higgs boson blues

stefan mostert

8 october 2018

1,400 words

10 minutes

A Road Trip Through Architecture, Apocalypse, and the American Dream

A slow and golden winter sun rises over a very green Sonoran Desert. The rains came late, and autumn temperatures seem to let the moisture linger in the ground for longer than three seconds. Our old Jeep — heading west to California — is the only car on a four-lane highway.

I’m sitting with a mild case of the Higgs Boson Blues: a kind of future nostalgia, if I’m to understand Nick Cave correctly — a longing for a time that is about a time that looks back to a time that no longer exists. Or something like that. I blame the desert. When the apocalypse comes, this is the place to be: alone and as far away from any other humans as possible. Like “Hannah Montana, in the African Savanna.”

We’re off to see Cave live in concert, and my playlist, A Night with Nick, is kicking off our road trip in style. For my wife and me, these adventures revolve around a few essentials: architecture, nature, food, music, and people.

In keeping with the theme, our first stop is Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute on the outskirts of San Diego. Completed in 1965, and now surrounded by endless suburbia and highways, it still graciously overlooks the Pacific Ocean. That’s how you arrive: a concrete-framed view of the ocean, with a trickle of water — a thin stream dividing the entire site in half — at your feet. Biblical.

A very serious gatekeeper informs us that we are to remain in the central courtyard only and not enter the buildings on either side.  “But we can enter the open corridors?” my wife inquires hopefully.  He repeats, with stern eyes: “The building on your left, you cannot enter. The building on the right, you cannot enter.”  Clear, thank you.

We admire the textures in the soft autumn light, the carefully constructed details around every corner, and the clear synthesis between client and architect. Kahn wrote that the project began without any formal brief: “We just started playing around.”

An informal chat with the on-site security guard leads to her asking if we’d like to see the library. Would we! If a security guard leads you into “the right side of the building,” then surely there can be no problem.

The internal spaces are a continuation of the overall feel: the ever-present view of the Pacific Ocean, the contrasting textures of concrete and wood, and the individual expression of elements through articulation and detail. This is my first visit to a Kahn building, and I’m a believer!

Time to head north. Most cities today have some level of a traffic problem, but Los Angeles must surely be leading the pack. How fitting — as we slowly creep along a ten-lane highway with a river of cars stretched out before us over the hill — for the city that embraced the modern era and its cars with open arms to be where it is now. But this is how we learn, and perhaps this traffic is exactly what Los Angeles needs. Meaningful actions come from big reactions.

We booked the cheapest Airbnb in Venice and got what we paid for: a lingering smell, some grime, and an overall feeling of strangeness. But we’re not planning to spend much time here. We throw down our bags and head into Venice’s streets for the night.

The next morning, after a coffee and some people-watching in Beverly Hills, we continue our Architecture Safari at the Schindler House. Designed by Rudolph M. Schindler and completed in 1922 during the very early days of Modernism, the building sits perfectly between two eras, with traditional elements intertwined with the modern. It was one of the first homes to blur the threshold between inside and out. We admire its relationship with nature and the resulting light quality — along with the house’s most unique element: outdoor fireplaces! My wife, an aficionado of all things flame, fire, and ambience, gets so excited she nearly climbs into one. Sensing a shameful eviction from the premises, I pull her out. Time to move on.

You don’t expect people in Los Angeles to be any closer to each other than two adjacent cars, but that’s exactly what we find in the city’s Grand Central Market — a lively inner-city space filled with warmth, smells, sounds, and food from every corner of the globe. A fresh juice and a few small plates from somewhere east get us going again.

Next up: the celebrity Bradbury Building. Already more than a hundred years old and star of many Hollywood films — most notably the original Blade Runner — the building features a tall atrium that draws your eyes upward, eight stories or more, with brown bricks, black detailed steelwork, and balconies in various degrees of depth all coming together in a way that leaves everyone who enters in awe. You start by looking at the building but end up watching everyone else’s reactions as they enter.

Just up the street sits the recently completed Broad Gallery, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. City exploration — and Architecture Safaris in particular — are morning activities and are not to be pursued after lunch. Standing in a long queue with half-shut eyes, we’re reminded of this while also disappointed in our inability to absorb life lessons. We walk through the gallery halfheartedly while our minds long for something a little less intellectual — like watching the sun set on Venice Beach.

I’ve come to learn what the most American thing of all American things is: radical individualism. You can be anybody you want to be, and you can express it in any way and any place you like. A lingering effect of Postmodernism, perhaps: Anything Goes! If that’s the core of American life, then Los Angeles — and Venice Beach in particular — is at the core of the core.

As the sun sets over the wide beach, we watch a thousand people doing whatever they feel like. There’s the skate park and the young mom teaching her two-year-old daughter to drop into the half-pipe. There’s the outdoor gym, the slacklines, the dancing roller-skaters, the surfers, and the small community of beach dancers. We pause here as black silhouettes move against the fading orange light in the west. It all seems so utopian — strangers coming together with music and dance — until, out of the blue, a fight breaks out! Two men push each other and exchange threats. Ah, humans. We like to be close, but not too close.

Our evening city-hike ends at the Santa Monica Pier, where we board the Ferris wheel — bright Los Angeles stretching endlessly in one direction and the dark depths of the Pacific in the other.

A stroll around the Venice Canals with coffee starts off our last day. Developed in 1905 by Abbot Kinney as part of the Venice in America development — complete with gondolas and gondoliers brought in from Italy — it was arguably an amusement park predating Disneyland by 50 years. It boomed, declined, and today appears to be some of the most sought-after real estate in the area.

We spend the rest of the day on the beach and in the ocean. It’s almost time to return to the desert, so we make the most of all this water.

I got a preview of Nick Cave’s show with his film Distant Sky — a live show aired for one night only at locations around the world. I was excited to see how intimate the show would be: how Cave maintains a direct connection with his audience, his eyes constantly scanning the entire room; how he walks into the crowd without bodyguards and even invites groups of people onto the stage.

Cave is strange in his own unique way. With his dark lyrics and Australian goth-cowboy look, wrapped around his peculiar dance moves, he’s making the most of who he is. After the show, on our way out, my eyes catch one of the t-shirts for sale: a sketch of a skinny Cave with the subtext: “Exploit your imperfections; they’re the only thing of interest you’ve got.”

Yes, there are many ways of being human — and many ways of spending time with other humans.

Perhaps I was wrong then. When the apocalypse comes, I don’t want to be alone in the desert. I want to celebrate my humanness with Nick Cave, the setting sun, and all those interesting people on Venice Beach.