THRESHOLDS
exploring the in-betweens​

ALICE TEYSSIER vocalist | flutist | maker | educator

PROJECT WEBSITE

My son Lucien was due on November 10, 2018. I had been ready for him for weeks already, in case of an early arrival, and I was finally relieved of teaching and performance duties. The 10th came, then went. The next day came, then went. And onward for two weeks. It was the sort of limbo I had never yet experienced in my earthly life: my old self and my new self, balanced, suspended, one foot in the past and the other in the future, a moment of in-between, of Zwischen.

Through the physical, emotional and intellectual discomforts and unknowns of that period, I found myself incredibly artistically inspired. This moment, this threshold, seemed ripe for the creative juices. So I wrote, every day, my experience, my thoughts, my anticipations. I invented songs and sang them to him. I made recordings of his heartbeat at every prenatal appointment. I wondered what his human experience felt like, looked like, sounded like. I gazed at mothering women on the sidewalk, wondering what reality would be like when I finally joined them. After my son was born on November 26, I passed beyond that threshold and into a new being, a new self, a new reality.

This project commemorates two thresholds of human experience: the entry of a new being, the transformation of another. I want to live in that transformation, artistically and creatively, observing it from the other side and bringing its mysticism to this world. As such, I am actively creating and commissioning a set of works from people who have themselves become parents; each of their experiences is individuated and unique, some more distant memories than others’. These works are custom-made for my new, evolving self: my nurturer’s voice, body, soul.