WEBVTT

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The rituals must be recorded.

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This is an annotated mural
reproduction of a carving

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on Lintel 25, from structure 23,
in Yaxchilan, Chiapas, Mexico,

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from 725 AD.

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The original carving was
by an unknown Maya artist

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nicknamed Cookie Cutter
Master by scholars.

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This installation
was a collaboration

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with Gabriel Garcia Roman.

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And I took the picture.

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This is from this residency on
Governors Island, with LMCC.

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The scholars tell me this
is Lady K'abal Xook, wearing

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the fat, rounded, cross-like
emblem of her Lord, Shield

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Jaguar, on her huipil,
her dress, the cloth.

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In this drawing of a 1,500-year
doorway carving in what is now

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Mexico, she is looking up at the
vision of herself as a warrior

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goddess.

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The goddess version
of her emerges

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from the mouth of a snake, made
from the smoke of her blood,

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let from her tongue by a rope.

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The bloody robe and the cloth
burning in a bowl before her.

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The vision serpent,
smoke snake, Kʼawiil.

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A scholar told me
it is white-boned.

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What scholars tell you
is subject to change.

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It is a ritual recorded upon
the accession of Shield Jaguar

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to the throne.

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He is taking his place.

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The lady honors it
with this vision rite.

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The sculptor scribe honors
it with this carving.

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The ritual must be recorded.

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We might never know
its full meaning.

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I am mostly about the vision
serpent because who wouldn't be?

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Look at it in its gaping maw.

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It has a double head.

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I used to think the warrior
was part of the snake,

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but I wasn't
looking well enough.

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The scholarship means
looking closer and closer,

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re-seeing, getting a
better vision to work from,

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a sharper picture,
a clearer drawing.

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I am here to get closer.

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How a vision is made,
how an image is made,

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how writing is made from image,
how a story is made from sight,

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how we've been telling
this story for a long time,

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we've been doing this forever,
how we were some of the first

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to do it.

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I say we because I think I'm
these people on the wall.

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And I will believe I am their
blood for as long as I bleed.

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My blood burning on a rope, in
the smoke, I see them as me.

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I'm on bent knee, bent
neck, in my huipil,

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looking up at the warrior
goddess version of me.

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I bow backward before
the spear I brandish.

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I'm delirious from the
blood leaving my tongue.