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10 November 2007
This has truly been a voyage of delight. Yes, we have had difficulties, adjustments, last minutes changes, etc. After all, Mercury was retrograding for the start. But we have had countless lovely encounters and visits with, among others, Stef and Gary, Bruce and Holly, Jake and Mary, Rosalie, Becky, Peggy, Peter & Jason, Leonard, the Saint, Carol, Richard, Janice, Kinmont, Macha, Dave Brown, Matt and Wylie. And this just in San Francisco and the Gold Rush country. Unfortunately, we missed with Iana, Mechelle, Piper Kinkaid, Coral and Phil – Iana's contractions changing our hoped for gathering.
In Big Sur, Monterey and Carmel, we enjoyed the company of Mary, John, Gary and David; in Santa Barbara, that of sister-in-law Pat and Efale.
Each and everyone of those mentioned is/are a story in themselves. All was wonderful despite my lack of furnishing details. One will simply have to take my word for it, but my thanks for the hospitality and exchanges to each and every are depthless.
And now we are in Los Angeles, the City of the Angels. Just as we were leaving Santa Barbara, Toni phoned to say her show had been 'locked' after 24 hours of no sleep and as the strike is bringing everything in the business to a close. So she was free. Instead of catching only the rarest of glimpses, we instead had her home all the time. With Lee enroute to Bolivia, we had lovely Caryn over for dinner the first night. Then again, the next night, all four of us were joined by Paul and Jonne-Marie at Prizzi's for a proverbial time.
And yesterday was an eureka enlightenment. We visited the Getty Villa, perhaps the ultimate in homoerotic neo-classicism. The museum is overwhelming. It is easily one of the finest collections of Greco-Roman art to be found. Each and every one of the classical deities is presented through selected representations and with cogent explanations. After exploring and absorbing as much as we could, we returned to the parked car for transfiguration, thanks to Gary.
Lynne, known as the 'good daughter' and, consequently by default, now the 'good sister', bequeathed on me before leaving Narragansett a black button that reads simply 01.20.09. I wear it almost continuously, and it has provided me with a fascinating sociological observation tool. Many if not most people do not notice it or at least choose to comment on it. A goodly number, however, will ask what it is. Two, only two so far (Peggy and Gary), recognized the significance without needing to ask. But yesterday, after returning fortified from the car, we were booking now for the 'The Unexplained and Mysterious Focus Tour' at the Getty Villa. One of the staff asked about the significance of my button. "It's the last day the President will be in office," I replied. He then commented that there were also buttons that supply the countdown on how many days the administration has left. I had heard of these as well but then clarified that January 20th 2008 is the last day Bush should be in the Oval Office as President. "But he cannot be re-elected" was the returning comment. "If we have marshal law, he won't have to be." And then I added, "If you think about it, what other alternative does the present Administration have? If they do not do it, they know they will be pursued and prosecuted endlessly. They are simply not going to allow themselves to put into that position." The entire group of five was stunned into silence as I continued to explain the inevitability. And then, as we were walking away, one of them asked, "Are you a writer?" I realized that they could not fathom the reality of what I was saying; that, instead, it was a fictitious scenario of the kind that only writers could come up with.
And then the Mystery Tour began with Sabina, from UCSB, my alma mater, as our guide. We were shown first a grave arrangement of Orpheus flanked by two sirens – Orpheus or the deceased youth in the guise of Orpheus. Either way, it did not matter. In the dynamics of art, idolatry and apotheosis that was once paganism in its heyday, I understood that the artistic representation of someone, especially as a deity, is the creation of a potential idol – one of the mainstays of ancient spirituality. The gods are often first conceived as portrayals of elementary features of nature – or at least associated with them (Zeus and the lightening bolt; Demeter and fertility; Helios/Phoebus Apollo and the sun, etc.) They may also additional be or become psychological archetypes. But whatever they are or originally were, they also have a Euhemeristic reality as well in which renowned individuals were apotheosized into deities – a process that is readily detected among the Greeks, early and imperial Romans, the Chinese, in Shinto, Santerìa/Candomblé, Nordic and Irish mythology, ancient Kemetic religion, etc. In other words, it is a steadily recurring feature for pagan spirituality. In a pagan world, a person of significance may be likened to a god and eventually assimilated to a particular deity or become a deity in his or her own right. The situation is always fluid and flexible and multiple. Deities, therefore, are constantly and organically augmented by human and perhaps other incarnations.
Gazing at the portrayal of Orpheus as a stunning youth in the prime of promise, I could have converted to Orphism on the spot – despite its transcendental/gnostic orientation. I was probably 'saved' from this course by the standing figure of a beardless Heracles – the very piece which originally became the raison d'être for the Getty Museum in Malibu. This last is a magnificent work that may have had a specific human model for its inspiration or may represent an idealized synchronization of the most exquisite features taken from different individuals. The idol is free-standing – allowing the visitor the walk around and view from each and every angle. The face alone is riveting – as are also the torso, the buttocks, etc. In all, it is completely this-worldly; in a word, it is paganism at one of its best.
But after Orpheus, Sabina took us to a Greek mummy of a youth from the Roman province of Egypt. Once again, I fell in love and saw the gods. Sabina was a font of information. She rarely allowed the possibility for any of us to ask a question, but, again, thanks to Gary, I was rarely deterred from doing so. Sometimes these docented groups can be spirited with comradery and stimulated exchanges. This was not one of those occasions, but that did not detract from spiritual revelations at hand.
A kouros of Apollo was the next 'mystery' – in this case the question revolved around whether it was a forgery or not. But either way, it was a stunning achievement. I found that if and when I focused not on the long stylized hair that, virtually with the archaic smile, defines a kouros, but on the head of the youth alone, once again it was a moment of darshan and understanding of supreme pagan beauty. The tour concluded by focusing on a Cycladic portrayal of a possibly blind or eyes-closed enraptured harpist (Orpheus, Homer, Tiresias?) The magic of the focused tour was the selection of a limited number of beautiful works that allowed me to concentrate on the particular rather than on everything. I was able to appreciate by the end the significance of the Getty Villa as a major temple of classical paganism. Unlike with much contemporary pagan expression with its emphasis on ritual, here the stress remains with art. But again, either way, the purport is 'to put something together correctly' – ritual or art: both words are cognate. Yesterday, at the Getty, I enjoyed my brand of paganism at its best.
We chose to drive back along Sunset Boulevard. The traffic for much of the way was bumper-to-bumper standstill, but it did not matter. Although the drive took nearly two hours, we are retired and on holiday and were able to enjoy the architecture of Los Angeles in enforced leisure. The classical music from KUSC was perfect, but most astonishing for me was the comment the announcer made after naming the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky that had just completed: "Subtitled 'A Weekend with Dick Cheney'." OK, this is coming from the University of Southern California, but it is still Los Angeles, and even here things are being said.
The pilgrimage to Rome continues.
Michael