There are formal jokes embedded in Keeping Time, such as the editing when Mekala calls the Ark members to get them together for a practice and a gig. Much of the film’s editing follows more of a jazz-type logic, a black visual intonation perhaps. However, in this scene the edits parallel the timing of a conversational joke, like when Mekala says, “Yeaaaah, you’re not being paid enough for it, [takes a beat] but you’re still gonna do it.” As the camera cuts back and forth between the multiple phone calls, the film takes a beat longer than expected with each call before cutting, and Mekala or the person on the line immediately and swiftly begin the dialogue again in the same way as the quick, “but you’re still gonna do it.”

The cuts seem to playfully make fun of the band’s inability to make something happen, and it’s not the music, it’s not the mise-en-scene, it’s not the cinematography—though the abrupt shift in framing adds to the feeling. It’s the editing that makes this a funny scenario instead of a straightforwardly painstaking one. It’s also clear how different the disruptive editing in this scene feels compared to others; it’s following a different beat.

Kara Keeling mobilizes Robin D.G. Kelley’s conception of “poetry” or “poetic knowledge” to claim that poetic form “has a temporal dimension: anchored in the ‘now,’ it strives toward a future of a different present, a future presently accessible as a kind of yearning within a shared imagination.”^[1] Like poetics, humor is a mode of returning politics to the present and necessarily involves sharing. Its success relies on a positive and prosocial affect—at least within the context of those who share the humor. Humor can certainly attach itself to antisocial content and to a conceptualized future as a mode of producing the bond between people but, as a formal device, doesn’t rely on that content to remain humorous. 

I therefore follow Keeling (who follows Kelley who follows Aimé Césaire in true ensemblic fashion) to position humor as a similar term. Like the “It went somewhere else” line at the beginning of the film, the jazz ensemble’s humor is as fugitive as their practice. Humor can disrupt progressive future-oriented thought and move the topic elsewhere, such as when Makala Session finishes drumming with an immediate and eruptive “Very Nice” in reference to Borat (2006). This joking reference moves the seriousness of practice back to a place of sociality. Alternatively, humor can return a buildup of mounting past-oriented pressure to the present moment for affective release, such as in the opening example where humor relieves the pressure of not getting paid enough and returns focus to the relationship that eclipses the payment and makes the experience worth it in the meantime until better opportunities arrive. 

Humor’s performance consists of an immediately available payoff, a pleasure felt now in the absence of future.^[2]Perhaps, spontaneous, disruptive and interruptive, well-timed humor even more so. Humor can be pre-thought and used as strategy, but it is funniest when improvisational. 

To position humor within a political framework, I turn to Lee Edelman who states “The future is not simply what will come next. The future is the image of what already has been and must be preserved.”^[3] For Edelman, conservative politics depend on The Child who is figural, fantasmatic, and must be protected at all costs. This includes the cost of real people and existing children who must contort their lives and undergo harm in the name of a hypothetical next generation.^[4]

Notably, Edelman is not simply referring to politics that are explicitly labeled conservative. Politics that are commonly understood as progressive can be conservative when they attempt to preserve an “inner child” and frame politics as a fight for future children.  In forging a deep attachment to the fictional future that The Child evokes, progressive politics can justify harm to real people in the pursuit of ideological reproduction at all costs. In this sense, humor becomes a wonderful figure in that the joke will surely bomb if present audiences—including where and how they are currently situated—are not considered.

In the masterclass with the film’s director Darol Olu Kae, I asked what role humor plays in his work—if any—as either a philosophical outlook or production practice, and he conveyed a similar commitment to the people involved in the present work. While his response was more fleshed out and used different terms, for me, two aspects were key: 

1. Humor as Mirror – The form reflects the people involved, especially Mekala Session and his dad Michael Session’s relationship. This response adds to Darol’s other claim that the form depends on the work at hand. This form was appropriate to the current iteration of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, but he doesn’t always make films this way. 
2. Documentary Impulse and Index – The humor wasn’t typically scripted. They’re real jokes that members would bust out on a whim. It’s therefore indexing a specific relationship that’s authentic and prefigured, which must have occurred to joke so naturally together and in this intimate capacity. 

For In Media Res, I pose a similar question. I’m wondering what role humor plays in black study? If humor is both a matter of social connection and timing, where does it fit in the jazz ensemble and black life? Is it connective tissue, a liminal space? Does it belong in the garage, the porch, the street, etc.? 

Works Cited

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004. 

Edelman, Lee, “#715 Lee Edelman - No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive.” YouTube, December 9, 2022, https://youtu.be/R-kg4QRa3lc?si=PLHqUYw_uIfAWhJm.

Keeling, Kara. Queer Times, Black Futures. New York: New York University Press, 2019.