The Poetry Project

Fugitive Impulses: An Interview with Nile Harris

Pamela Sneed

I had an opportunity recently to sit down with downtown artist, performer, writer, dancer and provocateur Nile Harris, a self-described jester. Perhaps in the language of the Orishas, he is also a trickster. He is a poet of many media and his “plays” have electrified New York’s performance scene. He has recently returned from Vietnam, and is known for his frequent collaborations. I consider him a kindred spirit in the realm of pushing performance boundaries, satire, and poetic insights. In this interview we discuss his work, a recent play, this house is not a home, and let me hold your hand as I say this [the words are just words], which premiered in September at The Poetry Project.

—Pamela Sneed

PAMELA SNEED: Yeah, I was teaching last night, and I was in Africa. I’ve been going since. I haven’t taken a break since I came back. So I’m a little delirious.

NILE HARRIS: Oh, super same. My feet have not touched the ground in over six weeks. I just crash-landed back into New York. I’m just accepting that summer might be over, like the fun and games are over, and I need to put my feet back on the ground and get to work.

PS: Did you have a holiday?

NH: I did have a real holiday. August somewhere. At the beginning of summer, I was working a lot, but then in August, I really unplugged. Like, going to Vietnam.

PS: We have a lot of places to start, right? I’m realizing that I know so little about you. I love your work, your voice. I like how abject it is, the attitude, like a Black ass kind of fuck you.

NH: Yeah.

PS: I remember meeting you during Queer Art?

NH: I know. The Black meetings.

PS: The Black meetings.

NH: I was a baby, y’all saw me grow up from when we started those.

That was my first job in New York City, my first real, administrative job. It was, like, the worst of times. It was 2020. The world was collapsing, and we were just on Zoom together.

PS: Right, yeah, that was that around the pandemic and…

NH: George Floyd.

PS: George Floyd, right.

NH: The ongoing anti-Black violence. We were being instrumentalized by yet another organization to take some action. But at least they have money. At least we all got some money.

PS: True. But I feel like those initiatives became so problematic. Now no one’s interested.

I invited someone to my class at Cornell, and they were going off about Palestine, I was just sitting there like, oh, shit. I probably won’t be invited back there.

NH: But if that frame can’t handle the truth being told in that way, then maybe you’re better served elsewhere.

PS: True. You know, I want the students to have that exposure. Look, this is the time that we’re living in. We’re against this war.

NH: Yeah. There’s no better way to teach someone artistic practice than engaging in what’s happening right now.

And that impulse, that political, that fugitive impulse, that’s art making right there.

PS: Fugitive impulse. I love it.

NH: That’s all we can do.

PS: Where are you from?

NH: I was born and raised in Miami, Florida. I’m a Florida boy. And not in a cringe way, but I love the beach. Like, I grew up swimming in the ocean, kissing boys on the beach, smoking lots of weed.

PS: How was the school system?

NH: I went to a performing arts high school after going to some, like, really kind of preppy private schools for elementary, middle school. That was kind of tougher for me, but like, yeah, I went to a really accepting school. Came out as gay at 15 to my parents and was living out and gay in high school. It must have been a relatively safe environment.

PS: Was it interracial or diverse?

NH: Miami is super, super Cuban, super Hispanic-forward. So in that way. I have a joke about how when I left Florida and went to undergrad in North Carolina was when I really met white people for the first time.

PS: So you would say, you grew up working, middle or upper-middle class?

NH: Upper-middle class. My mom is one of nine, my dad is one of twelve, from you know, lower-income working class families. But they were both the exception, or rather the professional corporate success stories of their families and perhaps that’s why they got together, their exceptionalism.

PS: Wow. And you have brothers and sisters?

NH: I’m the only child.

PS: Me too.

NH: Oh, God. What does being an only child mean to you? I feel like everyone has an opinion when I tell them. Like, ooh, you’re an only child.

PS: I definitely longed for a sister or brother, but that’s how I became an artist, a writer. I would make up stuff in my imagination and I was an avid reader. I wrote my first story when I was nine years old. But, you know as an only child everything fell on my shoulders. When my parents got sick, it was me with all the responsibility. I definitely would have liked some other family members to share the load or something.

NH: The burden and the love.

PS: What about you?

NH: I feel similarly about being an only child. Like, I grew up feeling very lonely and found ways to entertain myself through art, through drugs, through all sorts of different activities.

We were talking about partnership before we went on the record, but I’ve never had any long term relationships in my life. I feel like that’s why I struggled to find intimate partnership. I’m just not used to being close to someone in that way. Like, someone seeing you live your life every day.

Because I didn’t grow up with another sibling who was watching me in my messy moments. I was kind of pretty solo. So I feel like that’s why I’m kind of fiercely independent in a way that is beautiful but a curse. And I often feel trapped by my own independence.

PS: That’s a great point. Because I too am supremely independent, you know? And, you know, we probably need partners that would be really exceptional.

NH: We move to our own beat, and we need that space, but we want to be caught.

My favorite thing in the world is going to the beach by myself or going to see a show by myself after a long day at work, and I can’t see any man taking that away from me. I still love that sense of alone time. That’s how I recharge.

PS: Since I started my visual practice I can spend hours, days. It just doesn’t matter to me if I don’t see another person, right? I mean, it’s been great. And it’s added magic, you know?

NH: I love that. I feel very fortunate. I own one of your paintings. A little abstract that you sold through the queer art printed book fair a few years ago. It really means a lot to me.

I’m really grateful that I have that painting. Watching your painting practice and your daily devotional commitment is so inspiring. I love it so much.

PS: That brings me to the last show that I saw. You had that huge plastic bubble.

The show was so painterly. Can you tell me about your practice and how that happened?

NH: It’s interdisciplinary. I see it as all the forms coming together. So the visual design is as much a part of it as the choreography and the text. Everything is an equal player in that way. I’m always thinking about design and that sort of painterly touch for that play came out of a close collaboration with my friend Dyer Rhoads.

He fabricated all of the paintings that were in that particular work. I’m not that skilled of a painter, by any means. But, yeah, it was just through collaboration with him bringing the images out of my head and onto the canvas. And he was a really great conduit for that.

But I knew I wanted the environment to feel like a cartoon comic sans primary color saccharine Ed Ruscha graphic world. It needed to feel absurd and as if made by a child.

PS: Right. But even that bounce house and the colors. And then Malcolm[-x Betts] was wearing the red boots that matched the bounce house. So it was intricate and powerful.
Working on all those levels.

NH: In images, very much so. Like, even though I’m not much of a painter, I do think of my performances as composition-oriented. Often the first thing I’ll see is the image that there’s three bodies and there’s this or that object on stage, and they’re dressed in this particular way. I’m normally working backwards [from that image]. I see a strong image in my mind that holds some sort of conceptual or thematic inspiration for me, and then I’m trying to figure out how to create that image live onstage and work from there.

So in that sense, that sort of painterly or that imagistic impulse is always at the forefront of the work, even if I’m not the one painting it myself.

PS: Right. Conceptualizing it. Brilliant.

What was the name of that piece?

NH: this house is not a home.

PS: Luther Vandross?

NH: And I love Luther.

PS: We love Luther. So, that Black, queer musicality is embedded in.

And you have just catapulted. You are a superstar. You’re doing all this performance work. Tell me how you got here.

NH: Tell me, can a downtown artist be a superstar? You can be the talk of the town for a moment, but what does that actually mean?

PS: I was at a dinner party the other night and I said your name and all of a sudden the lights came on and people were like, Nile Harris! And you just came back from Vietnam, and you’re still an early career artist.

NH: Yeah, I feel like I’m having a little moment in New York, with my last work this house is not a home but I’ve been making work all my life. Even in high school. I studied acting and theater, but I always knew that I wanted to make things. I always was. In high school, I was writing plays and I started writing plays that had no words in it. I thought I was inventing a new, new form. I was like, this has never been done before. Plays with no words. And then I moved to New York, and they’re like, honey, that’s just “downtown dance.”

And then I started dancing and learned more experimental and contemporary dance. Ralph Lemon and, you know, Ishmael Houston Jones and Dean Moss. I don’t know why I went down a very masculine lineage, but I became really interested in these folks who are working with theater and dance and improvisation, particularly, and who understood that the improvised moment can be the composition—that you can commit to not knowing, and that can be a solid offering. And I started thinking through these theatrical traditions and less about commercial theater.

But I grew up loving musical theater, and I feel like that still shows up in my work because I say that my work is often about the place beyond words or when words are no longer enough, really dubsmashing so much discordant information at you at one time that is not just linguistic information. So in that way, my love of Broadway spectacle also informs [my practice]. Like, just wanting to make theater entertaining, not boring.

PS: Wait, what makes it boring?

NH: When people are too afraid to risk saying the wrong thing.

PS: Has there been any pushback?

NH: Not significantly, but I don’t doubt it’s coming. I feel like I have been very blessed these past few years and have started to feel a real sense of home here in New York and support for what I’m doing. I haven’t had many opportunities yet to tour my work, which I think will open me up to a different set of questions and concerns and perhaps pushback. I’m waiting for some European invitations, but I don’t think that there’s as much of an appetite or budget abroad these days for a Black Americana clown rant as there once was. Which surprises me.

PS: Do you think they want something more representational?

NH: Perhaps it’s an aversion to giving more air time for American propaganda, that this piece exploits and plays with—and I don’t know, I feel like the work that is widely distributed is work that explains itself. “I am Black, and I am in pain for these explicit reasons.”

PS: Right.

NH: And not that I’m not making work about being Black and being in pain lol, but I’m not trying to serve it up on a platter for you. I hope to maintain some integrity and opacity while simultaneously making fun of you and myself. I’m not afraid to put myself in a compromising situation.

I’m often trying to purposely be like, I am the town jester. I’m okay with that.

I’m a Black bottom and I’m the town jester. And that’s, like, fucked up and I’m holding space for that. And if I have experienced any pushback, it might be around that. It means a lot to talk to you right now, because I have a narrative in my head that a lot of the older Black femmes in our community kind of are concerned about me, like, “You coonish boy, you’re shucking and jiving for them, but they’re never gonna love you as much as you want to be loved.”

PS: Right.

NH: I feel that. But maybe some of that is my imagination.

PS: For me, I’m a little different, but I love satire, experimental forms, and different ways of talking about Blackness. I like things that push the envelope. When I saw this house is not a home, I was like, oh, thank God, because I was worried about performance art. I feel like the people who get to be really experimental are white but I feel like people of color still have to be kind of narrative.

On another note, I’ve been working on an epic poem. Your work has that feeling of the epic poem, you know?

NH: Definitely. I’ve been thinking about that.

PS: Yeah.

NH: With this Thursday piece. [In The Poetry Project’s Poets Theater Symposium, Sept. 19, 2024.]

PS: Right, exactly.

NH: Like, yeah, the long. The epic. The long and the epic.

PS: Right. And then the sound and the musicality…Well, what’s the title of it? I read it last night on the train.

NH: Let me hold your hand when I say this [the words are just words].

I’m really excited. I cannot believe that you said yes. I’m in disbelief. I’m always trying to find a challenge with my work or challenge myself to do something. And the thought of inviting this group of women who I admire so much to say some bullshit that I have to write down scared me and felt really inappropriate. I was like, I can’t do this. I can’t waste their time like this. Like, why would I bring this superstar group of women together to orate the dribble of my imagination? But then that sort of impulse, I’m like, but why not? Why not ask and let you all decide for yourself. I’m so grateful that y’all are reading it. My mom’s gonna be in it. All of a sudden, a reader dropped out. And then I ended up asking myself who do I want to be the 6th reader, and I was like, let’s call my mama. So I’m flying her in tomorrow.

PS: Oh my God.

NH: That’s the most beautiful inspiration ever. I can’t believe I was opaquely talking about my mother and my grandmother in the work, and then I decided, let’s not quote, let’s go straight to the source.

I feel really excited to have my mom learn more about me, things I wouldn’t have shared with her directly.

PS: Did you ever see the Bill T. Jones piece where he’s with his mother and he’s dancing and she’s singing a spiritual?

NH: No, but It makes me think of an Ishmael Houston Jones piece with his mother called Relative that was filmed by Julie Dash.

PS: It’s beautiful.

NH: I just watched it last night and it’s a dance where he’s had his mom coloring eggs while she’s telling a story about Ishmael’s life, and he’s just doing this beautiful improvisation.

Every performance artist has to have, like, a mama moment, right, where they bring the mother into the frame.

PS: Well, that hasn’t happened with me, my mother died last year. But this is an aside and we could talk about this later. What am I supposed to do Thursday?

NH: Just come and read the pages. That’s all it is. The words are just words. Like nothing is precious.

I don’t spend a lot of time writing, but I feel like in my life, I do a lot of writing on my feet.

You know, I talk on stage a lot. I’m always working through my alliterative word puns on stage, and I’m writing in those ways. So this piece is my attempt to try to capture some of that associative logic onto the page.

But I think it’s purposeful that there’s six people reading simultaneously, so you can’t focus on one thing too much such that everyone should feel free.

PS: To just read the words, do whatever words want.

NH: Exactly. It’s not written by AI, but it has this sort of purposeful not-meant-to-add-up-to-much-of-anything type of vibe, and that we’re trying to embrace that sort of dada impulse of being like, the words are just, this is just sound.

This is just music. Everyone’s voice is so different. Everyone’s pacing, I think, everyone’s interpretation is going to be so different, and will hopefully become an abstract musical composition. No matter how you approach it, you in proximity to all the other voices will create some mark.

PS: The actor in me is like, what do I do? You know what I mean? I need to do something, you know?

NH: So like, acting is doing. I made them say on the program that it’s read by you all, not performed by you. There’s something kind of matter of fact about the task of reading.

PS: Uh huh.

Well, let me go back, though, because this piece is kind of predicated on some loss. So can you talk about that?

NH: Yeah. It has recently been informed by loss, but not predicated on it. I actually started writing this play before I went to Vietnam in August to perform for the choreographer Anh Vo. But I also gave myself my deadline of, like, while in Vietnam, I need to write this play. As I was writing the play, yes, my grandmother sadly passed while I was in Vietnam. But I actually had 70% of the play written already. It kind of did reinform what I think I was subconsciously thinking through and made it a little more specific.

Which is why I wanted, for lack of a better word, to put together an intergenerational cohort of Black women readers. So I’ve been thinking about my grandma. Sadly, we weren’t very close, but I think that much of my processing of her loss is the things that I would never get to know or the things that I don’t know. So through this guesswork I was trying to create a connection that might never be there through this sort of poetic task. It’s what I’m thinking about. I went to her funeral just a couple days ago before our performance, and that was the first time I saw my mom all year as we were commemorating the passing of her mother-in-law. That’s why I felt like, oh, my mom should just be here for this event. It kind of has all become about my maternal situations, even though I don’t think I explicitly set out to make that piece.

But that was kind of the information that the world kept on giving me as I started to, like, think about bringing these folks together.

PS: What has she said about the piece? Has she read it?

NH: I don’t know. Her first question was, what should I wear? She has not commented on the text. She just said that she did not want to say anything sacrilegious. That was interesting. I told her that there was sexual content, and I told her that there is, of course, mentioning of God and godliness, but I don’t think that there’s anything explicitly profane or bad, said with a sort of Satanic intentionality. But she hasn’t really discussed it, which I’m unsure if it’s because of her lack of having read it or that she’s not concerned. I think she’s just really excited to do something with me.

She saw this house is not a home, so she knows that I can be crass, and she knows I like irreverence, and she knows that I say bad words on stage sometimes, but I don’t know if she’s really processed the actor task of standing on stage, sitting on stage and reading this text. I kind of sprung it on her 72 hours before, like, she found out yesterday. I called her, and I booked the flights this morning.

PS: What should I wear?

NH: Oh, my God. I think I want everyone to dress like themselves. You know, [Crackhead] Barney will be dressed like Barney. She’ll be titties out, painted white. I’m excited for everyone just to come as they are.

I have a question for you. Something that I’ve been worried about or thinking a lot about is the trope of the mammy. And if I’m being a stupid gay boy trying to ask this question about motherhood and positioning you in a way that doubles down on that trope in a harmful way, or if, like, it’s just a thing that someone can do. Of course, you can do things in a harmful way and/or a reparative way…

PS: Well, can you say that? Can you put that into the piece? It’s difficult to answer.

I feel like it’s a question. I’m excited that you brought Black women together.

I feel recognized. I don’t feel used.

NH: Barney posted online yesterday on Instagram. She heard a joke for the event. Now she’s calling it “mammy fest”.

So that’s the energy she’s bringing into the frame. That’s what Barney is picking up from my emails about the project thus far.

I feel very comfortable putting myself in certain situations, and I would not put someone else in a situation that I would not put myself in. But I also hold myself to a very different standard than I hold my mother and you and Jenn and these women I respect so much. Again, it’s making me anxious.

But I know that y’all are not just “Black women,” like a monolithic identity. You’re radical fucking thinkers and artists who all fuck with form and all embody the legacy of making that I admire so deeply—incendiary gestures—and are okay with playing ball. So I don’t want to censor myself because of a fear of some woke identity-based sort of thing. But I do feel very aware that I am a man in this situation…

PS: Right.

I feel visible in being asked, that’s important to me.

And I admire your work.

NH: Visibility is a trap, right? Can be a trap.

PS: Well, not always but can be.

#278 – Fall 2024

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