A couple of decades ago, conceptual and visual artist Renee Nahum made music using palm trees as notes. Her piece eventually was broadcast, repeatedly, over the local airwaves by a then-venerated news lite show, ‘Eye on L.A.’ -- so that palm tree music was breathed in by residents as substantially as the particulates in the air. Now, though, the actual tapes and photos associated with her art piece are lost to the dustbin of history in a memoryless town -- or are stored in one of many cardboard boxes that most of us (or our spouses) keep cornered. So at our request, Renee just recently took the photos shown here, to assist this interview. FP: When did you do this particular art piece -- 20, 25 years ago?

Renee Nahum: Twenty years ago.

What was the inspiration?

The inspiration was purely visual. I always liked how palm trees looked. Sort of hanging in the skyline. And they just looked like a musical staff. Like musical notes.

It seemed this way to you since you were a kid? Or at what point -- was there a “Eureka!�? moment?

I don’t know. There wasn’t a Eureka moment. It just was. And then I started thinking, “Gee, I really would like to know what they sound like. Let’s take the visual and put the element of sound to it; let’s see if there’s something interesting that comes out of it.�?

So you took lots of pictures all around the city?

I would go around, and every time I would see what I thought was an interesting pattern of those palm trees -- and it had to be the really really tall ones, I forget what they’re called, I think they’re ‘Royal’ palms, they’re the really tall ones that stand above all of the architecture. And they’re usually planted in long rows. And I started taking pictures. And I had a friend who was an avant-garde musician.

It was Raymond Brooks?

Raymond Brooks, yeh!...I forgot his last name, I didn’t remember it!

You met him at SelectTV? (An early pay TV broadcasting company)

Yeah! (laughs) I met him at SelectTV.

Where you were a customer relations rep?

Right.

What was he doing? Was it the same?

Uh-huh.

And he was a horn player, who played trumpet; he had played with the Chicago Art Ensemble. And I told him my idea. I showed him my photos; he didn’t think it was that weird. He said, “Yeah, lets do it! Lets try.�? He was willing to interpret the photos. His idea was, and I went along with it, not to interpret just the palm trees, but to interpret other elements that were in the photos. So if there was a car going by at a certain point, that hit at a certain point of the score, we would put that into the score. If there was some sort of a block of a building, or some other things, some other elements in the photos...

It might be a honking noise for the car -- it was that literal?

Right. Or a car that was stopped would go, “Vrrumm, vrrm.�? (imitates sound of engine starting up)

But your idea initially was seeing the trees as notes on a staff,