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Standing in front of an empty storefront sign, squinting in the hot desert sun, tanned by the geography of developed and undeveloped territories, a shifted baseline, a converted landscape, searching unnamed spaces of hidden interiors, of vacant plots, of distorted traffic tunes, of flaming red skies, of vibrating blocks of concrete, of rocky canyon echoes of Santa Susana, of crooked skinny palm trees, of the half-full overly romanticized Los Angeles River and of holy Hollywood and its smaller than life sign for possible clues of its influence and impact from birth to present. Only the spaces between the relics of dusted fame, the annual rings of an oak tree, the heroic poppies, the bottomless coffee, the open-mics of all ages, and within the unnoticed crevices where kabob is cooked over fire pits, can I claim as the smog-ingesting grounds that birthed my imperfect strokes laid upon the canvas, stretched by the golden sun. To move freely between one medium and another, borrowing from each discipline to inform the other, closing the gaps that make one end of Sunset Boulevard a world apart from the other. The in-between, the edge, the empty quarter—areas of concentrated dissonance where two or more bio-diverse species overlap and assimilate, where feral biota succeed—it is this area, birthed from an upbringing of fragmented chaos in a city that entertains chaos intercepted by a distant horizon thirsty for relational grace and perceived through the lens of my dyslexic brain. Here my fingerprint becomes a scratch on a lathe-cut 7″ record and the added noise repeats intolerably as pearls of sweat stain my silk maroon peasant blouse. Finally a western screech owl lands on the exact groove, the cycle is broken and a looping cassette bleeds over — there will always be no beginning and no ending. Within the 100 foot circle lives a living archive of 300 things nobody knows and nobody will ever understand. Thank you Lew Welch. Welcome to my body and the sounder – ongoing.
Helga Fassonaki 