of your absence in your day to day life. It’s also equally as important not to get carried away with the decisions you make for yourself in the liminal, because they can undermine what you’ve got going on back in the real world. Santa Barbara was a liminal space and extremely costly decisions were made there. Time will tell how those decisions will play out, but I have a very good feeling about them.
The liminal is similar to a dream state, where it isn’t totally you that’s operating there, more of a projection, or character that is mostly you. Just like dreams are places where you can never quite grasp where you are, what’s going on, who the other characters are - liminal spaces lend themselves to this breathable ambiguity. The difference is that the liminal offers you choices in perception in a way that dreams can’t. You can feel the ground under your feet and wiggle your toes, or hear a canary and know it’s a canary. The dreamlike ambiguity is largely driven by your shedding of much of the outer layer of our identity.
What do I mean by this - the outer layer of our identity? In my day to day I am Mackenzie - I rise, I cuddle my dog, I wash, I drink coffee, go to work, run and grow MackBecks, interact with the same 5 people, eat my usual diet, engage with my ritual hobbies and pastimes, return to my home, rest and sleep in the comfort of my own bed. These are the general basics of my human life. In the day to day of course there are surprises - new information, behaviors out of the ordinary - but for the most part, it’s highly predictable, and this predictability is actually a formula of who Mackenzie is at that point in time. This routine and all the details it contains comprises the outer layer of my identity, or my patina.
When I leave this routine, the formula of my existence changes because the experiential inputs of my day such as my home, my workplace, my people etc. are no longer part of the equation. It’s exactly this absence of inputs that removes a layer of you and exposes a different layer of who you are - your liminal self is now exposed. To this new Mackenzie the world is different. I have recently experienced this most acutely in my prolonged visits to Greece. I rise in a bed that isn’t mine, to smells and sounds I’m not accustomed to. I wash and drink with water that is different from that at home. The coffee is radically different. I don’t speak the language! This Mackenzie eats mussels every day? You see? Even small changes have big effects on our perception of who we are.
This new me is initially uncomfortable, and in this discomfort there are decisions to be made. I can succumb to my discomfort and seek comfort in hiding while frantically searching for the familiar by scrolling Instagram or finding the closest restaurant that serves espresso martinis. I can fully explore my new reality with the zeal and enthusiasm of a squirrel let into a cupcakery. Or, I can choose to exist anywhere in between these extremes. Whatever I choose, this becomes liminal Mackenzie - the dreamlike version of myself free of my day to day patina, except I’m not just a subconscious projection of myself like in dreams. I am just as real as I was as normal Mackenzie. There is incredible power here.
Liminal Mackenzie showed up in Santa Barbara, and liminal Mackenzie was there to build an art residency on a Greek island! It’s so radically different to dream and scheme as liminal Mackenzie with other people also existing in their liminal states. Ideas and plans become much more than just possible - you can see them, touch them, smell them. The way we spoke about what would have seemed impossible in our day to day lives was instead spoken about with certainty. We all knew the truth - our plans were happening - and basked in the warmth of that truth we danced and celebrated each other like we had discovered fire.
Have you seen the animated film, “The Road to El Dorado”? For most of the trip Jordan and Vasili, our two project architects, essentially became the two main characters, Miguel and Tulio.
I couldn’t stop laughing watching them playfully and theatrically scheming, especially because starting a hostel and art residency on a Greek Island is kind of the modern equivalent of finding El Dorado. Vasili and Jordan are walking, talking liminal spaces. Many of Vasili’s friends fondly refer to him as a black hole for this reason. At any moment a random passerby can get sucked into either of these two’s intrigues. It’s as if their zest for life tears a hole in the fabric of “normal life”, and allows them and their teams to step into a magical world of their making.
It’s important to mention here that at this point Vasili had become one of my best friends and closest confidants, but I barely knew the rest of the team. The rest of the team all knew each other extremely well, with Vasili being their common denominator, almost all of them had been close friends since high school. So, not only was I entering this super exciting liminal state with this team of people - I was also getting to know all these people in a meaningful way for the first time, which is kind of as intense in its own right as entering liminal spaces! Think back to what I wrote about relationship building in the last chapter -
We seem to go through bonding rituals together over time, each set of rituals existing in their own phase. As we progress through the phases, the relationship becomes richer and also expands beyond the two people originally involved. This is such a fascinating part of what we do with each other - the rules and parameters of relationships and networking strike me as almost choregraphed, or game like. After meeting person A, you can spend X amount of time with them to develop Y amount of trust. When you attain Y amount of trust, person A introduces you to person B, and you start a whole new dance with person B - replicate that a hundred times and you have a social group. A hundred simultaneous relationship dances - trust earned and lost, gifts given, secrets shared, perspective exchanged, experiences lived together, highs spent in collective effervescence, lows endured by way of gossip and social exclusion, revealing to each other what it means to be human and using each other gently in our becoming who we are.
— Chapter 5
This was a formative experience for me as a person who collaborates with others, and a foundational event for the future success of The Greek Project. So, in the spirit of actually explaining “How to Start an Art Residency on a Greek Island” to those who wish to know how things like this can happen, it’s important that I emphasize that what happened in Santa Barbara that allowed the team to move forward in constructive harmony with each other and the project wasn’t a series of words said or unsaid. Nor was it a series of actions like papers drawn up and signed.
In retrospect, I think it’s useful to view each of the team members and even their significant others (because their opinion and support matters more than you can ever know) as precious metals with unique characteristics and properties. Each of us allowed ourselves to be melted down in the liminal state and we were poured all together into the crucible that is the idea of The Greek Project. From the crucible emerged the team! A beautiful metal alloy, the likes of which can be used to accomplish amazing things like our project.
Unfortunately, there is no blueprint I can offer you as to how teambuilding/ reality building like this happens besides the above metaphor and series of examples that I think showcase the art and science of relationship building in a liminal space with a desired outcome. The three following experiences in the liminal share qualities that made them integral to my understanding of myself and the group I was joining, these qualities being: I was experiencing the new and unknown and thus challenging myself, I was inundated with information from which I could learn and understand, and I was able to build a relationship with another person.
Jordan picked Vasili and I up in in LA and we headed to Santa Barbara where we would spend the next 24 hours with each other and Jordan’s significant other, Kenzie, before any more team members showed up. I was extremely comfortable with both Jordan and Kenzie, as we we’re already friends from having spent time together before - my experience with the new and unknown in this situation was being confronted with both of their conceptions of reality, which differed greatly from mine.
It was clear that Jordan and Kenzie were taking special care to show us their home, Santa Barbara, and what they loved about it. I was particularly moved by this because I had never really spent time in a place like Santa Barbara before, so while I knew idyllic places like this existed in theory, I had never been shown around one by one of its residents. To add to how beautiful and calm Santa Barbara is, it’s also very walkable, and that’s exactly what our hosts wanted us to experience. We spent much of the time with Jordan and Kenzie strolling, their primary pastime.
The strolls also weren’t just strolls. These were strolls where you picked edible plants and berries to enjoy with a ridiculous frequency. Every so often Jordan would pluck a plant and rub it on us to showcase its beautiful fragrance. Both Jordan and Kenzie are intimately familiar with the flora of Santa Barbara that they can tell you whether they are native or invasive, and what jobs they have in the environment of Santa Barbara.
As professional strollers, they took us on paths that were largely ours to enjoy privately, with almost no one else around. Eventually we made our way into the more overtly urban parts of Santa Barbara where the beautiful Spanish colonial architecture takes center stage, even though flowers and trees are still abundant. Even here, they can tell you who the streets are named after, what role those people played, how old the buildings are, what happened there and why. It was unbelievable to me that residents could be in such communion with not just their home, but their environment at large. Jordan’s knowledge even extends deep into the Los Padres national forest that surrounds Santa Barbara, due to his research and work as a hot shot firefighter.
24 hours of strolling with these two showed me what was important to them and how they expressed their appreciation. They are deeply committed to their home and to its beauty in a transcendently positive way, and they showcase their love through understanding their environment. The famous psychoanalyst Erich Fromm posited that the heart of love is in understanding, and these two put that concept on full display. These were exquisite people.
Remember Adam Jones from Kansas City? He arrived to Santa Barbara along with Vasili’s childhood friend and other Greek Project team member, Eli. When Adam and Eli joined the group, we did what you might expect. We dined together, talked at length about the project, budgets, projections, goals etc. Almost every night we would end up at a Santa Barbara college bar that we all adored called The Wildcat. We explored the beautiful downtown, indulging in all the fine goods being sold there - ranging from Turkish coffee to skin creams featuring minerals from the Dead Sea. I felt myself becoming close with every team member very quickly and effortlessly. It was quite remarkable.
One of the nights we decided to have a party at Eli’s air bnb - this architectural marvel, El Jardin, designed by Jeff Shelton -
Vasili prepared fresh fish that we had purchased from the fish monger that day and we all enjoyed each others company. Jordan and Kenzie had invited 3 family members who were good friends of theirs. Bill, the father, and his two kids - Noah and Sofia. Hanging out in this surreal house, in the most beautiful city in America, with a team of some of the most extraordinary people I had ever met, eating fresh fish from the Pacific, on the eve of starting a hostel and art residency on a Greek island - was overwhelmingly positive - almost too much to wrap my head around. What happened next in the evening really made me question the validity of determinism and if we were living in a simulation.
Turns out, Jordans friends are from an esteemed family that builds carousels by hand and have been doing so for hundreds of years. The father, Bill, was gracious enough to share his newest carousel design with us at our weird liminal party in the Dr. Suess house. He pulled out what I thought was hat box and removed a miniature carousel he had built by hand, showcasing his new design and demonstrating how the large scale version would work. He presented his life’s work while all of our jaws were on the floor.
This experience reinforced an idea that was recurring on this trip for me. Life for people who do things like the project we were doing was filled with amazing and out of the ordinary experiences BECAUSE: people doing interesting things attract other people doing interesting things. Such a simple concept, but whoa is it obvious in its power when you see it up close.
Vasili and I had one extra day in Santa Barbara after everyone else had left. Jordan informed us we were in luck because we hadn’t had the opportunity over the previous days to enjoy what he thought was the best thing to do in Santa Barbara. Jordan put Vasili and I on he and Kenzie’s E-Bikes and he told us to follow him while he rode his normal bicycle.
We quickly descended to the beach and Jordan looked at us with glee and told us he’d meet us at the end. E-Bikes go quite fast, so fast we went down what seemed like a many mile stretch of beach, the sun on our faces, wind in our hair, the waves crashing to one side, and the soft patter of Phoebe’s (Jordans dog) paws emanating from the other side, serving as a rhythm to this ecstasy.
At the end of the beach are the grounds of Ritz Carlton Hotel, which Jordan led us through to the golf course, which overlooks the sea. We ordered a cocktail and watched for whales at sunset. I started to understand something so big and beautiful in that moment, something big enough that even today, many months later, I can’t quite articulate it. My hope is that at some point in this story I can do that for you, because whatever truth I was on the verge of understanding in that moment, I assure you it is key to the success of projects like this one.