3 October 2023
JJJJJerome Ellis wanted to find a way a to make a book that was a bit less silent than books normally tend to be. The artist, based in Norfolk, Virginia, infuses his recent book, “Aster of Ceremonies,” with words but also musical scores. The book explores Ellis’ relationship with stuttering through different “doorways,” Ellis tells me over the phone. “I’ve been interested in approaching it musically and through performance and through dance, and through writing.”
This Saturday, Liquid Music teams up with Milkweed Editions for a book launch, where Ellis will be bringing his saxophone and laptop and plans to play music, sing and read parts of the book, followed by a conversation with Chris Martin, editor-at-large for Milkweed Editions.
Martin approached Ellis about being a part of Milkweed Editions’ Multiverse series, devoted to forms of language and poetry that are rooted in neurodiversity. Ellis had already started on a project, and worked with Milkweed to bring the book to fruition.
With a background in theater, and training in music theory from Columbia University, Ellis’ music is layered, atmospheric and looped. His work often brings together poetry and sounds, and movement.
Ellis calls “The Aster of Ceremonies” “a musical instrument of knowing.” It’s anchored in the metaphor of an aster flower, which Ellis likens to stuttering:
“Stutters and Asters
are sisters, clerestory
to a space of ceremony.
Their syntaxes similar,
pink instruments ready
in the still air.”
Born in Connecticut, Ellis was raised in a religious family in Virginia Beach. “I spent a lot of time around hymnals and Black practices of blending music and speech in forms of preaching,” Ellis tells me.
One section of the book is named after a Benedictine prayer. His grandfather, a minister, used it at the end of every service. “I’m interested in finding ways of bringing music into books in different ways,” Ellis says.
The Benedictine Prayer section of the book features advertisements about fugitive slaves who had some sort of Black dysfluency, which is a key concept in the book.
Black dysfluency refers to stuttering and other forms of speech that are disabled, marginalized or non-normative — like aphasia, Tourette syndrome, or the experience of not speaking the non-dominant language, or speaking with an accent.
Exploring Black disfluency means exploring the intersections of race and disability, but for Ellis it also means looking at his own heritage and lineage. Ellis’ father is Grenadian, and he inherited his stuttering from his Jamaican mother. “I think of it as an heirloom,” the artist tells me.
“I am interested in the way that Black cultures have so many forms of knowledge and practices that are handed down,” Ellis says. Dysfluent knowledge, the artist adds, has been accrued and developed over time. His research goes all the way back to runaway slave advertisements for Black dysfluent people. Part of the question grounding Ellis’ work is to find out what role of enslaved people running away has to do with speech.
Ellis makes reference to these advertisements. In one piece, he writes of a fugitive in an ad named John Smart:
“According to the advertisement in ‘The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser,’ he began his journey on January 18, 1750, near London.
“The ad says he ‘stutter[ed] much in his speech at times.’ We honor the holiness of his speech, and of his whole being.”
In the book, Ellis asks whether Black dysfluency can be a form of ancestral wisdom. Through the work, he studies the freedom practices of Black dysfluent people and honoring them.
In a way, the book reminds the reader of “Say their names” from the Black Lives Matter movement, expanding it into histories and legacies — both of people, and also plants. The book breathes with the fragrance of a garden, looking toward roots, stems and leaves reaching toward the sky.
Saturday, Oct. 7, at 7 p.m. ($10). More information here.