A friend of a friend

That there are six degrees of separation between me and anyone else on the planet is a concept that both troubles me and makes me skeptical. Nonetheless, I was reminded of it one weekend recently at a party in another state where I knew none of other people present - I had one of those well, that explains a lot moments, when I learned something about an acquaintance here from a friend of a friend of a friend - a man whose other plans at the last moment fell through and he attended the gathering at which we were also last-minute guests.

What I learned, and I use that word advisedly, is of no consequence and neither should it be, but what is important is that the world if one moves in certain circles really is growing smaller and tighter. I cannot imagine there are six degrees of separation between me and the Queen but if I moved in her circles I might well find it to be so. And so another connection was made when I received an email - an instance of a correspondent helping me with my thoughts about Roderick Cameron - in which he writes "As I recall there was another part of that circle, a gentleman named Ludington who lived in Santa Barbara and had a strong impact on Mr. Baldwin. Just a data point for you."

"I had known Wright Ludington all my life, and his house in Santa Barbara remained the one thing in America I wanted to see and had not. So I was doubly delighted when he called to ask me to come out for a visit.

"Even if I had not known Wright's special magic, I would have felt it in that house. As we walked through the rooms, I could feel the powerful force he exerts on his environment - in the architecture, the decoration, and especially in the pictures and sculpture that fill his world.

"'Come,'  he said. 'I'll show you to your room.'

"He opened the door not to a guest room, but to an art gallery. We entered at one corner and looked down what seemed like an endlessly long room - at least sixty feet. The white walls were filled with a fantastic collection of paintings of every period and nation. I stopped at every picture. Suddenly, it occurred to me that there weren't any windows - yet the room was filled with light. I looked up to see an ingenious skylight that extended the room's entire length. No one has ever awakened to such glorious sunlight.

"At each end of the room was a four-poster bed with blue-and-white curtains. Each bed had its own table, chest of drawers, books and a good light for reading. The beds were so remote from one another, and the curtains pulled so cozily around them, that even if you had to share the room, it would be like having the place all to yourself.

"Beside my bed was the bath and dressing room, painted brilliant yellow, with an enormous window directly over the tub. From that window I could look down the tawny-grassed valley to the blue Pacific far below."

Billy Baldwin does not give a date to his visit and clearly he is describing a room other than this. The point is, I think, not that Ludington - the donor of 175 works of art to the Santa Barbara Museum and erstwhile owner of Val Verde, an estate described as "a retreat for the nation's gay cultural elite" - knew Roderick Cameron, but that he was a life-long acquaintance of Billy Baldwin who employed Arthur Smith a good friend of Andrew Crispo, who very possibly walked along the same street as William Pahlmann, called "the best known decorator of his day," by Mark Hampton, who worked for David Hicks, who was influenced by Van Day Truex, who in turn was a friend of Roderick Cameron, who may well have danced with a man who'd danced with a girl who'd danced with the Prince of Wales.

However small the degree of separation it is membership of a circle that matters. It is perhaps facile to think of circles, cultural elites, and in a way too horizontal, siloing being more to the point. Siloing is a name for a form of vertical segregation of society where depending on your belief, sexuality, race, income etc., you belong to your silo and have little or no connection with the members of other silos. As a phenomenon it is pretty obvious in modern-day American society - there are the broader categories: straight, gay, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, black, white, Democrat, Republican and within those are smaller categories such as ideology, denomination, sect, club, team, university,redneck, yankees, red-haired stepchildren, young, old, male, female, immigrant, illegal, left, right, center, etc., etc, etc.

Friend of a friend, indeed, you might say.

Photograph by Ezra Stoller (I think) from The World In Vogue from the Viking Press, 1963.
Quotation from Billy Baldwin Remembers, Billy Baldwin, Harcourt Brace Jonanovich, 1974