Impossible Duets: Mixing Crisis Actors, Audre Lorde, & Future

On a recent episode of the Poetry Magazine Podcast, we discussed Harmony Holiday’s poem “Sex tape or Future and Audre Lorde fall in love.” Holiday then wrote to us to share her own audio recording related to the poem. She explains the relationship between her poems in the October 2017 issue and her mixed sound piece below. Click here to listen to the recording on her Afrosonics page.

I’m working on a series of Dunham-inspired dances related to my latest book, Hollywood Forever, and the new work I’m doing on reparations. I made this mix inspired by the poem “Sex tape or Future and Audre Lorde fall in love,” along with “Crisis Actor.” The structure of the dances is similar to that of the poems: impossible duets with images and footage of people like Audre Lorde, Jason Holliday, and H. Rap Brown. The most satisfying so far is an attempt to spar with Sidney Poitier slapping that guy in The Heat of the Night. I’m playing around with sound pieces to dance to along with the images and footage, which has led to a series of sonic explorations on the idea of Crisis Actors. I wanted to share the mix with readers of the October issue as it feels relevant to the conversation the poems are having and to the conversation between the editors on the recent Poetry Magazine Podcast about Future, Audre Lorde, and mixing. The mix itself samples Future talking about sleeping on the floor at his grandma’s house, one of the most iconic scenes from Get Out, and the classic meme reaction “Bug flies into reporter’s mouth.”