Dear Los Angeles
Page 22
JULY 29
1929
Books the Los Angeles Public Library believe might contaminate the morals or literary tastes of their readers should not be tolerated in Tarzana, and when we consider the fact that some hundred million [Tarzan] readers all over the world have already been contaminated, we should exert every effort to keep Los Angeles the one bright spot in the literary firmament.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
1939
Big money did not immediately soften Burroughs’ hatred of modern life. His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had money, he went to Southern California.
ALVA JOHNSTON
1941
We’ve just re-discovered the poetry of George Crabbe (all about Suffolk!) & are very excited—maybe an opera one day—
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
JULY 30
1769
We proceeded for four hours on a good road, with the exception of two very steep hills. We halted in a very large valley where there was much pasture and water. Here we had to construct a bridge to cross the gully. I consider this a good place for a mission.
GASPAR DE PORTOLÁ
1769
We left Los Ojitos, where there was another earthquake of no great violence, at half-past six in the morning. We crossed the plain in a northerly direction, steadily approaching the mountains. We ascended some hills which were quite rugged and high, afterwards we descended to a very extensive and pleasant valley where there was an abundance of water, part of it running in deep ditches, part of it standing so as to form marshes. This valley must be nearly three leagues in width and very much more in length. We pitched our camp near a ditch of running water, its banks covered with watercress and cumin. We gave this place the name of Valle de San Miguel. It is, perhaps, about four leagues from Los Ojitos. In the afternoon we felt another earthquake.
MIGUEL COSTANSÓ
1928
Flew into a Los Angeles airport this morning to wait till the fog raised to get over to another one at Santa Monica, when all at once a plane dropped down through fog that was thicker than smoke in a Presidential nominating room. And who crawled out of the thing but the kid himself, Lindbergh!…Fog don’t stop that lad. I asked him where he was going and he told me, “Confidentially, East.”
WILL ROGERS
JULY 31
1876
Earthquakes occur fairly frequently, usually in August.
LUDWIG SALVATOR
1937
I’ve been kept busy every minute. The first thing to settle was the Memorial Concert. There were two groups working against each other, one—the ASCAP which wanted to run one at the Shrine Auditorium—the proceeds to go to a scholarship fund—the other group was the Hollywood Bowl organization which wanted the proceeds of their concert to go to themselves as there is usually a deficit at the end of the season….
I packed a trunk with suits, shoes, etc. and will send it by freight Monday.
IRA GERSHWIN, to his mother
AUGUST 1
1935
Sat through a very uninteresting performance of the Tschaikowsky Sixth Symphony in order to hear Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Heifetz playing superbly. And these continual complaints that we, if I may include myself among musicians, are making, I was forced to make again. After hearing the Tschaikowsky once, which I believe everyone who has entered a symphony hall has, I see no necessity for hearing it again, since, by virtue of sequence upon sequence and repetition upon repetition, one is forced hearing it once to hearing it scores of times….And the programs here at the Bowl are generally bad….
My study with Schoenberg is progressing steadily. We have reached four-part counterpoint, second species. He is very good to us, and takes great pains teaching us. His English has become very good. He is even able to be witty with the use of words, which represents a certain level of mastery. He is moving, I believe into another house. And I understand that he has been engaged by the University here for another year. They promise to present many of his works….
Xenia is an angel. We have been married now almost two months. It is always very beautiful….
August 3rd we have a meeting of your composers, modern, of Los Angeles. I don’t know exactly what will happen. Wm. Grant Still will be there, and some other negro composers. They have asked me to play something.
JOHN CAGE
1942
This is a strange and curious place.
WILLIAM FAULKNER, to his agent
AUGUST 2
1769
We halted not very far from the river, which we named Porciúncula. Here we felt three consecutive earthquakes in the afternoon and night. We must have traveled about three leagues today. This plain where the river runs is very extensive. It has good land for planting all kinds of grain and seeds, and is the most suitable site of all that we have seen for a mission, for it has all the requisites for a large settlement. As soon as we arrived about eight heathen from a good village came to visit us; they live in this delightful place among the trees on the river. They presented us with some baskets of pinole made from seeds of sage and other grasses. Their chief brought some strings of beads made of shells, and they threw us three handfuls of them. Some of the old men were smoking pipes well made of baked clay and they puffed at us three mouthfuls of smoke. We gave them a little tobacco and glass beads, and they went away well pleased.
FRAY JUAN CRESPI
1856
Almost all the newspapers from the north are continually filled with reports of lynchings in the mines. And, oh fatality! only Mexicans are the victims of the people’s insane fury! Mexicans alone have been sacrificed on gallows raised to launch their poor souls into eternity. Is this the liberty and equality of the country we have adopted?
FRANCISCO P. RAMIREZ
1933
I gave the watercolor to Diego R[ivera]. He was very pleased. He too was just in a very annoying and difficult situation, because he was stopped from completing his wall murals in the Rockefeller Center. He still is answering correspondence from three years ago and is the subject of much contention in America just now. I am trying to get him some connections here. For now he is still busy in New York with the murals, but wants to do film and is dying to do so.
GALKA SCHEYER, to Wassily Kandinsky
1941
“Why do we go wrong in our relations with other human beings? Because of a basic inattention.” [Josiah Royce]….
Try to avoid negative emotion. Most newspaper reading, especially in wartime, is crying over spilt milk….
Begin to lead the rationed life: no more toys, only tools. There isn’t any such thing as human nature; we can rise to anything because we can sink to anything….
Our ideal should be to accept unlimited liability for all the acts of our fellow human beings. We are all members with one another.
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
1943
As for “The Gentleman Caller,” I have devised a new ending for it, considerably lighter, almost happy, and I’m having to re-write the earlier scenes to jive with it.
As for Metro, by the time my six months are up here, I hope that I will have been gripped by some really big theme for a long play, one deserving entire devotion—In which case, I would retire to Mexico and live on those savings until it is finished.
Let’s face it!—I can only write for love. Even then, not yet well-enough to set the world on fire. But all this effort, all this longing to create something of value—it will be thrown away, gone up the spout, nothing finally gained—If I don’t adhere very strictly to the most honest writing.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
1959
Aunt Frieda had a wonderful cold chicken lunch, string beans, potato salad, tomato and lettuce salad, hot rolls, fresh pineapple, coffee cake and tea ready for us yesterday w
hen we came. Both she and Uncle Walter are handsome, fun, and so young in spirit. They have a little green Eden of a house, surrounded by pink and red and white oleander bushes, with two avocado trees loaded down with (alas) not-yet-ripe fruit, a peach tree, a guava tree, a persimmon tree, a fig tree and others.
Aunt Frieda has had some wonderful adventures and is a great storyteller. Ted gets on magnificently with Walter; we simply love them both. It is amazing how Frieda resembles daddy.
SYLVIA PLATH
1966
This is the story of the United Space Ship Enterprise. Assigned a five-year patrol of our galaxy, the giant starship visits Earth colonies, regulates commerce, and explores strange new worlds and civilizations. These are its voyages…and its adventures.
GENE RODDENBERRY
AUGUST 3
1769
On our way we met the entire population of an Indian village engaged in harvesting seeds on the plain. In the afternoon there were other earthquakes; the frequency of them amazed us.
MIGUEL COSTANSÓ
1769
At half-past six we left the camp and forded the Porciúncula River, which runs down from the valley, flowing through it from the mountains into the plain. After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and an infinity of rosebushes in full bloom. All the soil is black and loamy, and is capable of producing every kind of grain and fruit which may be planted. We went west, continually over good land well covered with grass. After traveling about half a league we came to the village of this region, the people of which, on seeing us, came out into the road. As they drew near us they began to howl like wolves; they greeted us and wished to give us seeds, but as we had nothing at hand in which to carry them we did not accept them. Seeing this, they threw some handfuls of them on the ground and the rest in the air….
We judge that in the mountains that run to the west in front of us there are some volcanoes, for there are many signs on the road which stretches between the Porciúncula River and the Spring of the Alders, for the explorers saw some large marshes of a certain substance like pitch; they were boiling and bubbling.
FRAY JUAN CRESPI
1967
[Executive producer] Mort Abrahams drove out for an inconclusive discussion on what I should say in the final speech, looking at the ruined Statue of Liberty. Fox wants to shoot three versions, giving them all possible choices. I obviously prefer to shoot only the speech I wrote, since this is my only chance to put muscle behind that choice. Besides, it’s the best. I can’t believe the Code still forbids the use of “God damn you!” It’s surely acceptable in the context of this speech; Taylor is literally calling on God to damn the destroyers of civilization.
CHARLTON HESTON
AUGUST 4
1769
We made camp near the springs, where we found a good village of very friendly and docile Indians, who, as soon as we arrived, came to visit us, bringing their present of baskets of sage and other seeds, small, round nuts with a hard shell, and large and very sweet acorns. They made me a present of some strings of beads of white and red shells which resemble coral, though not very fine; we reciprocated with glass beads. I understood that they were asking us if we were going to stay, and I said “No,” that we were going farther on. I called this place San Gregorio, but to the soldiers the spot is known as the Springs of El Berrendo, because they caught a deer alive there, it having had a leg broken the preceding afternoon by a shot fired by one of the volunteer soldiers, who could not overtake it. The water is in a hollow surrounded by low hills not far from the sea.
FRAY JUAN CRESPI
1847
Lieut Stoneman 1st Drags quarters were broken open and his trunk robbed of seven hundred dollars—I had just left his quarters with him and on our return we were informed by Mrs Flores that two men had broken in the house—she saw them from her door which was next—We made great exertions last night to discover the thieves but as yet have not been successful—I am truly sorry for poor Stoneman—It is hard to lose money so far from home
LIEUTENANT JOHN MCHENRY HOLLINGSWORTH
1920
The reason I stay here is because this summer climate is without exception the finest I have ever known. Sky, mountains, the sea, light, temperature and a sensuous wind combine to make it perfect. 88 to go at noon. Cool winds 23¢, a blanket at night—and every night. No flies, no mosquitoes, no gnats, ants, cockroaches or bugs of any kind. Name me a better summer world with—of course—the exception of Baltimore.
JOHN FANTE, to H. L. Mencken
1957
The Almighty has withdrawn his hitherto effusive regard for me and struck me down….On Monday I lay in the sun and bathed in the pool, and in the evening, just as I was dressing to go out and dine quietly with Leonard Spigelgass, I bent down to get some socks out of a drawer and was seized with a blazing pain across the small of my back. At first I thought I had slipped something but I suspected, and I was right, that it was my old friend “lumbago.”
From then on the whole week became a highly coloured nightmare. Clifton sent me to an ass of a chiropractor, who was most sympathetic and kindly and tortured me more thoroughly than the Gestapo.
NOËL COWARD
AUGUST 5
1769
The scouts who had set out to examine the coast and the road along the beach returned shortly afterwards with the news of having reached a high, steep cliff, terminating in the sea where the mountains end….
At the end of the canyon, however, the hills were somewhat more accessible and permitted us to take the slope and, with much labor, to ascend to the summit, whence we discerned a very large and pleasant valley. We descended to it and halted near the watering-place, which consisted of a very large pool. Near this there was a populous Indian village, and the inhabitants were very good natured and peaceful. They offered us their seeds in trays or baskets of rushes, and came to the camp in such numbers that, had they been armed, they might have caused us apprehension.
MIGUEL COSTANSÓ
1935
Here, at night, the people gather on the beach and light fires. Down the beach road it is like a decoration of fire-beads round the curve of the bay. And Japanese and Hawaiians and Americans sit and make love and get drunk, and the drunker most people become the louder they are, and the drunker the Hawaiians become the better they sing and play guitars and dance strange dances in the firelight, until they are so homesick they can only drink more and sing more. You watch and find yourself shut out because you are white.
There are still mountains here and palm trees and oranges and strange blossoms, but they do not touch me any more, either to delight or offend me. They are, just as I am.
ERIC KNIGHT, to a friend
1949
In this fourth year of drought everything is horribly parched, the stream is dry, the oaks losing their leaves, even the pine trees unhappy. A few more seasons of this kind of thing, and the whole of southern California will have gone back to the coyotes. Which might be quite a good thing, perhaps.
ALDOUS HUXLEY, to Anita Loos
2012
A crowd of about thirty people was gathered in a corner of Canter’s Deli close to 11 p.m. on Friday night. It was a fairly grungy group, dominated by young people, but well seasoned with middle-aged duffers like myself. Graphic t-shirts were the uniform of choice, dreadlocks and face studs the predictable accessories of those who had shown up to be accessories to municipal misdemeanors. We were drinking coffee and milkshakes, laughing and kibitzing a few steps away from the Kibitz Room, where the evening’s band could be heard warming up.
At the center of the group was Robbie Conal, a jolly, urban gnome in a chicken t-shirt. He was holding up his latest street poster, a Mitt Romney visage rendered in the classic Conal hand: over lined and jittery, a graphic manifestation of Conal’s genius….
We we
re Robbie’s guerrilla postering crew. After two decades of watching his iconic posters crop up mysteriously on street corners around Los Angeles, I felt privileged to finally be there, at the center of the Los Angeles political art hub….
“Ma’am, is one of these kids yours?” the larger of the two officers asked me. I parked, got out and identified Bunnyhead as my personal perp….
These two officers immediately saw they had nabbed some newbies. They checked student ID’s and asked about their SAT scores. They even went so far as to admire the poster and tell the kids they thought their political activism was admirable, but private property had to be protected. The crew nodded in perfect understanding. Because everyone was so cool, they gave the kids a break on the vandalism charge, and let them go with a curfew infraction. The guilty parties scraped the poster off the door, parents were notified, citations were issued and everyone went home. We await our court date and anticipate a small fine.