ABSTRACT
Motorcyclers, food trucks, and revelers gather at the known starting spot. Some people operate small carts peddling soda, brown liquor, snacks, and the like position themselves. Eric Waters is an icon among the photographers there. He has witnessed the preparations at the center of these communal struts and celebrations and historical cultural rhythms. For many outside the city or the culture, the French Quarter and Mardis Gras emblematizes New Orleans and its creole history and architecture. Bodies are in motion. Marchers dress and change outfits. Masking Indian suits might take almost a year to make and cost thousands of dollars. Mythophonic in character, then, would be those orientations of speech, music, dance, and nonverbal communication that could survive that “tortured passage of flesh” and, as best they could, reconstitute in the new world the values and perspectives of the old.
