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before we get to deep into this edition let us take a beat to pause.
we invite you to slow down.
february is our month.
28, sometimes 29, days of
black history and futures.
february brings the celebration of Lorde's birth
and this year,
the fourth anniversary of our hidden hub
House of the Lorde.
these past four years away from our digital brown paper world
has been spent
weaving and holding a cocoon
building connections,
learning how to be in relation with others, and
continuing the work from our last edition(all the way back in 2022)
creating practices that sustain us.
in this edition, we return to Lorde’s revelatory work,
Sister Outsider,
to our earliest encounters with the idea of revolution,
and how they both demand something of us.
as always thank you for being here. we hope you enjoy yourself.
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we’ve made a companion outta our copy of Sister Outsider.
found ourselves
in cross-legged circles
new orleans, seattle, savannah, chicago
reading and annotating in the margins of "Uses of the Erotic
and recently, "Learning from the 60s"
Lorde is trying to tell us something.
Tiff asked during House of the Lorde’s January Reading Room.
Tiff's question carried us to a dark theater in Cape Girardeau, Mo
1992.
I was 7 years old
one of 12 chaperoned youth
packed into a grey church van,
traveling forty-five minutes to the nearest theater.
Spike Lee's Malcolm X.
afterward, I formed a congregation
outta my stuffed panda bear and MC Hammer doll
and marched back and forth
torso stiff, knees high
pointing and exclaiming
Later that year, our aunt and older cousin signed and gifted us a young adult biography of Malcolm X
“Keep up the good work. I Love you,
Jeannie and LaRonda.”
in meditation on Lorde’s ninety second year and House of the Lorde’s fourth, we are gather on february 18 for Sister Outsider, Aloud.
a durational reading of Lorde’s call to us all.
we've recently been rereading
"Learning from the 60s"
revisiting Lorde's speech against the backdrop of this current flavor of turmoil in the US feels eerily prophetic,
like Octavia Butler’s Parable in the Sower.
delivered in february 1982 at harvard university for Malcolm X weekend, ten years before we would encounter X’s legacy, “Learning from the 60s" was, as Lorde says, “born from his words.”
tho' Lorde's talk is directed toward Black people specifically, there is much here for all of us.
how to sit in the discomfort of our differences.
how to relate to time and history.
how to practice revolution.
what we’re carrying from "Learning from the 60s,"
from our childhood memory of first meeting
the idea of revolution through Malcolm,
and from the daily labor of holding House of the Lorde
for 1,460 days,
is this:
revolution is coming.
just maybe not tomorrow.
revolution arrives through
pushing against the boundaries
of our imagination.
through the ways we play.
through minute and massive shifts
within
and beyond us.
we witness transformation at House of the Lorde
in the softening of bodies over time.
in the sounds of laughter and grief.
ease and play.
we feel the promise of revolution at House of the Lorde
when someone slips their shoes back on
and whispers,
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ten years ago, after reading "Learning from the 60s"
for the first time,
we answered "no" to Lorde’s final question
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now, after four years of holding House of the Lorde
and ten years in relationship
with our copy of Sister Outsider,
we respond with our full chest:
yes.
we are doing ours.
and now we reach out to you,
inheritors of Malcolm and Lorde,
as we continue to do our work,
and through us the echo of their voices asks
each one of you reading:
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10 | Notes on Masculinity
13 | Bodacious Burlesque's Bloomers
14 | Adele Wolf's Valentine's Day Follies (OKC)
18 | House of the Lorde's 4 Year Anniversary
22 | New Session of Burlesque & Drag Classes
23 |The Velvet Hour @ City Winery
27 | House of Burlesque
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