2004-04-28 - 10:12 p.m.
Tomorrow I am giving my fourth Aboriginal Art and Songlines lecture to one special first grade class. And, like the Washington trip, this will be my last, although not for the same reason. I'd love to keep on giving this lecture, and also the Australian Heron Island lecture about the Great Barrier Reef, green turtles, and mutton birds, year after year, but all these unique and wonderful things are being eliminated because the school now wants the children in each grade to have the identical "educational experience" regardless of which teacher they have. If such were even possible, which I highly doubt, let alone desirable, which I don't think it is. Ones favorite teachers have never been the educational equivalent of the Stepford Wives. But in order for all the first graders to have the "identical educational experience," I'd have to give the same lecture to all three classes, but the other two teachers "don't do Australia" (and this one won't be allowed to next year), so now, after this year, nobody will be able to get it.
My friend Bob said I ought to have it videotaped, and in principle I do agree with him, it would be nice, but I realize that nobody really cares all that much except me, the teacher of the class, and her students (after they've heard the lecture!), but all of us are participants, too involved to fool with filming it. If I had thought with more foresight, I could have retrieved my tripod from storage (which I really do need to do anyway) and I could have just set up my own videocamera in the back of the room and videotaped the lecture passively. Would have been better than nothing. But I'm just not thinking like that, not yet, anyway, and my concentration has been on just giving the lecture itself.
I color-printed off all my supporting pictures and aboriginal art samples, forty-four pictures in all, showing the various styles of aboriginal art such as x-ray style, cross-hatch style, and dot style. They come out of the printer in alphabetical order of the picture name, which is not the order in which I present them in the lecture. So I decided to go to Denny's for dinner, and on the table in my booth, I could sort the pictures into the right order while waiting for my dinner to be cooked.
It was 9:30 P.M., the restaurant was very quiet and leisurely, not very crowded at all. I was sorting the pictures into piles, pictures of aborigines, pictures showing the landscape ("the line of the desert is the dotted line," said Frank Lloyd Wright, and, appropriately, the artistic style of the desert aborigine is the dot style), cross hatch and x-ray style pictures, dot style pictures showing various animal dreamings, and finally the more complicated dot-style pictures that tell a more detailed narrative. As I was doing this, one of the waitresses walked by and said, "Oooh, pretty pictures!" She continued on through the restaurant to one of her tables, but when she next passed my way, I said, "You like the aboriginal art?"
"Oh yes," she answered, I wanted to see your pictures." So I began to explain some of them to her, pointing out that the u-shapes indicated people, because the objects are always shown in relation to the landscape and the impact of humans could be shown by footprints (as some of the animals are), but since people are sitting on the ground more often than they are walking or standing, the aborigines essentially show them as the imprint of their butt and legs. I also showed her how to tell men from women, by the tools that were next to the u-shapes. Men's tools were boomerangs, spears, and throwing sticks, whereas women's tools were digging sticks and a container for carrying grubs.
The waitress wanted to me to explain one of the more complicated pictures, but just then a belligerant man at the booth behind me started shouting, "I'd like to somebody to take my order." In a flash, I no longer existed and the poor waitress was by his side, accommodating this low-life's essential need. But he didn't even know what he wanted yet, yet he was willilng to take the time to lash her with a long harangue about how hard it is to get good service these days, subjecting her to a long inventory of which Denny's in L.A. provided better service than others, with this one being the worst (presumably due to this one waitress who stopped for a moment in an unbusy restaurant to look at some intriguing pictures). Somebody really needs a life, and so that others can have one, too.
It really is that old thing that a waitress once shared with me a long time ago, that some people are so low that the only people they think they can lord it over are waitresses. That one particular waitress told me that she had a msster's degree, was an actress and singer, and was raising her daughter all by herself. "Yet you're the only customer I have who ever looks me in the eye or treats me like I am a person."
I experience that a lot, particularly in this city where there is a whole huge underclass of Hispanic workers (busboys, gardeners, nannies, and assorted laborers) who are all but invisible to the dominate Caucasian population. A busboy will come by to bring water and perhaps take a coffee order and ask "How are you," and then when I tell him that I am fine and ask him how he is, or maybe give him some variation such as, "I am fine, and I hope you are, too, on this fine, summery day," they always stop and look at me in momentary astonishment, but then smile broadly at the awareness that somebody has actually asked them how they are. But you know, I don't have to lord it over a waitress or busboy in order to make myself feel good. In fact, that would make me feel bad.
After I finished my dinner, I went to the cash register to pay and the waitress who had been interested in my aboriginal art prints took the opportunity to go over to help me there. She said, "I have a degree in art history, so what you showed me was fascinating, it is so different from western art." She then went on to say that while people think art is impractical for making money, one needs to get a "real" job, she said her grandmother always told her to keep her art alive, because someday she might have to fall back on it in order to make a living. "You know, like making jewelry, or something. When there are no jobs, you might be able to survive by bringing beauty into the world."
Fascinating concept, and we talked for a brief moment while my credit card was being run through (stolen moments in the midst of the work requirements), about how all the jobs are being exported out of the country. Not all of them, of course, but I do receive a negative ear-full every other day or so from my unemployed friend, Bob, whom I mentioned above, to whom interviewers have been callous enough to say things like, "you are too old for the job," "you aren't good-looking enough," or "why would we hire you when we can hire a twenty-one-year-old Mexican girl for four dollars an hour?"
Bob said, "Isn't it illegal to discriminating against me due to my age (he is 56)?"
"Of course it is," I said, "but none of these laws really protect you, not when the companies don't voluntarily comply with the laws' principles." It's like keeping an orderly society...all the laws don't keep people orderly, it's the willingness of the vast majority to accept the reason for them and therefore obey them. And I already see a breakdown in that every morning on my way to work as I have to suffer through what I call "the most dangerous intersection in Los Angeles," Mulholland Drive and Coldwater Canyon. Yeah, sure, there is more crime down in the Rampart District, on Alvarado Street, or wherever, but those are desperate places where people turn to gangs, crime, or drugs for solutions. There is no such excuse among the multi-million-dollar mansions on Mulholland Drive. There, they are just too self-important to pay attention to minor interruptions such as stopping at a red light during the crowded morning commute or driving on their own side of the road if they find a way through the wrong side. They're in their Hummers or Porches, they've got a meeting at the studio or wherever they have to go that is more important than the destinations of us other people, which, in their view, gives them the right and the need to ignore the most basic "Stop Look and Listen" safety standards that Dick and Jane and every child in grade school understands. This is a breakdown of society at the most fundamental level, in my opinion.
Maybe the aborigines were right after all. After all, they are at once the oldest living culture on the planet and the least technologically developed. For them, making their art is not a way to survive by bringing beauty into the world, but by this expression of reverence and appreciation toward the beauty of the world and a celebration of its creation, their art is helping the world to survive by continually creating it anew.
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