Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal
Volume 3 Issue 1
IN THE DARK
Charlie Hope Dorsey
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Charlie Hope Dorsey is a writer, performer, and spoken word artist from Southern Illinois. A
queer single mother of two children, all her work is dedicated to them and lays at the
intersection of performance, blackness, and sexuality. She is currently pursuing her M.A. in
performance studies at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Abstract: The artist’s duty is to “reflect the times,” said Nina Simone. Poets too, have this
political duty. As a queer Black woman, I share my lived experience(s) as a political form of
engagement and resistance, both in writing and onstage. Inspired by Audre Lorde’s (1984)
text Sister Outsider, this piece of personal performance poetry explores Della Pollock’s
notion that performative writing is citational. Blending references to white poets such Emily
Dickinson with allusions to writers, artists, and theorists of color, this piece makes space for
black culture in the academy and recounts my return home after a period of self-imposed
exile. It surveys the liminal space between the dark of writing and the light of performance
and also critiques the hierarchal academic structures that subjugate knowledge, people, and
spoken word poetry. It was originally written and performed in a show entitled Greyscale:
Performing Across Difference, in the Marion Kleinau Theatre, in March 2017.
Keywords: poetry, performance, spoken word, politics, identity
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From the text Sister Outsider
(Lorde,
1984). In the essay entitled:
“The
Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Audre Lorde says, and I quote:
Within this country where racial difference creates a constant, if unspoken, distortion
of vision, Black women have on one hand always been highly visible, and so, on the
other hand, have been rendered invisible … we have had to fight and still do, for that
very visibility which also renders us most; vulnerable our Blackness. For to survive in
the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most
vital lesson - that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings. And
neither were most of you here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us
most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. (42)
In the dark1
and in the light,
and in/between.
Here,
and
not here.
Can you hear me now?
When I was young, growing up in the city by the bay, the one that was golden gated by
keepers, I used to want to be a photographer. Capturing. Pretty. Little. Images. Developing
the negative into positive.2 I particularly enjoyed the solitude, most of all,
of the dark room,
process
in
progress.
Under the red light,
watching my art appear
so sloooowly…
turning the film into print
like I. Turn. Everything. Into poems.
You see, I am, the epitome of esoteric,
an enigma
wrapped up and doubly bound3
with spoken words I’ve been holding
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like
breath,
so
close to my chest.
Did you miss my voice?
I did.
Here I go again,
picking up the paper clipped page where I left off.
Remembering why I came to poetry in the first place.
Because. I, I, I was hurting,4
and that memory always returns for a reason
like remembered rapture:
the writer at work,
bell hooks chapter,
“Dancing with Words,”
she says:
“Experiencing language as a transformative force was not an awareness that I had arrived at
through writing. But rather, I discovered through performance” (hooks, 1999, p. 35).
So here I am again,
but should I be?
Suddenly, side-steppin’ onstage, a page,
illuminated by a white hot spotlight.
Fulfilling that introverted artist urge
to be a part of a community
then apart from the community.
It’s been years of coming out of hibernation,
and I’ve been lost in translation
with one foot in
and one foot out of the academy.
But in case you thought I lost it,
I still got it.
Don’t ever get it twisted,5
I’m just trying to figure out the formation
lookin' to find, the right footing,
in all my notes.
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Alone
and long/ing
for some sort of spatial relationship, that just makes sense.
Searching for the ways
of working
with/in/slash/through
our shared anxieties,
as if this is “A
Theme
for English B”6.
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true (Hughes).
Breaking through lines,
resist, rebel, yell, “the poet is in the building!”
Like some Blackbird with a backpack, spillin’ a bottle full of hot sauce and all this Black girl
magic, and just last week, I was only waiting for this moment.
So “Shine and rise Momma!,”
like you tell your sons.
This will be the last time you get
stuck, stuck, stuuuck,
like a needle skipping on a record
so
I to record
this image
of trying to reach something just around the corner,
eluding me.7
A (Re) vision of a rebellious stone wall
falling down,
bridging gaps,
as if on our backs,8 and
“Ain’t I am woman?,”9
Truth asked.
I can still feel
some shade of her
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persistent presence in all of my absences.
I’m coming back to
face the audience,
Crafting a shadow of myself
moving, moving, moving,
in/between light and dark,
bearing as in witness that moment of
picking up the tempo
allegro, denouement, cacophony, crescendo,
I just put a spell on you!10
Like the pain of memory, how it returns for a reason… like my first semester in higher
education a white male professor told a nigger joke and when he got to the punch line, I
wanted to punch him in the face. He asked me after class “what are you so angry about?”
Or how on my son’s 13th birthday on July 13th, 2013 we watched the nightly news and
Zimmerman was acquitted for killing Trayvon Martin an unarmed Black boy. We blew out the
candles and ate our white cake with chocolate icing,
as if we haven’t seen this scene before.11
But like Lorde said,
“whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice
on issues central to her existence
somebody is going to call her strident
because they don’t want to hear about it” (Conversations 197).
But I refuse to be silenced in this quality of light.
My favorite pictures were always the ones I had ruined.
The art teacher said my print work was damaged
from over exposure,
like my nervous writing12 and voice,
trying so desperately to expand its reach.
The sound of an image,
an outstretched hand,
that just wants to
hold
your heart,
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your hand,
you attention,
as you
listen, listen, listen.
Listen,
This is the way this
Philosopher-Stoned-Witchy-Black-Mother-Queer-Poet-Warrior-Woman speaks.
Listen,
this is the way I always
talk back.
So listen,
this is theory.
And if ya don’t know
now ya know,
baby,
baby.13
14
As if Biggie Smalls mixed with Michel Foo-ko,
haunting the halls of academe. And
I am afraid, sometimes, in this litany
of survival, ivory tower of babble,
hoping, like my love, struggling to make it
into language.
Then into idea.
Then into more tangible action.
Make it to the
shore
and walk / slanted,15
like truth is,
tippin’ on a tight rope,16
anchored by eyes
across a stage, the threshold of this page,
I will make it.
Someday, somehow, someway, with
these poems entangled in
hopes and fears
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cobbled
and carved
from the
rock
of our experiences
because
“poetry is
not
a luxury,”
said Lorde,
but a vital necessity of our existence.
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REFERENCES
Dickinson, E. (1998). Tell all the truth but tell it slant —. In R.W. Franklin (Ed.). The poems of
Emily Dickinson: Reading edition. (p. 494). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Gingrich-Philbrook, C. (1998). Autobiographical performance and carnivorous knowledge:
Rae C. Wright’s animal instincts. Text and Performance Quarterly, 18(1), 63-79.
Hawkins, J. (1965) I Put a Spell on You. [Recorded by Nina Simone]. On I Put a Spell on
You [Vinyl]. New York: Philips. (1965)
Hill, L., & Newton, J. (1998) Everything is Everything [Recorded by Lauryn Hill]. On The
Miseducation of Lauryn Hill [CD]. New York: Ruffhouse-Columbia. (1999)
Hughes, L. (1959). Theme for English B. In L. Hughes Selected Poems. New York, NY:
Vintage Books.
hooks, b. (1981). Ain't i a woman: Black women and feminism. Boston, MA: South End
Press.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York:
NY: Routledge.
hooks, b. (1999). remembered rapture: the writer at work. New York, NY: Holt Paperbacks.
Irvin III, N., Joseph II, C., Patton, A., Monáe, J. (2010). Tightrope [Recorded by Janelle
Monáe]. On The ArchAndroid [CD]. New York: Wondaland Arts Society-Bad Boy
Records. (2010)
Kelly, L.S.
(Producer), & Garbus, L. (Director). (2015). What happened, Miss Simone?
[Documentary]. United States: Netflix.
Kermode, F. (Ed.). (1975). Selected prose of T. S. Eliot. London, UK: Faber & Faber.
Knowles, B., Muka, A., Nash, T., Hollis, C., Martin, R.D., Muhammed, R., & Ngozi Adichie, C.
(2013).
***Flawless
[Recorded Beyoncé Knowles featuring Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie]. On Beyoncé [CD]. New York: Parkwood-Columbia. (2013)
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Lennon, J., & McCartney, P. (1968). Blackbird [Recorded by the Beatles]. On The Beatles
[vinyl]. London: EMI Studios. (1968)
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. New York, NY: Crossing Press.
Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.). (1983). This bridge called my Back: Writings by radical
women of color. New York, NY: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press.
Pineau, E.L. (2006). Shadowboxing: Myths and miniatures of home. Liminalities, 2(3), 1-38.
Pollock, D. (1998). Performing writing. In P. Phelan & J. Lane (Eds.), The Ends of
Performance (pp. 73-103). New York, NY: NYU Press.
Simone, N. (1966). Blackbird. [Recorded by Nina Simone]. On Nina Simone with Strings
[Vinyl]. New York: Colpix. (1966)
Simone, N. (1967) In the Dark. [Recorded by Nina Simone]. On Nina Sings the Blues [Vinyl].
New York: RCA Victor. (1967)
Wallace, C., McIntosh, H., Combs, S., Rock, P., Olivier, J.C., Barnes, S. (1994). Juicy.
[Recorded by The Nortorious B.I.G.]. On Ready to Die [CD]. New York: Bad Boy -
Arista. (1994).
West, C. (2008). Hope on a tightrope: Words and wisdom. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
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NOTES
As I begin to write, the record player in my mind scratches sultry Simone’s voice “In the Dark” in a drowsy syncopated
1
tune, I type until the song skips to
2
“Everything is Everything.” And suddenly, Lauryn Hill sings, “Now hear this mixture, where Hip Hop meets scripture/
Develop a negative into a positive picture,” (Hill & Newton, 1998) the playlist continues as the night turns like a phrase into
day,
so I pick up, Craig Gingrich-Philbrook’s (1998) essay. The one where he explains the potential of performance to
3
overcome the binary thinking proposed by what Peterson and Langellier refer to as “creative double binds.” It is here
where I am tied up in/between the black and white, performance and writing, lived experience and academic language.
bell hooks (1994) teaches me to try to sever these ties, to be willing to straddle these lines. In Teaching to Transgress,
4
about “Theory as Liberatory Practice,” she writes, “I came to theory because I was hurting” (59). I remember that my
mentor shared her text with me under a tree and this was my same path to writing. I remember he was on top of me, in the
dark, all 225 pounds, on top of me, with hands wrapped round my throat and I couldn’t breathe. I got free though. I wrote
my way out from underneath him. And memory returns for a reason…
5
I step away from the screen and scribble in my notebook as Beyoncé Knowles’ song “***Flawless” plays and I turned the
volume way up. “Respect that, bow down bitches … Don't get it twisted, get it twisted” (Knowles et al., 2013).
6
My mind drifts back to my first poetry class in college. We only read the work of Black authors in the Harlem
Renaissance section. Poems like Langston Hughes (1959), “A Theme for English B” were the only exposure I had to Black
poetry. I had to find Black voices like mine on my own time, voices like Audre Lorde.
7
In the text Sister Outsider, Lorde (1984) documents her experience in the classroom. She says, “And if I read things that
were assigned I didn’t read them the way we were supposed to be. Everything was like a poem, with different curves,
different levels. So I always felt that the way I took things in were different form the ways other people took them in… I had
an image of trying to reach something around a corner, that it was just eluding me” (45). I was reaching, trying to find other
women of color to read, with stories like mine, I found
8
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa
(1983). Reading the experiences of women of color shared on these pages, I felt a connection, like I wasn’t alone,
something missing from reading the works of T.S. Eliot and Wordsworth. I felt like I had something to grasp onto that was
true. Rebellious women like Angela Davis, Patricia Smith, Asate Shakur, and
9
Sojourner Truth, ask me to reflect, “Ain’t I a woman?.” These words, first spoken by Truth at the 1851 Women’s
Convention, are echoed in the works of other feminist women of color. Casting a vision, insisting on being heard.
10
I hear again the High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone sing, “I love you anyhow and I don’t care if you don’t want me. I’m
yours right now. You hear me? I put a spell on you” (Hawkins, 1965). She casts a spell, this is a skill I too am learning.
When I did my first one-woman show, this was the title I chose, “I Put a Spell on You.” The words and works of these
women echo in me and resound in my poetry and performance. They shape my writing, evoke my voice, and they gently
remind me that history changes things, but so much remains the same.
11
“I have seen this scene before.” More specifically, I have performed in it. This phrase was spray painted on the wall of
one of my early performances. In this performance called “Bat on a Wyre,” I played a mystic, who saw the future, the
apocalypse, but these days it seems like this performance is becoming a reality. There is an escalation of racism, sexism,
and violence toward people of color, history repeating itself. I stay up at night worrying about my teenage sons.
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12
The anxiety rises in my body, my leg begins to tap, as I type trying to find the right words, at three o’ clock in the
morning. I write best at night when my boys are asleep, but my writing seems so nervous. Della Pollock (1998) argues that
nervousness is a characteristic of performative writing. Nervous refers to the transitive nature of performative writing, the
way it “crosses various stories, theories, texts, intertexts, and spheres of practice, unable to settle into a clear, linear
course…” (90). In this poem, my mind moves rather quickly between my lived experiences, popular culture, theoretical
frameworks, it paces like I do when I perform.
13
from the lyrics of The Notorious B.I.G.’s song “Juicy” (Wallace, McIntosh, Combs, Rock, Olivier, & Barnes, 1994) to
14
Michel Foucault (Foo-ko). This is no misspelling but rather noting my challenge in learning to say the name of Michel
Foucault, correctly. You see, because as poets we make choices about how we share our truths and
15
like Emily Dickinson writes, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant” (Dickinson, 1998). In these footnotes I have tried to tell you
a bit more of mine, to offer you a little more about this queer Black woman who lives the truth of these lines and to let you
in on some of the little secrets tucked beneath these pages, move you from the light of the page into the dark by my side.
Whispering secrets like that slant reference was only half about Dickinson, really more of a wink to my lover at the time
and her solo show Slant based on that line. And here I go again
16
walking that “Tightrope,” like that Janelle Monáe’s song (Irvin, Joseph, Patton, & Monáe, 2010) that I love to dance to,
blending my performance experience from another show, The Carnival, where I first teetered this line of light.
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