lion.mouth

Dang. So, Thursday night I went to the grand reopening of Santa Barbara's Granada Theatre. I know that Santa Barbara reeks of wealth, but it's the kind of wealth that likes to pretend its just beach-bummin'-boho-too-laid-back-to-notice. Never have I seen the display of glitz and glamour that strolled over the red carpet and hovered around the champagne that night. I got free tickets through work and later learned that people paid $1,000.00 a seat.

You know you've reached extravagance when all around you are furs and feathers, sculpted hats with lace veils, and inch-thick diamond bracelets. I was clearly unshowered and had my sweater buttoned to the throat to hide the gross yellow stains on my t-shirt. Had I known, I would have gone all out. It was hard to take pictures because we were crammed in there so tight, but I really wanted to show you the old woman in the fluted red and turquoise gown, and the rows of tiny tiny cupcakes, and the flapper costumes, and the rhinestone cowboy.

The whole event made me reflect on what I had said earlier about a longing for an over-the-top mythology with all subtlety thrown to the wind. Not that I was talking about something that would actually take place, but it did feel like I walked right into the parade I had described. It was bizarre and repulsive and fun and ultimately very moving. And it helped me draw a connection between architecture and myth, or the ways spaces give rise to meaning.

When we build, it is always with a (particular) future in mind. The basis of all our designs is an ideal, and we build as though we are carving around the ineffable, revealing it in negative space. At the same time, we base our ideals on the architecture itself. Our homes, churches, schools, theaters, etc. become stopgaps in that we believe the immaterial past and future can be contained in them. I think myth and architecture feed each other. Yes, we bring meaning to structures, but there's a lot to meaning-making that we don't control and can't predict. Every time you make a shape you include and exclude. Certain belief systems are better suited to say, a steeple than a hogan, and vice versa. This is one way that beliefs perpetuate themselves, finding residence in something more lasting than brain tissue.

This is all sounding more impossible the more I talk about it. But really, I would be a very different person had I grown-up in a geodesic dome or a castle or on a farm. How was I, as a kid in church, to 'consider the birds' when I was distracted by white beams and the smell of carpet. I considered them via another architectural feat, imagination, and meanwhile learned to associate morality with shelter and a neo-Puritan aesthetic. It is yet another testament to the relational nature of meaning. Context is part of meaning, and everything we know depends on the way things stand in relation to one another, literally and figuratively. This is the humanity of logic. People can dream and do extravagant things in the Granada because it is an extravagant place.

So bringing it back to Thursday night: Everyone there behaved as though they believed and agreed that the theatre held great, desirable, intangible things, apparently unavailable elsewhere. Phrases like "the pinnacles of human achievement," "magic," "cultural investment," "preservation" and "artistic excellence" thickened the air. Would these things really be lost or endangered were the Granada to fall into ruin? I'm beginning to think so. I mean, would we even be able to take such grandeur seriously (I did; there were near tears) were it not for the height of the ceiling, the weight of the Moroccan chandelier and the depth of the orchestra pit? Okay, probably, but the point is that buildings are powerful.

True story: Charles M. Urton built the Granada using a mail-order how-to book on steel high-rise construction. The project ran out of money, so he sold his family home in order to see it to completion and pay-off every last worker. In 1925, a year after it opened, an earthquake leveled most of Santa Barbara, but the Granada was undamaged. Mr. Urton climbed the eight stories and hung a home-made banner that read: "Built by Charles M. Urton, Builder." Despite the voice inside me saying, "Why do we treat buildings like a legacy more perfect than children?!", I got chills. I want to be a builder! I want to hang my name on something after I've bought it with my whole self. David Conant, the architect overseeing current renovations, boasts of the theater's "good bones."

I suppose I am easily amazed, but I reel a little bit when I think that the structures I inhabit affect not just my everyday perception of the world, but my hopes, beliefs and expectations; that they are extensions of myself and points of contact with a collective identity. In the same way words are! Just like language! Architecture is literally our mode of existence! I was thinking about these things while watching the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra and the Santa Barbara Chamber Choir perform the most popular movement of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, O Fortuna. Seriously, they went all out.

BTW, I saw my very first play at the Granada when I was 6 or 7 years-old.