Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Eucalyptus

I have heard Sydney described as Los Angeles' east coast. It might have been part of a joke about the number of Australian actors (NIDA graduates at that) who now work in Hollywood. Or Australians in general: it's not just actors. I notice a 'presence'.

Besides which, there are gum trees everywhere. Over the top of my mental map of old ranches, villages, missions, and stars' homes, I could begin to lay a map of Australian regional references based on the Australian native trees that I see: "Oh, look there's a sideroxylon. I haven't seen one of those since Wangaratta."

The other day in Santa Monica I saw what looked like River Red Gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) and was reminded of Adelaide or indeed Alice Springs where they sit in the dry river beds.



I saw this smooth-trunked species Downtown and almost thought of it as another of my "cultural conjunctions". The background is the Standard Oil Company building.


This white-flowering species (Nicholii? Look close) was sighted down near where Topanga Canyon comes out at Malibu.
 

This specimen was in a suburban garden in Encino.


In Silver Lake, I saw a yellow-flowering eucalypt that I last saw as a street tree in Alice Springs. Its natural habitat is on the West Australian goldfields.


How could I ever be homesick in this inverse of Oz? On the other hand, what if, in some sinister universe, there was a American equivalent of Murray Bail's Mr Holland (the lead character in his novel, Eucalyptus), who wouldn't let me go back to Australia until I could name and map every species in Los Angeles County!? Could be worse fates.

At UCLA
Also, at UCLA.

Outside Royce Hall, scene of Schoenberg premieres. See why UCLA reminds me of ANU?



If you liked this blog, others of mine on Los Angeles are:

A daily reminder, 1 April 2011
When you take a closer look, 21 April 2011
The frame (thoughts on the Getty Center), 24 April 2011
A light on the hill (the Reagan Library), 30 April 2011
A couple of snapshots (Malibu and the Valley), 1 May 2011
More to love about LA, 6 Jan 2012
Walking with stars, 10 Apr 2012
En plein air and a little elan, 16 Nov 2012
LA Substantial, 18 Jan 2013
City of Angels, 20 Jan 2013
City of Nets? City of Dreams, 31 Jan 2013
Rounding off - LA vignettes, 2 Feb 2013
Loving the architectural reminders of old Los Angeles, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjuntions, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjunctions II, 6 Feb 2013

Non-linear lessons, 7 Feb 2013
More than whimsy - Contemporary Art, 8 Feb 2013
Life and movies?, 10 Feb 2013
But, whimsy indeed, 12 Feb 2013
Pockets of charm, 13 Feb 2013
La Reina de los angeles, 18 Feb 2013

Others of mine on Australia are:

Considering the aboriginal land of Altjira, 20 May 2012
Opera in a land of Song, 29 July 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Virginia in the Desert, 10 Sep 2012
 Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow's The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
A trip through the yellow inland, 6 Jan 2013
Observations from the Hill, 12 Jan 2013
City of Nets? City of Dreams, 31 Jan 2013

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Urban Light - old Los Angeles

I wrote the other day (8 Feb 2013) of Chris Burden's installation Urban Light at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; of how it must evoke nostalgia in old Angelenos with its display of charming old LA streetlamps.

But this old Los Angeles still exists. It may be a bit ratty, but Los Angeles still sounds echoes of its former lovely self, and you'll still find these charming hangovers of these earlier days in downtown LA:


Main Street, City Hall in the distance

Across from City Hall

and even in some of the classier suburbs, like Montrose:



Friday, February 22, 2013

Cultural conjunctions III




To the right, gum trees and a copy of Houdon's statue of George Washington, Los Angeles City Hall in the background. But we're a long way from Washington's America, not to mention Australia...

Answer

Which of the following Hollywood actors has composed a symphony?
 

- Clint Eastwood
- Shirley Temple
- Mickey Rooney
- Russell Crowe
- Alec Baldwin


The answer is Mickey Rooney. As Dorothy Lamb Crawford writes in her book, A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Emigres and Exiles in Southern California (pp.31-32): "Americans amongst filmdom's celebrities of the time - notably composers George Gershwin, the recently arrived George Antheil, and composer-actor Lionel Barrymore - also supported and welcomed the musicians fleeing Hitler's Europe. Barrymore and Mickey Rooney would both study composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and each would produce a symphony."

Of course, Clint Eastwood conceives the music for his films, and Shirley Temple and Russell Crowe have both sung on film. Alec Baldwin is radio series host (or 'announcer in chief') for the New York Philharmonic. But they haven't composed symphonies so far as I know.
 

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Monday, February 18, 2013

La Reina de los angeles


Quite a bit of the local LA news the other night (continuing through a couple of ad breaks in fact) focussed on the imminent retirement of Pope Benedict XVI. It made a change from the stories about the manhunt for Christopher Dorner up at Big Bear, or stories about a football code I haven't yet developed an obsession for.

Yet, it also made me think that there must a lot of Angelenos who would be interested in this. Los Angeles, or at least the Valley, is part-Mexico. I practise by reading the signs on the buses - Personas mayores e incapacitadas tienen prioridad de asiento. And most of the Spanish-speakers, I guess, will be Catholic. This is quite a nice coincidence because I've been familiarising myself with Catholicism as part of my research into the opera, Philippa. One of the paintings that particularly attracted me at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was a rendering of the Virgin of Guadelupe.


I realise that this image is a template and that there are other versions (this is not the County Museum's). No doubt there is someone somewhere who is an expert on images of the Virgin of Guadalupe and can distinguish between the quality of the various artistic renderings. But I like the piety which leads to mugs in 99c Stores on Sherman Way displaying the image. It makes me think about Los Angeles in a different way.

Last year, heading down to San Diego, I saw this by the side of the freeway -



- a big red cross through the Hollywood sign - Hollywood as Sodom and Gomorrah to the Religious Right.

Yes, Los Angeles is freeways and smog and if you focus on the street maybe it's cluttered and congested.

Van Nuys Boulevard, San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles
But see the surrounding mountains turning bright pink at sunset, and you'll realise that we could call these mountains Sangre de Cristo, just as easily as the range in Colorado. And you may even recall, while watching a shootout up at Big Bear on the CBS Nightly News or waiting nearly an hour for the 239, that the city on what Southerners disdain as "America's Left Coast" was named for the queen of angels. It's an intriguing other aspect to Los Angeles.

To read more on the opera Philippa:

1. - 16 Sep 2012 - an account of my initial thoughts on Philippa, when I was attempting to convey a more comprehensive trajectory of her life
2. - 18 Sep 2012 - containing Act I of a revised scenario, beginning the action in Vietnam
3. - 25 Sep 2012 - containing my revised scenario
4. - 7 Oct 2012 - one-page synopsis, to make sure such a story can fit into "two hours' traffic on the stage"
5. - Becoming a Harlemite, Vietnamese and Catholic 10 Oct, 2012 - detailing some of the research I'll be doing
6. - A Harlem Tradition? 20 Oct 2012 - detailing Harlem interest in white culture
7. - Sacrifice? 21 Oct 2012 - considering the nature of Philippa's death and whether it was self-sacrifice
8. - Classical aspirations 30 Oct 2012 - looking at Harlem's attitude to classical music in the age of Philippa
9. - Montagnards and Lowlanders 1 Nov 2012 - looking at some of Philippa's writing from Vietnam
10. - A sobering thought, 13 Nov 2012 - recognising the prevalence of lynching in the US until well into the 20th century
11 -  Words, words, words, 11 Dec 2012 - considering whether Latin should be one of Philippa's languages given that catholic services, even late into the 1960s, would not yet have been in the vernacular.
12 - End of the rebirth, 20 Dec 2012 - some thoughts on the end of the Harlem Renaissance around the time of Philippa's birth.
13 - What Puccini would have looked for, 26 Dec 2012 - examining the theatricality of the Philippa synopsis

Other blogs of mine on Los Angeles are:

A daily reminder, 1 April 2011
When you take a closer look, 21 April 2011
The frame (thoughts on the Getty Center), 24 April 2011
A light on the hill (the Reagan Library), 30 April 2011
A couple of snapshots (Malibu and the Valley), 1 May 2011
More to love about LA, 6 Jan 2012
Walking with stars, 10 Apr 2012
En plein air and a little elan, 16 Nov 2012
LA Substantial, 18 Jan 2013
City of Angels, 20 Jan 2013
City of Nets? City of Dreams, 31 Jan 2013
Rounding off - LA vignettes, 2 Feb 2013
Loving the architectural reminders of old Los Angeles, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjunctions, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjunctions II, 6 Feb 2013

Non-linear lessons, 7 Feb 2013
More than whimsy - Contemporary Art, 8 Feb 2013
Life and movies?, 10 Feb 2013
But, whimsy indeed, 12 Feb 2013
Pockets of charm, 13 Feb 2013

Sunday, February 17, 2013

A Quiz


Which of the following Hollywood actors has composed a symphony?
 

- Clint Eastwood
- Shirley Temple
- Mickey Rooney
- Russell Crowe
- Alec Baldwin

Contrasts

LA: - I love that there is snow in "them thar hills"


not even an hour's drive from the sun and warmth and backyard (or frontyard) citrus trees in the San Fernando Valley.




Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Pockets of charm


The thing is, Los Angeles is a conurbation of lots of different areas which grew into urban spaces from some other origin - Tarzana was Edgar Rice Burrough's ranch. If you say you don't like it, which part do you mean? Have you walked around Angeleno Heights, NoHo, Toluca Lake, Encino...? I keep noting that Los Angeles must have been overwhelmingly beautiful in the early years of the 20th century and when the former-Vienna Conservatory professor Vicki Baum came here in 1931 to assist on the filming of her novel, Grand Hotel she said, "I stayed drunk for weeks with this sun and air and the beauty of the hills." You can still see this Los Angeles, as for example we did in Westwood, near UCLA, last week.


Percy Parke Lewis's 1931 Fox Theater, Westwood

Even amidst the anonymous glass towers of modern corporate architecture, you can see the hills and palms and 1920s peeping through.

Looking up Westwood Blvd across Willshire
If you liked this blog, others of mine on Los Angeles are:

A daily reminder, 1 April 2011
When you take a closer look, 21 April 2011
The frame (thoughts on the Getty Center), 24 April 2011
A light on the hill (the Reagan Library), 30 April 2011
A couple of snapshots (Malibu and the Valley), 1 May 2011
More to love about LA, 6 Jan 2012
Walking with stars, 10 Apr 2012
En plein air and a little elan, 16 Nov 2012
LA Substantial, 18 Jan 2013
City of Angels, 20 Jan 2013
City of Nets? City of Dreams, 31 Jan 2013
Rounding off - LA vignettes, 2 Feb 2013
Loving the architectural reminders of old Los Angeles, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjuntions, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjunctions II, 6 Feb 2013

Non-linear lessons, 7 Feb 2013
More than whimsy - Contemporary Art, 8 Feb 2013
Life and movies, 10 Feb 2013
But, whimsy indeed, 12 Feb 2013
Pockets of charm, 13 Feb 2013


Tuesday, February 12, 2013

But whimsy, indeed

I love this commercial architecture of times gone by, which still had time for huge decorative elements. (On Ventura Boulevard.)


See also the Liquor Shop, post of 4 Feb.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Life and movies?

These street trees from around the San Fernando Valley remind me of a set in a Tim Burton movie. And then I read that Burton came from Burbank, not far from here...







Friday, February 8, 2013

More than whimsy - Contemporary Art

A giant beachball in a space the size of an aircraft hangar? I've long been sceptical of Contemporary Art. I have always doubted that it had true depth - its point is often too obvious - and I've considered its best quality whimsy. But I remember how Sydneysiders loved Jeff Koons' Puppy some 15 years ago as the 12-metre structure stood for months gradually flowering outside the Museum for Contemporary Art. I know that people love this whimsy. The Contemporary exhibits are often the most fun.

This quality must to some extent explain the appeal of Contemporary Art to school children. There is a terrific installation at the Eli and Edythe Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Metropolis II by Chris Burden features about 1,100 specially-made Hot Wheels-sized cars zooming around at the scale equivalent of 240-miles per hour through 18 lanes of 'roadway' in a miniature Lego-like city. Ten thousand cars negotiate the system in an hour. When we were at the Museum, a couple of classes of schoolchildren were angling themselves around the structure, fascinated for minutes on end.

By the way, the Broads after whom this building is named, also endow Placido Domingo's position at the Los Angeles Opera. This is typical of the type of US arts patronage I wrote about last year (Noblesse oblige - arts philanthropy in US classical music, 26 Oct 2012); you find the same names cropping up - David Geffen, Mark Taper...


But I've started to realise that there are ways in which Contemporary Art may express something deeper than whimsy.

When I saw Christian Marclay's The Clock at the MCA in Sydney early last year, I was understandably knocked out by the skill and stamina that would have gone into making it - a 24-hour compilation of short movie sequences (gotta be around 1,440 of them), extracted from world cinema over the past 100 years and focussing on the time shown on clocks on the set (how did Marclay 'proof' it?). But I remember the emotion I experienced when I realised that every single outtake was showing the real time at that second or minute - Gary Cooper at High Noon, Patrick Macnee as John Steed from The Avengers looking at his pocket watch at 12.05, a bit of Picnic at Hanging Rock at 12.07. I was amused and awed. But also moved - because what these outtakes showed, apart from what time it was, was what we all seem to be doing at certain hours the world over: having an evening drink, unwinding for the day...It was strangely unifying. I could imagine that Metropolis II has deeper associations (and dare I say 'resonance') for the denizens of a city criss-crossed by freeways.

And yet, there is another Chris Burden installation at the County Museum that I found even more affecting and which I imagine must speak poignantly to Angelenos. Urban Light is a structure consisting of 202 old Los Angeles street lamps.

I've sometimes thought that Los Angeles must have been a very, very beautiful city in the early years of the 20th century. These street lamps are echoes of those days. What must this installation say to old Angelenos, who remember an earlier LA? Here we enter the realm of nostalgia and shared experience - Contemporary Art which is about something the viewer has experienced; not just about the artist expressing him or herself or commenting on art itself. We made our observations to one of the guides and he agreed, recalling something which must have been an old saying when he was a kid. "That's right," he said. "'Be inside before streetlamps out'."



If you liked this blog, others of mine on Los Angeles are:

A daily reminder, 1 April 2011
When you take a closer look, 21 April 2011
The frame (thoughts on the Getty Center), 24 April 2011
A light on the hill (the Reagan Library), 30 April 2011
A couple of snapshots (Malibu and the Valley), 1 May 2011
More to love about LA, 6 Jan 2012
Walking with stars, 10 Apr 2012
En plein air and a little elan, 16 Nov 2012
LA Substantial, 18 Jan 2013
City of Angels, 20 Jan 2013
City of Nets? City of Dreams, 31 Jan 2013
Rounding off - LA vignettes, 2 Feb 2013
Loving the architectural reminders of old Los Angeles, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjuntions, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjunctions II, 6 Feb 2013

Non-linear lessons, 7 Feb 2013
More than whimsy - Contemporary Art, 8 Feb 2013
Life and movies, 10 Feb 2013
But, whimsy indeed, 12 Feb 2013
Pockets of charm, 13 Feb 2013

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Non-linear lessons

Some years ago I learnt not to listen to Beethoven's Emperor Concerto from the beginning. I'd heard it so often I would vague out, find myself compiling tomorrow's shopping list or something, before the end of the exposition. I'd be lulled into a dream by the predictable unfolding of the familiar landscape. Catching snatches of the piece coming out of the open window of someone's living room, however, or absent-mindedly flicking on a radio gave me a new appreciation of the piece. Why? Because what I'd experience when entering the piece in midstream was the actual hue, the full impact of the piece without the dulling of any mental expectation.

This has got me thinking about the mosaic manner in which we most effectively learn something. I'm getting to know Los Angeles in a similar fashion: "Oh, so if that's Westwood, Beverly Hills must be over there" etc...

This has got to be one of the most lovely confusing places I've ever had to orientate myself in. I think it has something to do with mountains on all sides of the San Fernando valley. I wonder how I can be approaching mountains when I've just left mountains behind. But gradually I've begun to piece the city together (it helps to have gotten used to the sun being in the south of course). I've now got a picture in my head of a coast that goes south-east to north-west, then east-west, and then south-east/northwest again. There is a big ring of mountains sitting on the flat bit of coast (bounding the San Fernando Valley), then to the east of that a break leading to the coastal plain where Downtown and Hollywood etc lie. I got a buzz coming home the other day when I knew we were about to hit the Sepulveda Pass into the Valley and "if my predictions are correct, the Getty Center will be up there on the left. Westwood and UCLA are over there on my right, and Santa Monica is behind us to the left." I'm working on the city inside out, rather as a composer does when he's working on a piece and the entire shape isn't yet (can I say "boringly"?) guaranteed.






Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Cultural conjunctions II


I guess we could always have guessed Hollywood thought so, but I didn't think they'd say so, so blatantly.


Saturday, February 2, 2013

Rounding off - LA vignettes 1

To my Australian ears, conversations here have marked shape. Coming out of a shopping centre in Canoga Park, I held the door open for a couple holding shopping parcels.

"Oh isn't that nice?" said the woman. "They've brought my car around."

"Oh wow," I thought. "Westfield has valet parking?" Then I looked at the car at the kerb and got the joke. It was the white Lamborghini that had been on display inside the mall earlier in the morning. "You had me for a moment," I said. "Nice dream."

"Yeah, nice dream for her; bad dream for me," said her husband.

What is it that makes Angelenos wittily round off conversations? Is it the influence of hundreds of screenwriters floating around town?


If you liked this blog, others of mine on Los Angeles are:

A daily reminder, 1 April 2011
When you take a closer look, 21 April 2011
The frame (thoughts on the Getty Center), 24 April 2011
A light on the hill (the Reagan Library), 30 April 2011
A couple of snapshots (Malibu and the Valley), 1 May 2011
More to love about LA, 6 Jan 2012
Walking with stars, 10 Apr 2012
En plein air and a little elan, 16 Nov 2012
LA Substantial, 18 Jan 2013
City of Angels, 20 Jan 2013
City of Nets? City of Dreams, 31 Jan 2013
The combination of effects, 1 Feb 2013