Los Angeles Fugiens
Karen Pinkus brought us to the Getty Research Institute this afternoon. Only in LA can one build a museum of such a size, where visitors park in a separate parking building before taking a tram to the actual mammoth of the museum itself. But it is beautiful. Up on the hills where we have Malibu on the one side and Downtown on the other, we didn't know where the real gallery appears to be.
The context of our visit is not only to see old hermetic manuscripts that deal with our Alchemy class. It is also to discover the strange neurotic side of the Southern California psyche. Without the East Side NYC glamour and unquestionably that of its continental giant but but with a lot of money to indulge in this neurosis to the extent of acquiring certain collections -- to the benefit of poor scholars like ourselves of course, who willingly or unwillingly find ourselves in this part of town. Mr. Getty, not like like his less flamboyant aspirant, Manly P. Hall who founded The Institute of Philosophical Research in Los Feliz Village, built an amazing library. (The IPR has absolutely nothing philosophical to its research, not unlike some scholars who call themselves philosophers) An ex-stockbroker, Hall spent the last decades of his life traveling around Europe buying rare alchemical and hermetic texts. At the time of his death, he bequeathed an amazing collection to the Getty Institute.
We are all very happy with the effects of such a neurosis of course. But everytime we hear this story, it just cracks us up.
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The collection is great. No one, however modernist or avant-garde, can resist melting when touching the fragile pages of a 15thC manuscript. The director is one of those Classicist volube in Greek, Latin, Old German and Arabic. He is like an irritating version of The Taxi Driver, with some angst about academia perhaps rather than the Vietnam War. But we had a nice tour, flipped through the Michael Maier emblems. With stuff like green dragons wrapping themselves around a mensturating woman, etc., I think it kind of make sense that some form of hermetic, mystical tradition has its afterlife in Los Angeles. Our class, however, is little interested in that. We are not interested in finding out what the green dragon mean, or how the publishing industry is like, or how colour pigments induce spiritiual contemplation in and of itself, etc. Next week, we're reading Marx. Having said so, Mr. Director's knowledge is all well appreciated and we know where we can turn to for our resources.
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The class adjourned to Palms, this Thai restaurant around Hollywood where there is Thai Elvis performing on stage. It was weirder when he sounded like John Lennon after awhile. But the curry was good and we love sitting down relaxing with Karen -- despite missing the season premier of America's Next Top Model, so at 8pm Sam and I had a 2-minute silence to imagine how it would be like -- even though the noise was drowning out most of our conversations. When asked about the main difference between the students here and at Northwestern (where she taught for 7 years before coming to USC), Karen's answer was, "students here are much better looking." After all, it was only yesterday that George Lucas donated $175 million dollars to his alma mater. Damn it, it's all going to visual culture people (VCP). Again. We talked about the ridiculous sports culture in USC and Karen bitched about the ridicuously high prices at which football game tickets are being sold each season. It's all rigged anyway. According to her, the thing to do is when we become TAs, corner a jock in class, get the scores beforehand or threaten to fail him. We'll be all so rich then.
Sending her back, Seth asked Karen how long it took for her to acclimatise to LA when she first moved here. "15 minutes," she answered., "Surprisingly, I found LA more like my hometown (NY) than Chicago was. In Chicago, people just did not understand hedonism." I trust her opinions, after all, she's the coolest faculty on my card now (PK is not 'cool,' she is just, Derridians are Derridians, 'cool' is never their word). And so, I will give LA my version of the "15 minutes." Hope it'll come soon along with a driver's license. But first, I have to be able to get out of my apartment next weekend to buy some warm duvets for Fall.
The context of our visit is not only to see old hermetic manuscripts that deal with our Alchemy class. It is also to discover the strange neurotic side of the Southern California psyche. Without the East Side NYC glamour and unquestionably that of its continental giant but but with a lot of money to indulge in this neurosis to the extent of acquiring certain collections -- to the benefit of poor scholars like ourselves of course, who willingly or unwillingly find ourselves in this part of town. Mr. Getty, not like like his less flamboyant aspirant, Manly P. Hall who founded The Institute of Philosophical Research in Los Feliz Village, built an amazing library. (The IPR has absolutely nothing philosophical to its research, not unlike some scholars who call themselves philosophers) An ex-stockbroker, Hall spent the last decades of his life traveling around Europe buying rare alchemical and hermetic texts. At the time of his death, he bequeathed an amazing collection to the Getty Institute.
We are all very happy with the effects of such a neurosis of course. But everytime we hear this story, it just cracks us up.
---
The collection is great. No one, however modernist or avant-garde, can resist melting when touching the fragile pages of a 15thC manuscript. The director is one of those Classicist volube in Greek, Latin, Old German and Arabic. He is like an irritating version of The Taxi Driver, with some angst about academia perhaps rather than the Vietnam War. But we had a nice tour, flipped through the Michael Maier emblems. With stuff like green dragons wrapping themselves around a mensturating woman, etc., I think it kind of make sense that some form of hermetic, mystical tradition has its afterlife in Los Angeles. Our class, however, is little interested in that. We are not interested in finding out what the green dragon mean, or how the publishing industry is like, or how colour pigments induce spiritiual contemplation in and of itself, etc. Next week, we're reading Marx. Having said so, Mr. Director's knowledge is all well appreciated and we know where we can turn to for our resources.
---
The class adjourned to Palms, this Thai restaurant around Hollywood where there is Thai Elvis performing on stage. It was weirder when he sounded like John Lennon after awhile. But the curry was good and we love sitting down relaxing with Karen -- despite missing the season premier of America's Next Top Model, so at 8pm Sam and I had a 2-minute silence to imagine how it would be like -- even though the noise was drowning out most of our conversations. When asked about the main difference between the students here and at Northwestern (where she taught for 7 years before coming to USC), Karen's answer was, "students here are much better looking." After all, it was only yesterday that George Lucas donated $175 million dollars to his alma mater. Damn it, it's all going to visual culture people (VCP). Again. We talked about the ridiculous sports culture in USC and Karen bitched about the ridicuously high prices at which football game tickets are being sold each season. It's all rigged anyway. According to her, the thing to do is when we become TAs, corner a jock in class, get the scores beforehand or threaten to fail him. We'll be all so rich then.
Sending her back, Seth asked Karen how long it took for her to acclimatise to LA when she first moved here. "15 minutes," she answered., "Surprisingly, I found LA more like my hometown (NY) than Chicago was. In Chicago, people just did not understand hedonism." I trust her opinions, after all, she's the coolest faculty on my card now (PK is not 'cool,' she is just, Derridians are Derridians, 'cool' is never their word). And so, I will give LA my version of the "15 minutes." Hope it'll come soon along with a driver's license. But first, I have to be able to get out of my apartment next weekend to buy some warm duvets for Fall.