Photographer and longtime Echo Park resident Martin Cox sends me the following (and I say yes!):

Author Tadahiko Imada wrote

SOUND OF THE BLOOM OF A LOTUS FLOWER

In the early Showa period (1925-1989), people gathered to listen to the sound of the bloom of a lotus flower at Sinobazu-no-ike pond in Tokyo, in the early summer. However, the frequency of that sound is approximately 9-16 Hz. As humans normally hear sounds within a frequency range from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, people were unable to actually hear the sound of the bloom of a lotus flower. But they loved and wanted to listen to that phantom sound. The experience was a kind of communal auditory hallucination.

Inspired by the above I am proposing the following conceptual event:

EVENT: Self-guided Auditory Hallucination in Echo Park

WHERE: The Lotus Bed in Echo Park Lake at Glendale Blvd. and Park Ave
in Los Angeles, CA 90026

If you see me singing it's the song of the lotus....But hurry. I'm not sure for how much longer this season the lotus will continue to bloom.

Martin, who I met a few years ago when Fototeka Gallery mounted an exhibition of his work, has lived in Echo Park since 1989. A witness to the recently accelerated gentrification of the neighborhood, he emailed me some thoughts about the neighborhood:

I moved here from SF, and before that, London. In Echo Park I found a deeper enthusiasm for place, for non-conglomate alternative small town in a big city ways of living, a place where enthusiasm for capitalism was questioned under giant dusty tropical leaves surrounded by fallen backyard fruit.

I remember in 1993 seeing a white jogger in fully logo-ed training
outfit, running around the lake, I thought it was all over. But it was not.
Then, when Starbucks opened on Alvarado, it seemed the end.
When Pioneer Supermarket shut, I really thought we were through.
But somehow EP has absorbed these changes and still forges a distinct
personality and vibe quite different from Silverlake or other
surrounding communities. But I wonder for how long, as ever more
luxury cars edge down our tatty streets, will every shack becomes a
make over marvel?

I don't know what it will become, but Echo Park has been my longest
home ever, and my arrival here as a poor white european lefty artist
may have been just as much part of the change that I now complain of.

My focus has lately centered on the actual park and lake itself.
I walk its winding paths each day. With wonder I watched not one, but two pairs of Canada geese raise their
goslings, teach them to fly and leave the lake. I also saw a litter of
Mallard chicks stolen by greedy children, evidence of
turtles smashed by tormented people, fully loaded trash cans dumped
into the lake. The joyful red bridge, Echo Lake's most picturesque
detail, was painted a corrective drab green, the same green as the
leaves, the trees and even the eerie water itself. Lacking contrast
with the park, the bridge has all but vanished as a feature,
invisible to drivers on Glendale Blvd. I heard that this was the
"proper" colour that the Victorians would had chosen. Victorians
were certainly not right about a lot of things and this disappointing
decision has taken the jewel from the crown of Echo lake.