How I Found Los Angeles
10/03/2016
Which brought me back - not for the first time - to an explanation I groped toward in 2008 when I first began writing about Los Angeles for KCET. Now, almost eight years later, that explanation remains true enough.
Lakewood, 1954. The author, D.J. Waldie (left), with his brother. Courtesy of the authors collection.
Then, I reminded readers-I-hoped-for that I had earlier written an account of the place where I live ( Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir ). I wrote about a lot of things in Holy Land : water, sin, carpentry, land use policy, the Laws of the Indies, and a dead cocker spaniel. This miscellany seemed, at the time, to be the description of a life, although I wondered if it was. I wonder still.
I had had a solitary conversation taking years, held mornings and evenings during my walk from my house to my office and from office to house, the predictability of each step eliding into the rhythm of each sentence. Eventually, the conversation turned public because the back-and-forth was essentially an argument. It was an argument initially over the folly of staying here (here = suburban Lakewood) and the folly of faith (faith = wanting to believe that so much ordinariness would add up to anything).
I finally decided that the argument was about falling in love. I found that I had argued myself into falling in love with the place where I am. I wondered if the same argument would work on you.
I found that I had argued myself into falling in love with the place where I am.
In writing about falling in love eight years ago, I started to add something about us. But I stopped because I have a bad habit of referring to us, of wantonly throwing you and me together as we, as if you and I were passengers on the same Metro bus, and as if our being together implied anything, particularly any obligation between strangers.
We remains a terrible abstraction in Los Angeles with reasons in our history and in our landscape - reasons worth talking about, hence many of these pieces. But standing against abstraction (and the distractions of Los Angeles) is an imagination - my imagination and, if I'm lucky, yours, too.
I think of it as a moral imagination, as the means by which I have written myself into the story of my place and its redemptive mix of tragedies and joys, negotiating my way from a flawed private life to the flawed - but sacred and humanizing - place that is Los Angeles. Or rather the bigger thing that's L.A., of which Los Angeles is both a present and absent part. (You can be in L.A. but nowhere near Los Angeles.)
Lakewood in the 1960s, Tomorrows City Today. Courtesy of the authors collection.
--
--
Uses of History I have an old friend who collects stuff - lots of old stuff - about which he knows a great deal. You might peg him as a mere collector - assembling stuff for the sake of more stuff - but I know that his collecting enlarges his imagination. His beloved stuff takes him outside himself.
I have another old friend who photographs disregarded places and later paints them in a startlingly photo-realistic way. You might think his dingbat apartments and aging bungalows are merely ironic, but he renders their ordinariness as an incarnation.
I write about Los Angeles where, despite our desire for forgetfulness, the back-and-forth of past and present persists. Sometimes, two examples of vernacular architecture adjacent to each other are having a more serious dialog about where we've come from than you'll read in any Los Angeles newspaper. Sometimes, the most commonplace stuff of L.A. resonates with unexpected intensity.
Writing history can seem like artifact collecting or landscape painting. Pessimistic Henry Adams (one of those Adamses from whom presidents came) wondered in 1905 what use writing history had at a time when Adams felt the past slipping away with ever greater velocity and the imaginations he observed had become weary of remembering except as an excuse for nostalgia.
Adams balefully regarded what he called the acceleration of history at the turn of the 20th century. I imagined at the turn of the 21st that Adams' acceleration was like a speeding car in which the past is framed in the rearview mirror and we're only along for the ride.
The erasure of topography - regrading on Fort Moore Hill in downtown Los Angeles in 1949. Courtesy of the L. Mildred Harris Slide Collection - Los Angeles Public Library. [source]
When I looked at the history of Los Angeles, I saw the effects of this awful regime of speed. I saw it in the landscape, in what Norman Klein called the erasure of the city's topography in the rush to build a more perfect paradise. The leveling of the multi-ethnic neighborhood of Bunker Hill, for example, rendered downtown a sterile corporate island for nearly half a century. The channeling of the beds of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers made both rivers nearly invisible.
And I saw how erasures of memory were preconditions for the last 50 years of failed local politics. In forgetting the conditions under which Los Angeles came to be, voters failed to see how callous and remote city government was becoming. Ignorance of the violent history of law enforcement in Los Angeles County gave cover to decades of corruption in the LAPD and the Sheriff's Department.
L.A. poses large questions about the uses of history, and this bears on my question from 2008: can any part of our past be of any value to us except as nostalgia or irony?
There are Angele os who dont want any history at all, with history's resistance to simple narratives and its counterclaim to our ability to reinvent ourselves endlessly. They are content to
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet Appoints Santiago Solanas as CEO to Lead Next Era of Growth and Innovation
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet and Veritone Reach Agreement to Distribute, Transact and Monetize Media Archives
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
18/05/2024
If Bundling Is Back, What's the Ideal Bundle?
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. Bundling is back in a big way, with all the major streaming companies and many pay TV operators exploring ways to simplify the consumer experie...
18/05/2024
FCC to Vote on LPTV Rules during June Open Meeting
WASHINGTON, D.C. Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has announced a tentative agenda for the June Open Commission Meeting schedule...
18/05/2024
Matthews Launches New Multipurpose Grip Rail Telescopic Grid Pipe Solution
Matthews Studio Equipment has introduced Grip Rail, which the company said offers a better way to mount equipment on location, in the studio, or on the fly....
18/05/2024
IAB Tech Labs, Google Partner on New First Party Data Solution
In a notable development in the industry-wide effort to address privacy concerns while improving efficacy of marketing efforts in a cookieless ad landscape, IAB...
18/05/2024
TV Tech Weekly Product Wrap-Up
Missed any of our product coverage during your busy week? The TV Tech weekly product and services news wrap-up provides links to all of our coverage from May 13...
18/05/2024
DHD Elevates the Art of Podcast Production
DHD Elevates the Art of Podcast Production Brie Clayton May 17, 2024 0 Comments Hero image: the DHD DX2 base and expansion modules Latest-generation ...
17/05/2024
Aerojet Rocketdyne's Camden Site Leverages Modernization Investments to Accelerate Solid Rocket Motor Production
Aerojet Rocketdyne has worked to modernize facilities at its Camden, Arkansas, l...
17/05/2024
FCC Plans to Revise LPTV Rules
The FCC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would revise rules governing low power TV stations (LPTV) in a number of areas, including online ...
17/05/2024
Demystifying Post-Production: Introducing Cinema 4D Particles Week 4
Demystifying Post-Production: Introducing Cinema 4D Particles Week 4 Brie Clayton May 17, 2024 0 Comments With the spring release of Maxon One, we...
17/05/2024
Takashi Yamazaki Film Godzilla Minus One Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Takashi Yamazaki Film Godzilla Minus One Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio Brie Clayton May 17, 2024 0 Comments Hero image credit: 2023 TOHO CO., LT...
17/05/2024
Sterling Event Group Streamlines Live Event Productions with AJA
Sterling Event Group Streamlines Live Event Productions with AJA Brie Clayton May 17, 2024 0 Comments Live event productions only happen once, which ...
17/05/2024
Meet the product manager
Muster Ngobi, product manager at LYNX Technik tells TVBEurope how the ever-evolving media industry provides a truly dynamic working environment By Matthew Corr...
17/05/2024
TV, Streaming Schedule for 2024 NFL Regular Season Is Released
NEW YORK As declines in linear TV viewing make the ongoing popularity of live sports, particularly football, central to financial success of the TV industry, th...
17/05/2024
Netflix Ad Tier Hits 40M Monthly Active Users
During Netflixs second Upfront presentation to advertisers, Amy Reinhard, Netflix's president of advertising, walked advertisers through the continued growt...
17/05/2024
Scripps Promotes Jeff Kiernan to VP, Local News
CINCINNATI The E.W. Scripps Company has added to its leadership team for news by promoting Jeff Kiernan a veteran journalist and general manager of Scripps'...
17/05/2024
Survey: New Disney-Fox-WBD Sports Streamer May Hurt Pay TV Sub Counts
Top executives from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have consistently insisted that their joint venture to launch the Venu Sports streaming bundle in the...
17/05/2024
Caitlin Clark's WNBA Debut Set Viewing Records
ESPN has announced that its coverage of Caitlin Clark's WNBA debut in the Indiana Fever versus the Connecticut Sun season opener was the most-watched WNBA g...
17/05/2024
ATEM Mini Extreme ISO switcher and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K
ATEM Mini Extreme ISO switcher and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K Brie Clayton May 16, 2024 0 Comments Blackmagic Design announced today that Yoic...
17/05/2024
Pixomondo's Virtual Production Academy Expands with Programs at Sony PCL, Vook, and Vancouver Film School
Pixomondo's Virtual Production Academy Expands with Programs at Sony PCL, Vo...
17/05/2024
WBD Upfront Show Offers Peeks at House of the Dragon,' White Lotus,' Biden-Trump Debate
The Warner Bros. Discovery upfront presentation took place Wednesday, May 15 at ...
17/05/2024
The Black Keys, Jelly Roll, Kate Hudson Set To Perform on The Voice' Finale
Season 25 of The Voice wraps on NBC Tuesday, May 21, with performances from The Black Keys, Jelly Roll, Kate Hudson, Lainey Wilson, Muni Long, Thomas Rhett and ...
17/05/2024
CNN Boss Mark Thompson's Plan Includes More News in More Categories on More Devices (Upfronts)
New CNN CEO Mark Thompson spelled out his plan for the struggling news network d...
17/05/2024
Netflix To Launch In-House Advertising Tech Platform
Netflix, a newcomer to the advertising business, said it plans to launch an in-house advertising technology platform....
17/05/2024
Netflix Plots TV Takeover at Upfront Presentation
Netflix shared some programming projects at an upfront presentation in New York. Those include the basketball-themed comedy series Running Point, a Mindy Kaling...
17/05/2024
Plex Geek Week Sale Offers 20% Off Plex Lifetime Pass
Plex is offering movie and music collectors a 20% discount off its Lifetime Plex Pass as part of its Geek Week sale....
17/05/2024
GroupM Names Toby Jenner as President, GroupM Clients
Giant media buyer GroupM said it named Toby Jenner as global president, Group M Clients, a new position at the company....
17/05/2024
Clients of Independent Agencies Boost Programmatic Buying
Smaller advertisers are increasingly buying connected TV programmatically, according to a new report from FreeWheel, Comcast's ad-tech unit....
17/05/2024
TCLtvPlus Adds Streaming Music Channels From Vevo
TCLtvPlus, the streaming app on smart TVs made by TCL, has added live linear channel from music-video programmer Vevo....
17/05/2024
StackAdapt Adopts Data From Samba TV for Programmatic Campaigns
StackAdapt said it made a deal to integrate data from Samba TV into its programmatic advertising platform....
17/05/2024
Tonight on House of Zwide: Dorothy is blown away by Ona's sketches for her wedding dress
Tonight on House of Zwide: Dorothy is blown away by Ona's sketches for her w...
17/05/2024
Tonight on Scandal: Dintle has a visit from her past that leaves her very unsettled
Tonight on Scandal: Dintle has a visit from her past that leaves her very unsett...
17/05/2024
Save Time and Money with WO Traffic v24.0
WO Traffic provides a solid foundation from which stations can manage, execute, and scale end-to-end ad trafficking and sales, both today and into the future. W...
17/05/2024
Broadcast Innovation in India: How AI and Automated Production Helps Smaller Sports Grow
Broadcast Innovation in India: How AI and Automated Production Helps Smaller Spo...
17/05/2024
SVG Sports Cloud Production Forum Gives Refresher Course on Cloud-Based Tools, Ecosystem
SVG Sports Cloud Production Forum Gives Refresher Course on Cloud-Based Tools, E...
17/05/2024
WNBA Tip-Off 2024: Scripps Sports Constructs New Studio for Second Season of WNBA Friday Night Spotlight on ION
WNBA Tip-Off 2024: Scripps Sports Constructs New Studio for Second Season of WNB...
17/05/2024
SVG College Summit 2024: Auburn's War Eagle Productions Breaks Down How They Produce Live Gymnastics Broadcasts
SVG College Summit 2024: Auburn's War Eagle Productions Breaks Down How They...
17/05/2024
Netflix & Shondaland Announce the Song List and Soundtrack for 'Bridgerton' Season 3: Part 1
Back to All News Netflix & Shondaland Announce the Song List and Soundtrack for...
17/05/2024
Skeem Saam: Thursday's episode, 16 May 2024 [video]
Skeem Saam: Thursday's episode, 16 May 2024 [video]Missed an episode of Skeem Saam? No problem! Watch the latest episode of your favourite South African soa...
17/05/2024
Prison Journalism: Letter to my mothers
Prison Journalism: Letter to my mothersThabo Mthembu was incarcerated in Pollsmoor Prison from 2014 to 2019. Read Thabo's story by Thabo Mthembu 17-05-20...
17/05/2024
Paul McCartney becomes UK's first billionaire musician
Paul McCartney becomes UK's first billionaire musicianMusic icon Paul McCartney has become the UK's first billionaire musician, according to the Sunday ...
17/05/2024
Tonight on Smoke and Mirrors: Sakhile advises Tiny against sabotaging Petunia
Tonight on Smoke and Mirrors: Sakhile advises Tiny against sabotaging PetuniaDon't miss Friday, 17 May's riveting episode of South African soapie Smoke ...
17/05/2024
RT'S Operation Transformation comes to a close after 17 seasons
RT has today announced that Operation Transformation (OT) is to end after 17 seasons. As series come to an end each year, RT undertakes an editorial review to...
17/05/2024
Studio One: Your Binaural Beats Lab
By Craig Anderton When I heard about binaural beats, I was interested-I like beats, and I'm into binaural audio. But this has nothing to do with either o...
17/05/2024
May 16, 2024
Scripps Research chemist Donna Blackmond elected to the Royal Society of the U.K. Blackmond's wide-ranging work has shaped origin of life theories, our unde...
16/05/2024
Power Provokes Vital Questions About the Role of Police
PARK CITY, UTAH - JANUARY 18: Director Yance Ford introduces the Power premiere at Library Center Theatre. (Photo by Chad Salvador/Shutterstock for Sundance F...
16/05/2024
Mental Health Matters: Embrace Self-Care With These Audiobook and Podcast Listens
May is Mental Health Awareness month, a time to recognize those living with ment...
16/05/2024
ABC and SBS bring digital radio (DAB+) services to the Gold Coast
ABC and SBS bring digital radio (DAB ) services to the Gold Coast 15 May, 2024 Media releases ABC and SBS today announced that audiences on the Gold Coast ...
16/05/2024
Clear-Com Communication Solutions Enhance Oregon State University's PRAx Building
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({...