En été... In summer 2001 and 2002, this man in his rocking chair rocked, impassive, 1000 times 20 seconds per day at Mont Parnasse, between two advertisements. One day, a woman dialed the telephone number marked on the bottom of the screen. She simply wanted to thank this man, as well as the person who had filmed him. "Every night when I return home, I watch the Indian. He comforts me. Thank you." A real moment for a true fiction in which the Indian is the image that does the calling -YOU... SEE a history that takes detours |
Archetype of the dream factory and forever barbaric He looks at us It looks at us She looks at him This is the story of a see-sawing between a white world and a red world, of a see-sawing between man and woman, between reality and myth, between light and shadow, between anthropology and fiction It is the story of the toppling of our gaze where, in the end the flame of Eros ignites the magic of the image It is a history of human nature It is already written as it will be written on the way... Can an image change lives? Can two sexes imagine its magic? It is the story of two barbarians lighting up in the heart of the Empire |
|
Medea Granddaughter of the Sun, daughter of the Night, magician, she knows absolutely nothing of mediocrity and feels the imperious necessity to always cross the limits of the known. she never lost spermatic knowledge, that of the inseparability of body and soul, of flesh and word, of fire and reason. she is a total woman, one of those who make Man and who loathe the half-hearted and the weak, the little masters. She sacrificed two children from her belly, ejaculated by a white perjury. White granddaughter of the Sun she is an artist at present, she is a barbarian at the rising of the West She is for real (any resemblance..). Tsoya' ha (little sun) Born from a drop of blood that fell from the Sun on Earth, he is her son, the red Adam of his Yuchi people. But Hollywood has made him into an image-man, a good generic Indian or the ambiguous incarnated memory of this "dignity, righteousness, force of character, valiance and untamable spirit of Independence that so impressed the first Europeans who met these men and women, young and old, free, equal and fraternal, in the heart of their tribe, which has a communist domestic economy." (Engels, Origin of the Family) He is a former activist of the American Indian Movement. He was at the battle of Wounded Knee. He is an artist at present. Red Sun-Man, He is a barbarian at the setting of the West. He is for real (any resemblance ...) Sink Half brother of Little Sun, he has a man's body, a woman's mind and his words are androgynous. A poet, he has sinful thoughts and soporific ink. He is a red moon-man. He is the one who calls and speaks the past and the future. He is for real (any resemblance...) A Chorus mixed and sometimes his echo. Onos A dwarf jackass, he is Medea's supernatural companion. His red color is a sign of his divine nature. The sun offered him to his grand-daughter in consolation for the White-man's betrayal. When they saw him, so small, so red, with such long ears, the Yuchi were stumped, and called him Horrabbit, since he was the fruit of the fornication with a mare and their lustful, lying and mythological rabbit who, according to them, at the beginning, had stolen fire. DS Vehicle of the gods, she breathes, takes in and blows out before dashing off. White goddess, convertible, Medea is her charioteer, her magician. She transports all of the attributes: a very old white leather suitcase out from which come the puppets of the sun-man, moon-man, shooting stars, Medea's angels with their real wings + a thousand decoys and beneficial disguises, offerings from a white memory to an Indian world. A DVD screen for her back-seat passengers will allow for several asides-citations: Cock-a-doodle-do Mister chicken (Jean Rouch) Don't touch the white woman (Marco Ferreri) Imagine, then, this already epic team. Medea, radiant, at the wheel of her convertible DS. Tsoya'ha, his jet black hair in the wind, beaming at her side. Onos, undisturbed in the back, his chest, head and ears erect. Sink, in order to keep up with his dwarf jackass neighbor, is sitting on the trunk, feet in the passenger seat, winged and unruffled. Of course, in order to attain this burlesque state of grace, we need all of the time of fiction to get to the flamboyant finale at Sunset Boulevard. But, alone and together, from the first image, They will only be subject to looks. Several characteristic tribes will appear on their way. The Yuchi tribe, deported in the 19th century from Georgia to Oklahoma via the route of tears, almost vanished but being reborn--even in the absence of land--along with its rituals and its numerous children. Today they are 2000 in number. The Navaho tribe, which persists on the largest Indian territory in the USA-- equal to the size of Belgium, straddling New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado, with its Uranium mines and its tourist resources managed in part by a tribal council that, since a dozen or so years now, has reconciled economic modernity and collective traditions--is a very unexpected socialist society in the heart of imperial America. Today they are 200, 000 in number. They are all for real. This truth will feed into the very creation of this story since there will be no extras or decors, only complicities still very much inscribed in their own contexts. The Yuchi will, for example, celebrate a ceremony for that event... My approach to the reality of the American Indian stems from 15 years of friendships and working relationships with Yuchi and Navajo artists and with their people. In spring 1988, during a first encounter in Oklahoma City, I was making a video-portrait of Tsoya'ha, the Yuchi name of the photographer Richard Ray Whitman, with 5 other contemporary Indian artists. During the summers of 2000 and 2001, in a clip that was shown on the largest advertising video screen in Europe, at the foot of the Montparnasse tower, Richard rocked, enigmatic, in a slow zoom out ending on the question: what is the purpose of the lynx? A visual haiku, a new urban breath, Richard laughingly described himself as the watcher of his beloved Paris and of the estimated 13 million looks he summoned. Meanwhile, from the Mohawk suburbs of Montreal to the Navajo Monument Valley in Utah, stopping over at the Yuchi in Oklahoma, with Richard and Joe (Sink) his half-brother Dale Tate Nevaquaya, I video-documented this mythic Indian America --still invisible to those who do not want to see beyond clichÈs ... even if it means turning them around, by following the traces of Buffalo Bill. In 1994-95-98, I was able to invite Richard and Joe to Marseille for a multi-media representation in one of the northern neighborhoods. This led to other meetings, decisive for the proper realization of that epic : -John Trudell, singer-poet, the last charismatic leader of the American Indian Movement, whose wife and three children were burned alive in unclear circumstances during a march on Washington in 1978 (since it had probably instigated it, the FBI closed the case very quickly). John, traumatized, wanted vengeance, but the day he realized he was nothing more than a hunted beast, he decided to fight solely through his art. Richard and John met each other at Wounded Knee in 1973. A dozen of John's songs will provide the rhythm for the action in balance with the music of New Yorker Richard Horowitz. -Larry Emerson, painter, medicine man, economic counselor for the Navajo Tribal Council who, for over twenty years has been a militant for a political ecology, in which his people regenerate their traditions by collectively managing the riches of their earth: coal, oil, uranium, sun power + tourism. Engels must be turning in his grave from pleasure... Even if the Indian notion of cycles goes against his historical materialism, there will be a living memory to generic communism at the heart of capitalism and its Empire... The story will traverse the great annual Navajo fair and festival, which takes place at the beginning of September at Window Rock, the seat of the Tribal Council, for there is no better place and moment for painting-in an immense and entirely Indian crowd- the tranquil evidence of contemporary Indian America with strictly no romanticism. -You...See constantly feeds on and constructs itself, then, around the extreme presence of these bodies today in their most realistic contexts and in the archaic archetypes they incarnate...sun-man, moon-man, medicine man, all savages among savages, just like our magician... Medea, the child, in the chance of diurnal somnolence, knew pleasure, traversed by an ardent ray. Since the sun is a fearsome rival for every man. And, even like the shadow of the night, does not forget. How can a man, bearer of light, bearer of myths, assume his image that calls today? |
1. The Announcement
An eye opens, immense, exorbitant
In its abyss, the brilliance of a strange reflection
A white face sways softly,
dressed with a large hat, surrounded by long
black hair.
Crystalline, enigmatic, archetypal, he smiles.
Reflection in a golden eye of a Hollywood Indian
in a rocking chair.
And in the forward movement
A masculine voice murmurs
YOU
And in the backward movement
The voice
She
The groan of a man coming
his voice powerful
You!
The eyelid, heavy, closes
A woman's cry of rage
the voice
She!
A white body tears through this night.
the pallid and sculptural back of a man,
rejected by two feminine hands which,
bearing on his skin the memory of his
pornographic coupling,
crashes to the floor in slow motion with a thump.
the voice
You!
The silhouette of a wild woman who, already standing
where she lay, flees across a big room
naked, summoned, snatched, drawn by the
intensely luminous caress, a caress from
somewhere else
Voice
She...
Standing grimly at a window,
she catches her breath in front of the
beautiful face of the American Indian, who
from front to back,
Voice
You!
from back to front
Voice
She...
on his steel rocking chair,
the image-man of a giant suspended video screen
on the faÁade of a tower, lights up the city like a lighthouse
for lost souls.
The gay song of a robin redbreast punctuated by
strange mechanical grinding sounds.
The screen turns off.
A long, feminine, breath
Paris, Montparnasse, midnight.
The Twin Towers rise up like phantoms
surging up from an enormous
cloud of dark dust inhabited by diabolical gargoyles.
The roar of an airplane taking off.
Black.
2. The revelation
The bloody flaming of an entire sky at sunset.
Two human silhouettes contemplatively rock
in their rocking chair.
The strident noise of billions of insects.
One takes of his hat and runs a hand through
his very long hair: might he be the image-man?
Oklahoma City, the next day
The flashing of a white light.
Two almond shaped head-lights have come to a halt.
The two watchmen have not budged.
A dog at their feet growls.
In the last blush of the horizon, two silhouettes
get out of the car.
The movement of one is not human:
4 legs and between them two immense ears
stand upright.
The dog's growling increases.
A woman advances in the beam of the headlights.
A dwarf jackass at her side.
Furious barking.
The two men stand up brusquely
in the light and
their feminine sight
crumbles,
faints, like an echo.
Black.
Four faces in blinding light lean over and
study her.
The face of the image-man is strangely
and entirely lit by a rising sun...
The face of the other Indian is lit
By a half-moon.
The face of a red jackass.
The face of a Dingo dog.
The mixed chorus:
Who can understand the moon?
She abruptly covers her eyes with her hand,
softly separates her fingers, and between them sees
the same concerned faces again.
The floating faces of the sun-man and the moon-man smile.
Trembling, the fingers isolate the sun-man and in a scissor
movement block him out.
Another fainting.
Black.
The mixed chorus:
Who can understand the sun?
Framed by two almond-shaped head-lights,
the white aura of the Indian and
the inanimate woman in his arms form just
a cross rising in the night.
It advances and offers itself to the darkness.
3. The Golden Rain
The imprint of a body on an old crushed sofa,
like a raft washed up in the middle of a living room:
a sea of papers and accumulated objects.
Still-life of chaos in the early morning.
The crickets, alone.
Oklahoma City, second day
The creaking of a door
A dark silhouette enters this apparent disaster.
The image-man, seen from behind, stops in front of the
abandoned sofa.
Bending down, he lightly touches the mark of an absent
body on the garnet velvet.
The shadow of his feet on ochre earth.
The crickets louder and louder
The moving shadow disappears into a
clump of leafy plants
Stop.
A small green clearing.
The sliding of a look.
In its abstract frontality,
bathed in a rain of light
here is an Origin of the World:
laying on the grass half-naked,
the body of the white woman,
legs open, offers golden fleece
to the ardor of the sun.
Her thighs tremble with pleasure.
So, she modestly places her hand.
The man is dazzled.
White.
The green clearing.
A man's brown hand feels the crushed grass.
He lays his body down.
There it is, in the memory of the pubis,
eyes closed, a human face in the caress of the sun,
the human face of the red man.
Black.
4. Adam
A man's voice resonates, the same:
Once there was a woman ;
when she was going down to the creek
to dip water
on the ground
some drops of blood had fallen down ;
she saw it
she took it
she put it away.
Out of the blood a baby came to life,
it is told.
Nobody was here,
but the blood was there.
Flames start to rise up in the dark.
The sun was in her courses;
she had dropped the blood which
the woman found.
It is told that the woman who found
the blood
must herself have been the sun.
That boy was an Indian;
he was a son of the sun,
Tsoya'ha was his name.
And so it has come about,
that the Yuchi are living on earth.
Flames dance, twirling.
They hide then reveal, purple, in the night,
the face of the mute image-man.
The mixed chorus calls:
TSOYA'HA
The man's face turns slightly,
he starts to speak in a guttural language.
His voice is not the voice of myth.
The faces of an entire group of Indians, men and women,
sitting around a fire, appear in succession.
And the music of the untranslated tale of the Indian
will only have the cracking of the cinders and the OOOH
of the assembly as commentary.
The narrator has stopped speaking.
The flames become the light of morning.
The Indian smiles.
His voice-over:
I am Tsoya'ha, son of the sun,
the Adam of the Yuchi people.
.
5. And the story...
White.
The face of the white woman in the same
morning light.
A feminine voice-over, hers:
I am Medea
granddaughter of the Sun
daughter of the night,
the barbarian
because of the murder of my sons
because of, this man so white,
Jason's betrayal
She smiles.
She lays down on the crushed garnet sofa in the
the living room chaos where
a number of sleeping Indian bodies are resting,
scattered birds in the rays of a nascent sun.
She sleeps.
The third day
The cries of over-excited children outside.
Medea getting up again, sketches a gesture of surprise
when she sees all of these impassive snorers.
The child-like voices get closer.
Medea, feline, steps over several bodies and slides
toward a window and lands nose to muzzle with
her red jackass.
The jackass, decked out in a costume of feathers,
a little Indian comfortably installed on his back,
seems to question her gaze perplexedly.
She bursts out laughing and, stepping around other
happy snorers, leaves the small, dingy white house
surrounded by a burnt lawn that has become a
parking lot for pick-up trucks and old dented American
cars, among them a DS convertible coupe, radiant in all
of its whiteness.
Onos, the red dwarf jackass, surrounded, dressed up,
submerged
by a dozen Indian boys and girls, turns toward her and
brays with virility. All of the children imitate him
enthusiastically.
Medea, at his side in solidarity, caresses his neck.
A child looks at her attentively and without saying a word
removes a circular broach from his vest, which has four black,
white, yellow and red rays on it, and places it first on Medea's
white skin, then on her black dress, then on the golden hair
and lastly on her red lips.
Smiling, Medea takes his two hands and the broach in her own
in a gesture of thanks and then brings the entire group away
from the house under a large tree.
A fading light haloes the sleepers.
With a sigh an Indian woman wakes up and,
quickly, as if on the look out,
bounds toward the window
where she freezes at the vision of a strange
small green-grass theater.
Under the great oak, with only the crickets for music,
the children are seated in a half-circle and
are looking at Onos, who has become
a puppet theater;
hidden behind him, Medea uses her agile hands
to make an entire mythology of magical figures
run from his neck to his hindquarters: a winged golden
sheep makes fun of his guardian angel, a dragon,
a sun-man shows reverence for a moon-man.
The nostalgic sound of a small hurdy-gurdy
Two child figures fall from the jackass and fly to
the ground, their heads split; dead sons.
Medea is playing out her own dramatic story
The Indian woman screams.
In a frenzy she awakens all of the bodies
and rushes outside
All of the pick-ups and cars full of children
and adults leave the scene under a dramatic ochre sky.
Only the silhouettes of Onos, Medea, Tsoya'ha
and Dingo remain still.
Medea's hands open the trunk of the DS.
Then a fat white leather suitcase.
She takes out a pair of white goose-feather angel wings
and ceremoniously offers them to Tsoya'ha.
Hesitating, he manipulates them clumsily before
cheerfully placing them on his head.
Dressed like this, Tsoya'ha traces three dance
steps and nimbly jumps onto Onos's back,
who breaks into a braying trot out of surprise.
Tsoya'ha, whose long legs hit the ground is
forced into burlesque strides, rhythmed
by the wild fluctuations of his strange costume.
Dingo's gay barking accompanies them in this
unusual hullabaloo for the setting sun.
The irruption of the dumbfounded face of a sheriff,
who has just jammed on the breaks of his patrol car.
His shaking silhouette growing more and more
distant, Tsoya'ha greets him.
An immense moon has risen.
The din of insects.
A cicada-camera plunges into the grass
across several landscapes prior to humanity
The lapping sound of a crayfish taking to the water.
A toad croaks.
An owl hoots.
A coyote breathes in the night.
A rabbit listens with his agile ears.
Medea's hand lights a white candle, which
she lifts to Tsoya'ha's face, skimming over it with
the flame, fashioning it, sculpting it like the
daughter of a Greek potter who, made the first
image out of a shadow of her beloved.
He looks fixedly at her, has not budged.
The voice whispers
You...
Medea pulls the flame back
She
Then moves it forward
You
Then back
She
thus rocking the shadow of his head drawn
on the old white wood wall
You...
She...
She remains still,
You
See
They are effaced by a yellow halo of light.
An oil lamp carried at face level by a brown hand
inquisitively lights up Medea's face.
The voice again:
You...
should have come...
The lamp reveals the face of the moon-man,
without the moon.
Light becomes day.
He smiles.
The voice over:
I am Sink, the moon-man
of thoughts of soporific ink
of hermaphroditic words
I am the one who calls...
Light becomes night.
He carries the lamp to his eyes again then
with a gesture of invitation
Sink:
You...
follow me
You
See me
Sliding in the grassy night,
Phantoms of jumping frogs following on their heels,
The moon reflecting in the dew under their naked feet
like the foam on waves.
A tohu-bohu of burgeoning human and inhuman nature.
Sink's voice
Spider palmed up
prays lunar
globular and darkly,
its brittle voice
scratches the trees
Far away,
thumbmarks dream
of frosted glass.
Old throats eddying
with age,
sound the water.
Fingertips hardened
into sleep, curve
the eggdish of moon.
Birds oily black
peck into the air
with honed beaks,
leaving holes.
Taking off with the dull beating of indistinct forms.
Dread of the dark.
Medea's voice
I implore you, crowd
of silent shadows and
you infernal gods
and you
dark chaos
and you
On the horizon, a moving sea of grass,
a small cabin appears under the moon.
A candle shines in its window.
Dark
home of the god Pluto
and you, souls bound
at the banks of the Tartar
in the hideous cavern
of death
free yourselves from your torture
to rush to this hymen of a new genre
In the wavering of the lamp
Two toes are on wooden steps
One, feminine white, the other masculine brown
The Third Night, Sink's House
Sink's voice
Plateaued onto sleep
ghosts dogear the eaves
and silently
salt the sea.
Sonambulist inks
the sperm
pressed again
the shadows,
pressed against
the window of night
A trembling brown finger caresses this universe
Flesh imparts itself,
hand into wing
wing into tongue.
And the cicada-camera turns for the last time before returning
to its grass, shining green in the nascent light.
Mossy gray pebbles
their lips stilled,
brood inside the gourd
as spider turns to fog
fog turns to earth
and earth turns to song.
The rhythm of their bare feet in the dew meeting up with
ladybugs, snails and scorpions
Medea -off-:
For you, according to the custom
of my race
I took down my hair
I ran barefoot through mysterious woods
I made the rain fall from clouds
without water,
I held back the seas
in their deepest depths,
and the ocean choked back its
powerful waves,
because I conquered the tides.
The firmament, whose laws I disrupted,
saw the sun and stars at the same time.
A brown toe stops just in front of a golden beetle.
Two fingers take it daintily.
They place it on a small triangle of embroidered pearls.
Golden pubis, rising Sun.
And offer them delicately to Medea's white palm.
6. DS
Dawn breaks on the calanque of the DS which,
raises itself up, rumbling.
The fourth day
Tsoya'ha, on the passenger side, balances his chest
over the top of the door in order to better see
this magic
Medea, at the wheel, smiles.
Sink beats his hand on the body while Onos,
also in the back, provides the rhythm with his ears.
Tsoya'ha, back in place, leans toward Medea and,
taking her with a virtuoso gesture he tips her toward him
and takes her place as driver.
The DS takes off escorted by Dingo, barking
in complicity.
In the great calm of early morning, she slides into
a post-card of the deep still sleeping heart of America:
houses, lawns, cars, star-spangled banners,
everything is well, if a little dingy, coming apart,
moth-eaten...
the yellowing memory of a golden age.
Tsoya'ha puts a cassette into the player in the dashboard.
A traditional Indian chant
and John Trudell's voice
Were were 18
We were born in a middle
of a Babylon dream
hey man, hey woman
she was a beautiful woman
he loved her full
she became his last stand
he was a cowboy
she was an Indian...
Medea's little laughter is cut short by the vision of the
flashing lights of a police car in the rear-view mirror.
Tsoya'ha, unflustered, stops on the roadside, turns off
the motor and puts his hands on the steering wheel,
in plain view.
The DS, with a great outward breath, sinks.
A sheriff with his colt slung across his shoulder,
the sheath open, catches up: it is the patrolman that saw
him with wings.
Onos seems to stare at him with interest.
Sink yawns.
Confused, the officer exclaims:
Nice car, Adam!
But what kind of game are you playing?
Come on, papers!
Stoic, Tsoya'ha, with a small, borrowed gesture, holds
his hand out to Medea.
Black.
The passengers of the DS have not moved an inch.
The officer leaves his car and returns to them, papers in hand.
The voice of a radio commentator
As President Bush has asked
Why don't we like ourselves?
Tsoya'ha and Sink laugh
The journalist Watterson wrote in 1896:
We are a great imperial republic
destined to have a decisive influence on
humanity and to shape the future of the world
like no other nation, even the Roman Empire.
The officer's shadow covers up Tsoya'ha and Medea.
He holds out his hand, with the papers, over the Indian.
Tsoya'ha's voice:
Get out of my Sun!
The shadow pulls back. With a slap on the door, the officer
concludes: OK ma'am, everything is in order
But be careful with your funny crew...
we don't much like (takes time to think)
aliens around here.
His hand remains firmly attached to the colt.
He turned around.
Black.
The DS takes off.
A bird's eye view of this banal heart of the Empire
The commentator's voice:
Mr. Zbigniew Brezinski, just recently:
America's objective should be to maintain
our vassals in a state of dependence, insure
solidarity and the protection of our tributaries
and prevent the unification of the barbarians.
The DS is lost under the trees.
A Hawaiian guitar, Trudell's voice:
I tell you what happened...
7. Ceremony
In the night, the DS follows a pick-up, and lights up
a group of Indian children on its bed.
On the road to Kellyville, Oklahoma
The DS turns into the lot of a gas-station.
Several pick-ups, surrounded by numerous young and
old Indians, are parked there.
A crowd gathers at the sight of the DS that has just stopped
in front of one of the pumps.
Tsoya'ha and Sink laughingly smack numerous hands
under Medea's complicit gaze.
The children, fascinated by Onos, fall into formation
around him.
Tsoya'ha tries to calm their enthusiasm.
A few intrigued Whites observe the scene from a distance.
Once the tank is filled all of the vehicles take off together.
Beams of head-lights tear through the darkness in the
jolts of a bad road.
The convoy crosses high grasses.
A steep climb.
The arrival, at the top of a wooded hill, on a vast
clearing, its center lit up by a large fire.
Dozens of pick-ups are parked in a giant circle
with interlinked canopies of canvas and branches, tables
and benches.It is a very animated camp in which
each group eats around its hearth.
A long column of slowly jumping dancers enters onto
the ceremonial terrain in a large circle.
Eight men sitting around an enormous drum accompany them
with the stridence of their song and the rhythm of their mallet
made of skin.
Medea has approached.
Certain of the men are wearing colorful shirts
and large hats decorated with feathers,
women wear ample dresses of bright colors and
very noisy bell shells attached to their ankles.
Many are simply in t-shirts and jeans.
Tsoya'ha and Sink have joined the circle.
Medea sits down and watches them.
Onos passes in front of her escorted by a group of children.
The fire becomes stronger, outlining the dark silhouettes,
still dancing to the same haunting scansion.
Sometimes the faces of Tsoya'ha and Sink surge up.
Then, Sink's face comes to a halt.
He says: Stains her face with splendored arms
of winter grasses and blue spider dung,
they are nesting in the slope of her shoulder
and her nipples at dusk, they whisper
as starlings to the ear of the moon.
It trickles as ink to the shadow of her scar,
inverted as basements and thumbs, buried
inside her flesh.
Interior lights bring the puppets of the winged sheep and
the dragon to life. They mingle with the dancers,
they glow among the flames, new spirits.
It is a tattoo of birthmarks in negative
and voices of primeval tongues, counting
her ribs of abacusas falling trees
and imploding lungs.
The sun-man and the moon-man appear suddenly...
She is a journey of murmurings
in familiar blood, a river of ancient mouths
swallowing the songs of a thousand hearts,
eddying an arc of shattered light, breathing
a black air of undertow and clay, reflected
as language of sky and rumblings
of harsh palates, and slivered open as rain.
And this ballet of bodies of shadow and bodies of light, licked,
celebrated by the flames, dissolves into the gold of a great
nascent Sky.
The songs, like the frogs, go quiet,
the dancers slowly separate.
Onos, alone, lays down near Medea.
A woman also sits at her sides.
(the furious woman of the puppet theater)
She offers her serene face to the spectators
A voice-over (her own) names her:
Juanita Crossing Killer
Thirty or so portraits of old and young Yuchi follow, they each
introduce themselves--off.
Wena Meatsake
Nena White Crow
Nita White Thunder
Morgan Mope
Acee Cutting White Head
Terrible Woman...
8. Duel
Medea and Tsoya'ha alone, hair in the wind in
the early morning, are riding on a little road crossing fields
sheltered by white trunks against which cows rub.
Taking out a cassette and smiling, Medea puts it into the player.
The whistling of the herders resonates and responds.
The Fifth Day
The cows seem to lend an ear.
They are laughing.
Passing by a field in which a mare and her foal are playing,
Tsoya'ha thoughtfully slows down then stops the DS.
The calls of the herders continue.
Several other horses approach.
Tsoya'ha leaning on the fence whistles powerfully.
A beautiful mustang comes up to him.
Tsoya'ha laughs and caresses his muzzle.
He guides him to a barrier, which he opens and after
taking him out mounts him bareback.
A surprised Medea cries out.
Tsoya'ha, in a child-like exultation,
makes his mount rear up and, after a sign from
Medea, gallops off.
A cloud of red dust has already drowned them out.
Medea grabs hold of the steering of wheel of the DS,
revs it and raises and raises it
(shifting into the all-terrain position)
like a rival stallion.
With a squealing of tires, she takes off after him.
A violent and dull sound of men breathing in unison
rises up from the DS, hymn of the hunt.
Tsoya'ha turns around gleefully, he hastens the gallop
and goes abruptly into the high grass.
Without hesitating, Medea, like a tank driver, steers her
convertible after them.
A valley, a small river.
The horseman crosses it, sending up a shower.
Medea and her DS are unstoppable, they have already
gone by with an enormous splash.
The tiring mustang is in a lather. Tsoya'ha encourages it
but the animal starts to walk and stops softly at a cross-roads,
where a lone panel indicates:
Gypsi, Oklahoma
The DS arrives at their sides in a torrent of red dust.
The paroxysm of barbarian panting.
Tsoya'ha, foot on the ground, places his hand on the muddy
calanque of the DS as a sign of respect.
Radiant Medea, like a heroine excited by victory,
jumps on the hood
and bare foot on the hot metal, her arms raised,
palms offered up to the sun, her hair unleashed,
begins a possessed belly-dance.
Two steps behind her, Tsoya'ha is silent, forbidden.
The mustang chews on some grass and looks at him.
Their passiveness seems to heighten the ardor of the
male panting and Medea, who undresses, undulates
like a goddess in a trance.
Tsoya'ha slowly backs up with the mustang.
They disappear into the bushes.
Medea is frozen.
The whistling of the DS as it sinks.
Medea slowly kneels then lies down on the hood
The expiring of the car causes her to slide.
White and silent, she has fallen on the
red earth in front of the DS.
They are two white stains in the heart of this
landscape in the middle of nowhere.
9. Errance
A road map.
Medea's index finger traces the red line of route 66.
Medea's 'voice:
Tulsa...Sapulpa...Bristow...
Ah, the 48, yes... but afterwards?
Newgy? Tuskegee?
And, of course, no Gypsi, Oklahoma!
Country music
A cloud of white dust.
The DS leaves a trail and stops in front of a run down farm
where a man is sitting under the veranda.
Medea gets out of the car with her map in hand and goes
toward an old White man in overalls and a pipe in his mouth.
She greets him. Excuse me, I am little bit lost.
I am looking for a Yuchi ceremonial camp
Yuchi? grumbles the old farmer
But they've been gone for a long time!
Gone? Medea asks surprised
But I was with them last night
Removing his pipe, rubbing his eyebrows, the man slowly
replies: Well, ma'am, I don't know where you
come from with your funny car and accent...
But, me, I know, since I was born here and
so was my daddy, that there have never been
any Yuchi...
Gone! Vanished!
And with those words he quickly gets up and goes into the house.
The DS drives on route 66, direction West.
A series of signs follow one after another.
Chandler.
This is where the great pioneer rush took place in 1899.
Luther.
This is where the former territory of the Sac'N'Fox nation begins.
Arcadia.
This is where the former territory of the Kickapoo nation begins.
The DS turns off at a gas station decorated with a neon light
"Arcadia 66".
Medea enters into the boutique, which is also a drugstore with rows
full of Indian knick-knacks. The memory-camera slides across
an entire row of dolls with black braids, quietly bedded
in their sarcophagus-like boxes.
A nasal voice-over:
Yuchi? You know. When I see
Indians...they are...Indians, that's all.
But where do you come from with that accent?
The DS has just passed under a large green road-sign:
For Oklahoma City take a right.
The Sun is at its zenith.
An enormous digital thermometer reads 100? with
99% humidity.
Down-town, inside the furnace, is completely deserted.
Between the skyscrapers, there are only some Blacks
and Indians just hanging around.
Dripping, wetting her lips, her forearm on the wheel,
Medea has a vague look in her eye.
Some chords, Trudell's voice:
Message on the wall...
Something's have to change...
The DS suddenly accelerates, leaving behind the dead center.
Something's have to change
The DS drives slowly by the memorial of the bombing that
destroyed a federal building in 1993, leaving 150 dead.
Another of Trudell's songs:
What happens when you are alone
But you ar'nt alone
The DS is parked in the immense lot of a shopping mall.
Medea walks quickly through the market gallery with its
rococo dÈcor and syrupy music to the surprised eyes of
a quasi-elephant like population moving heavily.
He heart in her throat she walks out.
She drives fast, wind in her hair, accompanying Trudell's song
with her hand beat on the wheel.
You know what you are doing
But you don't
Your soul, your tears,
Your private journey...
What you have done you'll never
do again
A police car in the distance.
She slows down, grimacing.
The same sheriff passes her and looks at her for a long time.
She signals to him.
At the summit of a mast, a red heart from the station LOVE
followed by a sign for Family Dollar.
The strange atmosphere: streets made up entirely of
abandoned stores, buildings, and houses with boarded up windows
immediately
followed by prosperous lawns and country clubs.
At dusk, at an intersection a group of Whites sit on the sidewalk,
harmonium and amplifier turned on, calling to worship God.
Mauve sky and street-lights.
Medea brings a box of cocoa to her lips.
Empty.
The DS stops in front of the neon Budweiser of a little bar.
Pushing the two swinging doors, Medea has a coughing fit:
the very smoky atmosphere and darkness of a room in which
the bar lights and the pool table are nothing but halos.
It is silent. Everyone is looking at her. There are only men.
All Indians. Surprised, she hesitates for a moment then resolutely
heads for the bar.
A mocking voice exclaims:
Look, another one from the race
of toothed idiots!
Heavy laughter.
As if nothing had happened, Medea asks the gigantic and scary bartender for a beer.
Expressionless, he slides a bottle and a glass
in her direction, which passes in front of an old, already tipsy,
Indian.
The pasty drunkard calls out to Medea, who has gotten her order.
Hey ma'am...I am just a little thirsty
If you buy me a drink I'll tell you a good story!
He wiggles his necklace made out of large animal teeth.
The entire room bursts out laughing.
Medea, amused, signals to the barman.
A bottle slides.
The future tale teller vigorously washed it right down.
Thanks ma'am...
He winks at her and touches his necklace.
You know how I got it?
The laughter increases.
Medea, willing to play along:
It's the story, isn't it?
But I'd like to try...
She has already held out her hand.
Taken aback, embarrassed, the old man slowly removes it
and gives it to her.
Sarcastic murmuring in the room.
She feels the teeth for a long time with her fingers
Medea's voice:
Whoa! A nice coyote!
Not true?
The Indian, with a malicious tone,
Heh, no ma'am...it's the coyote who...
The chuckling that had started up again stops suddenly.
Medea has just placed the necklace at the height of her sex.
But it's been ages now that chickens
haven't had teeth.
The entire room is speechless.
Trembling, the Indian lifts his hand and
slaps it on Medea's, who had expected as much.
The entire bar screams with laughter
The headlights of the DS light up the faÁade Tsoya'ha's house,
plunged into darkness .
Onos and Dingo patiently wait for her...
10. Flesh of the Gods
The chaotic living room with its raft-like sofa on which Medea
abundantly sleeps under a lit lamp, just like the jackass and the dog at her feet.
Headlights. A motor shuts off.
The door squeaks, a silhouette with a hat moves forward.
The DS drives in the night. Tsoya'ha is at the wheel.
Medea is at his side, Sink, Onos and Dingo in the back.
Trudell's music:
Why why why?
This happening to her.
She is not guilty
She needs to bloom
Oh Lord Oh Jesus
What is she doing
to do it now?
The headlights in the holes of a beaten-up path.
An immense wall of yellow grass.
On the inside of a sort of igloo
made of skin and branches
--a sweat lodge--in dense steam,
Medea, Tsoya'ha and Sink, accompanied by
three other Indians, are panting with sweat.
One of the men throws a ladleful of water on a hearth
of glowing embers. A cloud absorbs them.
They are dripping in t-shirts.
Their breathing is heavy and whistles.
The men chant softly with guttural voices.
Medea, suffocating, grasps onto Tsoya'ha's arm
and pinches it until it bleeds.
He grabs her body and lifts her, violently pulling
her out of the lodge.
Breathing deeply, standing under the moon,
Tsoya'ha takes Medea in his arms, and looks
into the distance.
Medea, silent, calm, her breathing regular,
contemplates him in silence.
They are alone with the crackling of a large fire and
the yapping of coyotes.
In an ochre ravine, a dozen of them sit in a circle around
the hearth.
They pass a terra-cotta pot and takes turns dipping
a ladle and bringing it to their lips: peyote.
Each swallow brings a reddening grimace.
Lighting streaks the sky.
Onos passes by.
One of them gets up suddenly.
Spasms and vomiting.
Their bodies become deformed silhouettes that lay down.
The sun-man and moon-man puppets wake up like lively fireflies.
The sun-man goes toward the flames, making them dance on his fingertips.
The moon-man seems to command the shadows, which he molds,
forms or dissolves, as is his wont.
A choreography of light and shadow that play with each other,
illogical, diabolical in an ark full of improbable creatures.
Sink's voice:
She is genius and purple in death,
and mimics her hands of smoke
and powdered bones,
and gambles clot against clock.
Blinks her eyelid of rocking chair
as creaking dust,
and swills the bitter white root, entangled
around her perfumed wrist of moist dirts.
Tsoya'ha's face lit up by the yellow sun rises up.
Sink's face in the half-moon follows.
Then, the face of an Indian woman looms, lit by a blood-red sun.
It is the furious Sun-woman, Juanita Crossing Killer.
This grave trinity, fades like a dream.
The phantoms of Onos and of numerous children pass
by in a non-stop racket.
She remembers her children, walking
backwards over slategray coffins
in a far winter,
and mucous slung from fingertips
of an artic shadow.
What was the name of the first to fall ?
Was it " Squid at night "
or " Seashell in dream " ?
(under the effects of peyote, Medea replays her murderous
temptation. Chenley canyon. 2 cameras and a balloon.
The children and the ass are linked with very long strings,
like puppets)
Onos's ringing braying suddenly dissipates all of these clouds.
Under an immense turquoise sky, on an immense ochre earth,
like Malevich's figures, Onos's trotting silhouette moves
inexorably forward toward an enormous dark scar, followed
by a crowd of twirling children.
She is often
a canyon that cries and severs the eye
and leaves a red wound, deep as slashed meat,
exposed muscle and bone of dry hills, covered
with horses ribs, bleached and blue sage.
The sky lays belly down and watches
The ass sings outs.
The farandole of children do not let go of him.
The flying camera approaches, as does the scar, which proves
to be a crack, a precipice.
Onos, like the merry little Indians, heads straight for the precipice.
her body of water in blackened orbs, cattails
and willows, dust of pods near the whining fence,
where hides and feathers grow fetid
with ether and scalding winds.
An enormous open mouth screams
Medea's voice:
NO! ONOS! NO!
Two simultaneous lightning bolts light a landscape on which everything has frozen.
Everything goes white.
A blue dragonfly escapes her mouth
and drones past her sallow ear.
In a gesture of recognition, Tsoya'ha's hand
grips Medea's wrist.
Tsoya'ha gets up, Medea is sleeping serenely
on the grass.
Tsoya'ha covers her delicately with a very strange skin:
the skin of a DS.
11. Walkers of Beauty
A perfectly flat horizon in the light of the rising sun
seven Cadillacs planted vertically into the earth wait
like toys left by a facetious divine hand, already rusted
monoliths, their end after the fall.
Sixth day, Bushland Texas
In this geometric working drawing,
there is a gas-station where the DS has stopped
Tsyoa'ha abandons a phone booth,
Medea is driving, Onos is in the back-seat.
Tosya'ha gets in the car and hands a photograph
of two smiling Indian children to Medea.
Tsoya'ha's voice:
My sons...in prison for a few months
nNow because of a something rotten.
One of their white friends was armed
and killed before their eyes.
They were accused of being accomplices.
I have to find the money for the trial,
let's go!
The DS turns onto Interstate 40, going west.
It is nothing but
a white speck on a black line cutting through a stubbly yellow
monochrome under a uniform blue.
Indian chanting + John Trudell's voice
Like an electric Indian
doing his John Wayne
Lightning near the mountains in the distance.
The savage beauty of a country of rocks and scrub.
At an intersection there is a strictly forbidden road leading toward
a nuclear waste dump.
The DS drives under a green panel:
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Trudell's music:
Rich man's war, industrial street
Free man society, nuclear man
Central america bleeding and Palestine
The poor starving for food for real
Rich man's war, attacking you tomorrow
Human lies
Industrial priest...
The DS parks in front of an industrial hangar where several
monumental sculptures are in place:
A small metallic cloud, like an ironic sign at the top of
a tall post.
A sort of tank made solely out of large steel breasts.
Tsoya'ha goes into the open building.
Medea, intrigued, feels the strange armored vehicle.
A man who is in the middle of soldering stops and, lifting
his visor--he is an Indian--moves happily toward his visitor
who he greets with a strong slap on the shoulder.
Tsoya'ha introduces Medea to the sculptor who bursts out
laughing at the sight of Onos
But, it's one of my works come to life!
They laugh.
While the two men talk, a curious Medea sits down
in an enormous iron rocking chair decorated with
little cut up airplanes.
Tsoya'ha and the Indian come closer.
Medea invites Tsoya'ha to take her place.
He starts rocking impassively.
In his unyielding rocking he is the flesh and steel image
from the screen on the Montparnasse Tower.
The Indian--off:
Tsoya'ha has always liked my nuclear chair...
The eagle camera in a vertical sweep along a
black rock face up to its sharp tip
A lava pyramid in the middle of a flat and
naked desert
Tse Be Dah, Rock with Wings Navajo Territory, NM
The minuscule DS drives by its base.
Trudell's music:
No more than neon flash
We have to face what we really are
In some points we have no choice
Distant stars, distant lights
In real world we are human beings
In shadow of real world
We were being human
The DS stops in front of an isolated house.
We can still see the rock on the horizon.
Tsoya'ha gets out. A woman appears at the door
They greet each other, exchange a few words.
Tsoya'ha gets back in the car.
The DS starts up.
Tsoya'ha is driving. Medea turns around, having contemplated
the winged rock, between Onos's ears, that is growing
further away.
Tsoya'ha:
We'll find Larry
at the tribal council of Window Rock...
One of his sons is in prison with mine.
Maybe the Navajo nation will help us.
The landscape is still as deserted and majestic
Trudell's voice:
Distant thunder, distant cloud
A patient rain
What we take is hard to do
What we do is hard to take
Dreaming some kind of life
We said it could be different
But it wasn't
The DS has slowed down. Tsoya'ha stops the cassette.
He stops at an Indian sitting on a slope, his head bobbing,
an empty bottle of wine in his hand. Tsoya'ha gets out
and crouches down next to him
Tsoya'ha:
Hey brother, are you okay?
The other mumbles in Navajo.
Medea helps Tsoya'ha put him on the seat with Onos.
The Indian, half out of it, lets them.
The DS takes off again.
Suddenly the Navajo becomes agitate and screams:
What's that?
Onos has just licked his face.
Tsoya'ha and Medea laugh.
Tsoya'ha:
Don't worry brother!
You've just had a bit too much to drink!
Trudell's voice:
Something start good and will be bad
Something start bad and stay bad
Living a liar or not living at all
The DS enters a housing project of pre-fabricated buildings:
LukachukaÔ. Uranium mine.
They stop in front of an faÁade with a huge sign :
Navajo Miner's Union.
There is a poster on the window with the heading:
Rights for the Contaminated
The Navajo thanks them and, laughing, taps Onos on the neck.
Wow, I was really plastered.
He goes inside.
The DS is still running beautifully--a Navajo expression
Tsoya'ha:
Cheap wine...When I was 15,
on Saturday nights my friends and I
always used to go drink in secret
in a small canyon off the Bristow exit.
Medea looks at him, questioning
He smiles, ironically
Oh even little Indians
can get bored
A horse running at a gallop comes toward them in a great cloud
of red dust.
Two cheerful children are on top of him.
The DS slows down, it stops.
The two little Navajos are very excited by the DS and Onos,
and are already touching the latter.
Their white and brown spotted mustang seems doubtful about
his red cousin.
Tsoya'ha rubs his neck and, with a quick movement,
straddles him bare back.
The mustang rears. The children laugh.
Tsoya'ha makes him turn around in the other direction.
Tsoya'ha holds out his hand.
Medea has already grasped it. She finds herself riding
side-saddle, holding on tight.
They are already far away, abandoning the DS,
Onos and his keepers.
The eagle-camera slowly moves down the cobalt sky
to two peaks of scarlet rock.
Medea and Tsoya'ha are in a large wheeled carriage that
slowly catches up to the mechanical whirlpool of a
dozen fair attractions. They get down and force their
way through an enormous crowd of Indians.
The cries of bodies whirling through the air combines with
the dull beating of drums and the strident songs of traditional
dances, nasal voices commentating rodeos and other contests
(jewelry, rug-making, fry bread) can be heard on speakers.
All of the Navajo people in their most beautiful attire, necks,
chests, wrists decorated with giant necklaces in turquoise
and silver have come together for their great annual fair.
Tsoya'ha and Medea walk toward an elegant construction
in the form of a Hogan, or traditional Navajo house,
which shelters the Tribal Council. The horizon is nothing
more that a red rock wall with a large circular opening
in the middle through which the azure sky radiates:
Window Rock.
Onos's ears stick up out of the crowd that has gathered around
the DS parked in front of the office.
Medea takes Tsoya'ha by the arm:
While you are with Larry
I am going to offer them a good surprise.
Medea splits the crowd and stands next to Onos.
She slides
a DVD screen out vertically, and turns it on.
The crowd says "Ahhhh" when they see the gadget.
Tsoya'ha gives her a thumbs up before crossing
the steps of the Council.
Alain Cuny, a feather stuck through his wig, and Serge Regianni,
dressed only in a loincloth, roll their fake Indian eyes at
the General Custer of an operetta.
The public is incredulously silent.
Reggiani, grotesque, scoops up some kind of paste and puts it
on his face.
The first sounds of laughter.
Gunfire.
Catherine Deneuve has just been shot through her fine,
white neck with a bow and arrow. Her death is punctuated
by a very mannered "Oh!"
Huge laughter.
Don't touch the white woman, Marco Ferreri.
|
12. Final Sunset
An Indian horseman with long black hair
and a white puffy shirt brandishes
a tomahawk, screaming.
The image freezes.
A younger Tsoya'ha, it seems.
A large copper hand turns off the screen.
Tsoya'ha, who is sitting next to Onos,
pets his muzzle.
The DS is riding along, Medea alone in the front,
a six-lane highway.
Tsoya'ha to Onos:
I wasn't bad as a mean savage, huh?
A sign: Hollywood, next right.
The camera-eye of Onos slides over the
stars on the sidewalk of Sunset boulevard.
A crowd of feet.
On the right, on the left, he touches these
dream names on which everyone lightly steps.
Sneakers, sandals, flip-flops...
Sink's voice:
She flexes her ankle, where tiny bones
sing as graveyard hymn of rabid faces
pressed against the day, leaving
frothy bits of foam. She is entombed
with roaring embers inside her mouth,
they are stars and fingers, rippling
through scalps of trees, and smooth
the scars and lesions with spit
of silken web.
Onos's camera-eye has moved up from these feet stepping
on the dead gods to the bodies onto which are (surprise)
attached dumbfounded faces.
Yes, they all look at him, the gift of Zeus.
Yes, they cannot get over his DS and wild companions.
Yes, in the very artery of the dream factory, in the heart
of the Empire, they only have eyes for them, sent from
the gods, too human animals, too animal humans, barbarians.
She remembers the sun, and the time
she fell from its center of carbon.
Was she a diamond awakened in fire
and strung together with tongues
of pointed rain, exhumed as crows
recalling their oily black
With a violent squealing of the tires,
a car slams on the breaks at an intersection.
The driver stares at them, stunned.
as dwellings of blood. (One lies rotting
in the field, poisoned without us )
Another sound of brakes.
Then a third.
A shock, a crash of metal.
The faces go by very quickly now.
The DS speeds up. Sunset Blvd.
has become sinuous.
Another intersection, two pick-ups crash
into each other.
They are attraction, desolation.
They are the wild anarchy that strips the boulevard of its artifice.
They are the real Suns.
Behind them, at the last intersection, several chassis are on fire.
The noise of the shocks grown louder.
After a traffic circle they stop at a gas station with sputtering neon lights:
Last Sunset.
The attendant, a huge Indian wearing too small overalls has rushed over to them,
enthusiastic about the spectacle of the cars, which like flies to flypaper,
bounce onto each other and start to form a shiny pile.
He has hardly served them when he is already congratulating them
by slapping the back-side of the DS. With the tube still in his hand,
he climbs like a crazy man onto the pump and takes out his lighter,
spurting out gasoline and in a gigantic and splendid ejaculation of fire,
he burns the chaotic load of fresh metal.
The DS is already in the distance, going in the direction
of an enormous setting sun:
Sink's voice:
She cannot return,
nor dreams upon wakeful seas,
nor can she regurgitate her children bones
as she wishes, to cradle the femur
the scapula, the crooked spine who laughed
so much, she smells their sweat to her
fingertips and turns her face away from us
and we are no more.
Medea's voice:
It's for you that my bloody
hand has woven these intertwined garlands
It's for you that on this bloody grass
I offer a solemn sacrifice
For you that a torch ripped from the heart of
a funeral pyre has lit up these nocturnal fires.
Through the flames of an immense fire, the silhouettes of Medea
and Tsoya'ha, hair in the wind, Onos, ears perked up, and
their courier, DS go toward the red Sun, toward their origin,
the Sun-woman.
They evaporate there.
The Sun-woman has become the Iris-woman.
Blood Iris.
In her dark abyss, a reflection rocks, singing.
A very red robin redbreast on its cage swing
A magic robin redbreast
A magic and mechanical robin redbreast,
who just needs a little oil.
Epilogue
The Song of the Robin Red-Breast
The Yuchi people, like all of their sister tribes,
ancient people, were deported from Georgia to Oklahoma
via the route of tears, on which half of them would die in 1839.
Today, they still have to struggle:
for the official recognition that they are an autonomous people,
for their unique language, which is disappearing,
for their ceremonial sites,
for the right to be themselves, free in the heart of America.
Today there are 2000,
Proud to be Yuchi,
Like their 200,000 Navajo brothers,
and all of their Indian brothers and sisters at the heart of the Empire.
|