![]() The performance was exactly as Abdurraqib had described, but only half as interesting. Filled with feeling from the reading, I was confused with what I was watching. I had never seen the performance he was describing, but he provided the images to conjure it and the presence to bring me deep into its folds.Īfter the reading, I went home and found a grainy version of the video on YouTube. His words careened towards joy before falling off the cliff into the realities of survival, and grief, and the salvation of being close enough to feel the heat radiating off another person’s body. Abdurraqib had the crowd wrapped around his finger during the reading, transforming the energy of the room into that of a party among your closest friends. ![]() The unpublished work he shared was about Whitney Houston’s performance at the 1988 Grammys, where she sang I Wanna Dance With Somebody in slippery heels and the stiff body of someone who can’t actually dance. ![]() ![]() At a crowded summertime edition of a Brooklyn reading series, he read excerpts from his 2017 book They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, as well as, luckily for us, an essay from his forthcoming collection They Don’t Dance No’ Mo’. ![]() My most memorable encounter with Hanif Abdurraqib’s work was hearing him read it out loud. ![]()
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