dedalus_1947 | Entries tagged with arts

Ten minutes ago, I saw you
I looked up when you came through the door
My head started reeling
You gave me the feeling
The room had no ceiling or floor.

Ten minutes ago, I met you
And we murmured our “How do you do’s?”
I wanted to ring out the bells
And fling out my arms
And to sing out the news
“I found her, she’s an angel
With the dust of stars in her eyes
We are dancing, we are flying
And she’s taking me back to the skies”.
(Ten Minutes Ago: Rodgers & Hammerstein – 1957)

An offer from Meg and Lou Samaniego to accept their tickets for the touring Broadway musical Cinderella at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre would have been tempting on its own merits – but offering 6 tickets so as to include our daughter Teresa (Prisa), her husband Joe, and their two girls, made it a necessity. Nothing can compare with the joy of exposing young people to their first taste of live musical theater, and the prospect of actually observing my two granddaughters experience it was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity. Kathy quickly accepted the wonderful gift and immediately called our daughter Prisa to arrange the logistics of the evening. I merely sat back in my chair and allowed the waves of anticipated happiness to sweep over me. This would be a chance to relive the glorious magic of watching a quality musical through the first-time eyes of children.

I’d already witnessed Sarah’s reactions to animated musical movies by Walt Disney since she was 3-years old, watching Frozen for the first time. Her response was visceral and it was hard to keep her in her seat. She seemed to project herself onto the screen and was soon mimicking the actions and songs of the two lead female characters in the story. In the course of that year she watched the movie multiple times and memorized all the songs and actions. Other animated movies were watched over the years, but I couldn’t help wondering how she reacted to LIVE musical theater. Her mother and Kathy had taken her to see the Broadway productions of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, but I had missed out on those occasions. Sarah’s younger sister, Gracie, on the other hand, hadn’t yet seen a musical play, and had responded differently to the animated movies she saw.

There is an inherent curse and blessing in being the second child in the family. On the downside you will never be the FIRST to experience anything, because your sibling has already seen it and done it. The second difficulty is always being compared to your elder, and his/her development and achievements. On the upside, the second child has the gifted advantages of observation, assessment, and the choice to be DIFFERENT and UNIQUE from her sister. This is Gracie in a nutshell. She has never been “a little Sarah”. I stopped comparing them when Gracie was two years old, and she was foiling all the strategies and practices I employed and perfected with Sarah. I had to watch and re-learn with Gracie. It was as if she were doing it on purpose, all the while thinking: “If Sarah did this – I will do that”. It was confusing and sometimes annoying. So I was curious how she would respond to live theater for the first time.

I fell in love with live musical theater when I was 16 years old and a sophomore in high school. Oh, I’d seen musicals before, but they were always movie versions of Oklahoma, Carousel, and West Side Story. It wasn’t until a creative English teacher arranged to take the class to a local production of Meredith Wilson’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown that I was transported into the magical world of live theater. In a storefront space, accompanied solely by a piano player and drummer, a small company of singing actors transformed a tiny stage into multiple locales and settings with a rousing score of songs. I loved it, and never forgot the feelings and sensations I experienced. I stuck with local theater productions through college, seeing them at Royce Hall in UCLA or in Hollywood, like the Fantasticks at the Las Palmas Theatre. While dating Kathleen, I remember going to countless local musical productions directed by her sister Debbie, which included her son Jeff. I really didn’t pay much attention to touring Broadway shows until after the L.A. Music Center was completed in the late 1960’s, and more and more Broadway shows were presented there.

Marrying Kathy brought a whole new dimension to theater going. While I thought I enjoyed live theater, Kathy was passionate about it. She went beyond merely dreaming of seeing Broadway shows and waiting for them to appear in movies. She wanted to see them NOW – despite the ticket cost. If Kathy suggested a show we might see, and I mumbled back, “Sure, that would be great. Whatever you want” – she would have tickets ordered within the week. The first one I remember seeing after we were married was Marvin Hamlisch’s A Chorus Line, when it toured L.A. at the Shubert Theatre in Century City in 1976. A touring hit Broadway musical is a stunning production, and A Chorus Line didn’t disappoint. That evening Kathy and I talked about our responses to the play and promised each other to continue going. We also imagined, for the first time, the wonderful experience of taking our yet-unborn children to see a quality musical production while they were still young.

Kathy was already a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber before we were caught up in the excitement over the Broadway sensation Cats in 1982. We’d seen a production of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Universal Theatre, and loved the music from Evita, but it was the arrival of the touring company of Cats in 1985 that got us thinking about taking the kids. We prepared them by playing a cassette version of the Broadway musical for a month until they knew the songs by heart, and then we bought the tickets. In those days, going to the theater was a special event. We “dressed up” in formal attire, dresses, coats and ties, and scheduled dinner at a nice restaurant near the Shubert. After the meal, we walked to the theatre, anticipating with growing excitement the story we would see that accompanied the songs we had learned. Tony at 7-years of age was more talkative, speculating freely, while Prisa, at five, was more subdued. Normally a girl who scoffed at dresses and “dressing up”, she was very acquiescent to our sartorial wishes that evening and had been remarkably receptive to learning the songs from the play. At first, Kathy and I had debated taking her, thinking her too young. But Prisa was always sensitive to disparate treatment over such special occasions, so we didn’t risk leaving her out. It remained to be seen how she would actually respond to her first exposure to live theater.

We were pretty high up in balcony seats (what Kathy would call “the nose-bleed section”) when the house lights dimmed and then went out, leaving only a single spotlight on stage to illuminate the vast darkness. As the Overture began there was a muffled murmur from the seats below and then a sudden, sharp yelp from Prisa, who was sitting in the aisle seat. Two red eyes danced in front of her, soon revealing a costumed catwoman kneeling by her side. Once the surprise of having two disembodied eyes floating next to you wore off, the costumed cats scampered away on all fours, letting the audience slowly return their attention to the stage. Kathy and I worried for a while, checking on Prisa to see how she recovered from her original shock, but eventually stopped when we saw how the songs, dancing, and actions on stage soon absorbed her attention. From that point on I stopped observing the reactions of the children and became equally absorbed by the play. That first theatrical experience with the kids was a tremendous success. They couldn’t stop talking about the music, the costumes, and those eyes. The only way we could quiet them down after we drove home and prepared them for bed was promising we would do it again. That happened 3 years later, when I took them to see Les Miz.

In 1988 when Kathy learned the dates of the Les Miz L.A. tour, she bought the Broadway album and made plans for tickets. However nothing prepared us for the power of the actual drama in combination with its music. I’ve rarely experienced such an overwhelming sensory and emotional musical production. We were literally speechless for a long time before we started talking about it. We also discussed whether or not the kids were ready for this level of dramatic involvement. We decided they were and then moved on to the next question of who should take them. Surprisingly (I thought at the time), Kathy insisted that I take the kids alone and make a special night of it, with dinner and the theater – just them and me. I reluctantly agreed. Kathy is the bon vivant, the talker in the family. She loves to chat, ask questions, and share opinions with her children, family, and strangers. I prefer listening, without volunteering too much information. I had mixed feelings about the evening. On the one hand, I wanted to share this powerful musical with our children so I could watch and measure their reactions; but on the other, I would be solely in charge of conversing and entertaining them on the car rides and dinner without Kathy. It was the first of many future opportunities I would learn to cherish and treasure all my life. That time together became a timeless memory of a fleeting moment in the lives of two children who were both growing up too fast. I tried “morphing” Kathy’s behaviors all night. When we dined at Harry’s Bar and Grill next to the Shubert Theatre, I talked about the play and started asking personal questions about them, what they were doing in school, about their friends, and their plans. It was a wondrous prelude and postscript to one of the finest musical productions of all time. What I didn’t do enough of during the actual play was to watch their faces and their reactions. I only regretted it later when Kathy and I recalled that experience and wondered about their thoughts and their memories of the evening. It was a regret I did not want to repeat with my granddaughters.

Sarah was literally bouncing with excitement when she spotted me walking through the lobby of the W Hotel, across the street from the Pantages Theatre.
“Poppy!” she exclaimed, running and giving me a hug. “We’re going to see Cinderella together.”
“Yes we are”, I replied, catching sight of Gracie who was joining us, followed by her parents. Inspecting the two girls, who were already bubbling over with anticipation, I saw that they were prettily “dressed up” for the theater. They were both wearing sleeveless dresses that evening, and abandoned the popular fad of wearing Disney-inspired princess costumes to storybook productions. Sarah wore a black dress covered with sparkling sequins of differing colors, while Gracie had on a dress with a pink chiffon skirt and black top, highlighted with a large sequined star in the middle. The only real difference was Sarah’s proclivity for adding stylish accessories to complement the occasion or setting – this time eye-catching rainbow sunglasses to crown her blonde hair. There is nothing more contagious than the excitement of children experiencing something new and novel, and their desire to share their feelings about it. They studied the sights, storefronts, and people who were making their way to the theatre, taking special note of other children and how they were dressed. I just listened and watched, taking photos with my cell phone and asking them leading questions to gauge their reactions. Holding out tickets, which Kathy had handed each girl, we entered the theatre and made our way to a private reception area that came with the Samaniego package. From that point on, the evening played out like a kaleidoscope of scenes, expressions, and heightened emotions. Sarah and Gracie sometimes look about as if they were entranced, or they would break into animated conversations with the other adults and children who joined us in the room. Once seated in the theatre, Gracie, sitting between Joe and Prisa, stared, wide-eyed at the stage and set, while Sarah looked around and began talking to the children or adults sitting behind or in front of her. Once the play started, they were both spellbound, rarely taking their eyes off the stage.

It’s a sad fact of adulthood and growing up, that we learn to generalize our experiences and forget them. We forget what it felt like to see and feel things for the first time – the first time we saw a blooming flower, a bird in flight, or the ocean, and wondering if the waves ever stop. With age comes our need to define, generalize, and categorize the things that we saw and made comprehensible, normal, and mundane. Yet by doing so, the events lost their wonder and uniqueness. I’ve discovered that the only way to recall these lost memories is to watch the open faces and expressions of children as they participate in those experiences for the very first time. Once the musical started I kept looking at the faces of Sarah and Gracie and tried to read their feelings and reactions. Their eyes were fixed on the actors, costumes, scenery, and staging. They gasped at the smoke-puffing dragon chasing the prince, laughed at the interactions of Cinderella with her stepmother and stepsisters, and were stunned by the sudden costume changes and transformations on stage. They also followed the plot line closely, and were able to describe to me at intermission where this Cinderella story deviated from the traditional one.
“Poppy”, Gracie exclaimed in worried tones at intermission, “Cinderella didn’t lose her slipper at the ball! She picked it up!”
“Did you see how the pumpkin turned into a carriage?” Sarah asked me. “It was like magic!”

This must have been the way Tony and Prisa felt and reacted when they watched Cats for the first time in 1985. Adult reality was suspended for a magical moment, and they were transported to a theatrical realm where youthful wonder and imagination prevailed. At the close of intermission I took Sarah and Gracie’s hands, and together we returned to our seats in that magical realm to watch the end of the play.

Standing on the waters casting your bread
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing
Distant ships sailing into the mist
You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing
Freedom just around the corner for you
But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

You’re a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds
Manipulator of crowds, you’re a dream twister
You’re going to Sodom and Gomorrah
But what do you care? Ain’t nobody there would want to marry your sister
Friend to the martyr, a friend to the woman of shame
You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name
(Jokerman: Bob Dylan – Infidels, 1984)

Fittingly, it was on June 16^th, Bloomsday, that I finished reading James Joyce: A New Biography, by Gordon Bowker. I found the book so captivating I read it at the same speed I normally reserve for good novels or great science fiction. I was fascinated and also troubled by what I learned of this eccentric artist. Who would have believed that a Joyce fan like me had NEVER read a comprehensive biography of one of the most lauded authors in English Literature? I plead guilty with no defense. I loved the stories in Dubliners, and was captivated by the hero in the novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but I never got around to investigating the author. I was always satisfied with the many autobiographical items embedded in his works, and the tidbits of information I picked up from peripheral sources like magazine articles and travel books. I have to admit that since my introduction to Joyce in college, I was always more interested in him as an artist than as a man. As far as I was concerned, his work WAS the man, and I particularly loved his fictional alter ego Stephen Dedalus. Well James Joyce the son, brother, man, husband, and father, whom I discovered in his biograph, did not reach the lofty pedestal upon which I had placed his fictional character. Joyce may have been an exceptional artist and genius, but he was such a flawed and weak man that my opinion of him was greatly challenged.

While Joyce became my idealization of an artist, he was never my favorite author. My favorite novelists were a pantheon of American writers I discovered in high school, beginning with Herman Wouk, Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, and John Steinbeck, and increasing in college with the addition of Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Heller. Two notable teachers – Mr. Thomas McCambridge, in high school, and a forgotten professor in college influenced this pantheon. Both teachers rhapsodized about the writers of The Lost Generation who became my lynch pins to literature. Joining these writers in my literary Olympus were their iconic characters: Jay Gatsby, Atticus Finch, Holden Caulfield, Tom Joad, and Jake Barnes. Of these American novelists, I would put Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby at the top of the list. Gatsby was clearly the favorite of my teachers, and he became the subject of my first REAL book report in high school.

Book reports have to be the most boring type of writing that exists, because it is simply a means by which a teacher checks on a student’s completion of a task – the reading of a book. If I were assigned a book to read, I would read it for fun and enjoyment, and then write the report by paraphrasing the synopsis on the side covers of the book. However, Mr. McCambridge challenged that approach when he assigned Gatsby. He explained that Fitzgerald had a message just for me in the book, and it was a message hidden in clear sight. The story had “a theme” which the author was expressing through his words and descriptions, and it was my job to discover it by following the clues. Gatsby was the first book in which I highlighted the words as I read, and it struck a chord with me on two levels. First, the words became important because Fitzgerald’s style was so approachable and engaging, and his descriptions were lyrically beautiful. Secondly, his central character called forth that uniquely American desire which I shared, to strive and achieve the unobtainable, which he expressed wonderfully in his last page:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… and one fine morning --- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

It was only later in college, while reading the Norton Anthology of English Literature that I discovered the wonders of the English language in all its many expressions, and came across James Joyce and Stephen Dedalus.

In the quarter system of UCLA in the late 1960’s, a semester or, to be more accurate, a “tri-mester”, consisted of a 10-week period of time to complete a course. For The American Novel, this meant a delightful reading list of 10 novels, filled in with lectures three times a week. The English Lit course, on the other hand, covered the entire 20^th Century using the Norton Anthology. The novels on the Required Reading List of this class had to be decreased and carefully selected. The only book that affected me the same way as Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, was Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Until that course, I’d only heard about Joyce in terms of his being a member of “The Lost Generation”, and the author of a notorious book called Ulysses. Along with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein, Joyce was simply another expatriate living in Paris after WWI. It was this course, with its emphasis on English literature that finally showcased Joyce; first through his short stories in the Dubliners, and then his first novel, Portrait of the Artist.

Reading Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist was an epiphany. From my professor I learned of Joyce’s epiphanies embedded in his stories, and his revolutionary use of the inner monologue, or stream of consciousness in his writing. I found his portrayal of Dubliners even more stunning, because they were so radically different from the stereotypic characterizations I’d seen of the Irish in movies and television. His characters were deeper and more complex, hiding the dark malevolent secrets we all shared. However, it was in Stephen Dedalus, the artist in Portrait, that I found the mirror to my own youthful conflicts and aspirations. Reading about Stephen’s education in Catholic schools, his struggles with sexual temptations and religious repression, and his desire to be free, were reflections of my own life. I identified with Stephen more than any other fictional character I had read about, and I envied his courage at rejecting the values and teachings of the Irish Catholic Church, the shackles of Irish nationalism, and courageously pursuing the creative life of the universal artist. The last lines of the novel on the eve of his self-imposed exile from Ireland thrill me to this day:

“Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead”.

So what would I say of James Joyce now, after having read a very comprehensive biography on his life? Was he the Stephen Dedalus character he created in Portrait and Ulysses, or was he someone else? Should I write about what he was, or what he wasn’t?

Well, to begin with, as a self-portrait, Joyce’s portrayal of Stephen was broadly accurate. Joyce was a gifted student, trained under Jesuit supervision. He became a recognized literary talent in Dublin and wrote for newspapers and periodicals, and he worked as an English tutor and teacher for Berlitz, the famous language school. He was a particular genius at words and language, with an ear and musical gift for song. However, rather than gravitating toward Irish nationalism, as many young Irishmen of his generation, Joyce found inspiration in the creative views and artistry of Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian author and playwright. That was the first surprise for me. Ibsen, not W.B. Yeats, the driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, was his guiding artistic star and model. Although he would only write about Dublin and Dubliners, Joyce, like Ibsen, would become a “man without a country”, a universal artist of the world, and not a parochial Irish author.

The biggest letdown was learning that in many ways Joyce became his father’s son – a failed businessman and spendthrift who was barely one step ahead of eviction and bankruptcy. Joyce always lived beyond his means, borrowing money from his brother, relatives, friends, and loan sharks, and never worrying about repayment. In many ways Joyce was a gifted conman. With his talent and charm he won the confidence of friends, siblings, artists, publishers, and wealthy patrons who recognized his exotic genius, and then Joyce exploited them unmercifully, without question or qualm. Oddly enough, this story has been told in many versions and languages – the self-centered, artistic genius who never sees beyond his art, and other people are simply a means to produce it. That’s Joyce in a nutshell.

My last shattered illusion was the hope that Joyce was a more prolific author than I suspected, and a comprehensive biography would finally unearth a treasure trove of unknown works to me. Well, surprise! My own thumbnail bibliography of Joyce’s work was pretty accurate after all:

Dubliners, 1914 – Portrait of the Artist, 1916 – Ulysses, 1922 – Finnegan’s Wake, 1939

The only writings I was unaware of were the early book reviews and essays he wrote while in Dublin, an early version of Portrait called Stephen Hero (1904-06), poems, a collection of poems called Chamber Music (1907), a rarely performed play called Exiles (1915), and a pocket book of poems, called Pomes Penneyeach (1927). Much of the material that he would include in Finnegan’s Wake was serialized in magazines and periodicals over the 15 years he struggled with it, and simply called it a “Work in Progress”.

More than anything else, what I learned from this biography was what Joyce WAS NOT. He was not a romantic Irish nationalist, not a prolific writer, and not a hardworking, self-sufficient, dependable man. What was he? He was clearly a genius of the English language who played with it like an improvisational master. He was an artist who created words and descriptions and took them to the outer edges of what readers and critics found acceptable. In essence, Joyce created his own language, making up rhyming words and run-on sentences that seemed to have no meaning unless one had the codebook. Many readers of the serialized portions of Finnegan called him a fraud, and claimed that he was mocking them with nonsensical, make-believe words, limericks, and impossibly intricate sentences, and calling it “literature”. In a fashion, Joyce did play with language like a trickster, or joker. He reminded me of a 20^th Century representation of that universal trickster of myth and legend: the coyote of Indian legends, Loki of Norse mythology, and Maui of Polynesian myths. Joyce too was “a clever, mischievous person who achieved his ends through the use of superior intelligence and trickery. A trickster who tricked others simply for their amusement, to help them survive in a dangerous world, or to demonstrate the absurd chaos that the world needs to function”. Then again, others found a unique beauty in his words – a beauty I HEARD when I employed an audio book to listen to a reading of Ulysses. Without a doubt, Joyce’s work is best HEARD than read. Joyce plays language with an ingenious, whimsical style, like a jazz artist improvising his music.

I suppose there is one benefit to having waited almost 50 years to learn these facts about Joyce and how he lived his life. At 69 years of age I’m a lot less judgmental than I was at 18 or 20. Especially after having spent the last 8 years listening to incarcerated men tell me of their flaws, failings, and addictions. Joyce would have fit right in with these imprisoned men. He was a selfish, egoistical, and impulsive conman. He was a manipulator and scoundrel. At the same time he was a child of his time and place, living under the dual oppression of the Irish Catholic Church and British Imperialism. At his core Joyce was Irish and that always came out in his stories, descriptions and writing. But he was foremost a genius of the world and an artist of the English language. He was an artist of the genre that included Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh – he was obsessed and self destructive, left ruin in his wake, but created truth and beauty in his art. I can’t be disappointed that Joyce never lived up to the qualities he projected onto his creation Stephen Dedalus, or his other characters. They were fiction, and he was real. I can’t confuse the artist with his creation. I should just enjoy his art.

Take me on a trip upon
Your magic swirling ship,
My senses have been stripped
My hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels
To be wandering.
I’m ready to go anywhere,
I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade,
Cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,
Play a song for me.
I’m not sleepy and there ain’t
No place I’m going to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,
Play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning
I’ll come following you.
(Mr. Tambourine Man: Bob Dylan – 1965)

The announcement in October that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature was uniquely satisfying for me. It finally legitimized Dylan’s merit as a writer, poet, and artist, by putting him in the same category as W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Seamus Heaney. Dylan occupies a special place in my life. I can mark my progress since adolescence by his career as a folksinger/songwriter, a rock legend, and finally a cultural icon. I can’t begin to measure the impact that Dylan has had on generations after generations of musicians, writers, and artists throughout the world. I hear his influences embedded in hundreds of the singer/songwriters and bands that succeeded him.

I learned to appreciate poetry in my junior year of high school under the guidance of a marvelous English teacher, Mr. Thomas McCambridge. He took our class from the staid beginnings of Tennyson and Longfellow, and introduced us to the modern styles of T.S. Eliot and E.E. Cummings. Words, metaphors, and similes began to take on a life that was more complex and compelling than the rhyming words of earlier poets. But there was still a wall between poetry and me, and I continued believing that poetry was an intellectual medium reserved for cultured intellectuals and academically certified practitioners. Then I heard Like a Rolling Stone, and poetry exploded.

I didn’t hear Dylan the way I heard regular rock and roll songs on the radio. Those songs were commercial tunes that concentrated on catchy rhymes and harmonies. Dylan, on the other hand, challenged you with words, metaphors, and allusions. I listened to Dylan’s songs and words and then plunged headfirst into their endless flow of possible meanings and interpretations. This was the kind of poetry Mr. McCambridge talked about, poetry that demanded attention – grabbed you by the throat, forced you to listen to the words, and demanded that you interpret their message. Like a Rolling Stone, and the other songs on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited album, turned Rock and Roll on its head. The songs were too long, the orchestration was too simple, and the lyrics were too bizarre. And yet, the album seduced countless young people into falling for the allure and limitless capacity of poetry that was contained in his music.

The Something is Happening Tour marked a coming of age in my life. Dylan was the first musical artist I heard live in concert. It was 1965, the beginning of my Senior year of high school, when a friend, Russell Dalton, suggested that we go see him play at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in December. He told me he was tired of my endless ravings about Dylan’s Revisited album and he insisted we actually go and hear him play. I suspect that his real motive was to involve me in a double date so he could ask out a particular girl he had been mooning over. That night was my first rock concert and my first official date. Prior to this event the closest thing to a date was visiting a girl at her home under the watchful eyes of her parents, spending time with a girl at a school activity, or asking a girl to dance at the Sock Hops in the school gym after home football games. This was the first time I called a girl to asked her out on a date which entailed picking her up at home, meeting her parents, driving to the concert in Long Beach, and ending the evening at a pizza house before taking the girls home. It was a big deal. Yet, while I can’t remember the girl’s name, I have crystal clear memories of that night, the concert, and the songs that Dylan sang.

Tom Waits, the gravely voiced, fedora topped, blues singer was the opening act. I had never heard of him before, yet his songs and lyrics, a mixture of jazz and blues, invoked cinema noire images, and scenes of billiard parlors, forlorn and empty streets, and lonely nights. He was the perfect introduction to Dylan because his music also emphasized words and images instead of accompaniment and orchestration. Dylan’s performance was divided into two parts with a brief intermission. The first half was classic Dylan – a lone troubadour on stage with an acoustical guitar and a harmonica draped around his neck. This is the image of Dylan I will always keep with me: a man and his musical poetry, singing Mr. Tambourine Man, I Don’t Believe You (She Acts like We Never Met), and Desolation Row. He sang many of the songs on, what I thought at the time, was his debut album, Highway 61 Revisited, saving the electronically accompanied tunes for the second act. Songs like Tombstone Blues demanded concentration, but his hit, Like a Rolling Stone, brought down the house. That concert, and Dylan’s performance solidified my eternal support for him and his music. At the time, I was totally unaware of the historic musical significance of the album and this tour. For me, Dylan, the singer/poet, had sprung fully formed from the mind of some rock and roll god, with songs that were unique because they were more lyrical and poetic than anything else on the radio. They were almost existential. It wasn’t until college that I started filling in the back-story on Bob Dylan.

Besides the commercial rock and roll on the radio, it was folk songs that permeated college life in the mid- 60’s. These were the songs of protest and youthful defiance that challenged the Vietnam War and the social injustices that seemed so apparent to the baby-boomer generation. It was at UCLA, in the Newman Center and the Student Union, that I heard the classic folk music of Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot, and Peter Paul and Mary, and finally discovered some of the historic roots of Bob Dylan. It sounds naïve now, but until college I had no clue that the singer/songwriter of Like a Rolling Stone and Mr. Tambourine Man was the same guy who wrote Blowin’ in the Wind and Don’t Think Twice. While always a “fan” of Bob Dylan throughout my life, I never became maniacal about his music or his life. I didn’t buy all his records or CD’s, and I never bothered reading the countless articles and books written about him, or movies made about his life. I supposed I simply considered him an exceptionally gifted singer-songwriter. In fact, it wasn’t until 2005, when I saw Martin Scorsese’s documentary, No Direction Home that I finally got a clear picture of his early connections to the legendary Woody Guthrie, and American “roots-music”, and his migration to the folk music scene in Greenwich Village. I was especially shocked to learn of Dylan’s traumatic breakup with the folk world in 1965. By “plugging in” his guitar and playing electronic Rock and Roll at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan scandalized the folk music purists. All by himself, Dylan became the solitary bridge between folk music and Rock and Roll, and he created the folk-rock genre that would dominate the late 60’s and 70’s, and influence musicians throughout the world for decades.

Certainly the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan was controversial, and numerous traditional poets and writers criticized it. Perhaps they were even as shocked as the Folk Music purists were in 1965 when Dylan “plugged in”. I was delighted. In true Bob Dylan fashion, while accepting the honor, he did not attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, on December 5, 2016 to receive his award. Instead he sent a humble and disarming letter of thanks to be read by the United States Ambassador to Sweden. In it, he said that he was honored in receiving such a prestigious prize and joining the ranks of so many giants of literature. At the same time, he let it be known that he never really considered the idea that his work might be “literature”.

“When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in place like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio… Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for a long time now. I’ve made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do… Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?’ So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.”

I think Dylan’s response was perfect. To me, he will always be the Tambourine Man, dancing and singing his songs. Over all these years, he was just a musician creating his art – writing and performing uniquely poetic songs. He wrote for himself first, and, perhaps, for an audience second. With or without and audience, he would always write and sing his songs. Perhaps Horace Engdahl, a member of the Nobel Committee, said it best in a speech he gave after the ceremony. In it he called Dylan, “a singer worthy of a place beside the Greek bards, beside Ovid, beside the Romantic visionaries, besides the kings and queens of the Blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliant song Standards. If people in the literary world groan (at the prize for Literature going to a singer-songwriter), one must remind them that the gods don’t write, they dance and they sing.”

Who is the tall, dark stranger there?
Maverick is the name.
Ridin’ the trail to who knows where,
Luck is his companion,
Gamblin’ is his game.

Riverboat, ring your bell,
Fair thee well, Annabel.
Luck is the lady that he loves the best.
Natchez to New Orleans,
Livin’ on jacks and queens,
Maverick is a legend of the west.
(Theme song of Maverick: 1957)

James Garner died last month, on Saturday, July 19, 2014. He was 86 years old, and had previously suffered a stroke in 2008. I think I was saddened by his death because he was such a part of my childhood. Garner was the first adult T.V. and movie star who I truly related to as a youth, when I first saw him in Maverick in 1957. Bret Maverick signaled a new type of hero for me. He was not the cut-out, one-dimensional, childhood hero I enjoyed watching in the late 50’s, like Superman, the Lone Ranger, Davey Crockett, or Zorro. James Garner played a charming but complex, adult hero who defied simple characterization. Bret Maverick was self-deprecating, humorous, smart, and human. He was the new kind of protagonist who did not see himself as fearless, brave, or courageous. In fact, Bret would rather talk than throw punches, deal cards than shoot guns, and altogether avoid conflict and dangerous situations whenever possible. Bret was the reluctant hero who rarely “got the girl”, and didn’t always win. His greatest romances tended to be with women he competed with, rarely out-foxed, and always respected. With its timeslot on Sunday nights on ABC, Maverick was the first “adult” western TV series I was allowed to watch as a child. Programs like Gunsmoke and the Naked City were taboo to me, in those strict days of parental censorship. Although Garner shared the billing for Maverick, and alternated episodes, with Jack Kelly, he was the star who carried the show with his rugged good looks and personality, and made it a highly rated hit until 1960. After only three brief years as Maverick, Garner left Warner Brothers over a contract dispute and pursued a full time, independent career in movies. He was one of the first TV stars to make this transition successfully.

Bret Mav 1

I loved James Garner’s movies. Even on the big screen, he was able to consistently come across as such a friendly, likeable and relatable figure. He proved to be a formidable actor as well. He stood out in his role as a Marine captain, playing opposite Marlon Brando in Sayonara in 1957, was traditionally heroic as Col. William Darby in the WWII movie, Darby’s Rangers in 1958, and clearly captivated Natalie Wood in the 1960 romantic comedy, Cash McCall. But his real breakout film roles came in 1963 when he starred as the All-American “scrounger”, in The Great Escape, and the loveable coward opposite Julie Andrews in The Americanization of Emily.

Sayonara

The characters that James Garner played were the perfect models for me. As a teenager in a Catholic high school, I was desperately searching outside my family for positive male figures to imitate. I had outgrown the “good boy” types portrayed in Leave It To Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Donna Reed Show, and I was not inclined toward the “bad boy” types characterized in Marlon Brando and James Dean movies. Instead, James Garner offered a Third Way – not an anti-hero, like Clint Eastwood, but a non-heroic, regular guy, who was still good-looking, smart, funny, and could step-up, if called for, to deal with difficult situations. He was the type of man I wanted to be for a long time. By the time James Garner returned to TV, starring in the Rockford Files (1974-1980), I had outgrown my early need for role models, and would only occasionally watch his show. Interestingly enough, I happened to catch the episode when the show spun off a new character that would soon carry on the tradition of the non-heroic/regular guy. Tom Selleck, in Magnum P.I. (1980-1988), continued many of the mannerisms and style that made Garner’s TV characters so successful. Thomas Magnum was the Bret Maverick of the 80’s.

Rockford 1

I suppose teenagers are always looking for people to imitate and copy who are outside their immediate environments. The men and women they grew up with in their families, or their circle of friends and acquaintances, seem too familiar and ordinary. Stories and novels offered me one method to study male characters and types, but television provided a more contemporary vehicle to observe men and women who seemed more real. I’m glad that James Garner appeared when he did in my life. He portrayed characters that satisfied all of my secret yearnings and questions about male role models. Garner became the dad, uncle, teacher, and hero I wanted to imitate and become. I’ll always remember him in that way. Rest in Peace Bret Maverick.

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning.
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day.
Seems my love is up, and has left you with no warning.
It’s not always going to be this grey.

All things must pass.
All things must pass away.

Now the darkness only stays the nighttime.
In the morning it will fade away.
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time.
It’s not always going to be this grey.

All things must pass.
All things must pass away.
(All Things Must Pass: George Harrison – 1969)

I thought I had become immune to the fearful talk and doomsday forecasts from journalists, authors, and publishers about the future of print. I was aware of the paradigm shift going on throughout the media, and how newspapers, magazines, and book publishers were struggling to find new advertising and market strategies, while competing with digital online providers like Amazon and iTunes. But I’d become satisfied just watching this contest from the sidelines, waiting for the confusion to end, the dust to settle, and a winner (or winners) being declared. The struggle reminded me a little of the brief videotape wars of the 1980’s, when VHS and Betamax battled for video supremacy, only to both become obsolete with the appearance of optical disc storage (DVD) players. Then, of course, there was the drawn out music wars that began in the 1960’s with single and long play vinyl records battling audiotapes of various types for control of the business. Eventually both formats were vanquished by the development of compact disc (CD) players in the 1980’s, which replaced them with digitized music that could be heard on many different devices – like computers, MP3 players, iPods, iPads, and Smart Phones. Yet all of these enterprises seemed lightweight and trivial when compared to the print media, because they primarily provided visual and audio entertainment, and not vital educational, intellectual, historical, and cultural content and information. I suppose I always believed that despite these constant digital incursions, nothing could ever replace the printed page. We would always need books, magazines, textbooks, and newspapers. Well this last Christmas season, I was once again slapped awake to the transitory nature of all things.

I was getting in some last minute shopping for Kathleen on Christmas Eve when I dropped by Barnes & Noble in Woodland Hills. As I walked in the wood framed, glass entrance of the bookstore, I thought I could rest there for a while with a cup of coffee to review my shopping list before searching for a gift. However, instead of the cozy embraces of the bookstore café, decorated in gentle forest colors, and surrounded with wall posters of famous authors and neat racks of glossy magazine covers, I was greeted with devastation. I had entered what appeared to be the pillaged remains of a ransacked warehouse. It was a husk of a store with half-filled shelves, strewn with books in no particular order, or piled up in the corners. Sagging, gaudy signs draped across the walls and shelves announced 50% discounts and declarations that “All Must Go!” It took me a few minutes to realize that our only local bookstore, the last surviving, big chain bookstore in Woodland Hills and Canoga Park was closing, and it would be gone by Christmas.

For a long time I hadn’t much cared for nationwide, chain bookstores like Crown, B. Dalton, Brentano’s, Borders, and Barnes & Noble. Those national conglomerates had driven practically all of the independent bookstores that once decorated the literary landscape of Los Angeles and Southern California out of business with their cutthroat shipping and pricing tactics. But book buyers are fickle and memories are short, and anger at their harsh business practices quickly faded with the ease of shopping they provided – especially as many chains adopted the people-friendly strategies of legendary bookstores like The Earthling in Santa Barbara, or Book Soup in West Hollywood. Soon Borders and Barnes & Noble Bookstores were offering cafés with coffee house environments where readers and writers could drink, chat, read, and work. Some stores even offered the extensive selections of published material that once could only be found in college bookstores, and the convenience of having music and film material in the same building made them popular with the non-readers as well. Up until two years ago, two nationwide bookstores, Borders and Barnes & Noble Booksellers serviced Woodland Hills and Canoga Park, in the West San Fernando Valley. Now there are none. So, sulking in a somewhat depressed and nostalgic mood at the end of the year, I concocted a plan as Kathleen and I talked about going someplace on New Year’s Eve. We were looking for a friendly and scenic locale where we could window-shop, meet and mingle with lots of people, and enjoy a late lunch before bidding the old year goodbye. When we decided to go to Santa Monica and walk around the 3^rd Street Promenade, I wondered if the huge, three-story Barnes & Noble on Wilshire Blvd. was still in business. If it was, I decided to make a pilgrimage to one of the last surviving chain bookstores in Southern California.

Barnes and Noble remains the largest bookseller in the United States. The company still has 18 viable stores in the Southern California area – from Santa Ana, in Orange County, to Calabasas, near the border of Ventura County. Rather than sitting idly by, waiting for obsolescence, Barnes & Noble has boldly charged into the digital publishing arena and the e-reader battles against Amazon and Apple. According to David Carnoy of CNET, Barnes & Noble currently controls 25% of the e-book market, and looking to expand it. I own a Nook e-reader myself, and I’m planning on buying an Apple iPad Mini in the near future. I love the convenience of the e-reader and its immediate access to literature. Instead of having to travel to a brick and mortar store to buy a book, I can download one on any impulse or whimsy (as long as I have a Wi-Fi connection). I can read a review or an article about an interesting book or author, and immediately download the book on a trial basis. I can explore earlier works by an author I discover, or trace other writers of the same genre. My e-reader actually stimulates more reading and purchasing than when I went to bookstores. And yet I love bookstores. I loved browsing the shelves, scanning the titles and authors, handling a book, and paging through its leaves. Every time I find myself in a bookstore, I reconnect with memories of other times, in other places, and in other parts of the city when I was young with lots of time on my hands and very little money. I remember my dad taking me to explore the used bookstores around McArthur Park in Los Angeles, and the area around Sawtelle and Santa Monica Blvd in West L.A. He would give me a couple of bucks to spend and leave me to the wonderfully tireless task of choosing, eliminating, and buying my own novels. I remember when my Uncle Charlie first took me to Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Blvd to buy Christmas gifts when I was in high school. I recall spending hours roaming through the seemingly endless bookshelves of Martindale’s Books in Santa Monica when I was in college, and visiting Dutton’s in North Hollywood with Kathleen when we were dating. With those memories in mind, I entered the only remaining bookstore on the 3^rd Street Promenade on December 31, 2012.

As I walked around the store I was immediately attracted to enticing displays of fabulous books and memories of times spent reading them. Two tables held the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Martin, highlighting the books that were the current inspiration for movie and television screenplays (The Hobbit, and The Game of Thrones). A turntable rack hung with bookmarks of all styles and genres caught my amused attention with their depictions of superheroes, cartoon figures, and fairy tales. How much longer would bookmarks be practical? I asked myself, thinking how necessary they seemed when I was a child. The store abounded with classical literature. There were paperback works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte on sale, at 50% off their listed prices. Even leather bound versions of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sun Also Rises, and Huckleberry Finn were marked down. The store also offered a music and video department on the 2^nd Floor that was tastefully decorated with poster-sized prints of iconic musicians and artists. The last section I inspected were the shelves dedicated to Literature Studies and Poetry. This was the place where one could spend hours pulling books and reading portions of essays and poems. After a while I couldn’t take any more. I wasn’t going to buy anything. I was still trying to get rid of the countless books I’d collected over the years, trying to free up more space on my bookshelves and cabinets. I didn’t need one more volume added to the multitude I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet. At this point in my life new books would have to fit in the digital library of my e-book, and not on a shelf. Luckily it was about that time that my daughter Teresa arrived with her husband and daughter Sarah to join us for lunch. Sarah’s boundless energy for watching and mimicking street performers, and touching everything she saw in stores, quickly dispelled all thoughts of bookstores and print. Shepherding her around the promenade and mall kept us all busy for the rest of the day.

At the end of our visit to Santa Monica, in the fading light of day, we walked by one store that caught everyone’s notice. A huge, white apple glowed from a three-story, glass façade, and it seemed to beckon all to enter. Beyond that crystal entrance laid a vast enclosure of electronic and digital wonders, enticing people to walk in and peruse the treasures. Within that gleaming cavern lay the future. Paper publishing and print media will go the way of cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and papyrus. Those methods of communication, learning, and entertainment will soon wither, become archaic, and die. We are at such a turning point in our culture right now, and we are watching the slow death of the old giving way to the new. It is sad but inevitable, because all thing pass.

While writing this elegy about bookstores I started a list of neighborhood shops that have closed or disappeared. I’d invite you to share your own favorite old bookstore, new or used, and where it was located. I remembered the following:

Martindale’s on 3^rd Street, Santa Monica
Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood
Campbell’s Bookstore on Westwood Blvd, Westwood.
Dutton’s on Laurel Canyon Blvd, North Hollywood, and one in Brentwood
Either/Or Bookstore on Pier Ave, Hermosa Beach
Midnight Express on 3rd Street, Santa Monica
Papa Bach on Santa Monica Blvd, West Los Angeles.
Acres of Books in Long Beach
The Earthling Bookstore on State Street in Santa Barbara

Way out there on the Triple-R.
Yippee yay, yippee yo.
The horses are the best by far.
Yippee yay, yippee yo.
So saddle up boys and saddle up well,
And listen to the story that I have to tell
Yippee yay, yippee yo.

Tenderfeet come to the Triple-R.
Yippee yay, yippee yo.
They get on a horse but they don’t get far.
Yippee yay, yippee yo.
O around and around and around they trot
‘Till they can’t set down on their tender spot
Yippee yay, yippee yee, yippee hi, yippee ho.
(Theme song to The Adventures of Spin and Marty: 1956)

I suppose the reason some actors have such a significant impact on our lives is because their roles and portrayals tie us to specific times, events, and memories. When some actors die, their passing becomes a personal loss. That was the case today when I learned that Harry Carey Jr. had died at the age of 91.

Harry Carey Jr. was a venerable character actor, most famous for his work in John Ford films with John Wayne. But I knew him first as Bill Burnett, the summer ranch counselor on the Mickey Mouse Club television series called The Adventures of Spin and Marty, in 1956. In an age just dawning to the idea of television programming directed specifically to children and juvenile audiences, Walt Disney productions were huge. The Disneyland theme park, Disney movies, cartoons, and television series dominated the field of children’s entertainment; and with the advent of Spin and Marty, they were expanding into the blossoming teenage market. Although David Stallery (Marty), Tim Considine (Spin), and Annette Funicello (Annette) were the teen stars we identified with in the series, certain adult characters stood out. Mr. Burnett was one such figure. However I never saw his connection to the adult world of cinema until I saw the adult western, The Searchers, with John Wayne. When I knowingly pointed out to my father that the role of Brad, one of the searchers, was played by Spin and Marty’s Mr. Burnett, he gave me a bemused smile. Leaving the theatre he lectured me on that actor – pointing out that he was in fact the son of a famous silent-film, Western star, Harry Carey. Further, he explained, Harry Carey Jr. had already co-starred in the 1948 John Ford western classic, Tres Compadres (3 Godfathers), with John Wayne and Pedro Armendáriz. Of course these clarifying pieces of information were wasted on me at the time. Television and movies were still personal mediums of entertainment for me, and I would have to experience and prize quality films and acting on my own.

It wasn’t until many years later in college that I really learned to appreciate John Ford and Howard Hawks westerns as something more than star-vehicles for The Duke, John Wayne. I also came to recognize and appreciate Harry Carey Jr. as a valued member of John Ford’s Stock Company of actors who populated his movies through the years. This special band of thespians numbered Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, Ben Johnson, Mildred Natwick, Ken Curtis, Vera Miles, Jack Pennick, Jane Darwell, and many, many more. These men and women worked hard at their craft, movie after movie, and they brought life and substance to the characters they played. Harry Carey Jr. was such an actor.

Henry G. Carey was born May 16, 1921 in Saugus, CA., and died on December 27, 2012, in Santa Barbara, CA. The career of this native son of California spanned 51 years in movies and television, but I will forever remember him as the understanding and patient, summer ranch counselor in The Adventures of Spin and Marty. There, on the Triple-R Ranch, he taught Marty how to ride a horse, how to be responsible, and how to be part of team. Rest in Peace, Mr. Burnett. Yippee yay, yippee yee, yippee hi, yippee ho.

“A week ago, fifteen feet of the fresco
(América Tropical) was whitewashed,
thus hiding it from Olvera Street.
This brings up once more the question of
artist rights versus owner’s rights…
But property right is, finally, the right of money,
which is not always synonymous with good judgment.
The fresco is not destroyed, but merely partially covered.
Someday we may find that decisions of this kind
will be referred to properly constituted boards
on which art and property are both represented.”
(Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1934: Arthur Millier, art critic)

I first learned of American censorship and the destruction of Mexican art while gazing at the murals of Diego Rivera in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. I was there with my mother, during one of our visits to her family. I loved looking at the works of the three famous Mexican muralists, Los Tres Grandes (The Big Three), Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, throughout the city and the campus of the university. Their massive works showed a visually gripping, pictorial history of Mexico and her struggles for land, liberty and justice. Historical figures, events, and ideals came alive in the vast scope of these revolutionary works of art. They were massive picture books for the public, and, for a boy in love with comic books, an enjoyable way to learn history. My mother had grown up in Mexico City in the midst of this muralist movement and she proudly called it a uniquely Mexican art form that was meant to be politically provocative. It was at the Palacio de Bellas Artes that she told me the story of Diego Rivera and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and how the original mural, Man at the Crossroads, was destroyed in the lobby of New York’s Rockefeller Center in 1934. Of course my mother downplayed the fact that Rivera was a renowned Mexican Communist, attempting to insert an image of the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin in a mural paid for by the owner of Standard Oil Company. For her, Rivera had already painted controversial murals in San Francisco and Detroit, and this was an issue of artistic freedom and the duty of a painter to expand awareness and understanding. It was her contention that true Art, especially coming from a Mexican artist, was not welcomed in the materialistic and xenophobic America of the mid-Twentieth Century. I always assumed that the Rivera affair was an isolated incident in Mexican-American Art history, until I learned about Siqueiros, and his volatile experiences in Los Angeles in 1932.

My son Toñito first mentioned the Siqueiros exhibit while we were eating lunch at the Malibu restaurant, Gladstone’s for Fish, after having seen The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire at the Getty Villa in June (see Flickr album, 2010-6-24 Aztecs at the Villa). While discussing other things we could do together, he mentioned that there were two exhibits of David Alfaro Siqueiros coming to Southern California in the fall. The notion of seeing the works of a Mexican muralist appealed to me, but I filed the information away for the time being. I became more enthusiastic after reading an L.A. Times article about the two exhibits, and having visited two of Diego Rivera’s murals in San Francisco (see Murals of San Francisco). When I finally saw Toñito at my mom’s 86^th birthday party, I brought up the idea of seeing the new exhibits. He told me that he had just finished seeing the Siqueiros: Landscape Painter exhibit at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, but welcomed the chance to see the one in L.A. So we made a date for the following Friday.

I didn’t know quite what to expect of the exhibit called Siqueiros in Los Angeles: Censorship Defied, as I drove to the Autry National Center on a wet and overcast morning in October. I didn’t know too much about Siqueiros’s life, and, despite its provocative title, I wasn’t confident of the Autry Museum’s ability to adequately represent the controversial experiences he suffered in Los Angeles in 1932. David Alfaro Siqueiros is the lesser known of Los Tres Grandes. Although I was familiar with his major works at the Preparatoria Nacional (the National Preparatory School), the National University, and the Poly Forum in Mexico City, I knew little of the man. He was the youngest of the three muralists, and the most radically active. Siqueiros was a Stalinist Communist, who led a failed assassination attempt of exiled Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky in Mexico City, in 1940. Gene Autry, the original American Singing Cowboy, who parlayed his talent as a singer, and movie and television star of the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s, into a communication and sports empire, established his Western Heritage Museum in 1988. This boutique museum, whose name was changed to the Autry National Center in 2003, was built in Griffith Park, near the intersection of Interstate 5 and the 134 Freeway, and featured his personal collection of Western art, and movie and television memorabilia. Its originally stated mission was to preserve the “mythic aspects of the American old west”. I wondered how this museum, with its optimistic view of Americanism and materialistic success, would present one of the most politically provocative artists of Mexico. The auguries were dismal when I stationed my car in the ample parking lot in front of the museum and saw a huge, gaudy banner on the side of the building advertising, “How the West was Worn by… Michael Jackson”.
“Oh, oh,” I thought. “This doesn’t look good.”

Once I got past the Michael Jackson billboard, the museum thankfully focused visitors on the central issue of the exhibit. The dominant motif in all its publicity banners throughout the city, and along the walkway entrance to the museum, was the shocking image of a “dark Indian laborer crucified under the North American eagle.” It was the focal point of Siqueiros’s América Tropical mural, possibly representing the painter and how he was treated in Los Angeles in 1932, and the issue of censorship versus artistic freedom. There was a graffiti-style mural depicting political oppression and civil resistance on one side of the wall in the entrance hallway, and on the opposite side, a long, serigraph of thundering, wild horses, with the words: “Is the West a place or a way of thinking?” The courtyard was filled with multitudes of restless, squirming, bodies of children who were being unsuccessfully directed into neat rows. These elementary school students and teachers were on fieldtrips to view the permanent exhibitions of the museum, which featured the history of the American West, Native Americans, and “The Imagined West”. These tours aligned with their educational curriculum, but would not include the more mature themes illustrated in the Siqueiros showcase. Even surrounded by the dramatic wall murals and stark, overhead banners, the children were more attracted to the life-sized, bronze statue of Gene Autry and his horse Trigger. Toñito arrived soon after, and, with the herds of students having entered ahead of us, it was with a sigh of relief that we found the Siqueiros exhibit almost deserted and completely to ourselves. Walking past a stylized wall rendering of the exhibit titles, and a mural by Barbara Carrasco, called L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective, we entered the George Montgomery Gallery and began our tour.

Going to a historical art exhibition with my son, Toñito, is like going to a ball game with my daughter, Prisa. The activity plays to our mutual interests, and it gives us time to watch and talk. We did a lot of individual looking and analyzing, and then discussed our thoughts of the exhibit and some of the pieces at various breaks in the action. However, our first gallery issue was over photography.
“Dad!” Toñito hissed, under his breath, as I snapped a photo of a painting. “There’s a No Photography sign over there,” he warned.
Of course his cautionary remark didn’t stop me from surreptitiously snapping a photo or two, when there was no one else in the room and the gallery guard was looking the other way. But the prohibition ended any hope of a photographic record of the exhibit. It also prompted Toñito to keep a safe distance from me when I was trying to sneak a shot. When we did converge, our longest discussions of the exhibit were while viewing the stylized reproductions of the three murals Siqueiros painted in Los Angeles, and discovering his influence on the Chicano Movement and the muralists in Los Angeles.

From his readings on Siqueiros and viewing the MOLAA exhibit in Long Beach, Toñito had more information than I about the central piece of the show, América Tropical. Even though I had been to Olvera Street many times, I never knew that Siqueiros had painted a fresco on the second floor exterior wall of the Italian Hall building near the plaza. My son described its history of being whitewashed in 1932, ignored for many years, and then covered over by a wooden shed in the hopes of future restoration. On the other hand, I was able to tell him of the only surviving mural, A Portrait of Mexico Today, which I had seen in its present location at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art on State Street. Neither of us realized that Siqueiros had painted the first of his trio of works at the Chouinard School of Art in the mid-Wilshire area soon after his arrival in Los Angeles. However, the most surprising discovery was Siqueiros’s influence on the Chicano Movement because of his revolutionary activities and examples of political activism. He became the spiritual godfather of Chicanismo in the 60’s, and his murals were the wellsprings of the Los Angeles muralist efforts of the 1980 and 90’s. The exhibited works of Wayne Alaniz Healy (América Tropical, 1997) and Barbara Carrasco (L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective, 1983) plainly showed this influence. But I was actually most impressed by the framed blueprints of a rejected mural design that Barbara Carrasco submitted to the President of USC. Until Toñito brought it to my attention, I hadn’t realized that the blue-pencil markings on the drawing were the president’s actual comments, citing all the images he found offensive. It was incredible to see that challenging and provocative art was still being censored in 21^st century Los Angeles.

Overall, Toñito and I were impressed with the Siqueiros presentation, and found the other permanent and traveling exhibitions informative. Siqueiros in Los Angeles: Censorship Defied was concise, visually rich, and very dramatic. It was a tightly bound, three-act play that showed us, with just a minimum of paintings, drawings, and photographs, how a wealthy and handsome art student became a revolutionary soldier and a radical, committed Marxist. It presented a coherent picture of Siqueiros after the Mexican Revolution, his time in Los Angeles, and his artistic and political impact on the Chicano Movement. The secondary exhibit, The Art of Native American Basketry, was surprisingly good, and individual pieces and showcases in the rest of the museum were also enjoyable. Words, however, even in narrative style, never adequately describe a visual art exhibition and museum.

The Siqueiros exhibit runs through January 9, 2011, and I would heartily recommend that you see it for yourselves. If you are interested in a photographic tour of our day at the Autry, I’ve provided a link to my Flickr album here: see 2010-10-22 Siqueiros in L.A.

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my savior,
For He has looked with favor on His lowly servant,
And from this day all generations shall call me blessed.
The Almighty has done great things for me,
And Holy is His name”.
(Magnificat - Latin for magnifies - Luke 1:39-56)

“That was quite a revolutionary sermon you delivered today, your eminence,” I said, with a provocative smile. “I think you turned some people’s comfortable values completely upside down with your homily. I imagine many of your parishioners walked away scratching their heads or even angry over what you said.” I was purposely baiting him with my words. I had NEVER called George by his honorific title. He was always “Father” or “George”, but mostly George. I was also curious to see how he would respond to my calling his sermon revolutionary.
“That’s what Christ’s message is supposed to do,” he replied gently. “I wouldn’t be doing my job as bishop if I didn’t say it out loud”.
That was it. George had nothing more to say on the matter. He didn’t dissect his sermon or draw me a picture of what he meant to say. I concluded that he had said it all from the pulpit and he was leaving it for me to sort out for myself. His words haunted me for the remainder of our trip; and it wasn’t until after I saw the murals of San Francisco that I realized their unique power.

Kathy and I were spending the weekend in San Francisco and staying with the Archbishop at his residence on Cathedral hill. Kathy came to know George when he was a Monsignor in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The friendship had continued through the years, even as George was appointed to a series of important, but distant, administrative and pastoral positions, first as Bishop of Salt Lake City, and then Archbishop of San Francisco in 2005. We had attended his installation, and visited him in San Francisco on two other occasions, each time promising to stay at his residence. We were finally able to do so this month, when we combined this visit with a trip to Carmel for our 35^th wedding anniversary.

When George welcomed us to his home, late Saturday evening, he warned us that Sunday’s mass would be an extended celebration of the Feast of the Assumption because the Cathedral was consecrated to St. Mary of the Assumption. He would be con-celebrating the service with two other bishops and three newly consecrated monsignors. It was going to be a big deal, so I assumed it would be filled with much pomp, ritual, and flowery testimonials to Mary and the Catholics of the archdiocese. I wasn’t disappointed. The cathedral was resplendent, and the music and liturgy were elegant and carefully choreographed. A long line of altar servers, chaplains, priests, monsignors, and mitered bishops processed out from behind the altar, paralleled the monumental walls of the cathedral, and streamed down the center aisle, as the choir sang soaring tributes to Mary, the mother of Christ. Since I’d failed to pick up a Sunday missalette, I listened carefully to the readings to anticipate the basis for the homily that would come.

The first reading was from the Book of Revelation (11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab) in which the prophet described a woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth… She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod… Then a loud voice in heaven said: ‘Now have salvation and power come, and the Kingdom of God, and the authority of his Anointed One’. The Gospel was from Luke (1:39-56) and it told the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth and her declaration of the Magnificat. The only reading that did not mention Mary was St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (15:20-27) in which he concentrated on Jesus. It was an obscure passage (as I find most of St. Paul’s writings to be) where he proclaimed that, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through man, the resurrection of the dead came also through man. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order…” When the Archbishop rose to give the homily after the Gospel reading, I expected him to emphasize the Feast of the Assumption and the sanctification of Mary in her role of mother to Jesus and intermediary for mankind. I wasn’t prepared for his depictions of the readings.

George first used the reading from Revelation as his tribute to Mary, tying the celebration of her assumption into heaven with the consecration of the present Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption. He introduced the dignitaries con-celebrating the mass; mentioning the activities planned for the remainder of the day, and invited all to attend the special Vesper services investing the three new monsignors of the Archdiocese later that afternoon. He also reminded us of Mary’s role as Queen of Heaven and how she prays for us as we meet the daily challenges of following Jesus. In each Hail Mary that we pray, he explained, we say to Mary, ‘pray for us, now and at the hour of our death.’ Then he mentioned the second reading by quoting Saint Paul’s perplexing line about the Kingdom of God, and using it as his transitional to the main homily: “For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order.”

As best I can recall, the homily went something like this:
“What is the proper order?” George asked rhetorically, and then pointed out that Luke’s Gospel about Mary, and her “wonderful prayer of praise and confidence and gratitude to God,” actually clarified Paul’s statement, and anticipated the paradoxical “good news” of Jesus Christ. He recited specific lines from Mary’s prayer, explaining how they described who would be first into the Kingdom of God, and who would be last.
“Just listen to Mary’s words,” he insisted, “for they contain Christ’s later message: ‘God has shown the strength of his arm, and has scattered the proud in their conceit.’ It is the humble, not the vain and the arrogant, who follow Christ’s example and recognize him in their neighbors. The poor will see life clearly, as through a clean window or an open door, while the proud will look at life in a mirror.”
“Again, listen to Mary’s prayer,” he continued: ‘God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.’ Jesus showed the example of this throughout his lifetime, by dining with sinners and tax collectors, and paying more attention to the poor, the needy, and the outcasts like the Samaritans.”
“And finally,” George concluded, “Mary says: ‘God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.’ God does not value us according to our possessions or our wealth, rather, he measures us by how we use and share those possessions with others. Notice how the values Mary embraced in the Magnificat look ahead to the values her son will teach us in the Beatitudes, during the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the sorrowing, the merciful, the clean of heart, and the peacemakers. Like mother, like son. Mary is foreshadowing the Good News of Jesus. Do you see how these topsy-turvy Gospel values turn the earthly values of the world upside down? Mary and Jesus teach us the central importance of loving self-sacrifice in finding the meaning and value in life.”

I had heard Mary’s Magnificat hundreds and hundreds of times throughout my life, but I never grasped its revolutionary message. I was doubly struck by the place in which it was being expressed. George was proclaiming Christ’s radical gospel not on the mean streets of the Mission District, where it would be welcome, but from the pulpit of San Francisco’s luxurious Cathedral, surrounded by elegantly dressed and coiffed parishioners who came to celebrate the feast day of their church. Besides the tributes and honors being bestowed on this day, the archbishop was reminding everyone of their harsh duty to Christ’s message, and what that meant in terms of actions, values, and possessions. Honestly, despite my provocative words to George later that morning, I was in fact one of those parishioners walking out of Sunday mass, struggling to make sense of his homily and the challenge presented in Mary and Christ’s words to us.

The next day Kathy and I, accompanied by Kathy’s sister Beth, went to the one place I intended to see on this trip to San Francisco – Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. Despite having visited the city on many occasions, wandered through its streets and avenues countless times, and always noted the iconic tower from afar, I’d never visited this location. Actually, I was never particularly interested in seeing this tower, dedicated to the firefighters of San Francisco (and supposedly built in the shape of a fire hose nozzle), until I watched a KCET episode of California Gold with Huell Howser. There I learned that the spire was in fact one of the first Public Works of Art (PWA) projects during the New Deal era, and it was filled with colorful and controversial frescoes and murals painted by local American artists in 1934. The program noted that the Mexican artist Diego Rivera was such a major influence on these muralists that they protested the destruction of his fresco at Rockefeller Center in 1933 for depicting a portrait of Lenin, by striking in San Francisco. This sympathy for Rivera led some tower artists to incorporate a variety of Communist ideas and elements in their work: Karl Marx’s book, Das Kapital, newspaper headlines decrying the destruction of Rivera’s mural, and copies of the Communist journals, New Masses and The Daily Worker. Besides illustrating the agricultural and economic industries of the State, the frescoes also called attention to the class and labor struggles in California during the Depression (See Flickr album: 2010-08-16 Coit Tower). I was excited by these radical depictions of longshoremen, immigrants, and farm workers fighting to survive during the Dust Bowl years. They recalled the images of brotherhood and communal support I’d read about and seen in The Grapes of Wrath. This was America’s “public artwork,” connecting with the roots of Mexican muralism, popularized by Rivera, Jose Orozco, and David Siqueiros.

Muralism was the unique art form that spread at the beginning of the 20^th Century, in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. It was a revolutionary social and political movement that confronted the abuses and inequities of capitalism and imperialism through public art. Murals were painted in accessible places where all people could see and learn from them, regardless of race, education, or social class. Muralist worked over a concrete surface or on a façade of a building, and they depicted provocative scenes and images, with strong Marxist influences, that taught revolutionary historical, cultural, and political ideas. It occurred to me, as we left Telegraph Hill, that the radical Gospel values that George expressed in Sunday’s homily should also be visible in these murals, and I wanted to test my theory on more murals in San Francisco.

From Coit Tower, the three of us made our way to the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). Originally founded in 1871, the SFAI had gone through numerous rebirths, renaming, and relocations before occupying its present site on Chestnut Street in 1926. At that time it was called the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), and many of its faculty and students painted the Coit Tower murals. They were also instrumental in bringing Diego Rivera to paint two frescoes in San Francisco, one in the San Francisco Stock Exchange, and the other at the Institute. This was the mural we found in the vast gallery adjacent to the central courtyard of the SFAI. Yet, while the space given to Rivera’s work was impressive, the content of the mural was surprisingly passive compared with the controversial scenes in Coit Tower. The mural was called, “The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City”.

Filling the entire end wall of the gallery, the mural was divided into six visual sections. As the title indicated, there was a fresco within a fresco showing the building of a modern city. The work included portraits of the individuals who worked on it, or helped produce it as technical advisors and wealthy patrons. In the middle of the central panel was Rivera, who painted himself sitting on the scaffold with his back to the viewer, holding a paintbrush and a palette. Above his head loomed the largest figure in the fresco, a worker in blue overalls, operating the control levers of a machine. The only hint of controversy was a red badge with a red star in it, hanging from the machinist’s shirt pocket (an allusion to the Soviet Order of the Red Star medal). There were no other scenes of struggling workers, exploitive capitalists, or social issues. The fresco was simply a tribute to the artists, engineers, workers, and businessmen who were creating and building San Francisco (See Flickr album: 2010-08-16 S.F. Art Institute).

The following day, on our way to Carmel along Highway 1, Kathy and I stopped at the campus of San Francisco City College to see one last Diego Rivera mural. After a confusing search on the chaotic first day of classes, we found the fresco, titled “Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and the South on this Continent,” commonly called Pan American Unity, in the foyer of the Diego Rivera Theatre. It was a massive, ten-panel mural, originally commissioned for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1940, celebrating the opening of the Oakland Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. It was later installed in the Fine Arts Auditorium of the San Francisco City College. Rivera described it as “the fusion of the genius of the South (Mexico), with its religious ardor and its gift for plastic expression, and the genius of the North (the United States), with its gift for mechanical expression.” It was a lush and beautiful visual panegyric to the history and culture of both nations, with the city and bay of San Francisco floating in the background. Only one panel dealt with political topics of the 1940’s by showing the rise of Fascism and Totalitarianism with ominous representations of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Franco (See Flickr album: 2010-08-17 S.F. City College). The radical issues of social and economic justice that made up so much of his earlier works were no longer visible in this mural. I felt as if Rivera’s revolutionary fervor and energy had finally ground to a halt on the wealthy and affluent streets of San Francisco.

So, what happened to me on this trip to San Francisco? I saw evocative murals, the sights of the city, and the breathtaking beauty of Highway 1 (See Flickr album: 2010-08- Highway 1). However, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by my tour of the murals of San Francisco. I had been challenged by George’s homily to seek artistic representations of the revolutionary message he pointed out in the Magnificat and the Beatitudes. I thought they would be illustrated in the radical works of the muralists, but learned, instead, that the most provocative ideas come from the Gospel and the ministers who preach it. At best, the muralists depicted emotional images of political ideologies and beliefs that separated people from each other, and from themselves. One doesn’t need to search the work of artists, scientists, philosophers, or industrialists to find meaning and value in life. Cities and movements rise and fall, political ideals and philosophies expand and wane, but the Good News stays constant: “The Kingdom of God is here!” Christ proclaimed. All we have to do is “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself”. George was right. Christ’s message is radical and revolutionary, and it will never fall or fail, as long as people seek it and strive to live it.

Gently floating on its charming risings,
On the river’s current
On the shining waves,
One hand reaches,
Reaches for the bank,
Where the spring sleeps,
And the bird, the bird sings.
(The Flower Duet, from Lakme, by Delibes)

“I’m sorry sir,” the young man in white shirt and black tie said. “The lot is full. We are re-directing cars to the Santa Monica Public Library parking garage on 7^th Street. A shuttle will drive you back here”. He said it so quickly and politely that it took a moment to register.
“You mean I can’t park here?” I said, pointing at two empty spaces in front of me.
“Yes, sir,” he replied, with a winsome smile that belied the bad news. “Parking is limited here, and those spaces are reserved for patrons”.
“What the f---!” I muttered under my breath as I turned the steering wheel sharply to the left to negotiate a quick U-turn around the parking attendant. “This is really crazy!” I mumbled, seeing two more open spaces in the lot. I could feel the dark storm clouds of anger billowing up inside me as I stopped at the sidewalk.
“Screw this!” I decided, turning right onto Santa Monica Boulevard. “I’ll just find a place on the street.” With all my pent up frustration waiting to explode, I figured I would benefit from walking a block or two after parking the car on a nearby street. I turned on 10^th and drove slowly down the residential street searching for some open curb space. I passed Wilshire Boulevard, California Avenue, Washington Ave, and Idaho Ave. By the time I reached Montana without seeing a single, open parking space, my black mood started churning again.
“There must be at least ONE open space around here,” I growled, doubling back along 9^th Street, where more apartments and condos lined the street. Hopefully more apartments meant more parking. I re-crossed Wilshire and finally spotted an open area between two cars on the other side of the street. I made a quick T-turn into a driveway and parallel parked in front of a residential home. “There,” I said to myself, “it’s done, and I only have a block or two to walk”. I looked around to get my bearings and noticed there were an abundance of multiple layered parking signs everywhere along the street. “NO PARKING, 9AM – 12 NOON, Street Cleaning Friday,” one sign read. That wasn’t a problem! I was walking away, feeling that my car was safely ensconced among so many others, when another sign caught my eye. It made no sense, as I read, “NO PARKING, 8AM-6PM, Except SAT & SUN”. How was that possible, I thought, looking at all the cars already parked along the curb during that time frame? Then I saw the small script at the bottom of the message: “Vehicles with District No. 12 Permits exempted”.
“Crack and BOOM,” went the thunderheads in my mind. “I don’t f---ing believe this!” I fumed. “There is no public street parking in Santa Monica!” Every inch of this street was reserved for Santa Monica residents with special parking decals on their cars. I couldn’t believe it. In a bolt of pique I was tempted to leave my car there anyway and dare the city to cite me. But in the momentary lull between thought and action, I reconsidered. “That would be stupid,” I said to myself. In this depressed economy, cities were salivating over parking and traffic violations and the income they generated from penalties and fines. There was no sense rewarding the city of Saint Monica for their stinginess. I got back into my car and peeled away from the curb.
“I should just drive home,” I said spitefully, stopping for a red light at an intersection. “If this city can’t provide public parking on its streets, I shouldn’t be spending my time and money here”. At that moment my cell phone started vibrating and I picked it up.
“Tony where are you?” exclaimed my brother Eddie in a worried voice. “We didn’t find you at the Will Call”.
“Yeah,” I said disgustedly, “there was no parking in the lot so they sent me to the Library on 7^th Street. I’m heading there now. I don’t know when I’ll meet up with you”.
“There’s no hurry,” Eddie assured me. “Just relax! We dropped Tamsen off backstage, so we’ll just wait for you at the Box Office. Take your time.”
“Okay Ed,” I finished. “I’ll see you there”. The phone call had calmed me and committed me to a reasonable course of action. There was no sense getting angry with Eddie, or pouting about Santa Monica’s curbside miserliness. The important thing now was to get back to the Broad Stage Theatre before the performance began.

As is his custom when his wife Tamsen, a violinist in the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, is performing, Eddie called to invite me to the production. He explained that Plácido Domingo, the famed tenor and director of the L.A. Opera, was conducting the orchestra in a “zarzuela concert” at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. I said yes, even though I had no clue what “zarzuelas” were. I liked classical music. I enjoyed hearing Tamsen play, and loved getting together with Ed. He added that my mom and sister were also coming and he’d make arrangements for the tickets and dinner before the performance. Since he was handling everything, I simply reserved the date and thought no more about it. The night before the performance, Eddie sent me an email stating the time and location for dinner at the Bistro. The restaurant was on Santa Monica Boulevard, about eleven blocks away from the Broad Stage. The evening started out well enough. I left home at 4:00 and enjoyed a leisurely and speedy trip through Topanga Canyon to the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. From there it was a scenic ride into Santa Monica and the Bistro. I passed the Broad Stage Theatre on the way and was amused by its jutting abstract architecture. After a delicious dinner of light Italian cuisine, Eddie and I drove to the theatre in separate cars. The Broad Stage website had mentioned that “the neighborhood is protected by a preferential parking district that prohibits parking by non-residents” but I failed to truly appreciate what that meant.

Still spiraling in my tempest of annoyance, I drove into the Library parking lot and took a ticket from the automated dispenser. Parking was ample and I was quickly directed to a waiting shuttle bus nearby. On the ride to the theatre, I continued wallowing in my anger over the exclusive parking rights of residents, and started compiling of list of snarky observations about the city of Santa Monica:
1) Santa Monica has become a pretentious, boutique village that can only sustain the parking needs of its own residents.
2) Santa Monica’s nasty, emigration policy is plastered all over its streets – no illegal cars wanted. No permit, no parking.
3) A city that can’t provide parking for cars that come to its well-publicized stores, theatres, and tourist attractions, shouldn’t call itself a city. Let’s call it an exclusive, un-gated community on the Westside of Los Angeles.
The brevity of the shuttle ride from the Library to the Stage only gave me time to jot three comments, but I dreaded what lay ahead. There would surely be annoying lines and extended delays after the performance. I tried shrugging off my irascible mood when I spotted Eddie with my mom and sister, but I was not having much success.

The Broad Stage is part of a performing arts building, which also includes the Second Space theatres. The complex is a satellite campus of Santa Monica College, and was designed by Santa Monica architect Renzo Zecchetto. It looked like an architectural collage of different shapes, figures, and outcroppings all fused together. Its different surfaces seemed to change colors with the various hues of the coastal sky and the setting sun. It was physically impressive from the outside, and yet it generated a close and intimate feeling when you entered. The Stage seated an audience of 499, and it was inspired by the “horseshoe” shape of old Italian opera houses, which allowed eye contact with the actors and musicians onstage from any seat in the house. That detail was immediately apparent when we spotted Tamsen in the row of first violinists. She seemed only an arm-length distant for our own seats. I reasoned that this proximity would be a great help when listening to classical music. Even though I loved them, symphonies, concertos, and chamber music could sometimes relax me to the point of dozing off. “Zarzuelas” sounded Spanish, so I was hoping for a short program of Mediterranean, or well-heeled flamenco music to keep me alert. As we adjusted ourselves in the seats, I began paging through the oversized Notes included in the program. The first thing I noticed was the time.
“Oh no,” I moaned to myself, regressing into my former depression. “The first part is 45 minutes long!” This was going to be a 90-minute musical program with a 20 to 30-minute intermission thrown in. I wouldn’t be leaving Santa Monica until after 10 o’clock. I closed the program and sunk dejectedly into my seat. This evening was just getting worse and worse.

My mood lifted a bit when the orchestra finished tuning up and Plácido Domingo finally walked onto the stage to a rousing ovation. I had seen him on television many years ago, when he, José Carreras, and Luciano Pavarotti, performed as The Three Tenors. Of the three, Plácido always looked, and I thought sounded, the best. Despite his age, and recent ill health, he still looked impressive. Sporting a leonine mane and a trimmed grey beard, Plácido appeared every bit the pre-eminent “maestro” and Director of the L.A. Opera. Bowing to the audience, he then turned to greet the orchestra. The program began with a spirited version of Mozart’s “Overture” to Don Giovanni. Then, as I was settling back to enjoy more of the musical entertainment, an elegantly gowned young woman walked onto the stage and began singing “Einsam in Truben Tagen” from Wagner’s Lohengrin. I quickly reopened the program on my lap and carefully started reading the notes in the dim auditorium lighting. For the first time I realized that this was not an orchestral performance, but a vocal presentation of Opera Highlights and Zarzuela. “Of course,” I said to myself, mentally slapping my forehead. “This is the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, being conducted by one of the world’s greatest tenors. I should have known!” I had always entertained the idea of hearing a live opera, and even asked Tamsen and Eddie to recommend one for me, but never followed through. Now here I was getting an incredible sampler. I settled down to listen and learn, glancing, occasionally, at the program notes to identify the songs and the operas.

Eddie always claimed that opera was “transformational.” Well the evening’s performance certainly had that effect on me. When mezzo-soprano, Erica Brookhyser, and soprano Valerie Vinzant sang “The Flower Duet”, from Lakmé by Delibes, I was transported out of my anger to a new place. The tender, lilting sounds of their intertwining voices made their words inconsequential, and my spirit soared with the music. I traveled with those blissful voices and imagined myself gazing at the becalmed Indus River, and the beautiful white jasmine and roses that flowered along its banks. I was emptied of all my wasteful annoyances and frustrations, because there was no room to harbor those dark thoughts while listening to that wondrous music. The First Act ended too soon, and intermission barely gave me enough time to devour the program and notes in preparation for the second. I learned that the vocal ensemble performing that evening were culminating students from the Domingo-Thornton Young Artists School, so the evening was a graduation of sorts. In the Second Part of the performance, I discovered that zarzuelas are the Spanish-language operas of Spain and Latin America and they differ from the Italian style and sound. Of the 11 songs performed, I especially enjoyed the “Romanza de Maria la O”, from Maria la O by Ernesto Lecuona. It had a swaying Spanish rhythm that I found enchanting and mysterious.

At the conclusion of a thunderous ovation and encore, I said goodbye to my family and walked the two short blocks to the Library parking lot. In the brisk, evening coolness of Santa Monica, buoyed by the lingering echoes of music and songs, I practically floated to my parking space, completely unaware of the events at the theatre. I learned later from Eddie, that after the concert, Tamsen took them backstage to meet the conductor. Even though my mother was a huge fan, she was not over-awed or speechless with her introduction to Plácido. In fact, she took advantage of the moment to grasp his hand and speak to him in Spanish, telling him how much she loved the performance. She also told him of an evening long ago when as a girl she heard a performance by his mother and father, who were singers. They had fled Spain during the Civil War, and together with Plácido, lived in Mexico City for many years. I like to think that my mom’s remarks enhanced the significance of the evening’s performance by reminding both the maestro and my mom of their youth in Mexico, and the wonderful connections they had with music.

Despite not having met Plácido Domingo, the evening was equally memorable for me, but for different reasons. It proved to be a classic example of how people allow their reaction to random events to govern their moods, and it demonstrated the power of opera to return us to our default spirit of bliss and wonderment. The Broad Stage parking lot being full was a fact. The restricted residential parking in Santa Monica was another. As was the shuttle parking at the Santa Monica Library, and the length of the musical program. All of these facts created delays and momentary barriers, but THEY did not have the power to direct my feelings or moods. Only I had the power to do that, and I CHOSE to be annoyed, then frustrated, then angry, and finally depressed. I could just as easily have let those inconveniences go and concentrated on the simple solutions to the factual problems at hand. Instead I empowered those facts to direct my moods and poison my feelings. I was captive to those spiraling feelings until I was rebooted by the saving sounds of human voices in song. I will never again mock Eddie’s belief in the transformative power of opera. The evening’s music saved me by seducing me from my depression, and reminding me that self-deception and despair cannot occupy the same space as beauty and truth. Anger and frustration could not co-exist with the joy created by “The Flower Duet”, “Maria la O”, and the other arias performed that night. I’ll have to meet Plácido on another occasion.

“But that boy can sing,
And it was a start.
I believe in starts.
Once you have the start,
The rest is inevitable.”
(The Commitments: Joey “The Lips” Fagin to Jimmy Rabbitte)

It’s taken me a while to get around to this, but I’m writing to correct a wrong and apologize to my brother Alex for doubting and misrepresenting him. In my blog of July 23, 2009 (see The Good News According to the Movies), I misquoted him, and cited the wrong passage from the movie, The Commitments.
“I’m sorry Al. I should have known better than to challenge your memory of movie dialogue. You had the right quote. Jimmy Rabbitte did call jazz, ‘musical wanking.’ I was wrong.”

You see, instead of actually viewing the movie to check Alex’s quote, I used a Google search on the Internet. None of the citations I found matched the passage Alex quoted at my daughter’s wedding reception. The closest one was Jimmy Rabbitte’s monologue on Soul, which I quoted in my blog. It was only when I was actually watching a rerun of The Commitments, with subtitles, that I caught my error – and the right passage. In the movie, Joey “The Lips” Fagin accosts Dean, the sax player, at the urinals in the men’s room during a break, and tells him:
“What you were playing was not Soul! Soul solos are part of the song - they have corners. You were spiraling – that’s jazz!”
Jimmy Rabbitte, the band manager, joins them at the urinal and adds:
“Jazz is musical wanking! If you want to wank, use that thing in your hand, not your sax!”

I don’t agree with Alex or Jimmy Rabbitte about Jazz, but I do accept their opinions. I really believe that Jazz, like Soul and the Blues, are all musical fingers pointing to the swaying moon of harmony and truth. They are means by which we can unite our physical bodies with our creative souls – the merging of our divided natures into what we can become. Folk and rock and roll music got me through my youth, popular music inoculated me to adulthood, then soul, the blues, and country music got me through the anguish of middle-age life. Jazz is my reward for a life long spent. But that’s my own opinion, and everyone must find his or her own music. However, I must admit, the restroom scene with Joey, Jimmy, and Dean was very good. It was a great moment, with great dialogue, and I’m embarrassed I missed it. I’ve assuaged my guilt since the discovery of my error by claiming that my story was actually about how the movies explain life’s riddles, and not about jazz - but that’s petty rationalizing. Alex got it right. He has a great memory for movie dialogue, and I’ll never doubt him again.

The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid he was a friend of mine
(Cisco Kid by WAR, 1971)

I turned off the television set in the Family Room at about 10 o’clock and walked into the study to check my email and see the latest postings on my favorite blogs. They are found as “Bookmarks” on my browser, and I’ve listed them in order of preference. The first six were: The Dedalus Log, Tablesaw, Flor Y Canto, Militant Angeleno, LA Eastside, and Chimatli. As I settled back into my desk chair, looking at the screen, I opened my son’s web log, Tablesaw/Sharpest Blades. A large billboard-style picture of a masked stranger came flying onto the screen. Captivated by the gaudy poster, I read the rest of Toñito’s blog for November 5, 2009.

Is anyone interested in seeing this with me next week?

“Get ready boys and girls for a thrilling episode of El Verde! Meet mild mannered Arturo Sanchez, born as an alien from the not so far away world of Mexico and raised in the good old U.S. of A. All Arturo ever wanted was to live an ordinary life, but after a freak elote accident, Arturo became… El Verde!!!

“Join us as we go back, way back, to see how it all began. This November, TeAda Productions will present THE ORIGINS OF EL VERDE. Watch as Arturo becomes the superhero who fights for truth, justice, and the Mexican-American way! Then watch him battle the evil La Quinceanera with her ultimate plot to destroy the world.

“Yes, El Verde is the live superhero show that’s fun for the whole family. If you’ve never been to an El Verde show before, be sure not to miss this one".

I meant to catch the show in August, but we got all busy. I don’t want to let this one go by.

The flamboyant promotional language was amusing, but Toñito’s invitation was enticing. On impulse, I immediately responded to his blog: “Mi Raza on stage? I’m always up see Chicano or Mexican-American theatre. Just let me know who else is going so I’ll know when (or when not) to laugh. Let’s coordinate dates, because next week looks bad. Dedalus”

Last Saturday, Toñito and I met at Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica to watch El Verde-Origins. It was just the two of us (a father and son) getting together to watch a local play about a Mexican-American hero in America. I had not shared an encounter this long with my son in months. We had seen each other at numerous family events and occasions, and chatted; but there is no substitute for sitting, watching, listening, and sharing a ballgame, movie, or play with your child, and knowing that you have all the time in the world to talk. That’s what we did that night.

The play was funny and exaggerated, and it provoked childhood images of comic books, cartoons, and Saturday matinee movies. There was nothing really exceptional in the staging or acting, and the story’s premise was absurd, but I smiled and laughed all evening. It reminded me of the campy, over-the-top, 1960’s TV series, Batman. The costuming, dialogue, actions, and music were bright, flashy, and outlandish. One could almost imagine the words POW, THWACK, and KABOOM flashing across the stage, as the heroes and villains fought and chased each other through the sets. Only these characters didn’t look, dress, or sound like your typical American heroes and villains in Gotham City – they were different. These good guys and bad guys looked, dressed, and acted as if they were cast in a Spanish language telenovela, located in East LA. For the space of 90 minutes, I was a kid again; suspending my beliefs and watching an improbable, Mexican-American factory worker transform himself into an urban, barrio crime fighter. El Verde wasn’t “super” because he had no super powers. True superheroes like Superman, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and Spiderman, were aliens from other planets or Americans who acquired superpowers. El Verde was just a naively confident and ambitious Mexican-American who wanted to defeat evildoers. He reminded me of the two Mexican-American heroes of my youth, The Cisco Kid and Zorro. In fact, except for the color of the mask and his lack of a sword, El Verde matched El Zorro in mask and suit color (I chose Cisco Kid for my title and epigram because I liked his song by War better than Zorro’s television theme song). It occurred to me, while discussing the merits of the play with Toñito over a late supper, that I would never have seen this production on my own. My son was our family’s guidon, carrying the ancient pennant of our cultural past.

My son Toñito has many admirable qualities. He is smart (tall), talented, logical, artistic, and passionate; and when he puts his mind to a task, he can be relentless. He brought this determination to bear on many of the duties his mother and I assigned him as a youth (athletics and academic achievement), and in the personal endeavors he discovered and pursued on his own (children’s theater, high school drama, and college fine arts). As he grew older, Kathy and I assumed our parental balcony seats to watch his life unfold - curious how this motivation would manifest itself next. We saw it in his involvement in intellectual puzzles and games, and in his committed relationship with his fiancé. However, the most surprising imperative developed from Tony and Jonaya’s understanding that their children would be bi-racial and multi-ethnic. I first became aware of his interest in Mexican and Chicano history, language, and culture, in September of 2008 when another of Toñito’s blogs caught me by surprise (See Cosmic Quest)

Since then, Toñito has continued his quest of learning more about the Mexican-American experience, history, language, and culture in Los Angeles, California, and America. I’ve stayed abreast of his progress through sporadic conversations, but mostly through his blog. In fact, it was while reading his commentaries on ethnic diversity, race, and cultural history that I learned of Militant Angeleno, LA Eastside, and Chimatli, three Mexican-American web journals that chronicle the styles and culture of Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles from a Mexican-American perspective. We had once talked about seeing The Culture Clash, the Chicano/Latino performance group that mixes comedy, satire, and social commentary through a Latino perspective, but we never followed through. Toñito’s Internet invitation to see another type of comedy about a Chicano culture hero was more than enough to compensate. I look forward to another date.

“Tony, let me put it to you in two words: ‘the Blues’. That’s what it’s all about, and you knew it once. You need to get back to that time; when you used to go to the Blues Festival in Long Beach every year”.
Alex, my youngest brother, was waxing wise. It seemed that my daughter’s wedding was affecting him as much as me, but his symptoms were different. He had come over to my table during the reception to hug me again, pound me on the back numerous times, and praise me effusively for maintaining a “classy open bar”. Then he sat next to me, explaining his struggles of coming to grips with Prisa’s sudden transformation into “a married women”. I was only half listening, when his sudden detour to the Blues recaptured my attention.
“I still enjoy the Blues, Alex” I replied, not understanding what the Blues had to do with Prisa’s marriage. “They’re just not as important now as they once were. I was going to the Blues Festival during some really difficult times of my life, years of conflict and struggle. The Blues got me through those times; and the Festival let me see and hear the great Bluesmen like Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, and John Lee Hooker”.
“So, wouldn’t you want to see them again?” he countered, moving closer to me. “John Lee’s dead, you know. A whole generation of Black blues artists are fading away; don’t you want to see them one last time?”
“No thanks, Al” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll leave that to you. The blues were meant for younger men still struggling with careers and life’s injustices. I’m not in that situation right now. I’ve moved on to other things and other types of music. The Blues introduced me to Jazz. It was the portal to a whole new genre of music which I enjoy”.
“Jazz” he sneered back, making the word sound like a strangled cough. “Do you know what they say about jazz in the movie, The Commitments?”
“That’s the movie about the Irish band, right? I asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one. In the movie the old musician tells the young sax player that Jazz is the opposite of the Blues. He says that the Blues are the only honest music, the music that comes straight from the heart. The Blues grab you by the balls and lift you above the shit of life”.
“So we’re back to you favorite debating trick, aren’t we Alex?”
“What’s that?” he asked, taken by surprise.
“You know, supporting your argument by offering a movie quotation. You really stand by that notion in the movie The Grand Canyon. How does it go? All life’s truths are in the movies”.
“Oh, you mean, ‘All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies’. Yeah, I do, because they are”.

Actually, Alex misquoted the musician, Joey “The Lips” Fagin, and he confused the Blues with Soul in the movie The Commitments. Joey says, “Soul is the antithesis of Jazz”; and it is Jimmy Rabbitte, the band’s founder and manager, who said Soul “says it straight from the heart. Sure there’s a lot of different music you can get off on, but Soul is more than that. It takes you somewhere else. It grabs you by the balls and lifts you above the shite”. Alex can be forgiven these citation errors about the Blues, because it was the supporting premise to his argument that caught my attention and stayed with me after the wedding.

Are all of life’s riddles answered in the movies? I happen to agree with Alex, because I think they are too. The two movies we mentioned at the wedding are sufficient to begin my short essay on this subject. I’m not one to memorize movie lines, like my younger brothers, Eddie and Alex, or my children, Tony and Prisa. However, some lines stick with me, and stay with me for a long time (Even though my children will roll their eyes at my attempts at quoting those lines). This happened with The Grand Canyon (1992) and The Commitments (1991). These movies were very well written, and they both contain eccentric, but believable, characters who had great lines, and were excellently portrayed. The Commitments (novel by Roddy Doyle, and screenplay by Dick Clement) had Joey “The Lips” Fagin (Johnny Murphy) and Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins), and The Grand Canyon (written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan) had Davis (Steve Martin), the cynical Hollywood producer who makes gratuitously violent movies, and Simon (Danny Glover), the struggling, African American tow-truck driver.

The Grand Canyon has the distinction of posing my central premise and then answering it with a dose of concrete reality.
Davis says: “That’s part of your problem – you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies”.
In another part of the movie, Simon says: “You ever been to the Grand Canyon? It’s pretty; but that’s not the thing of it. You can sit on the edge of that old thing and those rocks. The cliffs and the rocks are so old. It took so long for that thing to get like that; and it isn’t done either! It happens right there while you’re watching it. It’s happening right now as we are sitting here in this ugly town (Los Angeles). When you sit on the edge of that thing, you realize what a joke we people really are. What big heads we have thinking that what we do is going to matter all that much. Thinking that our time here means diddly to those rocks. Just a split second we have been here, the whole lot of us. That’s a piece of time so small to even get a name. Those rocks are laughing at me right now - me and my worries. Yeah, it’s real humorous, that Grand Canyon. It’s laughing at me right now. You know what I felt like? I felt like a gnat that lands on the ass of a cow chewing his cud on the side of the road that you drive by doing 70 mph”.

The Commitments offered another take on humanity’s struggle for happiness when Joey the Lips gave Jimmy Rabbitte this bit of sage advice after the band broke up in a babble of anger and bitter argument.
Joey: “Look, I know you’re hurting’ now, but in time you’ll realize what you’ve achieved”.
Jimmy: “I’ve achieved nothing!”
Joey: “You’re missin’ the point. The success of the band was irrelevant. You raised their expectations of life. You lifted their horizons. Sure we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way it’s poetry.”

Joey the Lips’ suggestion that our pursuit of perfection (in relationships, careers, music, and art) is the poetry of life, is my favorite movie saying. What’s yours? I’ve never proposed any active interaction with my blog, but I’m curious. Whether or not you subscribe to the idea that “all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies”, what is your favorite movie quote or saying (no fair submitting the American Film Institute’s 100 Top Movie Quotes unless you think of one first)? I encourage you to respond by commenting on the blog or by emailing me. I hope to read your favorite piece of movie advice, or saying.

Hasta la vista, baby.

By sweat of brow

Shall you earn your food,

Until you return to the ground

From which you came.

Remember, thou art dust,

And to dust thou shall return.

(Genesis 3:19)

As I walked down the extended, brick archway, to the church entrance, I noticed a narrow table pushed against the wall. It was piled high with posters and brochures, and festooned with bright yellow signs. “Yes on 8: Protect Marriage” the placards read, in giant blue letters. Speeding past this gaudy altar, and ignoring the 2 men passing out flyers, I sensed that this Sunday’s liturgy was going to be difficult. Once seated, I tried centering my thoughts, and ignored the disturbing political presence at the door. The choir was settling into place and awaiting the choral master to lead them in the processional song. It was a lyrical litany of saints, followed by the melodic refrain “Pray for us”. On and on, the roll call sounded, chased by our plea for intercession: “Saint Lucy – pray for us; Saint Catherine – pray for us; Saint Francis - pray for us; Saint Joseph – pray for us; Saint Jude – pray for us; Saint Sebastian – pray for us…” Keeping rhythm with the tune, I scanned the Old and New Testament readings as the priest and altar servers marched in and began the service. When the first lector took the podium, I made a special effort to concentrate and listen to the words. Some of them were particularly reassuring.

The first reading was from the Old Testament: “Those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with him in love” (Wisdom 3: 1-9). The second reading was from the epistle of St. Paul: “Brothers and sisters: hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts” (Romans 5: 5-11). The final reading was from the Gospel according to St. John: “Jesus said to the crowds: ‘… For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day’” (John 6: 37-40). The readings were comforting, and I hoped the priest would use them in his homily. Unfortunately, it was not the message of love, forgiveness, and eternal life that I heard pronounced from the pulpit that morning. Instead I heard a clear command to do my duty as a Catholic and support the sanctity of marriage by voting Yes on Proposition 8. This was the controversial amendment that sought to circumvent the 2008 California Supreme Court ruling which declared a previous same-sex marriage ban (Proposition 22) as unconstitutional. I was insulted and disappointed, but I struggled to suppress my anger. The clearest thought I had, sitting in the pew, was relief that my children and their fiancés were not present to hear this disheartening, political directive. This was the Catholic Church at its doctrinaire worst, stepping across the line between faith and politics, and wandering away from the spiritual Kingdom of God and the Good News that Jesus proclaimed. I had already decided to support the ruling of the courts by voting No on Proposition 8 and avoiding the religious controversy surrounding the debate. Now the Catholic Church was thrusting the issue back in my face and telling me how to vote from the pulpit. I had come to church with very different expectations. My plan had been to attend mass and then participate in the community celebration of Dia de los Muertos. I knew of this Mexican tradition, with the art work, foods, and activities which took place every year on this day, but I had never participated. I was hoping to go and watch, free from rancorous moral or political arguments. With an effort, I closed my mind to the priest’s exhortations and suppressed my emotions for the remainder of the service. This Sunday was All Soul’s Day, the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos. It was the final leg of the 3-day series of secular and religious rites that started with Halloween and ended on November 2. As a child, I remembered this autumnal triduum beginning with the magical words “Trick or Treat!”

Trick or treat! That declaration, or question, was the “open sesame” to the wonder and excitement of Halloween. My earliest memory of that day was dressing up in a skeleton costume and going, along with my brother and two sisters, to Abuelita’s House in Lincoln Heights. There, embraced by the family’s blend of English-and-Spanish, we were handed over to our youngest aunts and uncle, Espie, Lisa, and Charlie (see Nacimiento Stories), who instructed us in the rules and etiquette of this uniquely American tradition. Our parents and older relatives stayed at home to distribute candy, or left for adult parties, while we took to the sidewalks. It was so cool; and so simple! Halloween consisted of children banding together for courage and convenience, and calling on houses in the neighborhood to solicit candy. A child’s ease with night-time activities requires structure, and Charlie was a master at Halloween. To insure safety and profitability, he explained, five rules needed to be followed: 1) always go in a group, keeping an eye on your younger brothers and sisters, because if you lose one, you might as well never come home; 2) only visit houses with well-lit porches, because luminosity meant trick-or-treaters were safe; 3) keep the smallest and cutest children at the forefront of the group when saying “Trick ó treat!”, because adults loved being charmed before giving the finer treats; 4) never enter the homes you visit, because some adults were not to be trusted; and, finally, 5) all the collected booty had to be pooled. The length of our “trick-or-treating” depended on a variety of factors: the weather (cold was a problem, but rain was a killer); the willingness and cooperation of the little ones (the longer they held out, the richer the haul); and the game plan – to concentrate on the opulent homes, and hop-scotch along the street, or go door-to-door, visiting each house, one by one. Every year was different, because the ages and make up of our groups varied each season. However we never had a bad outing because rewards were guaranteed.

The key to a successful Halloween in a Mexican family was the rendezvous at the end of the evening, and the merging of loot in an elaborate ceremony. Once the “trick ó treating” was over, and all the children were back at home (the oldest kids were always the last to return, carrying the largest bags), we would huddle together with mugs of steaming chocolate, the little ones already in pajamas, to combine, and reorganize our candy. One by one, each child stepped forward, youngest to oldest, to empty their Halloween bags on the kitchen (or dining room) table. We would “ooohhh” at the bulk and shape of each sack that was raised, and “aaahhhh” as the gum, suckers, candy, and chocolate bars spilled out. Each candy was a house-memory, and the big bars of chocolate were mythic. Tales were shared and exaggerated upon for the adults who gathered around us. They would hear of the evening’s travels and adventures, of the people we met, the jokes we heard, and the odd behaviors we noticed. If time allowed, we would then adjourn to the family room to watch scary movies on television before leaving for home, or going to bed. Vampira was the fright-night diva in the mid 50’s, and her slinky, clinging, low-cut black gown, and her eastern European (Transylvanian?) accent, was the perfect nightcap to Halloween. However, before we got too excited or comfortable, or fell asleep, our mother would hustle us home or to bed. Tomorrow, she reminded us, was a holy day of obligation, and we had to go to mass.

One of the few “perks” of being a Catholic school student was having a school holiday on the day after Halloween, All Saints’ Day. However, it was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the magic of Halloween was heightened by the blissful knowledge that there was no school the following day. On the other, there is nothing worse than being dragged out of a warm and comfortable bed, sleepy, exhausted, and grumpy at 8 o’clock on a cold or rainy morning. The fact that we were obligated, under pain of mortal sin, to attend mass on November 1, made it very clear that this was the central religious feast day of this triduum. However, for a child, the reasons weren’t obvious, although I knew the answer lay in its title. This day commemorated all the dead martyrs and saints of the Church who did not have specific feast days. Okay and why was that important to me as a second grader at St. Teresa of Avila School in Silver Lake? Why did saints need my prayers? I loved October 31, the Eve of All Saints’ Day, because it was a gaudy, folk-celebration filled with costumes, excitement, and repressed fears of death, ghosts, and demons. I also saw the value for November 2, as a day to remember dead relatives and friends. But the keystone to this triad, All Saints’ Day, was pointless; people simply went to mass and prayed for the saints. It seemed more of a hassle than a celebration. I didn’t “get it” until after my father died on November 1, 1971.

I never saw my father on the day he died. I was stationed at Norton Air Force Base, in San Bernardino at the time of his death. When I finally arrived home, his body had been removed to the mortuary. Even though he had experienced 3 previous heart attacks, and was unable to work or exert himself for over two years, his death was a shock. No one expected a husband and father of 6 children to die so suddenly. I was 23 years old at the time, and a first year soldier in the Air Force; my baby brother Alex was 4. There was something very wrong with a man dying that way. Death was for OLD people, abuelos (grandparents), bisabuelos (great-grandparents), and the ancient and infirm; my dad was only 50 years old. His disappearance made my previously ordered and predictable life seem uncertain and precarious. I saw my father on a weekend leave, and then he was gone forever. These feelings of impermanence lasted for a long time. A consequence of this unease was a series of crazy sightings I had for many years after the funeral. They would occur when driving on the freeway, and I glimpsed the familiar back of a man’s head, or a recognizable profile in the car beside me. I was convinced my father was in those cars. I tried speeding up, or re-positioning my car to confirm my impulse, but never managed to close the distance. My logic would intrude and shame me into doubting the possibility of such an encounter. I had seen my father in his casket, and knew he was buried – the dead did not rise. It was then that I began searching for confirmation of an ordered and loving universe, and the existence of people who knew the path from life to death, and could explain the detours that occurred along the way. These Beacons of Light would have to be rare individuals who had broken through the membrane of our earthly plain and achieved spiritual and metaphysical enlightenment. They knew the way, and could help others find it. These were the saints, the mystics, and the buddhas - the spiritual pathfinders of the Catholic Church, and other religions. The Church has always venerated these holy and mystical people as models, guides, and patrons who help others in their search for meaning, compassion, and the Kingdom of God. In the early church tradition, parents named their boys and girls in honor of saints, so as to bind them as spiritual co-parents to these children. In many European countries, Catholic children still celebrate two anniversaries: their birth-days (cumpleaños), AND their saint-days (dia de santos).Towns and cities were also named for saints (or dedicated to them) with the expectation that in return the municipalities would receive blessings and protection from their namesakes. Over time, although the customs continued to be practiced, the rationale for this close connection to the saints faded. In Latin America, when Spanish and Portuguese priests and monks began converting Native Americans to Catholicism, their notion of a huge body of saints (the Communion of Saints) fit perfectly with the Indian pantheon of gods, goddesses, and spirits. Indians, eager to satisfy the demands of the priests, while still maintaining their cultural identity (and in some cases their religious practices), chose Christian saint names, or adopted patron saints for towns and villages, whose feast days coincided with their pagan gods and goddess. Therefore saints, in the Catholic tradition, were a repository of wisdom and guidance, and a vital spiritual resource which had to be recognized and respected. It seemed to me, that All Saint’s Day, on November 1, was a form of spiritual insurance, a catch-all holy day for every saint who did not have their own particular feast day. The concept would make a lot of sense to the Catholic Church who did not want to slight or offend ANY saint and martyr. Six years after my father’s death, at the birth of my son, the sightings ceased. I had come to accept my father as one of the saints which the Church honored on his death day. My life changed dramatically when he died, and it seemed as if all my subsequent actions and experiences were guided by his presence and benevolent spirit. From being offered a teaching job at my high school alma mater, meeting my future bride on a blind date, to the births of my children (Toñito named after St. Anthony of Padua, and Prisa, named after St. Teresa of Avila), blessings and good fortune befell my father’s family, his children and grandchildren. However, my private canonization of my father was a personal matter, not recognized by the Church. The Church offered its own version of a day for the dead on November 2.

At the end of the “Yes on Proposition 8”mass, I escaped through a side exit, and evaded the pamphleteers who were handing out flyers to the predominately Hispanic parishioners. Once away from the pressing crowds and congestion, I took a deep breath of fresh air and continued on my way. All Soul’s Day has always been the most sensible and practical day of the triduum. It is simply the Day of the Dead. I was never really satisfied with the official Church explanation of who was a saint, who was a soul, and how Purgatory factored into this equation - so I ignored it. On the other hand, the Mexican folk customs and traditions for Dia de los Muertos fascinated me. I was intrigued by the artistic craftwork, the papier-mâché sculptures, the paintings, the candy, pastry and the elaborate decoration of family altars commemorating the dead. The celebration of Dia de los Muertos in Canoga Park, centers on a street fair along Sherman Way. It begins at the conclusion of the 9:30 Mass at the parish church, and ends with a parade back to the church for the 6 o’clock service. After mass, I parked my car near the old public library. This was a quiet and shady location, one block away from the hub of activity. I could hear and feel the thumping bass coming from distant loudspeakers as I geared up, standing next to my trunk. I took my coat, 2 cameras, a carrying case, cell phone, wallet, and notebook. This was more stuff than I needed, could use, or adequately carry; but I wanted to cover every contingency. In this over-dressed and overburdened fashion, I labored along the uneven, tree-lined sidewalk, and pushed the last vestiges of the morning’s sermon out of my head. Keeping pace with the quickening rhythms in the air, it struck me that I had no plan; I had no expectations of today’s adventure. Suddenly, I was out of the shade and into the bright sunlight of the main street. Hip-hop Latino music bounced off the one-story buildings and stores that bordered the street. A flood of men, women, teenagers, and children swirled around me and the white-topped booths in the center of the street. The island-like pavilions anchored the hundreds of craftsmen, vendors, and concessionaires who were working, cooking, or selling their wares. I was swept up in the surging multitude of walking, talking, standing, pointing, buying, and eating spectators. A riptide of flowing bodies, colors, and sounds, pushed me farther and faster than I wanted to go along the street. I came to a momentary stop when I bumped into a shaved-headed, thickly biceped, tattooed man, standing in front of a booth. There I found myself staring at a wedding cake arrangement of skulls, bones, and crucifixes. The highest layers contained finely appareled Madonna skeletons and elegant figurines of gowned and bonneted “catrina” skeletons of various sizes. I was drowning in a sea of plaster, ceramic, and papier-mâché artwork of the ghoulish and the dead. I stepped away from my cholo friend, and took hold of myself. This was going too fast, and there was too much to see, hear, and remember. I needed a plan and a perspective from which to view and appreciate these objects and experiences. I was determined to start over, concentrating on every moment. I would approach this celebration, its art, and its meaning, as a first time viewer, a fascinated student and a thoughtful photographer. I would take in all that I saw and observed. Walking back, against the pedestrian current, I slowly made my way to the intersection where I had entered, and found an empty store alcove to stop and take my bearings. I looked around.

The entire sidewalk corner was covered with a series of 4, hunched-over, technically engrossed, chalk artists, and an audience watching them work. How could I have missed this? I marveled at the care with which the artists treated the concrete surface, and their gentleness in creating something new. I’d always thought of chalk painters as sketchers, caricaturists, or street hustlers who turned a quick-trick on the ground for a few extra dollars. These were authentic artists, teachers, and philosophers, who used the earth as their medium, and the street as their studio.The artists only painted images of macabre, iconic, or historical significance. The first sidewalk fresco was an anatomically detailed skeleton (esqueleto), bordered in a field of black; the next was a giant portrait of Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist, feminist, and political activist of the 1930’s and 40’s; the third was a stylized depiction of a dancing, Mexican esqueleto, wearing a wide-brimmed mariachi sombrero; and the last was a painting of Emiliano Zapata, the legendary Mexican revolutionary of the 1910’s. I could see mothers and fathers pointing out these figures to their children. It was reminiscent of the first time I saw the historical murals of Siqueiros and Orozco in Mexico City and heard elderly grandparents using them as illustrations of the national struggles of Mexico for their grandchildren. Sadly, these sidewalk murals would not last the week. By Tuesday or Wednesday, pedestrians, skateboarders, joggers and cyclists would no longer avoid defacing the works by walking around them. Indifferent wheels, shoes, and sneakers would soon rub away and erase the momentary images that existed on the sidewalk. This was one of the over-arching themes that ran through the day and the festival – death and impermanence; nothing lasts forever, and everything dies. This theme was manifested in every artistic medium in the festival. I was surrounded by art. It was in the air, on the ground, and in each stall; creation and decay, innovation and destruction, beginnings and endings. I spent 3 hours exploring the street fair on Dia de los Muertos. I visited every booth, inspected all the paintings and artwork, explored the roof and balcony floors of the Madrid Theatre, watched the Aztec dancers, and listened to the mariachi bands. The preponderance of skulls (calaveras), skeletons (esqueletos), and stylized crucifixes were a constant reminder of death, and yet, life and renewal was everywhere.

Halloween is not celebrated in Mexico. There are no festivities on the EVE of All Saints’ Day; the holiday occurs the next day. Dia de los Muertos is a blossoming of a transplanted European religious practice. I saw this immediately in a recurring image that was visible in every booth and exhibit I passed. The repetition of esqueletos and calaveras in paintings, drawings, figurines, candy and bread, makes those images appear uniquely Mexican. The most recognized Mexican figures are the paintings and drawings of a string or quintet of musical skeletons dancing, strutting, or playing instruments. In fact, this common motif is a lineal descendent of the late medieval engravings and woodcuts of The Danse Macabre (The Dance of Death). The 1400’s were dark and dangerous times in Europe. This was the period when the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (Death, Famine, Pestilence, and War) terrorized the countryside, cities, and towns. These were the Dark Ages; the times of witchcraft and the Black Plague which left such an indelible impression on the hearts, minds, and imaginations of Europeans, and gave birth to the images of the Danse Macabre. The original depiction showed Death leading a row of dancing figures from all walks of life to the grave. The “dance” was an allegory of the equality and inevitability of death – no matter our wealth, station, or age, everyone will die. It was a reminder of the Christian concept of the fragility of life, and the hollowness of the vanities of wealth, youth, and beauty. It was also a reminder of the statement in Genesis that we are dust, and to dust we will return. The only escape from this short and brutish life was eternal happiness in Heaven. However, only the Catholic Church held the keys to this Kingdom; it held the power to forgive sins and erase the impediments to heaven. Therefore, All Souls’ Day was the European feast day that concentrated the efforts of the living on praying and offering masses and indulgences for the dead (this would later be corrupted into the practice of paying for masses and indulgences - which prompted Martin Luther into starting the Protestant Reformation). This was the religious iconography and traditions that the Catholic Church brought to Mexico and the Americas in the 1500’s. However, instead of surrendering to them, the Indians changed them. Just as a Mexican representation of the Danse Macabre transposed a frightful line of awkwardly moving skeletons, into a merry and raucous band of mariachi esqueletos, so it took a morbid feast day for the dead, and transformed it into a festive celebration of the living.

The rhythmic rattles and steady beat of the Indian drums alerted me to the main attraction at the center of the street fair. There, at the foot of the main stage, a troop of eight plumed and costumed performers moved and swayed to the flute and percussion arrangement of a pre-Cortesian dance. The complexity of the choreography belied the simplicity of the beat. The music was easy to follow and it attracted larger and larger audiences. Standing at the outer limits of the crowd, and searching for a line of sight that would allow photographs of the dancers, I was struck by the irony of this sight. What was being memorialized here, Mexico’s pagan past or the liberating new religion? This indigenous pageant pointed out one of Mexico’s central mysteries – whose religion actually won out after the “conquest”?

By 1550, Spain and Portugal occupied all of Mexico, Central and South America, and were inadvertently melding the two peoples and cultures into one. The possibility of mixing the religions would have been anathema. However, in converting Indians to Catholicism, enlightened missionaries first learned the indigenous languages, the cultures, and the religions of the vanquished people. Then they taught their own doctrine by pointing out the differences, similarities, and superior benefits of the Catholic faith. Sophisticated Indian religions were violent and bloody, with human sacrifices and cannibalism a common feature at the highest levels of observance. Aztec, Inca, and Mayan ceremonies included pulsating hearts being ripped out of heaving chests, and walls of skulls decorating pyramid topping temples. The pastoral religion of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus Christ was certainly an improvement over this, even with its morbid medieval iconography of suffering, torture, and death. Showing similarities was meant to comfort and reassure the Indians that converting to Christianity was the smart thing to do. To emphasize the inevitability of submission, the Spaniards even built their churches and cathedrals atop the rubble of destroyed pyramid temples and shrines. The victors never expected the Indians to fuse or unify the Christian beliefs and forms with Indian practices and observances. Priests and friars began suspecting this syncretistic practice only when they discovered pagan idols and statuettes behind church altars, or buried on church grounds and in cemeteries. Dia de los Muertos, became one of these syncretistic observances.

Standing on the balcony of the Madrid Theatre, I saw the full sweep of the day’s events. The Aztec dancers had moved to a courtyard setting, the juvenile mariachi bands were mobilizing near the outdoor stage, and wave after wave of people flowed in and around the tables, booths and exhibits on the street. Until today, I had never seen a Dia de los Muertos celebration. My visits and vacations to Mexico never coincided with this fall holiday, and the customs were not observed in my family. While my mother was strict in observing the religious aspects of the feast days, we never took part in any of the Dia de los Muertos activities. I was only academically familiar with the history, artwork, iconography, and practices of this day through stories, books and pictures. It took a discovery by Kathy’s parents, Mary and the doctor (see On My Way to You), to pique my ethnic curiosity and revitalize my own interest in the central aspects of this Mexican holiday.

After the death of their daughter Debbie (see The Pleiades), Mary and the doctor became regular visitors to the San Fernando Mission Cemetery. It was there, surrounded by the graves of many Mexican and Mexican-American families that they observed a curious phenomenon. Throughout the year, Mexican families would descend on the graves of loved ones and stand, sit, gossip, or picnic. These were not drive-by occasions, but full half-day excursions. The families would bring gardening equipment, blankets, chairs and tables, and they would tend, decorate, and deposit gifts, food, beer, and pictures at the site. They would also bring, and set up miniature Christmas trees, televisions, Valentine’s Day bouquets, and Easter eggs baskets. It seemed as if these families were continuing to include their departed sister, brother, mother, or father in the cyclical celebrations of life that occupied the living. While these practices at first shocked my in-laws, they also gave them license to maintain their own level of intense communion with their deceased daughter. Mary was especially fascinated with the Dia de los Muertos custom of setting up private altars by the headstones, and there placing the favorite foods, beverages, photos, and memorabilia of the departed. When she asked me about it, I explained that many rural and provincial Mexicans held the folk belief that during Day of the Dead, it was easier for souls of the departed to visit the living. Therefore, families went to cemeteries not only to REMEMBER the dead, but to coax and encourage them to VISIT and STAY with them for a while. The altars were meant as spiritual inducements to the dead. Small shrines were placed at the gravesites, but larger, more elaborate altars were constructed at home. These were the multi-tiered altars flowing with countless candles, food, cakes, candies, crosses, statues, images of the saints and the Virgen de Guadalupe, and photographs of deceased relatives and friends.

At the conclusion of my day, walking past a car with a “Yes on Proposition 8” bumper sticker, I felt oddly reassured. I had spent the day witnessing how a people and a culture can affect the Church by simply ignoring a dreary, solemn practice, and changing it into a joyful observance. All Souls’ Day (Day of the Dead) was never part of Christ’s message to humanity; it was an observance of the Church, meant to point us in the right direction (the finger pointing at the moon). Mexico translated and modified this day into something very different. Dia de los Muertos, with all its images and pictures of skulls and skeletons, is not about remembering the dead, and the inevitability of our own death. Paradoxically, the day is a celebration of this brief and wonderful life. The calaveras are decorated and transformed into sugared candies and curious figurines for the living. Esqueletos are not presented as frightful reminders of decay and decomposition, but as slender, well-dressed mariachi musicians, or curvaceous and elegantly gowned women who are here to entertain and seduce. This is the day when the dead can remember being alive, and perhaps leave us, the living, with a message: “Life may be short, harsh, and unfair, but it is such a blessing – so treasure every moment”.

"Come closer, famous Odysseus –
Achaea’s pride and glory –
moor your ship on our coast
so you can hear our song!
Never has any sailor passed our shores
in his black craft
until he has heard the honeyed voices
pouring from our lips,
and once he hears to his heart’s content
sails on, a wiser man”.
(The Odyssey, 12:200. Homer. Trans. by Robert Fagles )

A hint of music entered my head as I walked along the pathway between the Humanities Building and Knudsen Hall. Echoes of familiar sounds turned my thoughts away from the lecture I’d just heard, and which route to take to the Newman Center. They crept up on me like the tickling sensations one feels when someone silently enters your room, or pulls up alongside your car while driving. I was forced to stop and look for the source of the intrusion. Turning my head from side to side, I swept the area, searching for a tell-tale sight or sound. I heard it again; a whisper of music that I could almost identify. I hesitated asking anyone, since no one else seemed to notice. Students were trooping past me, oblivious to anything unusual, seemingly determined to reach their destinations as quickly as possible. There it was again! Obsessed now, by these mysterious sounds, and determined to prove I wasn’t going crazy, I changed my path. I crossed the tree-lined street onto the open grassy area of Dickson Court. I could hear better from there, but the sounds were still faint. My audio Geiger counter finally started crackling as I walked toward Schoenberg Hall. Of course, I thought, strike my forehead with my palm, the music building! The source of the sounds may have been revealed, but not the mystery.

What was I hearing, and why was I the only person on this side of campus reacting to this music? As I approached the entrance to the glassed façade, I finally began to distinguish the melodious sounds of violins and cello playing a hauntingly familiar piece of classical music. I walked in on what can only be described as an impromptu string quartet concert. There in the middle of a vast lobby, four student musicians sat on battered folding chairs, in front of rickety music stands, playing 2 violins, a viola, and a cello. Staring intently at the music sheets before their eyes, these young men and women rocked furiously in rhythm with their instruments, and the music they created. I stood mute and entranced. They were clearly students who had come together to practice and play. They were similar to my Political Science study group which met to research a topic or investigate a hypothesis in the library. Only these were Fine Arts students and their major consisted of practicing for musical performances. They sat in a towering chamber and hallway which allowed the music to swell and soar into the air, until one of them would suddenly halt it, by saying “Wait, wait, wait, that’s not it. Let’s try it again. Start from the top”. There weren’t many interruptions; the musicians seemed pretty good. Students and an occasional adult would walk by, stop, listen, and continue forward, entering or exiting the building. Everyone seemed to accept this spectacle as a natural part of the environment of this building, which I was visiting for the first time in my freshman year. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Music for free, and it was all for me. I was done for the day, with no more classes. I had nothing to do, and it didn’t appear that the quartet was leaving any time soon. I found a nearby bench and sat down. Placing my backpack by my side, I settled in to enjoy this private concerto, in the echoing chamber of Schoenberg Hall. I would never discover the titles or composers of the pieces they practiced, but it didn’t matter in those early days of college. My clapping startled the musicians when they finished the practice, and I was too embarrassed to ask them what they had played. I just sat and enjoyed the music and the sensations they created. It was my only private concert at UCLA, and my introduction to chamber music and the intimate seductions of a string quartet. I never found out why other students did not follow me into the building to discover this music. They acted as though their ears were plugged with wax.

Classical music has always transported me to other times, places, and sensations. My mother claims that she listened to classical records during her pregnancy to teach me an appreciation for fine music while I was en utero. I can’t testify to the effectiveness of this practice, and it certainly did not engender or stimulate my musical talent. I neither play an instrument nor carry a decent tune when singing. However, classical music was the first musical genre I fell in love with (followed by rock and roll in my youth, blues in middle age, jazz in my wisdom, and occasionally country). My first memory of a concert was being taken to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Palace of Fine Arts, in Mexico City, to hear the National Philharmonic Symphony when I was a child. My uncle Carlos was a cellist in the symphony and he arranged for my mother and I to attend an afternoon performance. I recall dressing up and treating the occasion as a very special event. I loved the location, the setting, the orchestra, and the ritualistic aspects of the performance. The only draw back was the dress requirement; I loved the music, hated the coat and tie. Later, when I discovered my parent’s classical record collection I played the LP’s over and over on our Victrola phonograph: Flight of the Valkyries, by Wagner, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker Suite, by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Blue Danube by Strauss, and even Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin. I wore (or scratched) the vinyl off those records by my repetitive playing. Despite this attraction to classical music, the only class I ever took in Music Appreciation was in high school. In college I satisfied my fine arts requirement by taking three quarters of Art History, so I was relegated to public libraries to explore and discover the world of classical composers on my own. It was from these borrowed records that I heard the differences between the Baroque, Classic, and Romantic periods, by listening to Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Wagner, and Brahms, to name just a few. I enjoyed them all, but the greatest allure for me was the smaller orchestras that played chamber music. My accidental discovery of the string quartet at Schoenberg Hall only whet my appetite for this type of ensemble, and I’ve been a fan ever since. It was this attraction that brought me to the First Baptist Church of Glendale, on August 17, 2008, to hear the Avanti String Quartet.

All artists, whether they are painters, writers, photographers, designers, sculptors, or actors create a unique, thought-provoking experience or object out of nothing. Professional artists are especially blessed because they have reached a level of expertise that people will pay to watch, hear, and appreciate their performance or product. I’ve always considered it an honor to know them because they are in a class by themselves. That is not to imply that their lives are easy; in fact the opposite is usually true. Only the most fortunate of artists can live from their art. Most professionals still need additional jobs (substitute teachers, personal tutors, temporary secretaries, caterers, waiters, landscapers, realtors, etc) in order to continue creating. Of all these artists, I’ve always thought musicians to be “other worldly”. Good musicians, in every genre, produce the sounds of angels. They create a sensory experience that touches all our faculties, and take us outside our selves. Listening to professional musicians who are also friends or family members is a transcendental treat, because of the extra dimension of personal familiarity. Even when they return to their mortal guises of uncles, nephews, nieces, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, or friends, their professional status gives off a special aura. My Mexican uncle Carlos was the only classical musician I knew until Eddie, my brother, met and married Tamsen (see Giri: Family Obligations), a violinist for the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and the Glendale Symphony. While my uncle has retired, Tamsen is in full career, performing as a soloist and as a leader or member of various ensemble groups. In 2004, she and three other women formed the Avanti Quartet. Eddie has always kept his family abreast of Tamsen’s performance schedule. Because of my love of chamber music, and my desire to support family artists, I have always tried to attend as many performances of the Avanti String Quartet as possible. When I received Eddie’s email alerting me to three performance dates, I chose one and responded that I would see him on the 17^th.

A string quartet is an amazingly intimate vehicle to enjoy classical music. The instruments are versatile enough to play most musical compositions, and the proximity to the audience makes the experience personal and inviting. The Avanti Quartet seduces the audience into the music, with their combination of style and talent. The ensemble is composed of 4 attractive women who are classically trained, accomplished, and respected professionals: Tamsen Beseke, first violin, Carrie Kennedy, second violin, Kaila Potts, viola, and a guest cellist for this performance, Cathy Biagini. During the performance they made time to interact with the audience, introducing themselves and their instrument, and discussing the composers and their works. The artists were personable and open with their guests, revealing confidence, shyness, humor, and charm in their speech and manner. These four sirens of music left a lasting impression on the men and women sitting in the pews of this picturesque, little church in Glendale. Starting with movements from Mozart’s String Quartet in C major, K157, followed by Glaznov’s peppy Five Novellettes, the Jazz Pizzicato by Leroy Anderson, and the String Quartet in D major, Op. 44 No 1, by Mendelssohn, the Avanti group guided their audience on a musical odyssey of the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th Century. I usually just sit and listen when I go to chamber recitals, much the same way I did at Schoenberg Hall so many years ago. On this occasion, however, I didn’t want to be a spellbound captive to music. I wanted to do something different; so I brought my camera.

I have been experimenting with my camera all summer – trying out different action sequences, lighting perspectives, shooting angles, and shutter speeds. Candid action shots have posed the biggest challenge because of the equipment and technical requirements. This is even more problematic for me because my pictures need proximity to the subject. I lack the high powered telephoto lenses to shoot from a distance. Since I have to be close to the person or action I’m photographing, it’s easier having willing subjects and spectators who allow me to intrude. This is difficult if I want take pictures of strangers performing spontaneous actions, or in front of a ticket-purchasing, sophisticated audience. I’ve avoided this dilemma by concentrating on family events and friends. Although I assumed that Eddie and Tamsen would allow me to take pictures of the concert if I was unobtrusive, I wasn’t sure of the audience; classical music aficionados can be finicky and pretentious. I might wander about freely in a Concert in the Park, taking pictures of performers and spectators, but a formal music chamber like a church or auditorium did not allow that liberty of motion. I needed a cloak of invisibility, a device that would make me part of the landscape, or background, as I moved about taking pictures of musicians, scenery, and audience; and I thought I had it. On a whim, about 3 months ago I’d taken an imaginary precaution in case I ever wanted to photograph an unplanned or unexpected subject or event. I’d always noticed how individuals carrying cameras and wearing lanyards with plastic encased, oversized identification passes with photos, labeled OFFICIAL and PRESS, were always given open access at public events. People just moved aside and let the photographer step in and shoot. Rarely did anyone challenge the cameraman or check his credentials. So, I downloaded a blank “Official” Press Pass for the Mobile Broadcast News from the internet. On one side it had space for a photo mug shot and information, and on the back an authentic sounding, Constitution-like quote, invoking the rights of religion, free speech, the press, and assembly. I typed in my information, added a recent passport photo, and encased the pass in a bold plastic sleeve on a brightly colored lanyard. It looked great; and real! I never had the nerve to use it, but I imagined that one day, in a Rockford File situation, I might need to. The Avanti Concert was the first time I dusted it off and tossed it into my camera case. It worked like a charm.

Eddie gave me carte blanche to take pictures of the Avanti Quartet during their performance, and the press pass gave me a freedom of movement I would not have dared take without it. No one in the audience turned a head or batted an eye as I changed locations; moving forward, back, to one side of the church and another. The more photos I took, the bolder I became. There was another photographer in the church using a camera with a telephoto lens on a tripod. We silently nodded to each other and continued shooting. I became so confident of my disguise that I hoped someone would actually challenge me. I had a ready response: I was Tony, a freelance photographer and journalist for LiveJournal, an internet website, covering the story on the Avanti Quartet concert. After all, these were talented, hardworking professional artists who merited media attention. Why not treat them as stars? The artists certainly deserved the attention. I got so carried away with my new persona of paparazzi that I insisted on more intimate photos of the performers. At intermission, Eddie took me backstage to meet and photograph the quartet as they relaxed and refreshed; that’s when my façade cracked. In the actual presence of these attractive and charming ladies and talented artists, I became a gushing fan. I awkwardly confessed that I loved their music, their selection of works, and their interaction with the audience (Thank God, I didn’t ask for their autographs). When I shyly asked if I could take their pictures, they rescued me by finding the right location, the best light, and posed professionally. I just had to point the viewfinder and click.

As I was awakening from this magically feminine and artistic encounter and returning to my seat, an elderly gentleman walked up to me and said in a very sincere way, “Thank you for being here”. When it dawned on me that he had thanked me, believing I was a newspaper photographer, I felt like a charlatan and fraud. Until that point, I had been playing a game, pretending to be someone I was not. My intention had been to merely take pictures of Tamsen and the quartet for myself and Eddie, now I felt guilty. The only way I could redeem myself and enjoy the second half of the performance was to give truth to my pretense. I WAS an amateur photographer and an authentic blogger on LiveJournal; all I had to do now was record and report the event for everyone to read and see. I made a silent promise to write this essay and post it, even though the elderly gentleman might never see it. At peace with myself, and one with the audience, I settled back into my seat to enjoy the music of my youth.

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The Dedalus Log

Flights of Fancy

Entries tagged with arts

Stardust in Their Eyes

Jokerman

Mr. Tambourine Man

Legend of the West

All Things Pass Away

Way Out There on the Triple-R

Siqueiros in L.A.

Murals of San Francisco

Zarzuela Nights in Santa Monica

The Commitment Correction

The New Cisco Kid

The "Good News" According to the Movies

Dia de los Muertos

Sirens Song