I Love Myself When I am Laughing (An Audiovisual Meditation)

“Laughter isn’t even the other side of tears/ It is tears turned outside out.” (Alice Walker, Where the Path of Life Leads Us) An audiovisual meditation on the expansiveness of black joy. This clip is taken from the 1907 film Laughing Gas (Edwin S. Porter). A woman goes to the dentist for a tooth extraction and is given nitrous oxide. Her uncontrollable laughter soon spreads to everyone she meets.

Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.