"They start out that I'm in here."

From David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001), a dialogue that Vishal Jugdeo and I have acted out every spring for the past ten years.

It goes like this: we select a diner on Sunset and arrange to meet there for breakfast. We say nothing to each other apart from what's said in Lynch's scene (roles are pre-determined by a coin toss). When the dialogue ends ("Right then"), HERB gets up and pays. If Vish is playing HERB, he leaves, and I don't know where he goes; if it's me, I cab it back to LAX.

Here is the scene from Lynch's original screenplay:

INT. DENNY'S RESTAURANT , HOLLYWOOD - MORNING
    
Two well-dressed men HERB and DAN (mid 30's) are sitting at a
table drinking coffee. Herb has finished eating his
breakfast, but Dan hasn't touched his bacon and eggs - he
appears too nervous to eat. A blonde waitress with a
nameplate saying "DIANE" lays the check on their table
smiles, then walks off.
    
    HERB
  Why did you want to go to breakfast if
  you're not hungry?

    DAN
  I just wanted to come here.

    HERB
  To Denny's? I wasn't going to say
  anything, but why Denny's?
    
    DAN
  This Denny's.
    
    HERB
  Okay. Why this Denny's?
    
    
    DAN
  It's kind of embarrassing but,
    
    HERB
  Go ahead.
    
    DAN
  I had a dream about this place.
    
    HERB
  Oh boy.
    
    DAN
  You see what I mean...
    
    HERB
  Okay, so you had a dream about this
  place. Tell me.
    
    DAN
  Well ... it's the second one I've had, but
  they were both the same......they start
  out that I'm in here but it's not day or
  night. It's kinda half night, but it
  looks just like this except for the
  light, but I'm scared like I can't tell
  ya. Of all people you're standing right
  over there by that counter. You're in
  both dreams and you're scared. I get
  even more frightened when I see how
  afraid you are and then I realize what it
  is - there's a man...in back of this
  place. He's the one ... he's the one
  that's doing it. I can see him through
  the wall. I can see his face and I hope
  I never see that face ever outside a
  dream.
    
Herb stares at Dan to see if he will continue. Dan looks
around nervously, then stares at his uneaten food.
    
    DAN (cont'd)
  That's it.
    
    HERB
  So, you came to see if he's out there?

    DAN
  To get rid of this god-awful feeling.
    
    HERB
  Right then.

Westchester Loyola Village Library

After dropping off my rental car to avoid paying for a day that would end six hours later (or two hours before my 8pm flight back to Vancouver), I walked to the Westchester Loyola Village Library to work on the piece that brought me to town: 800 words on Peter Cardew's design of the Reigning Champ store on South La Brea.

The person sitting next to me was also at work. You can't see it from the photo (taken surreptitiously), but to his left is a small keyboard, which he tapped away at, sometimes furiously.

I would love to have heard what this person was composing. The style of music, the samples he was using, whether it had anything to do with him writing and recording it at a library.

3315 West Burbank Boulevard, North Hollywood, June 14, 2018 1:15 p.m.

Today is a travel day.

Locations

Subject to Edward Hopper (South La Brea).

*

Subject to Dirck van Baburen (Wilshire).

The Exiles (1961)

Sherman Alexie speaking on Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles (1961) at the 2008 Northwest Film Forum.

Here is a link to the L.A. Weekly article Alexie mentions concerning one of the film's stars, Yvonne Williams (Walker).

Light and Space

In that kindly light the stained and blistered paint of the bungalow and the plot of weeds between the veranda and the dry water-hole lost their extreme shabbiness, and the two Englishmen, each in his rocking-chair, each with his whiskey and soda and his outdated magazine, the counterparts of numerous countrymen exiled in the barbarous regions of the world, shared in their brief illusory rehabilitation.

Image: Peter Alexander 7/18/11 (untitled blue diptych), 2011
Text: second paragraph from Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One: an Anglo-American Tragedy (1948)

Florence & Normandie

The possessive is gone, but the shop remains.

MacArthur Park

Northwest of the Morrison Hotel is MacArthur Park, a former drinking water reservoir and the inspiration for Jimmy Webb's song of the same name, made famous by Richard Harris in 1968, and then by Donna Summer ten years later.

MACARTHUR PARK
((Jimmy Webb)

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
and the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
and never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
after all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.

I will take my life into my hands
and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes
and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
and my passion flow like rivers through the sky.
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
and wondering why.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!