Post #160636 by Kukoae on Sat, May 21, 2005 7:59 PM

I know this posting is probably a candidate for the "Duh!" category, but I received my (true hardcover) edition of Sven's wonderfully packed treasure chest of Tiki lore. I'll try to avoid too much reiteration of appreciation for Sven's excellent work on such a beautiful book, but I don't think he'll mind a little.

I'm still just absorbing the book's contents in a cursory fashion, but already I am awestruck by the extent to which this Tiki culture had swept the US. It's clear to me that I was experiencing only the trailing edge of what remained of Tiki as a boy (in the mid-1970s).

Beachbum's food+drinks booklets reinforce the cultural contexts at play within this movement. It's funny too, because I never established the link between other "Atomic Age" cultural phenomena: modernism, "exotica" (heavy and diverse percussion sections) music and its indelible impact on film and TV soundtracks, the growing appetite for the unusual [an odd "xenophilia" in a post-xenophobic/hardline anti-Red period?], the appeal of "exotic" locations and cultures, and the imparted dreams of a purely imagined culture.

I'm just a bit too young (or was lucky to have grown up on one of the coasts of the US) to have never known Chinese, Indian, Thai, and Japanese restaurants. About the closest thing in my personal experience would be the dissonance I felt during visits to my grandparents in Michigan over the summers; it struck me as odd that the nearest Chinese restaurant was over an hour's drive away, and it was hard to find something I could recognise on the menu [I was never a fan of chop suey and their ilk].

I must admit also to feeling some dissonance within what remains of Tiki culture today. Remember, that my impressions of it back in the 1970s were a boy's. It consisted of "unusual and dramatic" food in a cozy and dark setting which fed my imagination of tropical paradises and the already mythological status Hawai'i has for anyone who has never been there.

Obviously, I never drank alcoholic beverages back then, though I do vividly recall the two full-page spreads on the menus with such hilariously funny (to a 10 year old) drinks like "Shrunken Head","Zombie", and of course, the crowning touch incorporating a "forbidden word": The Suffering Bastard.

But that was not Tiki for me. I'm hardly a teatotaller, but a part of me wishes there was more left of what I remember about Tiki than bars and drinking alcohol. I am not complaining here, but rather, expressing a small pang of grief. I suppose all things change and die, and this grief is identical for all such losses we experience keenly only too late, after they've departed out lives forever.

Sven: Your book's subtitle is perfect. You have performed an excellent work of archaeology, and speaking as someone who nearly diverted into the field [for Mesopotamian/Sumerian focused research], I acutely recognise the care of your gentle excavations of this mostly gone culture which thrived in our very midst.

In essence, we've become caretakers of a dead culture, bookmarked from the time of its last "native speakers", in much the way Manx is both technically a dead language, and one still kept on linguistic life-support by the handful of academics who learned it before its last native-born speaker died in the 1970s.

It's with a whole heart I express my appreciation to those who still live and contribute Tiki to the world: the Mikes (Tiki-Ti), the Shags, the Boskos, the Svens, Ottos, Beachbum Berrys, and all of those who contribute to the Cultural Preserve in which we find ourselves.

In a related area, I wish there were movements to revive Modernism (the essence of it, not the superficial "cheap plastic replicas"). As I see more of it, I'm struck by how well it dates, and how absolutely elegant and beautiful it was/is. The absolutely brilliant buildings of Lautner, Frey, Williams, et al, are as beautiful inside as they are outside. The Eameses' interior works are legendary, and I fully understand the zeal of those who collect such.

Southern California is truly blessed with so many surviving examples in excellent condition, but I know they can't be taken for granted. Demolitions happen every year. Probably lots more are "rotting away" like the Chemosphere was before Herr Taschen bought and rescued it.

Anyway, I just wanted to express my profound appreciation to bigbrotiki for putting so much loving hard work into his book. Maybe someday, when the big cycle of trends come around, we'll see a larger base of Tiki revival, but I remain guardedly dubious about that.

Cheers,
=Kukoae=

[edited by Hanford to fix the title]

[ Edited by: hanford_lemoore on 2005-07-02 18:15 ]