This is Christopher Burris in action, as captured by the late photographer Christine Jean.
111. Black men can’t drive: quickie with an actor / writer / singer / director / educator
Hello horizontal lovers. horizontal is the podcast about sex, love, & relationships of all kinds that’s recorded while lying down, wearing robes. A typical recording is long and languorous, and lasts between three and five hours. When I release it, I divide it into two parts (if we recorded for three hours) and four parts (if we recorded for five).
Christopher: It wasn’t a great time to be on the road as a Black man, because this is right after Eric Garner had been killed in New York, and so that was really really on my heart and on my spirit.
So, the first day in which […] I was able to get a little bit of insight was, um, a press conference— Eric Garner’s wife.
They had asked his wife, “Do you forgive the cops that murdered your husband?”
And her response was, you know, “My kids don’t have a father this Christmas. Um, no. Actually I don’t forgive them.”
And so I’m sitting in my room and I’m watching this press conference, and Charlie comes in— and at the time, it’s not just Charlie, but it’s Charlie along with one of the other like, big bosses, who had just sort of flown out for that day, or like, for a coupla days, to check in on us, and they come in and the big boss sees what’s going on on the TV and he says, “Ey! Who is that? Is that Heather B.?
And I said, “No, that’s not Heather B., that’s Eric Garner’s wife.”
And he says, “But you know who Heather B. is, right?”
And I’m like, “Yeah, I know who Heather B. is. Rapper. First season of The Real World. Yeah, I know who that is.”
So, Charlie can sense the— that I’m like, that I’ve got feelings about this question, right? And so he goes, “Well, well tell us what was going on.”
And I’m like, “Okay! Well this is what happened and this is what she said.”
And Charlie goes, “Well at least they apolog—”
And he stopped himself. But it was too late! Because, in that moment I was like, Oh, we’re on this road together, and you’ve been someone that I’ve considered a friend for a long time, but now I’m worried if you can actually see me or not. If your response is “At least they apologized,” I’m not exactly sure if you know who I am, and how I relate to the things that are happening around us in this world.
Hello horizontal lovers. horizontal is the podcast about sex, love, & relationships of all kinds that’s recorded while lying down, wearing robes.
A typical recording is long and languorous, and lasts between three and five hours. When I release it, I divide it into two parts (if we recorded for three hours) and four parts (if we recorded for five). The first half of the conversation is available in all the podcast places, and the second is available exclusively to patrons of the horizontal arts.
For access to The Full Horizontal, and to be a part of eradicating shame, diminishing loneliness, & alchemizing human connection, become a $7+ patron of the horizontal arts:
At the end of each longform conversation, I ask my guest to tell me a story, and the story marks the conclusion of our patron episode together. It can be any personal story that falls under the broad umbrella of intimacy — sex, love, or relationships of any kind. I’ve had stories of being carried down a mountaintop by a hunky guide (episode 10 with Elaine), watching your wife have a miscarriage, giving your father’s body to science (episode 92 with Dr. Alexandra Solomon), a friend breakup, and a particularly epic tale about the Cretan Resistance, thievery, journeying, and a real human skull (episode 31 with Matthew Stillman).
horizontal lila on the evening this quickie was recorded. Image by Loz Photography. June 2019
One of those stories on its own is a horizontal quickie.
My live event, the horizontal storytelling pajama party, is an eveningful of quickies. I get horizontal with my guest just like we do when we record a full episode, wearing robes, sharing a pillow, microphone above us, gazing upward as though stargazing, or post-coital, or whispering into the wee hours of a really good sleepover. At horizontal storytelling, there’s a whole audience getting horizontal with us in their pajamas.
When I ask my guest to choose this story, I tell them that it can have any kind of tone or outcome, as long as it’s a story that they truly desire to tell me — because if they have the impulse to tell it, and especially if they’re also a bit trepidatious to do so, it will be the right one: a narrative that others need to hear.
This quickie was recorded live in June 2019 at horizontal storytelling: the summer pride edition. We donned rainbow pajamas, noshed on milk and cookies, and curled up together, all 50 of us, to listen to five storytellers from across the LGBTQIA+ community.
Lila, ready for tales at horizontal storytelling: the summer pride edition. Image by Loz Photography. June 2019
In this quickie, I lie down with Christopher Burris. Christopher Burris is an actor, director and visionary creative from Asheville, North Carolina. He’s the Director of the Afrofuturistic Queer Sci-Fi Funk musical BRING THE BEAT BACK, by Derek Lee McPhatter.
I first met Chris when he directed a reading of “America’s Favorite Pasttime,” by Dennis A. Allen II, in which I got to play one of my favorite roles of all time, a Dominatrix mother, in a story with complicated issues of race and sex and transaction and correctness and parenthood.
The first day I showed up for rehearsal, the guy playing the young white friend of the young black male lead wasn’t there yet, and Chris read the part.
CHRIS IS A GENIUS. He read that part (the part of a white kid who uses hip-hop slang and the n-word in casual conversation), better than any of the white guys who I saw read that part. He was Hysterical. I basically barely stopped laughing for long enough to read my own part.
So not only he is a generous, warm, thoughtful, space-holding director, but his talents as an actor and a mimic can’t help but infuse the room with a robust sense of someone who understands the theatre deeply — like a dancer, a partner dancer, who knows both how to lead and how to follow.
Any chance I get to work with him, I jump — I LEAP to it, because I know it will confront me with the complexities of being human. And I know that in the rehearsal room, there will be laughter. So much laughter.
Christopher is also a patron of the podcast, and when I found out that he became a patron on Patreon, I wrote him this:
Dearest Chris. From one artist to another. You have my deepest thanks for your patronage of my work. I am moved to tears by your belief in me. Thank you thank you thank you.
You can find Christopher Burris on Twitter @misterburris.
In this episode, Christopher tells us a story about driving while Black, his best friend Satchmo, a Sponge Bob car, contact lenses, relationshipping, & really, really seeing people.
After this tale, at horizontal storytelling: the summer pride edition. Image by Loz Photography. June 2019
Come lie down with us in Bushwick, Brooklyn, for a story Christopher titled, “Black Men Can’t Drive.”
111. Black men can’t drive: quickie with an actor / writer / singer / director / educator
Hello horizontal lovers. horizontal is the podcast about sex, love, & relationships of all kinds that’s recorded while lying down, wearing robes. A typical recording is long and languorous, and lasts between three and five hours. When I release it, I divide it into two parts (if we recorded for three hours) and four parts (if we recorded for five).
