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Malibu
I was at a friend of mine’s daughters second birthday party. My friends lived in a small apartment in Santa Monica but they were both in show business and one of them had a client/friend who lived in a huge, cliffside mansion near Malibu. It was a beautiful, sunny August day. From the moment you walked in the front door, the view was spectacular. Windows all around. In front of the living room there was a beautifully landscaped green lawn with rose bushes and cypress trees for privacy. Inside there were lots of fun things, old, historic guitars in one room, old pinball machines in another, several bathrooms with views and sunlights, several bedrooms, all on the same level. There was an exquisite airiness to the place and lots of contemporary art and sculptures.
The party was mostly outside, although there was a double level buffet in the open plan kitchen/living room: one for adults with adult beverages and dishes and a snack bar toddler level with fruit leather and organice salt free goldfish crackers and capri sun boxes.
It was a lovely party, there were even balloons and entertainment. The couple who lived there were both very successful rock music producers. They couldn’t have been more welcoming.
When I went back inside to use the bathroom I treated myself to a walk around. Beautiful home with lots of places to sit, one had a fireplace, read, think….wait, my visual memory said, ‘read what?’ I went back to the communal spaces and I realized that there was not a single piece of reading material, Zero. Zilch. Rien. No magazines, no cookbooks, no books, atlases, bibles, directories. Instead of book shelves there were masks or there were bicycles hanging or hangings hanging, one bedroom had a fantastic, gigantic quilt on a wall where a bookshelf or several might have just done the trick.
So much care, thought and love had gone into making this home what it was. The people who lived here worked in the music business, they watched something on the giant tvs littered throughout, maybe movies, or concerts, they hung beautiful, provocative art.
Maybe they listened to audio books, I know they must have encountered print in the course of their daily lives and of course everyone had a kindle or reads on their phone. Maybe one or both of them had reading disabilities or were illiterate but it was such a startling thing that once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it and this lavish, beautiful home seemed suddenly soulless and cold.