Australian artist Anne Wallace paints her imaginings. The scenes in the suite 'Song cycle', from which this painting is drawn, are all based on her reveries.

The title of this painting is a phrase from the celebrated American song 'Stardust melody' by Hoagy Carmichael, a song bound up in ideas of nostalgia and longing. That was long ago 2005, for example, revisits the history of Modernism in architecture, showing the famous Case Study House no.22 by Pierre Koenig of 1960 — also known as the Stahl House — which is located above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The house is a paradigm of modernist domestic architecture. Here, however, the house is haunted by bats, and is set against a lurid sunset overlooking Los Angeles, the postmodern site of dreams and manufactured longing.

Desire, regret and the passing of time recur often in popular song lyrics. Anne Wallace has returned to the theme of music many times in her paintings. By exploring memory, Wallace ironically questions the gap between shared and private experiences of popular culture in contemporary life.