Under God

When I saw stars along Hollywood Boulevard dedicated to people like Joseph Szigeti, I realised that classical music was once American popular culture.

There are stars also to people like Stravinsky, Pierre Monteux, Paderewski, and the great Wagnerians Lauritz Melchior and Lotte Lehmann.

I love LA. I love the look of LA streets. The distant hills stop them from looking totally like Parramatta Road, or any anonymous-ville else.

I love the fact that you can see coyotes up in the hills and that they warn you about rattlesnakes on the trails.

I love that it often looks like 'that great Alice Springs on the other side of the sphere' (to paraphrase Herman Melville's comment about Australia)

Most of all I love that movies are made here.

This mural on the eastern wall of Hollywood High, Kate's father's old school, portrays some of the famous alumni - Lawrence Fishburne, Judy Garland, Carol Burnett...Check the way the guy on the side is pulling aside the curtain. A reference to the famous American painting of a fellow in his athenaeum (whose title I forget), I imagine it means this 'Old School Tie' is a producer, unlike the eastern wall's front-of-camera performers.

Not everyone likes Hollywood though. I saw this on the way down to San Diego earlier in the year.

A big red slash through the Hollywood sign.

And that's got me thinking about America's religiosity. Presidents these days end their speeches with 'God bless you. God bless the United States of America.' It wasn't also so. And wasn't until recently. Even a president as devout as Jimmy Carter ended his farewell address with 'Thank you, fellow citizens, and farewell'. Richard Nixon launched into a bigger arabesque, 'We come from many faiths, we pray perhaps to different gods - but really the same God in a sense - but I want to say for each and every one of you, not only will we always remember you, not only will we always be grateful to you but always you will be in our hearts and you will be in our prayers.' But then ended, merely: 'Thank you very much.' I wonder if any modern president would dare leave out the 'God bless you' mantra.

An Australian prime minister would not dare put it in! Australians give short shrift to public figures wearing religion on their sleeve. Wave the Bible and you are less likely to be elected. And there are advantages to this lower key. Has intense religiosity ever spared America immoral behaviour? Has it prevented shonky behaviour on Wall Street in recent years? Has it weeded out corporate sociopathy?

But here's an upside. Regardless of the work they're doing, Americans act joyfully. An Australian behind the counter will often give you resentful service; grunt when you say thank you rather than say, 'You're welcome'. You don't find that much here. Americans may simply be making lattes day in and day out, ringing up a cash register, driving a bus along the same route, but they behave as if they're part of the performance, the Divine Comedy. My current theory? I think they feel reassured they're doing what God wants them to do. It may not be forging a treaty or building a dam (always), but they feel that they fit into the grand design.

There's enough of the larrikin in me to be amused by the heckler who calls out 'bullshit' at the end of a ringing religious phrase, but it would be nice if Australians had a bit more of a sense of working for a higher power (or ideal). There are advantages to a higher key. I think this is partly how America built Wall Street, Silicon Valley - and Hollywood.