the déjà vu

black dreams & black time

Gabrielle Civil

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781566896221
• eBook ISBN: 9781566896313
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Performance Art
• Index: Social Sciences

Gabrielle Civil mines black dreams and black time to reveal a vibrant archive of black feminist creative expressions. Emerging from the intersection of pandemic and uprising, the déjà vu activates forms both new and ancestral, drawing movement, speech, and lyric essay into performance memoir. As Civil considers Haitian tourist paintings, dance rituals, race at the movies, black feminist legacies, and more, she reflects on her personal losses and desires, speculates on black time, and dreams into expansive black life. With intimacy, humor, and verve, the déjà vu blurs boundaries between memory, grief, and love; then, now, and the future.

Black Time

If there are flowers flowers

—Gwendolyn Brooks

You start out with one thing, end

up with another, and nothing’s

like it used to be, not even the future.

—Rita Dove

SPHERICITY

*

begin with flatness

make a line

now turn the line into a square

now turn the square into a circle

now turn the circle into a sphere

now turn the sphere into a globe

now turn the globe into a world

now turn the world into a spiral

now turn the spiral into a shell

WELCOME TO BLACK TIME

reacting to an earthquake in haiti

rolling into a mound of dirt

holding a shovel over my face

tangling myself up in paper

from cash register rolls

walking back into black atlantic

releasing myself in waves

submerging trying to dissolve

holding a mirror over my face

confronting history and reflecting sky

then years later or maybe centuries now

returning to a mound of dirt

encircled by a hundred-foot

extension cord

THIS IS A POWER LINE

coiling around my feet

walking and tracing the line

charging into past and future

holding a shell in my hands

holding this shell I hold a spiral of BLACK TIME

within a spiral of BLACK TIME

repeating and changing

reckoning and grieving

resurfacing and harnessing

re/generating power

*

BLACK TIME is not flat

is multidirectional

is multimodal

is global

is diasporic

is dispersed

is jam-packed

is overextended

is can i call you back

is i’m not always there when you call

is i’m always on time

is early is on time

is on time is late

is right and write and rite on time

is day after day

is the changing same

is taking a long time

is at the same time

is taking twice as much time

is being twice as good to get half as much time

is double consciousness and double time

is aftermath and aftershocks

is aspiration

is hurry up and wait

is one step forward two steps back

is back to life back to reality

is go back and fetch it

is flop and drop

is off the clock

is flavor flav’s clocks

is maybe flavor flav’s teeth

is how long it takes for afro sheen to come out the nozzle

is how long it takes for the hot comb to heat

is how long it took you to grow that hair

is how long it takes for the hair to grow back

is how long it takes to bargain at the market

is how long it would take to forgive the debt

is how long it would take for lotion to fix my ash

is never-ending

is this pandemic

is taking a long time

is what we make not what we have

is what happens if we take our time

is what happens when time takes us back

is flashbacks and flashforwards

is time and time again

is curtailed and controlled

is cutbacks and numbers

is cut back and devalued

is cut down and controlled

is feared and restrained

is gone too soon

is resting in power

is rising in power

is resurgent

is cyclical

is divination

is divine

is sphericity

is all the time

is seeping and oozing

is the déjà vu

is what happened before

is what’s happening now

is on and off the page

is embodied performance

is mobilized through body and breath

*

THIS IS A SCORE

close your eyes and take a deep breath

you have arrived into blackness

of inner and outer space

you are not settling here mind you

* that would require permission *

you are simply inhaling

and exhaling where you are

*

extend your limbs

allow your neck to roll in all directions

allow

vibration landscape

scale

feel

those things m o v i n g

in your body

through

specific parts

of your body

it could

be your hands your tongue

your head,

your foot, your fingertips

*

THIS COULD CHANGE AS YOU GO

allow your moving to revolve thought

allow your thought to span time

consider what has happened here for you

consider what is happening now

consider your body and your work

what is flat? what is spherical?

what spirals? what shells?

what has crystallized or emerged?

what has subsided or closed?

how have you marked

your own time or your people?

*

THIS IS A PORTAL

*

as a black feminist performance artist

my practice has to be about

claiming and wallowing in

BLACK TIME

stretching my body across

time lines

blood lines

power lines

holding the shell

un/earthing and re/grounding

channeling generations

Wild Beauty

*

Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision—a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Double Negatives
• Afterimages
• Black Dreams
• After the End
• Black Time
• Notes & Acknowledgments
• Image Credits