Art Works Podcast: Lynn Hill
This week's podcast introduces Lynn Hill, an Air Force veteran, author, and performer. I saw her last month, at the Atlas Theater's annual Intersections Festival here in Washington, DC, where she performed her own poetry in Holding It Down. Holding It Down is an extraordinary theatrical project from Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd about the dreams of veterans of color who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Based on actual conversations with veterans, Holding It Down is an often discordant, yet always gripping mixture of poetry, music, video monologues, and visual images that reflect the hallucinatory nature of both dreams and war. Hill is one of two key poets/veterans who performs in the production. Her passionate reading and charismatic presence underscore her unexpected story: she operated predator drones that fired missiles into Iraq while working remotely from a central station in Las Vegas. Aside from the irony of performing such work in a city known for its "good-time" mentality, Hill also found it difficult to separate what she calls her "war life" from her "real life." [3:22]
