(Video link here.) In his tiny, funny, illuminating poem of a film, Unendurable Line, Daihei Shibata shows everyday objects in the moments of tension — the thresholds — before they fall apart, spring, light, snap together…
We witness these thresholds daily, though are not always conscious of them, of the intensity or critical mass that must be exceeded for a certain reaction to occur.
As we watched it, we couldn’t help thinking of ourselves. Of the critical mass that must build before we take a step or make a change or reach the point of…
departure
…
kickoff
…
opening
…
no return
…
blastoff
…
Which is why we’ve always identified with this photo…
We google translated this snippet from Shibata’s blog:
Observing various things in everyday life from such a point of view, you should realize again that there is a “threshold” that triggers the change.
Everyone trying to find your own threshold!
Sally — How serendipitous! I just finished writing an article for Departures Magazine yesterday about some great wine producers I met with in Greece (I went to do research there in July) and one of the most interesting wines I found was one called Domaine Katsaros ‘Valos.’ Interestingly, Valos means ‘to go over a threshold!’
Winemaker Evripidis Katsaros came up with the name because the grape they’re growing on the slopes of Mount Olympus — xinomavro — is not traditionally grown that far south in Greece, so locals tried to dissuade him. He saw it as an opportunity: The crossing of an invisible boundary, stepping over it, and then stepping aside conventional advice (as to what one should grow where and why). The results and reward are stunning. If you drink Valos side-by-side with its xinomavro relatives from further north, it’s obvious that it’s xinomavro (which is often compared to nebbiolo from Italy’s Piedmont region), but it has an elegance to it that xinomavro from the north doesn’t, sort of like pinot noir from Burgundy, instead.
Cheers to crossing thresholds… and not tripping!