The Lonely Letters

"The Lonely Letters is a Black queer critique of the normative world, practicing a restlessness of word and phrase that seeks existence otherwise. The book is a work of creative non-fiction, taking the form of a correspondence between characters A and Moth. The letters explore Blackness and queerness through the music and embodied experience of Blackpentecostal spaces. The correspondence is in epistolary form, organized into 5 sections: Breath, Shouting, Noise, Tongues, and Nothing. The first section opens with A's first letter to Moth about mysticism, and love, considering the embodied nature of Black queer experience in the Blackpentecostal church. Breath functions as a way of being open to the world, antithetical to western logics of the right way to be human -- being protected against vulnerability. The second chapter is about Blackpentecostal music and how the rhythm, tempo, and improvisation moves participants and listeners beyond the material realm into a deep world of feeling and connection. A describes how listening to the music became the paintings they created, which are also shown in this chapter. The paintings -- also by Crawley -- are created in sync with the shouting, stomping, and clapping of the Blackpentecostal tradition. The section called Noise is about quantum theory and mysticism as explorations into the possibilities of deep interconnection, romantically and within the larger community. Section 4, Tongues, is about joy, touch, and interconnection. Black joy functions as the context of Black emergence, with the flesh as the potential for sense experience. The last chapter, Nothing, is about the improvised music traditions of Black churches: how nothing functions as the space for creation. The Blackpentecostal church is described as a place that is fundamentally invitational, about transfer, about excess, the affect that lingers long after the music and musings are done. This book will be of interest to readers and scholars in African American studies, Black Diaspora studies, queer studies, and religious studies"--… (more)