(07/11/05) Mulholland

101. FRIDAY AFTERNOON. AS VIEWED FROM MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

Here is a quote from the book I’m reading called ‘Wanderlust: A History of Walking’ by Rebecca Solnit. In it, Solnit is quoting something from Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Street Haunting: A London Adventure’:

“Of the people (Woolf) observes (while walking) she says, ‘Into each of these lives one could penetrate a little way, far enough to give the illusion that one is not tethered to a single mind, but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and minds of others. One could become a washerwoman, a publican, a street singer.’ In this anonymous state, “the shell-like covering which our souls have excreted for themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughness a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye.’ “

On Friday I left the stroller behind and walked along Mulholland Drive near Studio City - out where there's the lookout for the Hollywood Bowl and heading west towards Beverly Glen. It's kinda backwards in terms of my route but it was a Friday and I preferred the idea of being at that end of Mulholland rather than by all the traffic near the 405.

It was boiling. There was no pavement or pedestrian area. The cars whizzed by. I felt too exposed because of all the blind-spots created by the hairpin bends and the narrow lanes. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if walking up there was a good idea.

I got some aggressive cat-calls. Over the period of three hours, five sets of Hispanic laborers practically fell out of their cars whooping, cheering and cat-calling me, slowing down. One guy was leaning so far out his window I could see his belly button. - On those narrow roads, with the blind turnings! It was unrestrained and primitive. Not just let loose but unleashed. It seemed that just by walking in that situation I was generating some kind of chaos. Or maybe it was just because it was out of the ordinary. Maybe they thought I was a hooker. I don’t know. Perhaps it was similar to when I walked downtown by Our Lady of Angels church and those teenagers made fun of me - how they needed to react in some way and what they came up with just happened to be ridicule. But it was unnerving . I felt very exposed and vulnerable.

I turned off Mulholland and walked a while along Outpost. I turned off Outpost into a secluded cul-de-sac at the top of a hill. I sat and rested on the pavement in the privacy and peace up there. There were only two houses. They looked like villas. I was looking over into the canyon and also to the green hills beyond. They seemed so still and quiet, contained in a haze of heat and smog.

They were mirroring my own need for quiet right then. Or rather, serving as a model for it. Not the kind of quiet that’s the absence of noise – there were some squawking birds and two maids were speaking in Spanish in one of the garages - but it was all contained in a luxurious bubble of tranquility.

I was in a cul-de-sac on the edge of the world. Or at least the edge of LA, which is the world for me right now. The valley below was the moat that divides and separates. The hills were a mysterious and different world. It felt like I was resting my bones after walking to the end of a flat Earth.

Just by looking at what was in front of me, I could have been in Spain – except that there was a big American flag waving from the center of the roof of the villa just ahead.

Sitting there in that location, at one end of the spectrum, I got a more objective sense of the amalgam that is LA. I could look at the rest of Los Angeles in relation to this place. The people who live in those villas, obviously ‘successful’ and ‘wealthy’ people, have stuck themselves in a situation where they can feel like they’re not in LA – the logical and common outcome of ‘making it’ here. And yet, the whole scenario is such an LA scene and predicament. It’s an odd practice. I can understand it in some ways, but still it's odd that things became like this.

That day, someone from KPCC asked me to write a couple of sentences for their website about what my view of community is from the perspective of this project. But I have little idea of what community is these days, in this place anyhow. In that sense, this project often confuses me more rather than making that clearer for me.

Perhaps why I wanted to do this project is because I can’t integrate how these people can live here in this way, while all the parallel universes within LA exist also. Not that variety exists, but that each way of living here is so insulated and that so many people seem to be okay with that. That they seem comfortable with dislocation.

Maybe I just can’t digest LA – it’s too much, too sprawling, too varied. But what I can do is pluck things like experiences, information, conversations, facts. Perhaps somehow I can weave those things into my own being more and have a more direct relationship with the place I live in – be more integrated or at least less shut-off – which can be such a violent thing to be.

All this made me remember a religious Jew in London when I was a child. He used to walk incredible distances along the side of the motorway so as to get to synagogue without breaking the Sabbath. The neighborhoods he walked through were amongst Londons' most grey and depressing. It often pelted with rain and no warmth emanated from the speeding cars that skidded passed every second. He was trying to force the mould of the secular city to live out his devout and religious beliefs. He was using a tool for something other than what it was designed for. I wonder whether he liked it, all that walking. All those days. All that rain. Sometimes, when I'm in London, I still see him out there. I admire his commitment. I wonder what London looks like through his eyes.

Comments

[Fun Joel]

Nicely written/said, Lisa. As a transplanted NYer here in LA, I can relate to the disconnect you seem to be feeling. I love both cities, but can't help but notice the distinctions, such as those you point out.

And as a Jew who has walked many a fair distance to get to synagogue on Shabbat (including in bitter cold NJ winters), I can say that I generally still enjoyed the "head-clearing" nature of such treks. Great meditative time.

[Erin]

I don't understand what you mean when you say that the wealthy people who have purchased homes in the hills "have stuck themselves in a situation where they can feel like they’re not in LA." What makes Mulholland Drive any less "LA" than, say, Echo Park? Just because this city is geographically vast and diverse doesn't mean that any one neighborhood is necessarily more representative of the region than another. This sounds more like a backlash against people who can afford to live in the "nicer" areas of the city. And while I'm just as likely to occasionally pass judgment on LA's rich and/or famous denizens as the next gal, I don't agree with the argument that the hills through which Mulholland Drive winds its way west aren't just as much a part of the city's reality as our more densely populated and ethnically diverse neighborhoods to the east.

[Jayme]

I really admire what you are doing, trying to make some sense out of this city. Your descriptions of the people in Beverly Hills, the mother, the entertainment "mother" and the rug-sellers -- really poignant ! I felt embarrassed by them - I didn't even need the video!

I imagine you are getting a full dose of the type of looks (or looks the other way) that poor and homeless people get everyday all over our city.

I live in Mt. Washington and looked for your walk thru there but couldn't find it.

Anyway, good work... I'll be frequenting your site more now that I know about it