Liminal Space

I had a really fun Saturday night in and around Regina Downtown as part of Nuit Blanche. I didn’t take in as much of it as I would have liked, but I got to contribute in my own way and watch my daughter, DJ Tai Lin, spin some tunes at the Rooftop restaurant.

As I debriefed the next morning with my wife, I mentioned how I wasn’t sure about pushing this project as a comedy thing, and maybe I should put less focus on that part. I don’t particularly identify with the comedians I interact with, and although I try to make every song funny, I also toy with emotions like anxiety, sadness, pride and joy (amongst others). The emotions I use are as diverse as the genres I write in.

And that feeds into my fascination with a video game I played this weekend called “Pools.” If you can call it a game.

I review the game in more detail on my personal blog, but in short, Pools is a walking simulator where you walk through a seemingly endless aquatic complex full of pools, waterslides and tile. It leans heavily on the recent fad of “liminal space,” or “places between places,” where there are no people and being in the location is a bit unsettling.

I’ll spare the details for those who might go read my blog or want to play the game themselves, but I want to highlight how the game elicits a lot of feelings like fear, calm and joy with little more than space and sound. As an artist who writes and performs songs that do some of these things, it was hard not to be inspired and intrigued by this.

Now, the use of space to conjure up emotion is not alien to my writing. In songs like “American Kazoo” and “Vacation Sunday Blues,” I use long rests to pull out an emotion and focus the listener on what I just said. I sing the last line of “Traffic Stop” without accompaniment to give a lonely and desperate feel. And I have a song called “Flow Away” (as yet unposted) where I try to capture the feeling of waiting a long time by pedalling on a single chord for far longer than a standard song would. It makes you a bit uncomfortable.

So, what can I take from a video game as a songwriter and performer? Well, as I mentioned above, some of these lessons I’ve already learned, but there are a few aspects I’ll take as inspiration:

Black and white – A room that’s all dark or all black is just as empty as a room that’s all white or brightly lit. It’s in the transition between the two that there is “something”. And how quickly you go through that transition can dial in a sense of tension or relief.

White balance – even two white rooms can be vastly different. In Pools, they have rooms that seem sunlit, while others look like they're lit by fluorescent lights or incandescent lights. They’re all white light, but they feel different, from warm to cold to even a bit broken. A slight difference can be quite large when it’s the only thing changing.

Make it pop – In a complex full of white tile, a red waterslide or teal trim really sticks out. A small detail quickly becomes a focal point.