Beautiful essay. I would love to go to Octavia Butler's archive. Harming, this is an interesting piece on morality, while questioning and embracing your reality. Thanks for sharing it
As always, Harmony, your essays leave me breathless! Eastman has always been a mystery to me, and honestly, I didn’t mind. But I like engaging him now in this new way. So, shall we mere mortals dare to embrace the evil, the Blackness of it all, like our geniuses? Well. That’s what I’m taking. So f*ck you to saviorism and the asylum that is “civilization.” 🦾 (PS. I really loved that bit about civilization being an asylum.)
Loved this very much! "So to deny Eastman his posthumous and spectacular evil is to castrate him, and make him a relic for your well-curated tastes in revived black genius."
This essay reminds me to consider audience as part of performance production, and not dismiss the context and consequence of a gaze. Holiday beat me to Octavia Butler's archive - I have been frozen trying to pick the perfect boxes to request, not entirely knowing what I'm looking for. The close of this text shifted my thinking of historical memory and the purpose of the archive, wanting to free it from certainty or authority that what is in a box or on a shelf, or kept, remembered, and protected is still a bifurcated story, what clues to follow to the other side of the fork and what bit of nourishment are the alternative prongs holding at their end? I want to expand my research style to look broader, imagine, fill in, and probe the energy of a moment to craft a more complete picture, i'm thinking of Saidiya Hartman's 'critical fabulation' to get the job done.
As always, brilliant essay. Reminded me that Miles was “The Prince of Darkness.” And also of this haiku by Etheridge Knight:
To write a blues song
is to regiment riots
and pluck gems from graves.
Beautiful essay. I would love to go to Octavia Butler's archive. Harming, this is an interesting piece on morality, while questioning and embracing your reality. Thanks for sharing it
As always, Harmony, your essays leave me breathless! Eastman has always been a mystery to me, and honestly, I didn’t mind. But I like engaging him now in this new way. So, shall we mere mortals dare to embrace the evil, the Blackness of it all, like our geniuses? Well. That’s what I’m taking. So f*ck you to saviorism and the asylum that is “civilization.” 🦾 (PS. I really loved that bit about civilization being an asylum.)
Loved this very much! "So to deny Eastman his posthumous and spectacular evil is to castrate him, and make him a relic for your well-curated tastes in revived black genius."
Great essay!
This essay reminds me to consider audience as part of performance production, and not dismiss the context and consequence of a gaze. Holiday beat me to Octavia Butler's archive - I have been frozen trying to pick the perfect boxes to request, not entirely knowing what I'm looking for. The close of this text shifted my thinking of historical memory and the purpose of the archive, wanting to free it from certainty or authority that what is in a box or on a shelf, or kept, remembered, and protected is still a bifurcated story, what clues to follow to the other side of the fork and what bit of nourishment are the alternative prongs holding at their end? I want to expand my research style to look broader, imagine, fill in, and probe the energy of a moment to craft a more complete picture, i'm thinking of Saidiya Hartman's 'critical fabulation' to get the job done.