Chiara Barzini understands Los Angeles. Born and raised in Rome, where she now lives, she moved with her family to the San Fernando Valley when she was a teenager and later attended UC Santa Cruz. In 2017, she published the novel Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, a roman à clef of sorts about moving to Los Angeles during the city’s most eruptive years filled with riots, earthquakes, and slow speed chases along the highway.

Yet Barzini has never stopped thinking about Southern California. For the last several years, she has been at work on  L’Ultima Acqua: Il Sogno Perduto di Los Angeles, a nonfiction book that has recently appeared in Italy and will be published in Britain in the fall. Here she makes a fascinating and necessary argument about the essential nature of the aqueduct. “In 2017,” she writes, “a friend gave me an original instruction manual for the building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct by the very engineer who had built the aqueduct, William Mulholland. … When I took a careful look at the artifact back in Rome, I couldn’t help but think it had something important to say.” The result is this book, which explores the importance of such structures, as water suppliers and signifiers, to Roman and Californian culture. Such a confluence resonates from one space to the other, across continents and millennia. 

Barzini did not so much translate the book from Italian into English as she worked on both versions at once. In that sense, the very writing, the text (or texts) of the project, are interwoven in important and irreducible ways. The same, I think, is true of California and Italy, which share a relationship with seismicity (among other things) as well.

Barzini and I spoke over Zoom on a Monday morning in late May. We are pleased to share the conversation here.

The following is the transcript of the full conversation:

David L. Ulin: All right. We are recording. Thank you for being willing to talk about your book, Aqua, which we are excerpting in Air/Light. I wanted to start by. Just let’s start with just a general conversation about the book and what its genesis is, and and sort of this the fascination from both the, you know, California perspective. Since you have lived here for many years as well as in Rome, where you now are, the the relationship of water to those landscapes and to those, to those, to those cultures.

Chiara Barzini: Well, I wasn’t really sure that there was one, which was kind of the fun part about this book when I set off on this sort of road trip to go along the aqueduct of Los Angeles. I didn’t really know. I didn’t really think about the structure of aqueducts, nor did I think of the fact that I came from a place that was very important in terms of how water arrived in the city, and what Romans had built to get it there.

Chiara Barzini: So I think it was one of those really sort of like subconscious journeys where I set off thinking. I was just going to write a very sort of almost technical book about the relationship between LA and water, and I was going to have every stop on the aqueduct. Be sort of like a chapter in the book.

Chiara Barzini: And then, as I started the trip, I realized that this absence of water meant something a lot larger, both, you know, for me and for the book. And then I started to think about, like a taste. That sort of had the same taste of the end of something big, the end of a big empire, the end of something huge that had worked very well for a very long time.

Chiara Barzini: So during this journey when I did discover that the water had, in fact, run out. You know, because I visited all these places where you would see you know these spill gates like in the Alabama hills. For example, I had seen all these images of this sort of like gushing water, and I was really literally seeing like water trickling down the mountain. And it was quite shocking. So once I realized that this water was gone. Then I started thinking, Wow, it feels like, not just water, but it’s like the end of a of a kind of empire, of an empire, of water, of an empire that started because of water, and that’s when I sort of woke up a little bit and said this feels familiar to me because I come from a place that is a fallen empire, you know, even though it’s not at all contemporary, that feeling of something grandiose that is no longer here, but that you can sort of see the traces of here and there was part of my upbringing. So that’s when I started seeing the parallels. And then, of course, as always, when you’re writing or researching something. 100 doors opened up, and I realized that Mulholland had, in fact, studied. You know the Roman aqueducts when he built the La Aqueduct, and that

Chiara Barzini: Rome as an empire ended. When the aqueducts were ransacked and destroyed and attacked. So I just started thinking about water in in a larger and larger and larger context. And that’s kind of what the journey became.

David L. Ulin: It’s fascinating, because, on the one hand, you’d think, you know, on the surface of right. You know, Southern California and Southern California in particular. It feels like a very new civilization in the sense that it became, you know, modernized, let’s say, almost within living memory, I mean, not quite at this point, but within the last 1, 25 years or so, I mean

David L. Ulin: the construction or the opening of the aqueduct is 1913. So that’s 112 years ago, and then to compare that with Rome. Those aqueducts were built, you know, thousands of years ago, and and many of them are still standing in pieces, or there are relics of them as well as as you talk about in the book, the kind of the way that Rome is built on a foundation of its own antiquity. So it seems that on the surface that those 2 cultures are antithetical to one another. But I agree with you. There’s a real commonality between them, and I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that.

Chiara Barzini: Well, you know, they they mirror each other in some ways. 1st of all, you know, water builds empires and destroys empires. You know it’s really true. So it was, thanks to water that Rome was able to flourish. It was thanks to water that you know, we had naval battles in the Colosseum, and recreations of you know, reenactments of naval battles, and it was this element that once it was brought into the city with the sense of grandiosity and abundance. We have so much of it that we can fill the Circus Maximus. We have so much of it that we can fill the Colosseum and create a spectacle.

Chiara Barzini: That’s when I started to think about the parallels. Because and actually, you pointed this out in that beautiful essay that you wrote about the water arriving into Los Angeles, and the ceremony that that took place when the water arrived, and Mulholland standing, you know, on the side of the of the aqueduct, and, you know, making these great declarations and saying, There it is, take it, and everyone rushing to to with their tin cups to drink this sort of like magic potion, you know. It’s it’s so cinematic, and it’s so eerie and mystical and religious in some way, you know. So I started to think about also this idea of spectacle, you know, and how important spectacle is in the creation of empires, and is in the creation of representation of an empire, you know. So in Rome we had these naval battles. We had the fountains. We had even, you know the way that the aqueducts look when you arrive into the city is very majestic, you know, and they really looked like arteries connecting to the sort of heart that was the center of Rome, so a very strong and striking image. And then, of course, if we’re thinking of spectacle, I couldn’t help but think, you know, water is also what allowed for the studios to to begin, you know, and those jungle pictures, and those tropical pictures, and the animal pictures, and the zoos, you know all of the all of the beginning of you know, Lemley, and universal studios, you know Universal City were all born, thanks to water, you know.

Chiara Barzini: some to be able to hoard and keep and and distribute water, to make movies, to make spectacles. That was a sign of, you know, a great, great power. So that was another sort of thing that I was thinking about, you know. Also, you know, Chinichita and Hollywood sort of speaking to each other

Chiara Barzini: and film, of course, is a big part of of this book and and so it was really like. As as the story progressed I realized how everything was in was in in this sort of larger conversation. And yeah, I think it was. It was quite a surprise. Actually, I hadn’t. I hadn’t seen it coming, and then when I did, I got very excited, because it seemed like everything was falling into place.

David L. Ulin: You write about spectacle from both, you know, from both sort of the grandiosity of it, but also the kind of underside of it. One of my favorite moments in the book is the memory of going as a child to universal studios to see the shark from jaws and being, you know. I mean frankly irritated by the fact that it just doesn’t. It’s not spectacle at all.

David L. Ulin: And then, of course, there’s the section on Las Vegas which, where you, as an Italian in Nevada, are staying at the Venice with it. Sort of with those canals and all, you know. And there’s something so interesting about the quality airsat’s quality of that spectacle that it is spectacle. But it’s kind of a hollow spectacle, in a certain sense, as well.

Chiara Barzini: Yeah, and I think that kind of nails it. You know. The difference between these 2 empires is that Romans built for eternity, or that was their motto, you know. So, and in many cases it really feels like like they did. You know the aqueduct that I speak of at the end of the book, you know it’s over a thousand years old, and it’s you know, it has so many architectural layers on it, and it’s so beautiful, it’s so majestic. It just sits at this bottom of a garden, you know, on a private property. It has such a strange and enchanting story, and it’s just there, you know, and it’s been there for over a thousand years.

Chiara Barzini: and and you know I feel like the American Empire never declared, This is going to last forever. You know. I think this idea of capitalist consumption and sort of like use and consume and throw away is part of that kind of empire, you know, and even Mulholland said, you know we have water in abundance for a hundred years, you know, so it’s kind of like a Disney and smell spell. You know it’s like this is the amount of time. Do everything you want in this amount of time. But at midnight, you know, you’re going back home and.

David L. Ulin: Car turns back.

David L. Ulin: Yeah, no, I think that’s really.

Chiara Barzini: And so I felt like.

Chiara Barzini: No, no, go ahead.

David L. Ulin: Oh, no, you froze for a bit, so go ahead.

Chiara Barzini: Cutting out.

David L. Ulin: Yeah.

Chiara Barzini: Okay? So yeah, the yeah. So so this idea of of something that wasn’t meant to last forever, I think, is is what I was.

Chiara Barzini: Also I discovered along the way, you know, because I think, when I first moved to the United States, that grandiosity felt very similar to the Roman Empire. Grandiosity, you know, and it did feel like it might last forever. I remember my feeling when I first arrived to Las Vegas was, this is out of this world. This is completely out of scale from anything I know. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s so insane that it’s actually scary for me.

Chiara Barzini: And then I think at some point on this trip. I realized, you know I started seeing wait a minute, you know, in this Venetian palace my friends were teasing me a lot, for they would, you know we booked at the Venetian, and they love to make fun of me for being Italian, and you know, giving me the authentic experience and all of that. But at the same time, you know.

Chiara Barzini: it was. It was strange to hear the, you know, the empty you know. Knock on the walls, and you can hear the emptiness on the other side. You notice for the 1st time you noticed that the gondolas are cracked, that the water smells like cleaning products, you know it smell. It smelled like a vintage store, Vegas.

Chiara Barzini: and that’s not what an empire is supposed to smell like, you know.

Chiara Barzini: And and so I started thinking, Wow, if this is, you know.

Chiara Barzini: if this is starting to taste like vintage. Then something’s really changing.

David L. Ulin: So it’s interesting. I mean, I think I think this is a really fascinating point. It feels to me like American culture in general, and certainly California and Las Vegas, without question is built, is almost ahistorical, or is built with a sense of a kind of ongoing present tense as opposed to a relationship between the present and the past. I mean, that’s 1 way of dealing with or thinking about time, whereas the the Italian model or the Roman model, because of the kind of because of all of those antiquities, because of all of those ancient buildings, many modern buildings built on the foundations of those modern buildings. Antiquity feels very much in use or part of the present as well as you know as well as the past, and it feels so it feels like there’s a different layer. When I was in Rome last year, someone described Rome to me as a Lasagna, where all the different layers of time were stacked one on top of the other, and we’re all kind of in relation to each other. And again, as I say, California and Las Vegas, partly because they’re so new in terms of human history. They’re so. I mean, the landscapes are there. But in terms of the way we view them as the American cities that they are, or landscapes that they are now are so new it doesn’t have that same kind of weight. Do you think that that sort of the shortness of the vision, perhaps, has to do with the ahistoricity of the culture.

Chiara Barzini: I’m not sure, but I do think that there is also an attitude of a historicity, especially in California, that I was always very surprised by, you know the quickness with which you know even historic building can be turned into something else or torn apart, was always something that’s terrified me a little bit as a European living there as a kid.

Chiara Barzini: you know, and you know, even, you know, in those beautiful houses in Beachwood Canyons, in Beachwood canyon. I remember some of those houses used to be part of used to be temples from the, you know, when when the Theosophists were living there, and you know then they kind of turned, you know some of them were churches, and then they just turned into apartments or regular homes. You know there was never any. There was never a moment where someone said Hey, you know what? This is actually something special, and we might want to revisit this at some point, you know. A friend of mine told me that she was living in Beachwood Canyon, and she was hanging a painting on a wall, and she could feel there was emptiness on the other side, and she said, Let’s let’s see what’s going on here, and she opened a hole in the wall, and she discovered an entire other room with the stained glass, and it was, you know, it was a theosophist Temple, and you know, and I I always was, I always felt a little bit of sadness for these places that had been so important at some point, and had been someone’s dream. And then the quickness with which, you know they were. They were washed away, which I think is very California, but also very much American, as well, you know. So I. You know I was very excited because I feel like also a lot of the work you’re doing and a lot of the work. A lot of scholars in Los Angeles and thinkers are doing is to just put up a flag and say, this is something special. Let’s not, you know. Let’s pay attention to it, you know, and so I feel like, you know, California is beginning to have more history than it saw it. Did you know?

Chiara Barzini: And this was, you know, for example, visiting Manzanar was a big, was a big wake up call for me. I knew very little about it just through books that she’d told me about. So this idea that history is being woven in little bit at a time now seems to me reassuring.

David L. Ulin: To me as well, and I think you’re absolutely right, I mean, and Manzanar is a great example. I grew up in the East, but even so, we didn’t. You know I first learned about it when I was in my late twenties, when I was working in a bookstore and a collection of Ansel Adams. Photos from Manzanar was published.

David L. Ulin: and you know I had studied the, you know, I had studied the war. I had studied, you know the domestic side of the war. It was not, it was not part of that conversation or that narrative at all. So I agree with you that there is a kind of reclamation going on in some sense, and it may have to do with again this question of time that, as

David L. Ulin: Southern California or California begins to have a more, a longer, let’s say again, linear history. As you know, American history or United States history that we start to see, we start to think in broader terms like that. It does feel that the ancient Romans were thinking that way all along, perhaps because of, I guess, a difference in cosmology, or a difference in sort of you know, of

Chiara Barzini: Ecology.

David L. Ulin: Well, ecology, too. Yes, so I think there’s something interesting about that.

David L. Ulin: I think the perspectives are different. But the cultures or the climates are not dissimilar in a certain sense.

David L. Ulin: seismic culture, both in both places are seismic. You have that great moment in in the book where you’re thinking about the California earthquake, and then there’s an earthquake where you are in Italy, you know. So there are these kind of echoes and whispers of geographic geologic whispers, I suppose.

Chiara Barzini: Yeah. Yeah. Also, you know, Los Angeles was considered. You know, the the Mediterranean of California? You know the Salton Sea was considered. You know, the Riviera. In some ways we have so many references to the Amalfi coast, even a lot, you know, here and there in the city.

Chiara Barzini: You know this oak trees, orange trees, orange groves, you know there’s this kind of nature that is so pervasive in the Mediterranean, and it’s so Tuscan especially, I feel like it’s both the Tuscan and also yes, the Riviera and the Riviera, of course, has, you know, these lemon groves and these lemon trees that are so

Chiara Barzini: such a big part of their of that culture. So there was already from the very beginning a link between Los Angeles and I mean. Many people have written about this, but Los Angeles being a place where you can smell that Mediterranean ease in some way.

Chiara Barzini: So I was very drawn to that when I moved to LA, because that was sort of like how my family pitched it to me, and then I didn’t exactly find that right away. But I did later. Once I started researching and understanding things in a bit of a broader sense.

David L. Ulin: Right? Well, you are, I mean, in a lot of ways. I think of you as someone of both places. Right? As you were saying, you moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. You spent a lot of time not just visiting California, but living in California as well as as well as living in Rome and in Italy, and I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit through your own personal filter about your relationship with each place, and how they you know how they coincide, or perhaps don’t coincide, how they, how they how they exist in suspension with one another.

Chiara Barzini: Well, there’s a lot of moments where I sometimes close my eyes in Rome, and there’s that.

Chiara Barzini: you know. There’s this beach close to the airport that has such a resonance with Santa Monica, because you have the bay and this quiet, and then the sound of airplanes going over the ocean, and that sounds that sort of muffled airplane over the sea. Sound is a sound that’s become like home to me somehow. And so when I moved back to Rome. I chose to live right there, which in Roman terms is actually a very shitty suburban place, but for me it felt like a strange way of being at home, and I also liked you know I was excited because I lived close to like a drive through Mcdonald’s. You know there was like at the time. There was just one of them in Rome, and I could

Chiara Barzini: That smell of fried food kind of took me back to to LA. So in these little sort of fun, you know, pop cultural things. I would find similarities. And I was always also having dreams of, you know, opening a door in Rome and being in LA somewhere, and having these places really morph into each other, and the more they morphed into each other in my head, both living here and revisiting there, living there, and visiting here, and always having some missing piece and some dramatic sense of longing for one of the 2 places.

Chiara Barzini: I think that with time I created this middle place that I find, you know, with writing and with listening to music and with certain films where these 2 places sort of coexist and mirror each other and are in dialogue with each other. And I realize that that middle place does exist, because it’s a place of

Chiara Barzini: so many books that are reading these days, and so many thoughts that are that are circulating, you know even you are now, you know you’re such a great LA voice, and you’re starting to filter into Italy. And you know you’re doing yours. You’re our, you know, geological instability.

Chiara Barzini: So I feel like, you know, I feel like there is a a space, a common place, a city, and a sort of imaginary city.

David L. Ulin: Yeah, fascinating. I think that’s, I love that idea of an imaginary city. I want to ask you. So this book exists in 2 forms at the moment. I mean, you wrote it in Italian, and then there is an English language version that the Italian version is just out, and there’s an English language version that’s coming out in England later this year, and you didn’t exactly, as we’ve talked about previously, you didn’t exactly translate the book from Italian into English so much as kind of create an English version of the book. So I wondered if you can talk a little bit about both. I guess what the difference for you is between a sort of a strict translation and this kind of English version.

David L. Ulin: and what that process was like, because it does feel to me that you’re you’re situated in both languages, but each language carries its own kind of point of view. And so I’m curious about. I’m curious about all of this, so that whole process and and the effect of the kind of you know, each each language or each culture sort of asserting itself in different ways. In each version of the book.

Chiara Barzini: Well, it’s true what you say that the 2 books exist, and but they’re like almost 2 different books. They’re not 2 different books, but they have 2 different characters, and, in fact, maybe they have 3 different characters, because the English version of the book was written in my mind into American English, but then it was edited into British English.

Chiara Barzini: So so there’s even, you know, there’s even like a bit of like a sibling situation there.

Chiara Barzini: I think. You know there’s a person that you’re speaking to when you’re speaking into a language, an audience that you’re imagining, and a sense of self that you imagine when you’re speaking in a language that isn’t the same for every language so, Italian for me is a language that has that brings in a little bit more of that, like Catholic shame or a sense of you know, we can’t really say things as they are, because we’re going to get in trouble. So, for example, the Italian version of the book is quite a bit longer than the English version of the book, and I feel like some part of it might be that I work around saying something without just saying it directly. The English version is more direct. I’m not worried about someone judging me, or you know I don’t have a inner monologue about the Catholic Church, you know, despising me and considering me, you know. There I must have been. Maybe I don’t know a witch in some previous life. I have a lot of anxiety around shame and in Italian, and for some reason I don’t have it in English, so I don’t. I don’t know but it’s it’s fun, you know. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun to see

Chiara Barzini: these 2 siblings come to life, and to also some things that work in English. I try to bring back in Italian, and vice versa, and then also the the amount of research that I did, you know, to understand some parts of of Roman culture and the Roman history. I felt like I needed to explain them a little bit more into the English version, and maybe for Italians, they need to know less. So also, there’s some of that of like a little bit of this here, a little bit less of this here, and then, of course, in comes the language and the editing and the working the fine tuning of the voice, and who you are as a person when you’re telling a story in English, and who you are when you’re telling it into Italian. So there are 2 books really, at the end of the day.

David L. Ulin: Is that is that also an audience question as well? I mean, in terms of thinking about? Obviously, a book is a conversation. So it’s not just a monologue, it’s a dialogue or a trial, or however people are involved in that conversation.

David L. Ulin: So in the sense of thinking about how an Italian reader or an Italian audience is going to respond to this material as opposed to the way an American audience, I mean was that a factor in your thinking? Or was it more organic, or some combination of the 2.

Chiara Barzini: I think you know this is a nonfiction book, and I think America has a very longstanding nonfiction tradition, or the English language does, and Italy does here and there, but they still have a hard time with classifications and the amount of freedom they give themselves with nonfiction, so they need to know. But is it a memoir? But is it journalism? Is it a travel book? So the book in Italy now can be found in it can be found next to like guides. You know your summer guides. If you want to go to California, and you want to find the routes that you need to take. So it’s next to like the lonely planet guides. But it’s also found in, you know, memoir. And it’s also found in, you know, just normal fiction.

Chiara Barzini: so I think it’s, I think that, you know, is a little bit more wobbly. Here. Is it the idea of you know what what nonfiction is and what it represents for Italians. I think it’s finding its own path here, and I feel like, Oh, go like this would already have a category, probably in the English language market. That’s a little more recognizable.

David L. Ulin: It’s a little more. I think it is a little more porous here in that sense of, because the book is all of those things, and could be categorized as any one of them. But if you only categorize it as one of them, you’re leaving out all those other lenses and filters. Right? So it is a travelogue, and it is a history of water, and it is a memoir, and it is a nonfiction narrative. And you know it’s all of that. And that, I think, is one of the things that makes it so interesting is that you’re constantly moving in and out of memory and personal experience and research and reporting, and you know, and there and there are several different plot lines, if we want to call them that, that are all kind of intersecting at various points.

David L. Ulin: Did you find? I mean, there’s a lot in the English language version at least, which is the one I’ve read since I don’t read Italian. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of personal revelation. And I’m wondering, was it easier? Is it was that one of the things that was sort of easier for you in an English language context, as opposed to an Italian language context. Because you have the, let’s call it the cover of writing, outside of your of your native tongue.

Chiara Barzini: Very good call. Yes. Completely. But there’s a strange thing that happens where, when that revelation part that’s sort of more, I guess. Confessional part, or whatever you want to call it, that’s more linked to memoir or more personal. I find that as long as I write it in English first, so I don’t have that embarrassing cringey moment to myself, somehow, because I’m writing it in English when I go ahead and translate it into Italian. I have more courage somehow, and I feel less intimidated so often when I have to write personal things. I will write them in English, even if I don’t, even if they’re for the Italian market.

Chiara Barzini: and then translate them back into Italian. And I feel like that 1st English version, even if no one will read it works as a kind of protective blanket. Somehow.

David L. Ulin: Yes, that totally makes sense. I mean, I find that sometimes, if I’m writing about really intimate stuff, it’s easier for me to write it as a piece of fiction, even if it’s extremely autobiographical, just because it gives me that little bit of space that I can say something. I’m not exactly saying it as myself. I’ve got a place to hide a little bit, and paradoxically, that opens it up.

Chiara Barzini: Yeah, I mean, it’s completely hypocritical. If you think about it, you know it’s it’s just these these lies that writers tell themselves, or these tricks of the mind, you know.

Chiara Barzini: but in fact, a lot of what Italians have been responding to is a sense of tenderness that is in the book that I thought would not come across, because I thought I had complete control over it, and no one would notice that there’s also some sadness and some melancholy. But, in fact, that’s actually something, probably the greatest thing that people are interested in right now or responding to around the book. So I think, you know.

Chiara Barzini: maybe we need to create these little structures in our mind. But then, in the end, whatever sentiment is there, in the 1st place, will still bleed through the page.

David L. Ulin: Yeah, no, that makes sense, too, before we, before we we close the conversation, I do want to just go back and ask. So you were writing. Some of it was written in English first, and then re-rendered in Italian. Some of it was written in Italian first, st and then re-rendered in English

David L. Ulin: and I mean, and what was that process like? I find that, I mean, I’m really interested in that notion of, as we were just talking about how each language brings its own kind of perspective to what you’re writing about. How did that, I mean in terms of that back and forth? How did that process work for you?

Chiara Barzini: The1st draft was mostly in English, with bits in here and there that were in Italian and then and then I just had a very hybrid version at some point where there was chapters that were all in English, and bits of dialogue that were in Italian. A lot of it also had to do with the people that I interviewed and encountered along the way during the journey. So if I, the conversations with Taurus Poly, for example, or in Bombay Beach we would speak Italian to each other. So when I wrote it, I actually wrote out the conversation into Italian and then you know, all the other people that I interviewed or met were mostly in English, and so I wrote those in English. So it was a bit like dream logic, where you kind of go from one state to another without really understanding. And so the 1st draft was very messy, and then I started to, you know, make some order, and do all the holy English version and the holy Italian version.

David L. Ulin: Fascinating. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I

Chiara Barzini: Very fun.

David L. Ulin: Appreciate it.

 

Editor’s note: the Italian version of the book, L’Ultima Acqua: Il Sogno Perduto di Los Angeles, is available for purchase here, and the English version, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, is available for pre-order here.