We wait until we hold the paired face cards. Court Cards in alignment. The Power. Artaud's exhibit late in his life at the Galerie Pierre. The portraits he'd drawn weren't meant as works of art, but attempts at expressing "the ancient human history" imprisoned in the human face.
Traditionally, the tepee lining outlined the history of the tribe in pictographs. Since we'd arrived, Gabriele had been busy drawing portraits of all our shantytown neighbors onto mailbags. They now lined the inside completely. The tepee itself she had sewn out of 78 mailbags, the number of cards in a Tarot deck. She had interpreted and illustrated all the Minor Arcana. The portraits were the court cards evolving into the Major Arcana.
I argue with the tourista from Florida. NO PICTURES, PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE. But this particular argument almost has me convinced. He needs to video tape the giant tepee in the center of a shantytown in Manhattan with the World Trade Center in the background... "If my friends in Florida see it in the news, they won't believe it. They'll think it's a movie set or something that the news is trying to present as real. But if I show them my videotape, they'll believe me. Are you a real Indian?"
The touristas and journalists are relentless with their pictures. The journalists, especially those with the big cannons like CNN and the networks, we have to threaten physically. More, we need our own camera to record the confrontation. If push comes to shove, they will be the news story as much as we. With touristas, we've found a different tactic. Everyone in the shantytown has a disposable camera. We call it "Counting Coup." The idea is that if you see a tourista trying to get a shot, you sneak up and capture them with your own snapshot. Then you say, "Hello." And when they turn to look at you, you record their expressions point blank. "Gotcha!" Gabriele takes these dozens of developed prints of confused, angry, embarrassed faces, sews them into fur pieces and hangs them from the scalp pole in front of the tepee.
Peter Jennings in a shantytown doesn't look or sound like an "anchor." For one thing, he wears glasses. Also, his hair is all messed and he always apologizes for bringing his celebrity friends up to visit the tepee. This time he has brought Jessica and Hume. The anchor knows that actors and actresses, the famous ones, are America's royalty. Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses, we get to know whom they're marrying or divorcing, what scandals involve them, etc. Booths, Barrymores, Fondas, Redgraves. Divine Right. It's in the blood.
Jessica has something in her eye and is very uncomfortable, but Hume has a big smile. A little gnome, he asks if it's alright to light up his pipe in the tepee. For a second, I'm thinking maybe he's the Medicine Man I've been waiting for, but the pipe and the pouch he brings out are the normal, the habitual. The anchor, however, is all ceremonial now. "You can tell, by just looking at the portraits, why they put up the tepee..."
