self-enchantment
This Week in Reading
Black Swans by Eve Babitz
Daniel works for Disney Research, so he took Sam and I to Disneyland this yesterday. I hadn’t been in a decade, but it was the same as I remembered: spotless, perfectly art directed. In the afternoon we went to California Adventure, a park I appreciated much more as an adult than I did as a kid, and not just because you can drink sangria while waiting in line for the roller coaster. California Adventure condenses the 163,000 square miles of California into one tiny manageable park. Right across the plaza from front gate was a shop with a sign that read “Los Feliz Five and Dime”, which made us laugh. We drove all the way to Anaheim to see our street corner. There is a Hollywoodland there, where real buildings fade into fake buildings painted onto a flat backdrop 10 stories tall. This Hollywood didn’t smell like piss though; in this Hollywood, performers hang off of trolleys and burst into musical numbers in the middle of the street. There is a wharf that extends over a man-made expanse of water— San Francisco in miniature. The water ride is called Grizzly Mountain, which is of course, Yosemite, if Yosemite was made from poured concrete instead of granite, and was shaped like a bear. On the way to Pixar Pier (a replica of the Santa Monica Pier if the Santa Monica Pier was cleaner and more fun and sparkled at night), you walk down a path lined with real grapevines— because what is California without Napa Valley.
It is of course ridiculous to make a tiny fake version of California, and even more ridiculous to have the tiny California live inside of the real California, 45 minutes from the real Hollywood, 4 hours from the real Yosemite, 7 hours from actual Napa Valley. It is completely unnecessary, but what isn’t? California Adventure is entirely synthetic, but it is also California. It is perhaps more California than California itself it. California— there has been no place more self-absorbed, more self-worshipful. I talk about this a lot, how California is a place, but is also an idea, is also the most brilliant marketing campaign in US history. It is constantly selling itself, telling you that it is the most beautiful, the most easy, the most sunny and golden. That it is a place where good fortune is always on the horizon. You can pan for gold or become an overnight movie star. It is, as Eve Babitz puts it, a self enchanted place. A place so sure of its own splendor it convinces everyone else of it as well. Babitz writes “This has been rather tough on the Hollywood landscape, since self-enchantment requires people to believe you live in paradise. And thanks to the miracle of celluloid, the millions who worshipped the self-enchanted couldn’t tell whether Theda Bara’s leopard skin rug was lying in an alabaster palace or a photographer’s studio. So a lot of Hollywood seems to have been designed to look good in a photograph rather than to keep out the rain.
Not that Hollywood wasn’t really paradise, more or less, at least in my dream version of the 1920s, when it was full of pepper trees and mimosa— the streets filled with red and yellow clouds of fragrance— and when anyone with a nickel could take a red car all the way to the beach.”
That is the thing about California; as much as you want to decry it’s ego, it’s falsity, it’s extraordinary ridiculousness, you can’t deny that is exactly what it claims to be: sunshine and palm trees and an ocean so blue you could just die. And as much as we want to scorn Californians for their simplicity and their sun worship, they are probably the ones doing it right. Why would you choose a life that is cold and miserable when you could have one that is so sweet and good and beautiful? The most obvious of advice: when given the choice between two lives, pick the better one.
Black Swans is very Eve Babitz, by which I mean completely pointless. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes things don’t need to have a point. Sometimes you can just tango and go to the Chateau Marmont and wear silver shoes. Sometimes you can just have fun. (Or so I’ve heard, I have never attempted such a thing.)
California Adventure is the California that California wants to be. It is Hollywood without the trash, Los Angeles without the traffic. It is essentially propaganda. Millions of families fly to Anaheim each year to ride Space Mountain, get their photo taken with Ariel, buy a pair of mouse ears and a frozen banana and a Mickey shaped balloon. They stay at a resort and never leave this Disney themed bubble for the entire weekend, yet they can see all of California in a single day, can see the canyons and the mountains and the wharf, can try a slice of San Francisco sourdough or a glass of Napa Chardonnay. They have seen a replica of California, but I would argue they have also experienced the real-deal. They might not have climbed to the top of the real El Capitan, but they certainly witnessed the self-enchantment of California, up close and personal.
Studio-ing
I have two shows coming up this month! I have four pieces in Making H.O.M.E., a show at the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association Center in Santa Ana. The show is about recontextualizing the idea of home in the Vietnamese American community. There will be visual art, music performances and presentations by community organizations. It is this Thursday, 6-8, at the VAALA Center in Santa Ana. In a very on brand move, I actually can’t go because I will be camping in Mt. Rainier, but if any of you are local, you should stop by.
My project, “Literary Diet” will be in a group show at O’Donovans in Pomona this August. It will be part of the Pomona Art Walk August 16th, which should be fun! Come out and grab a drink with me!
Further Reading:
It feels like everyone is having a moment with Eve Babitz right now. I read Eve’s Hollywood a few months ago and wrote about it at the time. I think I liked Black Swans a little bit more.
Also I’ve been listening to Cali God by Grace Mitchell on repeat.