brief encounters #1: whitney houston and chris rock

Jillian Walker honors the ancestors in The Whitney Album at Soho Rep through July 2 (photo by Lanna Apisukh)

About twenty years, ago, I was the editor in chief of a local free weekly newsmagazine called New York Resident, which is still around but has changed significantly. We were hosting a comedy contest at a downtown club, where amateurs could do a few minutes of stand-up to compete for prizes.

About halfway through, the manager whispered in my ear, “Chris Rock is here and he wants to try out some new material, about twenty minutes. Would that be all right?”

Would that be all right? It was like a gift from heaven, both for the people in the audience and the respectability of the event itself.

Rock took the stage and looked at the large banner over his head.

“‘New York Resident,’” he read. “What the fuck is that? Aren’t we all New York ‘Residents’?”

I pitied the poor fool who had to follow Rock.

Last night, I was at Soho Rep on Walker St. to see Jillian Walker’s The Whitney Album, a ritual performance that honors Black female artists such as Alice Coltrane, Alice Childress, Phillis Wheatley, bell hooks, Lauryn Hill, and, primarily, Whitney Houston while exploring the legacy of slavery and colonialism, exploitation, and American overconsumption. “How do I/we honor Whitney Houston by way of Sally Hemings? How do I/we create a just historical space for her legacy?” Walker asks.

There were a lot of empty seats in the small theater, but one of them was occupied by Rock, who had come in alone. It appeared that much of the audience did not recognize him. He was dressed in all black; while it was suggested that audience members wear white and take their shoes off, most didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

Near the end of the show, Walker asked if anyone would like to join her and costars Stephanie Weeks and Ben Jalosa Williams by sitting on the floor of the stage, around a golden bowl holding water from the Atlantic Ocean.

Four people came down, including me. I was the only one wearing white.

A singalong ensued, so for at least a few minutes, the three-time Grammy and four-time Emmy winner was watching me “perform” onstage.

After the show, on the corner of Lafayette St., I bumped into the two women who had sat next to me by the bowl.

“What was Chris Rock doing there?” I asked them.

“We were just talking about that!” one of them said.

“He held the door for us on our way out,” the other added.

“I’ll have to Google it and try to figure it out,” I said, and they heartily agreed.

I later found a possible connection.

Perhaps Rock was there as penance for a joke he made in 2019, when he posted on Instagram a viral meme of a bored-looking Houston in sunglasses with the caption “Me sitting in a meeting that could’ve been an email,” adding his own “Hurry up I got crack to smoke.”

Bobby Brown, who was married to Houston from 1992 to 2007, posted in response, “During this time of women empowerment you chose to use your time to try and humiliate our QUEEN!!!” and “I thought you was a friend of the family.” Houston, who battled drug addiction, died in a Beverly Hilton bathtub on February 11, 2012, at the age of forty-eight.

In the lobby at Soho Rep, visitors are asked to contribute personal notes paying tribute to their ancestors.

I did not check to see if Rock had participated; his quiet presence said it all.

[Follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here. “Brief Encounters” are occasional random Mad Transit interludes; look for Mark’s Substack column every Sunday.]